(photo, left to right: Eleanor Magid and Lois Dodd)

I have so many films to talk about from this month’s DOC NYC Film Festival, I’ve had to break them up into four “roundups.” Today I’ll review two excellent documentaries about the struggles of women artists in a patriarchal world.  Katie Jacob’s “Artists In Residence“ is a rich, soulful account of three single women artists with children who filled the three floors of a building in Manhattan’s Bowery neighborhood in 1959 and lived there for fifty years. Jacobs discovered the story when she moved into the building herself in 2017. (One of the artists, Louise Kruger, died in 2013.) Interviews with the two remaining women and archival footage tell the story of their decades of raising children in an unconventional setting, and dealing with a New York art gallery system that was often unfriendly to women artists.

Lois Dodd, a painter, was the first to move in with her son Eli after her divorce. A few years later printmaker Eleanor Magid moved in with her daughter Gabriel. The trio was complete when sculptor Louise Kruger made one floor her studio, sharing it with her young sons Josh and Caleb.

Dodd learned her craft at Cooper Union and was one of the founding members of the Tanager Gallery, one of the first artist-run cooperative galleries in New York. Her eyes light up as she tells stories about the joys of living in a house filled with other female artists and children. Kruger found success early and was included in the New Talent show at MOMA in 1953. But later in life she became disenchanted and stopped doing her work.

Friends of Eleanor Magid once asked her “How can you raise children here?” Long a place occupied by homeless people and drug dealers, the Bowery was not a very nice neighborhood–but that made the rent cheap and all three of them went in together and bought the building. Eleanor taught art at Queens College CUNY for 33 years and also founded the Lower East Side Printshop in her home.

Jacobs (in the press kit) says that Eleanor once told her that “Women cannot reach their full potential unless they are single” and Lois says (in the film) that getting divorced was “the best decision I ever made!” Meanwhile, their children say that it was a challenge to achieve a balance growing up in a household where mothers sometimes had to prioritize their work over them. (Lois slept on a foam mat she would roll up every day to make more room in her studio for art and supplies.) Dodd and Magin also eventually found recognition for their beautiful work. And they eventually made enough money to spend the hot New York summers in a separate home in Maine.

I remember looking at an artist friend in her sixties’ curriculum vitae at her latest group show. It listed over 300 shows, numerous visiting artist gigs, reviews–a whole life of artistic achievement. And yet she still didn’t have a Wikipedia page devoted to her work. It’s very hard to achieve success as an artist and for many, I’m sure, just being able to make art and live the life of an artist is the reward itself, plus the community you share with other artists. “Artists In Residence” is an emotional testament to the highs and lows of living the art life with no dispensation for being a single mother.

(photo above: Ana Lily Amirpour)

Isa Willinger’s documentary “No Mercy” got its impetus from a comment made to her by an acclaimed Ukranian director whose work is little known in the U.S. “Women make the harsher films,” Kira Muratova told her. I don’t know if this claim can be evaluated quantitatively but the film gives a long roster of talented women film directors the chance to explain why and how their own work often deals with violence and extreme emotions. One key example of a harsh film directed by a woman is the Virginia Despues and Coralie Trinh Thi 2000 film “Baise-Moi” in which a pair of women go on a crime spree after being gang-raped. It was considered one of the first in the “New French Extremity” genre. Jacobs blends an appreciation of Muratova’s work with extensive interviews with contemporary women filmmakers (identified by very stylish lettering) accompanied by excerpts of their films.

Brooklyn director Ana Lily Amirpour, who started her career with the 2014 indie hit “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” says “There is something offensive to me about the question: ‘Oh, you have strong female characters…’ To push a kid out of your vagina requires strength. So it would be safe to assume that women are strong.” If you’ve seen any of French director Catherine Breillat’s films you know she is not afraid of making sex and violence her principal subjects. (I’ll never forget that murder in the rest stop scene in her 2001 feature “Fat Girl.”) She points out that women are expected to aspire to be gentle painters but she prefers to paint like Francis Bacon. “Saint Omer” director Alice Diop says there is a male gaze but also a female gaze: “I expect cinema and filmmakers in general to have a gaze that deconstructs all our viewing habits.”

The feminist film theory concept of the male gaze (introduced in 1975 by Laura Mulvey) was reviewed in Nina Menkes’ 2022 documentary “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power.” Interviewed here, Menkes says “I think the position of women in cinema has traditionally been, of course, that the woman is a sexual object, in one way or another. And if women reject that, there’s actually an automatic feeling that that film is harsh.”  Whether Muratova’s thesis is proved or not, “No Mercy” is an exciting introduction for many viewers who may not be familiar with the work of all of these brilliant artists.