agnesfilms.com is named in honor of Agnès Varda, the French filmmaker who has been making women-centered fiction films and documentaries for over 50 years. Varda, in spite of the high quality of her work, remains an obscure figure to audiences around the world. This is not surprising, since the film industry is not always supportive of women who want to work behind, as opposed to in front of, the camera. According to the 2010 Celluloid Ceiling report, women accounted for only 7% of directors in 2009 (a 2% decline from 2008), with women comprising only 16% of directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors in the 250 top-grossing films.

In an effort to provide support to emerging and established female filmmakers and to scholars interested in their work, our site aims to do the following:

• Foster a community of female filmmakers, scholars, instructors who teach film and filmmaking, and film lovers, who support each other with advice and information.  We hope to be joined by men who are interested in films made by women, as well as male filmmakers, scholars and filmmaking/film instructors.  Our aim is for our community to be diverse in terms of race, class and sexual orientation.

• Help women not trained in cinematic techniques be able to tell stories in this powerful medium.

• Shed light on the work of talented and committed female filmmakers working today, who, like Varda, don’t have the visibility they merit.

• Showcase our members’ films and publications, as well as new developments in their careers.

• Provide a space where filmmakers and scholars can come together to discuss their crafts and learn from each other, fostering project collaborations and strong connections between the production side of film and academia.

Please consider becoming a member and visit our contribution guidelines to learn about the ways in which you can get involved with agnès films.

Thank you from our editors:

Alexandra Hidalgo, editor-in-chief, cofounder

Alexandra is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University, where she teaches film and freshman composition. She is also a documentary filmmaker currently editing her first feature film, which deals with the experiences of four immigrant women living in New York City and transforming their communities. With her academic and creative work, she seeks to bridge the gap between filmmaking and rhetoric in order to explore how connections between the two can be transformative to both fields. Her scholarship has appeared in Films for the Feminist Classroom, Open Words: Access and English Studies and is forthcoming in the Ashgate anthology Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the Twilight Series.
 
 
 
Denah Johnston, Experimental and Fringe Film Editor

Denah is the Simone de Beauvoir Fellow at the European Graduate School, where she received her Ph.D. in Media Philosophy.  Her work lies at the constellation-like intersections of film, music, literature, media and culture.  Teaching film history, studies and theory in San Francisco, she is a filmmaker and member of the Board of Directors for Canyon Cinema.  Her first book No Future Now: A Nomadology of Resistance and Subversion will be published this fall by Atropos Press; she also has an essay on No Wave filmmaker Vivienne Dick in the forthcoming critical anthology Downtown Film, TV and Video Culture 1976-2001 edited by Joan Hawkins (Intellect, UK).