Satyajit Ray made Teen Kanya (THREE DAUGHTERS, ‘61) to commemorate the birth centenary of the Bengali cultural giant—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, actor, educationist, painter—Rabindranath Tagore. It is noteworthy that Ray, a polymath himself, decided to concentrate on the three female protagonists of Tagore’s short stories from the volumes of poems, novels, short stories, dramas, essays and songs that Tagore left behind. May 2, 2021 marks Ray’s birth centenary and studying the expansive creative careers of both men often reveals several points of intersection.

Tagore’s women, like Ray’s, are complex—independent yet bound by tradition; inhabiting, as women do, the in-betweenness within a desire for boundless personal freedom and the socio-familial space that denies it to them. Teen Kanya is an anthology of three films: Postmaster with the young, orphaned protagonist Ratan (Chandana Banerjee); Monihara with the childless wife of a rich jute plantation owner Manimalika (Kanika Majumdar); and Samapti with the shrew-like “wild child” teenager Mrinmoyee (Aparna Sen). Incidentally, it is with Teen Kanya that Ray, too, found a seamlessness within his own creative pursuits, as he began to score music for his films.

Tagore’s “Postmaster”, written in 1891, tells the story of Ratan who works for her village’s Postmaster, the Anglophile Nandal from Calcutta (Anil Chatterjee). With Nandal’s arrival, Ratan, receives affection for the first time in her life. She learns how to read and write from him, makes him his meals and then takes care of him while he fights a bout of malaria. When, unable to tolerate village life anymore, Nandal hands in his resignation and Ratan’s world is robbed of the love she had begun to acclimatise to. While Tagore’s Ratan falls to the Postmaster’s feet, begging him not to leave her alone, Ray’s Ratan walks past Nandal and goes on attending to her household chores. Nandal breaks into tears as the potholed road ahead leads to his future back in the city; Ratan quietly lives out her destiny.

“Ray did not deny his women the right of choice. His women had agency. They were primary protagonists in their own right,” writes actor Sharmila Tagore who was 15 when she made her debut in Ray’s Apur Sansar (THE WORLD OF APU, 1959). Her words do not just ring true for Ratan but also for Manimalika and Mrinmoyee. The three women form the moral arc of the film, making the audience not just question the society but also the ways in which they, personally, inhibit women’s personal freedoms and ambitions.

Even within a horror story like Monihara, where the protagonist lives with a cavernous greed for gold and is probably unfaithful to her husband, Ray (and Tagore) divulge the psychology behind her greed. Manimalika feels judged by her in-laws because she hasn’t been able to bear her husband a child. As Sharmila Tagore says “Ray gifted his women protagonists the liberty which defied the cliché that the male desire is visual while the woman’s is sensory.” This obvious visual female desire, as heightened as it is in the protagonists’ sexual transgression in Charulata (THE LONELY WIFE, ‘64) and Ghare Baire (THE HOME AND THE WORLD, ‘84), finds a materialist incarnation in Manimalika’s unapologetic gold lust. When you reduce a woman to her womb, why should she find it in herself to be a holistic human being and not just a dehumanized, ever-widening lacunae of greed?

Her disappearance from her husband’s life does not leave behind a vacuum that he can fill with another wife who can perhaps bear him an heir. Instead, she haunts him, filling his existence with a hopeless wait and an obvious dread. It is not just a haunting of her husband’s life, but that of his ancestral home, the seat of long-standing patriarchy that perpetuates itself from one heir to another.

Aparna Sen, at 16, made her debut as Samapti’s Mrinmoyee, a bright-eyed, rebellious village teenager who wouldn’t toe the line of patriarchy and the way it expects “marriage worthy” young women to behave. When Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee) marries Mrinmoyee, only with the consent of her parents, she lashes out, refusing to bow down to a life of servile conjugality. Not only does she have a mind of her own, but she also insists upon sovereignty over her body, which is only its most authentic self when running through fields and sitting on swings. She runs away from her husband on the night of their wedding and spends it outdoors, sleeping on her beloved swing.

These women, and Ray’s later women like Charulata and Arati (MAHANAGAR, THE BIG CITY, ‘63), are well-versed in articulating a language of complex desire and longing through their bodies, even when they don’t have the verbal vocabulary for it. There is an insistence (in both Tagore and Ray’s works) of intellectual, economic and physical sovereignty by these women that, as pointed out by Sharmila Tagore, often predates the establishment of a formal women’s movement in India. They are the conscience of the texts they occupy, and this conscience is not a vague, moral or a spiritual one. Both Ray and Tagore embody this conscience within a female body that transgresses, fights and yet, always, desires.  

TCM’s 14-week Women Make Film salute spotlights 100 filmmakers across six continents and 44 countries. Inspired by the series’ international flavor, here’s a look at some trailblazing female filmmakers of color from Africa, Asia and Latin America who navigated and explored complex societal expectations, political upheaval and religious customs throughout their lives and films.

Africa

African cinema is a “post-colonial phenomenon,” Beti Ellerson related in a speech recounted in Celluloid Ceiling. African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s not only allowed African women (and men) to acquire cinematic knowledge and skills but also utilize the medium to combat colonial stereotypes.

In 1975, Senegal’s Safi Faye became the first woman to helm a commercially released African feature, KADDU BEYKAT (’76). Faye incorporated her PhD research in Ethnology in her work, and in this movie, she documented her own village, providing residents with minimal direction save for a subject to discuss. In a 1981 interview quoted in Nancy J. Schmidt’s essay “Sub-Saharan African Woman Filmmakers,” Faye remarked: “I chose the cinema in order to relate effectively the real problems of people’s daily lives.” Faye’s work supports expanded opportunities for women, and as Ellerson affirmed, “She has given African women filmmakers a voice.” Ironically, the voices in KADDU BEYKAT could not be heard in Senegal when the film debuted; Faye’s home country banned the movie because she didn’t obtain permission to produce it there.

Female filmmakers still face censorship in Africa. For instance, Wanuri Kahiu found her feature RAFIKI (2018), which centers on two Kenyan girls who fall in love in a homophobic society, banned in her native Kenya. The controversy the subject still elicits in Africa instigated the ban, but RAFIKI was allowed to play on the worldwide stage at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received rave reviews as the first Kenyan film to play the prestigious event.

Asia

Women have worked as directors across Asia for almost a century. Wang Ping, the first female director in the People’s Republic of China, transitioned to directing from acting in the early 1950s more as a political appointment given her support of the Communist Party, and she learned on the job. As Shuqin Cui noted in Women Through the Lens, Ping became a popular mainstream director whose movies exhibit “an allegiance to ideology rather than gender,” as political constructs greatly persuaded cinema at that time. Indeed, revolutionary and socialist themes pervade her work, including her most famous film, 1957’s THE STORY OF LIUBAO VILLAGE.

Whereas socialist China promoted female directors in the 1950s, Middle Eastern women have historically been confined to more traditional roles in society. Pioneers like Iran’s Forough Farrokhzad, who challenged convention through her groundbreaking poetry and her documentary THE HOUSE IS BLACK (’62), have fought against gender inequities. It’s been a long road for other countries like Saudi Arabia, which allowed its first female director, Haifaa Al-Mansour, this century, itself controversial in a country where cinemas re-opened in 2018 after being closed for 35 years because of conservative religious and political forces. Due to restrictions on women in public places, Al-Mansour directed most of her debut movie, WADJDA (2012), from inside a van. The film proved groundbreaking in more ways than one: It was the first feature filmed entirely in Saudi Arabia and the country’s first Foreign Language Oscar submission.

Latin America

“Social, cultural and political conditions conspire to make the path of female Latin American filmmakers extraordinarily difficult,” Ana Maria Bahiana commented in Celluloid Ceiling. That said, numerous women have found a way, as female directors have worked in the region since the silent era. In 1917, Mexico’s Mimi Derba created a production company and made history as Latin America’s first female director within a year, while women like Brazil’s Gilda de Abreu and Mexico’s Matilde Landeta became prominent talents over the next few decades. Landeta, who helmed over 100 shorts, openly discussed the hostile environment she faced as she rose the ranks to director, confessing in 1948, “I used the only weapon at my disposal: my absolute knowledge of technique.”

Women filmmakers continued to achieve acclaim despite the widespread political instability that rocked many countries during the middle and latter part of the 1900s. For instance, Margot Benacerraf’s documentary ARAYA (’59) about Venezuelan salt miners shared the International Critics’ Award at Cannes along with Alain Resnais’ HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (’59). The re-democratization and resumed economic stability many countries experienced during the 1980s and 1990s allowed for an influx of new female voices who crafted stories that touched upon topics like gender, youth and regional identity, as Patricia White observed in Women’s Cinema, World Cinema. One of the most unique directors working today, Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, has gained recognition as an auteur whose films frequently contain shrewd observations of local class structures and society, like her feature directorial debut, the moody LA CIÉNAGA (2001). 

Early women filmmakers are enjoying a renaissance; one they so rightly deserve. Documentary series like Mark Cousins’ WOMEN MAKE FILM help amplify the filmmakers who struggled within the confines of a male-dominated industry to make a space for themselves. These talented women deserve to be appreciated for their sheer talent, perseverance and of course their wonderful films. Let’s take look at some of the more obscure female directors from outside of the English-speaking world and how they paved the way for filmmakers to come.

For Bulgarian director Binka Zhelyazkova, filmmaking was a means of protest. Fighting back against her home country’s communist regime, each of her films offered its own cutting political critique. Her first film LIFE FLOWS QUIETLY BY… (’57), for which she served as assistant director to Anton Marinovich, was banned by the Bulgarian Communist Party for 30 years and finally released in 1988. Zhelyazkova forged on. She continued to make bold films with strong anti-fascist themes. Her films were often banned in Bulgaria yet highly regarded elsewhere in Europe and beyond. She had a keen eye for creating atmospheric and visually stunning films and was heavily influenced by Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave and Russian cinema. With her directorial debut WE WERE YOUNG (’61), a haunting love story about two young resistance fighters, she became the first Bulgarian woman to direct a feature-length movie.

Austrian-Hungarian Jewish director Leontine Sagan is best known for her seminal lesbian film MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (’31). A pupil of Max Reinhardt, she trained as both an actress and a theater director. She saw an opportunity to try her hand at filmmaking when she came across German-Hungarian playwright Christa Winsloe’s story of a young woman at an all-girls boarding school who falls in love with her headmistress. Sagan’s MADCHEN IN UNIFORM is extraordinary for being the first feature film to portray lesbian love and for being female driven with a story by a woman writer with a woman director and an all-female cast. The film was a success, garnering rave reviews. Although Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that it was “magnificently directed, exceptionally natural and exciting film art,” the Nazi regime publicly made an attempt to destroy all copies of the film. Sagan was courted by MGM’s David O. Selznick, who quickly became a fan of her work and invited her to Hollywood. While this didn’t quite pan out, Sagan did go on to direct two British films MEN OF TOMORROW (’32) and GAIETY GEORGE (’46).

Following in the footsteps of Leontine Sagan was French director Jacqueline Audry. OLIVIA (’51) was based on Dorothy Bussy’s autobiographical novel which itself was inspired by MADCHEN IN UNIFORM as well as Colette Claudine’s novels. The story also takes place in an all-girls boarding school but instead of the Prussian Empire we get Belle Epoque France. Audry got her start as a script supervisor before working as an assistant director under the tutelage of Max Ophuls and G.W. Pabst. Her first solo success was GIGI (’49), one of three Colette stories she would adapt to screen. Even in an industry dominated by men, Audry made a space for herself directing films that featured complex and interesting female characters. She told subversive stories through conventional narratives with an eye towards literary adaptations with strong sexual themes. With the French New Wave, Audry’s style of filmmaking became quickly outdated and she was mostly forgotten. Decades later her work, especially OLIVIA, is finally getting the recognition she deserved.

In her brief 32 years, Forough Farrokhzad cemented a legacy as one of the great Persian poets. Her work openly explored female desire and was controversial in her native Iran, well before the Islamic Revolution. Farrokhzad was a woman determined to live life by her own standards. It was the subject of human perseverance that planted the seed of what would become her one and only film: THE HOUSE IS BLACK (’63). This 20-minute short documentary was filmed over 12 days at the Babadaghi leprosy colony. Her goal is clearly stated in the opening monologue of the film: “to wipe out ugliness and to relieve the victims is the motive of this film and the hope of its makers.” Farrokhzad narrates the majority of the film reading religious texts and her own poetry. In making the film, she brought awareness to the plight of those suffering leprosy and her unique filmmaking style inspired the Iranian New Wave.

By the time Therese Sita-Bella passed away in 2006, she was largely forgotten in her native Cameroon. But that has since changed, as a new appreciation for this dynamic and multi-talented woman has grown over recent years. Sita-Bella was born and raised in Southern Cameroon. She was part of the Beti tribe, educated by Catholic missionaries and moved briefly to Paris to continue her education. Sita-Bella became a radio and print journalist, a licensed pilot, a model and even played the guitar. In 1963, she added film director to her resume when she traveled with the Cameroonian National Ensemble, a collective of dancers who were performing at the Sarah Bernhardt Theater in Paris. With her documentary TAM-TAM A PARIS (’63), Sita-Bella became the first Subsaharan African female filmmaker. As author Dibussi Tande writes, Sita-Bella was “a woman ahead of her times, she made her mark in a male-dominated system that considered her an oddity and blazed the trail for many women in her generation.”