This reference work covers the history of women in film, highlighting nearly every woman film-maker from the dawn of cinema, including Alice Guy (France, 1896), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Penny Marshall (US), and Sally Potter (UK). Every effort has been made to include every kind of woman film-maker: commercial and mainstream, avant-garde, and minority, and to give a complete cross-section of the work of these remarkable women. Scholars and students of film, popular culture, women's studies, and international studies, as well as film buffs should learn much from this work. The dictionary covers the careers of nearly 200 women film-makers, giving vital statistics where available, listings of films directed by these women, and selected bibliographies for further reading. This is a one-volume, "one-stop" resource, a comprehensive, up-to-date guide that should be valuable for any course offering an overiew or survey of women's cinema. It offers not only all available statistics but critical evaluations of the film-makers' work as well.
In order to keep the length manageable, this volume focuses on women who direct fictional narrative films, with occasional forays into the area of the documentary. It is also limited to film production rather than video production.