The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking
Published by McFarland, 2024. 208 pages
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Do we need another book on female filmmakers? Honestly, yes, we do. It goes back to my thoughts when I saw The Substance (2024) in the theater last year. Did we need another movie showing us how shitty women are treated in the film industry? Then you realize it is still going on, and that we obviously still haven’t learned enough, so that message must continue on.

So yes, we definitely need another book on women filmmakers!

As a life-long cinephile, at any point when we can learn more about a sub-genre, or subject, that we might not be familiar with, it just opens doors. It opens up more titles that we might not have heard about. It opens up more filmmakers that we might not have known. Or we knew their work, but not who it came from, or who made it. It also opens up, and this is probably the most important part, a new or different way of thinking about and looking at a specific story or subject that might have been lost on us. The beauty of any art form is being able to see something different once we’ve learned more about it. It’s inevitable. And it is one of the things I just love about cinema and more importantly, reading about it.