'Women's Style' and American Independent Cinema: Gender Politics and Women Film Directors

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American cinema is often highly gendered for women directors, yet de-gendered for male directors. The gender of male directors is rarely referenced in either academic or popular writing, yet is frequently evoked when discussing women directors. By highlighting the gender of women directors or suggesting that women directors make 'women's films', there is an argument that can be made that these films have an audience and set of formal expectations that are gender specific. This research aims to assess how this gendered discourse effects the opportunities for women directors in American independent cinema as well as the reception of their films. Scholars such as King (2005) and Levy (1999) suggest that American independent cinema offers greater accessibility to filmmaking than mainstream cinema, yet according to the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, just 29% of the top 100 American independent features of 2016-17 were directed by women, compared with just 17% for the top 100 mainstream features. This suggest that the obstacles that women directors face are still based on their gender, even in the more accessible sphere of American independent cinema. My thesis will use a combination of reception studies techniques, first-person interviews and textual analysis to assess how being categorised as a 'woman director' impacts the opportunities for women in American independent cinema. Focusing on what is considered by scholars such as Rona Murray (2014) to be the boom years of the industry (the early 1980s to the early 2000s), I will analyse scholarly essays, articles in the trade press, and reviews and interviews in the popular press to examine how frequently women directors are categorised by their gender within film culture and what effect this gendered discourse has on the reception of their films. I will also undertake first-person interviews with directors such as Lizzie Borden, Sofia Coppola and Kelly Reichardt to ascertain the extent that gender informs their filmmaking and what effect their gender has on their ability to secure film funding. I will combine these interviews with textual analysis of key films by women directors working in contemporary American independent cinema such Born in Flames (1983), The Virgin Suicides (1999), and Old Joy (2006) to examine the validity of arguments by scholars such as Geetha Ramanathan (2006) that suggest that women make films that are formally different from those made by men. Through this my thesis will examine the effect of highlighting the gender of women directors. By examining the impact of gendered discourse on the opportunities for women in American independent cinema, my research aims to better inform how we speak about gender and aid the furthering of gender equality. Through case studies of Kelly Reichardt, Julie Dash, Sofia Coppola and others, this thesis will explore how essentialist divisions have affected the reception of these films, and how this relates to these directs' perception of their work. Through my ties with Phoenix, an independent cinema in Leicester, I will also use my research to inform a series of films, lectures and discussions on the industrial position of women within American independent cinema, allowing me to promote the findings of my work to a public audience through educational events.