The Ackland Film Forum returned to the Varsity Theatre on September 25 with its fall 2018 series “Women with a Movie Camera: American Female Directors: 1990-Present,” highlighting the cinematic achievements of trailblazing female filmmakers.

For the seventh consecutive year, the Ackland Film Forum will display various films that share a common feature or theme. This year, the Ackland Art Museum has teamed up with UNC’s Department of English and Comparative Literature to showcase a diverse range of films by American female directors. The first film in the series, Kathryn Bigelow’s “Point Break,” screened September 25 and will be followed by a new film screening every other Tuesday until December 4.

“We developed this series to go with a particular exhibition on view at the museum, which will be up in about two weeks,” said Allison Portnow Lathrop, the Public Programs Manager at the Ackland Art Museum. “It’s a display of art from the 1990s to the present, to go with a 1990s filmmaking class that’s being taught right now [at UNC].”

The Ackland Film Forum was established in the fall of 2011 with its first series, and have been hosting a new series almost every fall and spring at the Varsity Theatre since. This fall’s series will feature art films, a documentary by renowned cinematographer Kirsten Johnson, and popular indie films — such as Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides,” and Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird.”

“Focusing on those last couple of decades, we were really able to hone in on women filmmakers,” said Portnow Lathrop. “We thought this is the right moment to get that going, and to really highlight the women cinematographers and directors from the ‘90s until today.”

Each biweekly screening will begin with an introduction from a UNC faculty member to contextualize the significance of the selected film and to explain their own personal interest in it. For the final screening in December, of “Lady Bird,” there will be no introduction. Instead, the forum will host a round-table for female filmmakers at UNC whose discussion will focus on the experience of being a female filmmaker in the industry and breaking into the industry as a student.


Courtesy of ackland.org


“Point Break,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was the first on the list for this season’s series. The film follows Johnny Utah (played by Keanu Reeves), a federal agent stationed in Los Angeles who infiltrates a band of surfers who also happen to be elusive bank robbers. Soon, Utah’s romantic attraction to a female member of the group complicates his undercover role and his relationship with the alluring group leader, Bodhi (played by Patrick Swayze).

“I think it’s important [to screen “Point Break”], in part, because there have been some fairly major strides made over the last 27 years since this film was released,” said Gregory Flaxman, a UNC Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature. “But also, because there are limits to the kind of advancement of women, not just in Hollywood, but in general.”

Flaxman introduced “Point Break” to a crowded audience at the Varsity.

Bigelow, one of the more prominent directors in Hollywood, has several notable films under her name, including “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit” and “The Hurt Locker” — the 2010 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Bigelow is also the only woman to have ever received an Academy Award for Best Directing.

“In a really interesting way, she’s a female director who has a real sense of how to make movies about men,” said Flaxman. “She has a way of bringing out the very masculine and testosterone, raging chemistry in this movie. And a lot of [Point Break] is about those two guys [Johnny Utah and Bodhi].”

The next screening in the Ackland Film Forum will feature Kirsten Johnson’s “Cameraperson,” a compilation of documentary footage she has shot over her career spanning multiple decades, followed by Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides,” which was rescheduled to screen on October 23 due to conditions from Hurricane Florence.

For more information about the Ackland Film Forum, click here.

Featured image via Downtown Chapel Hill