Unofficially, the National Film Registry’s 775 entries include 63 credited to women filmmakers. (Perhaps there are others I’m overlooking?)
Since last updating this list, a dozen more titles of films by women directors have been added to the National Film Registry. Among the 75 movies put on the list in 2017-19, women were the primary creators of twelve.
My Name Is Oona (1969) Gunvor Nelson
Wanda (1970) Barbara Loden
I Am Somebody (1970) Madeline Anderson
A New Leaf (1971) Elaine May
Lives of Performers (1972) Yvonne Rainer
Girlfriends (1978) Claudia Weill
Before Stonewall (1984) Greta Schiller
Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People (1984) Ayoka Chenzira
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) Charlotte Zwerin
Eve’s Bayou (1997) Kasi Lemmons
Boys Don’t Cry (1999) Kimberly Peirce
Real Women Have Curves (2002) Patricia Cardoso
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden included seven in the most recent annual announcement.
An unofficial list of U.S. National Film Registry entries by women filmmakers (best I can figure).
How to identify films “made by” women is not always obvious. Generally, we think of a director’s credit as the main criterion. The Library of Congress National Film Registry includes entries from a wide variety of categories, some of which do not have “directors” per se. Others have more than one “filmmaker” or director attributed as the main creator. Nearly half of the 51 titles listed here have two or more makers. I have not included films for which women might have been a contributing creative force (as producer, screenwriter, performer, etc.) but not director or lead filmmaker.
With only 51 of the first 700 Registry titles created by women, the percentage remains low. By including nontheatrical films, however, the number is greater than often assumed. Some female co-directors have had their names omitted from attribution in a world where a single auteur is the default presumption. The Academy Award for Frank Film (1973) was given to Frank Mouris but not co-director Caroline Mouris, for example. Some filmmakers have not always been recognized as women because their names were not gender-specific (Marvin Breckinridge, Lee Dick, Ray Eames, Chick Strand).
Most of these movies can be found streaming online, but here I have not included sites requiring paid subscriptions or YouTube versions (which are easy to find but with notoriously ephemeral URLs). The links below are for complete (mostly) versions at authorized or reliable websites.
- Matrimony’s Speed Limit (1913) Alice Guy Blaché
- Mabel’s Blunder (1914) Mabel Normand
- The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916) Marion Wong stream
- Shoes (1916) Lois Weber (EYE stream; see also Milestone 2017 restoration)
- Where Are My Children? (1916) Lois Weber & Phillips Smalley
- Unmasked (1917) Grace Cunard & Francis Ford [not online]
- Grass (1925) Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, & Marguerite Harrison
- The Forgotten Frontier (1930) Marvin Breckinridge NLM stream
- A Study in Reds (1932) Miriam Bennett [not online]
- Trance and Dance in Bali (1936-39; released 1952) Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead stream
- Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939) Ray Dowidat & Esther Dowidat stream
- Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940) Zora Neale Hurston & Jane Belo
- Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) Dorothy Arzner
- Men and Dust (1940) Lee Dick download
- Tarantella (1940) Mary Ellen Bute
- Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid
- Martha Graham Early Dance Films (1931-1944), includes Lamentation (1943) Simon Moselsio & Herta Moselsio
- In the Street (1948) Helen Levitt, James Agee, & Janice Loeb
- The Hitch-Hiker (1953) Ida Lupino
- Glimpse of the Garden (1957) Marie Menken
- Little Fugitive (1953) Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, & Ruth Orkin
- The Hole (1962) John Hubley & Faith Hubley
- The Cool World (1963) Shirley Clarke
- Through Navajo Eyes [Navajo Film Themselves] (1966) Sol Worth, films by Mike Anderson, Al Clah, Susie Benally, Johnny Nelson, Mary Jane Tsosie and Maxine Tsosie, Alta Kahn. clip
Susie Benally teaching Alta Kahn. - A Time for Burning (1966) Barbara Connell & Bill Jersey
- Portrait of Jason (1967) Shirley Clarke
- The Inner World of Aphasia (1968) Edward R. Feil & Naomi Feil
- Salesman (1968) Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
- Growing Up Female (1971) Julia Reichert & Jim Klein download
- Frank Film (1973) Caroline Mouris & Frank Mouris
- Antonia: Portrait of a Woman (1974) Judy Collins & Jill Godmilow
- Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974) Thom Andersen, Fay Andersen, & Morgan Fisher
- The Buffalo Creek Flood (1975) Mimi Pickering
- Hester Street (1975) Joan Micklin Silver
- Quasi at the Quackadero (1975) Sally Cruikshank stream by Cruikshank
- Harlan County, USA (1976) Barbara Kopple
- Powers of Ten (1978) Ray Eames & Charles Eames stream by Eames Office
- The Decline of Western Civilization (1980) Penelope Spheeris
- Moon Breath Beat (1980) Lisze Bechtold stream
- The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1981) Connie Field
- The Atomic Café (1982) Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, & Pierce Rafferty download
- Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) Camille Billops & James Hatch
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) Amy Heckerling
- Fake Fruit Factory (1986) Chick Strand NFPF stream
- Drums of Winter (1988) Sarah Elder & Leonard Kamerling
- Paris Is Burning (1990) Jennie Livingston
- Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia (1990) Ellen Bruno
- Sink or Swim (1990) Su Friedrich
- Daughters of the Dust (1991) Julie Dash
- The Red Book (1994) Janie Geiser stream
- Scratch and Crow (1995) Helen Hill
SCRATCH AND CROW, Helen Hill’s thesis film at CalArts.