Gender matters: Gender policy and the rewriting of the mother-daughter narrative in contemporary Australian women’s filmmaking

Abstract

Australian women’s filmmaking has been shaped by a stop-and-start history of funding initiatives and structures of opportunity aimed at addressing gender imbalance in the industry. This chapter looks at three recent Australian films by female directors who craft their stories through and around interruption, delay and repetition in ways that draw on, or resonate with, the history of women’s filmmaking in Australia. The three films examined here are Margot Nash’s personal essay documentary film The Silences (2015), Sophie Hyde’s queered coming-of-age film 52 Tuesdays (2014) and Sue Brooks’ dramedy Looking for Grace (2015). Whilst these three films differ in genre, aesthetic and budget, each uses interruption as way of creating spaces for different kinds of intergenerational female stories.