FILMS DIRECTED BY WOMEN: MARCH EDITION (1968-1982)

When middle-aged Kata realises that her life will only be complete if she has a baby of her own, her longstanding-but-married boyfriend Joska refuses to comply. But by developing an unlikely friendship with the angst-ridden teenage orphan Anna, who is also involved in a controversial relationship, Kata discovers aspects of herself, and her role as a woman, that have gone unexamined throughout her entire, lonely life.

Juli moves to the big city in order to take up a job in a factory, and on the very same day the foreman János asks her to marry him. Alas, communication between the two is rough going from the very start – their visions of how life together is supposed to look divide them. János can’t find it in his heart to accept Juli’s yearning for independence or her past. In raw images that portend an almost predetermined conclusion with their social-realist tone, the film shows Juli’s resistance with all of its consequences – she decides to have her baby all on her own. In the end, we witness the actual delivery of Juli’s (in reality of course actress Lili Monori’s) child, the first birth to be shown in a film in Europe. Nine Months was honoured with the Fipresci Prize (Parallel Sections) in Cannes in 1977.
Since my first film « Cati », I have been obstinately inquiring about women with well defined personalities, able to make decisions in an independent manner, although at that time « feminism » was not really in vogue. It has now become so. The heroine of my film is one of these women. She is lucid, self-relying, and responsible. She tells the man who loves her that he must accept her as she is, with her past life, her experiences, her already formed personality. - Marta MESZAROS

The staff of the Back Bay Mainline, a Boston underground newspaper that rose to prominence in the 1960s, struggles with the shifting social climate of the '70s amid rumors that the paper is about to be sold to a media giant.

When romantic journalist Paolo rescues American photographer Lizzy from a scuffle in an Italian village, his efforts at romance lead nowhere. But when they meet again in San Francisco, Paolo succeeds in wooing her. Can their love overcome the differences between the traditional Italian Communist and the modern, liberated American woman that threaten to tear the two apart?

A complex and fascinating experimental exploration of time and identity, Anti-Clock is a film of authentic, startling originality. Brilliantly mixing film and video techniques, Arden and Bond's paranoid, psychological surveillance study of a career gambler turned clairvoyant unstuck in time captures onscreen the anxieties that have infiltrated the consciousness of so many in Western society.

1980 film by Diane Kurys

Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels and ordinary Angelenos.

Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.