Film Series
Punks, Poets & Valley Girls: Women Filmmakers in 1980s America
Following the independent breakthroughs made by women filmmakers in the 1970s, opportunities unseen since the silent era suddenly opened up for (white, straight, cis) women in the studio system in the 1980s. The result was a wave of decade-defining classics by directors like Kathryn Bigelow, Amy Heckerling, and Penny Marshall, who brought a sensitivity to female subjectivity and experience hitherto rare in mainstream genre cinema. Simultaneously, women filmmakers outside Hollywood continued to challenge white, patriarchal notions of narrative, form, and subject as seen in the radical works of the New York downtown scene, the LA Rebellion, and the burgeoning New Queer Cinema movement. These artists—pioneers like Kathleen Collins, Lizzie Borden, and Donna Deitch—defied the Reagan-era status quo to bring their stories and experiences to the screen.
Penelope Spheeris’ blistering rebel yell from the restless edges of Reagan-era America.
Penelope Spheeris’ ultimate record of the LA 80s punk scene.
Penelope Spheeris’ outrageous, often hilarious portrait of 80s hair metal excess.
Bette Gordon’s scuzzy feminist noir inverts Hitchcockian themes of voyeurism and the gaze.
Diverse feminist factions unite to fight for their rights in Lizzie Borden’s No Wave sci-fi polemic.
Susan Seidelman’s unflinchingly gritty time capsule of the East Village punk underground.
Susan Seidelman’s tale of amnesia and mistaken identity in New York's 80s downtown scene.
Joan Micklin Silver’s charming look at love, Jewishness, and “having it all.”
Laura Dern stars in this dark drama based on a classic story by Joyce Carol Oates.
Groundbreaking director Jessie Maple celebrates sisterhood and black achievement.
Kathleen Collins’ wonderfully complex study of the tension between the head and the heart.
A visually stunning examination of Chicanx identity and the Mexican relationship to death.
Christine Choy upends the myth of the American melting pot.
Empowering looks at black beauty, domestic labor, and a queer icon.
Two provocative family portraits confronting indigenous representation and black family trauma.
Unexpected love blossoms in 1950s Nevada in this ravishing landmark of lesbian cinema.
This unsparing quasi-documentary looks at the 80s porn industry via the story of two women.
It’s marriage, Bronx style, in this raucous, Sundance prize-winning anti-rom-com.
Kathryn Bigelow’s stylishly moody vampire western.
A blast of lo-fi cool from the 80s LA underground.
Girls just wanna have fun in the rare 80s sex comedy that is actually sex positive.
Tom Hanks dances across the ivories in Penny Marshall’s classic body-swap comedy.
Nicolas Cage’s Hollywood punk falls for a SoCal mallrat in this ultra-80s teen comedy.
Amy Heckerling’s endlessly quotable teen classic and the film that launched a dozen careers.
National treasure Elaine May’s unjustly maligned road movie comedy gets the last laugh.
Barbra Streisand dazzles in her decade-in-the-making dream project.
Nuclear war shatters an ordinary family in this heartrending study of resilience.
Mary Lambert directs this Stephen King shocker and a selection of MTV classics.
These landmark works revolutionized the representation of black women on screen.
A trancey No Wave classic from the 80s Manhattan demimonde.