7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
A documentary that spans 13 decades and five continents to give a guided tour of the art and craft of movies as told by female filmmakers.
Narrator: Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Sharmila Tagore, Adjoa Andoh, Thandiwe NewtonDocumentary | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
While Women Make Film advertises itself as "a new road movie through cinema" in its very subtitle, that metaphor may be apt only if roads are taken as connective tissues between places, rather than a way to get somewhere in particular. In that regard, another kind of thoroughfare, namely a river, might be just as relevant as a veritable symbol, since Women Make Film often follows a meandering path that might be best compared to "stream of consciousness". The result is frequently almost overwhelming in its offerings of all sorts of international films helmed by women, many of which my strong hunch is few will have had much foreknowledge of, but that also means that any attempted generalizations about what's on tap are most likely futile. If, kind of like the film clips offered themselves, Women Make Film can often seem kind of random in terms of both its purported focal issues (like openings, conversations, and tracking shots) and the "subheading" chapters supposedly doling out even more narrow information, and if there's a perhaps needless reliance on repeated shots of roads as one of several narrators discusses the "road movie" aspects of "it all", this documentary is a veritable cornucopia of interesting insights and it certainly provides a monumental set of examples of scenes from films directed by women across the globe for the past several decades.
Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer understandably in a glut of different aspect ratios, as can clearly be seen by shuffling through the screenshots I've included with this review. A lot of the material, including all of the interstitial shots of roads, is in 1.78:1, though both narrower and wider aspect ratios are repeatedly seen. As should probably be expected from a sprawling documentary like this which includes so many different films, many of which have obviously not been curated particularly well, the quality variations are wide, but need to be accepted as probably inevitable, given the rarity of some of the items on display. Some of the newer films look considerably better than older items, and some of the rarer offerings look to me like they may have been sourced from older, and at times either interlaced or upscaled, video, since things like stair stepping can be spotted at times. Palettes are also on the variable side, with some clips looking beautifully suffused and others looking faded and worn.
Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that may be a bit of overkill, given the fact that so much of the documentary features narration and or voiceover, and the clips themselves are at least somewhat weighted toward older films in mono. There are some appealing moments of immersion, sometimes due to the brief piano interludes with accompanying sound effects of film leader whacking against a cannister and the like. There are some obvious amplitude differences in some of the clips utilized, and fidelity is also somewhat variable. All of the contemporary spoken material is clear and crisp sounding. Optional English SDH subtitles are available.
Though this may sound counterintuitive, Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema may actually occasionally provoke as much annoyance as it does delight, since it basically browbeats the viewer into submission with an unending series of connective tissues between various works. If you are willing to surrender, though, this is a truly gobsmacking piece from both an overall content perspective as well as for those very connective tissues it discusses. Some of the artier aspects are probably unnecessary, but Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema provides so many introductions to both films and filmmakers that any artifices it also offers end up seeming like a small price to pay, all things considered. As should be expected from a comprehensive piece like this which includes such a vast variety of source elements, quality in both video and audio can be pretty widely variable. Highly recommended.
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