“Boys Don’t Cry” and “A New Leaf” are among the films being added to the National Film Registry this year. The Library of Congress announced its annual selection of 25 films and the list includes “an unprecedented seven titles directed by women, the most in a single year since the inaugural registry in 1989,” Deadline reports.
Directed by Kimberly Peirce, 1999 Hilary Swank-starrer “Boys Don’t Cry” tells the story of Brandon Teena, a trans man living in rural Nebraska. Dark comedy “A New Leaf” was released in 1971, which the source notes made Elaine May the first woman to write, direct, and start in a major American studio feature.
Other titles to join the National Film Registry include Patricia Cardoso’s America Ferrera-led 2002 coming-of-age story “Real Women Have Curves” and 1978’s “Girlfriends,” Claudia Weill’s portrait of a Jewish photographer in New York City. Gunvor Nelson’s look inside the mind of a little girl, 1969 avant-garde pic “My Name Is Oona,” also made the cut.
This year’s selection includes two documentaries from women filmmakers, Greta Schiller’s “Before Stonewall” and Madeline Anderson’s “I Am Somebody.” The former, released in 1984, explores life in the LGBT community prior to 1969’s Stonewall riots, and the latter, released in 1970, is “considered the first documentary on civil rights directed by a woman of color,” according to the source.
While this year’s selection marks a step forward for the National Film Registry, the fact remains that just 28 percent of this year’s titles are directed by women, suggesting that there’s still has a long way to go towards celebrating and preserving films by women.