REVIEWS
Maya Montañez Smukler’s Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema is an exciting and topical examination of a transformative group of female filmmakers whose stories and struggles have too often been forgotten. At once an eye-opening analysis and a significant contribution to feminist film scholarship, Liberating Hollywood persuasively challenges the received wisdom about a period of American cinema (the so-called time of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls) in which women are routinely banished to the margins. As Smukler demonstrates, women were always there – making movies, good trouble and American history."
Manohla Dargis, film critic for The New York Times
“A counterintuitive feminist history of the new Hollywood that convincingly challenges widely held assumptions about the boys’ club movie brat auteur renaissance. In Liberating Hollywood, Maya Montanez Smukler is remarkably attentive to the industrial as well as sociopolitical histories that made such a new women’s cinema and such a suddenly liberated Hollywood possible.”
Jon Lewis, author of Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
"Both long overdue and coming right on time, Liberating Hollywood richly expands our understanding of Hollywood filmmaking in the 1970s. Expertly researched with stories from those who were there, Maya Montañez Smukler’s book tells the stories of female directors working in Hollywood in the 1970s and fighting for their rights as mediamakers."
Miranda Banks, author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild
"Smukler sees the increase of independently produced features in the ’80s as a turning point for women no longer at the mercy of a slow-moving studio system. She’s right, though working independently puts the onus of proving artistic and commercial viability directly on individual artists’ shoulders, dependent on a world of potentially prejudiced funders with no centralized power to reform, however incrementally. That said, it’s impossible to read Liberating Hollywood and not recognize the progress that has been made, even though too much remains sadly familiar. It’s still rough out there, but histories like these keep me moving forward."
Nellie, Killian, Film Comment, January-February 2019
In Liberating Hollywood, Maya Montañez Smukler chronicles an era in which pant legs were wide and the gender gap even wider. In the 1970s, the book says, “woman directors were entangled in a paradox of progress.” Fueled by the women’s liberation movement, they were eager to lead, yet faced discrimination at every turn.
Harper Lambert, MovieMaker, April 2019
Maya Montañez Smukler's valuable history is the first to zero in exclusively on [Peter] Biskind’s turf, the 1970s. It was a pivotal era for female directors and one that laid the groundwork for much of the activism happening in the film industry today. . .Pinpointing sexism and misogyny when you're investigating negative space is a hard thing to do. Why didn't these directors make more films?. . .Smukler is also careful not to claim sexism as the sole culprit, but sees the bigger picture of regime changes or financial lockdowns at studios or other uncontrollable events that would scupper any director's dreams.
Isabel Stevens, Sight & Sound, May 2019
Zigzagging between positive and dismal accounts gives Smukler’s book a mercurial rhythm, instilling in the reader a deep admiration for the women she spotlights — and a wish to go back in time and smash their male colleagues’ cameras. Or heads.
"Lost Men, Found Women: Revisiting the New Hollywood"
Nancy M. West, Los Angeles Review of Books -- April 13, 2022
PRESS
"100 Women, One Hotel, and the Weekend Retreat That Presaged Time’s Up By 18 Years"
Cari Beauchamp, Vanity Fair -- January 30, 2018
"Rediscovering the female filmmakers of the 1970s with UCLA’s ‘Liberating Hollywood’ series"
Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times -- January 25, 2019
"How the 1970s Marked a Turning Point for Women Directors in Hollywood"
Daniel Schindel, Hyperallergic -- January 23, 2019
"Liberating Hollywood: UCLA Film Series Highlights Extraordinary Women in Film"
Spectrum News 1 -- January 29, 2019
"Film archive series to shed light on Hollywood’s unrecognized female director"
Jordon Holman, The Daily Bruin -- January 23, 2019
"Liberating Hollywood: The Celebration of the Early Entrepreneurs of Modern Female Cinema"
Deirdre Mitchell, FEM -- February 26, 2019
"Juleen Compton, a Director and Actor Whose Career Was Tragically Overlooked"
Richard Brody, The New Yorker -- June 19, 2019
"Gender Ratios Are Improving in Indie Films, but Visibility’s a Greater Goal"
Dr. Martha Lauzen, Variety -- July 11, 2019
"Promising Young Women"
Joy Press, Vanity Fair -- March, 2021
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GUEST POSTS
"The Enduring Legacy of Joan Micklin Silver's 'Between the Lines'"
--Maya Montañez Smukler, Women and Hollywood, February 22, 2019 |
"Last night’s Oscar winners were more diverse than usual. Here’s what we have to thank. The high-profile activism that’s recently taken place in the entertainment industry paid off." --Maya Montañez Smukler, The Lily/Washington Post, February 25, 2019 |
"In Search of Old Boyfriends"
--Conversation with KJ Relth & Maya Montañez Smukler, UCLA Film & Television Archive Blog, June 27, 2019
--Conversation with KJ Relth & Maya Montañez Smukler, UCLA Film & Television Archive Blog, June 27, 2019
