“Dutch delight” produced by women filmmakers: Cinema against stereotypes

Abstract

This paper offers a brief history of women filmmakers in The Netherlands from the 1920s to the present, in an attempt to achieve two goals. The first aim is to show that despite the scarcity of women directors in the histories of the cinema of the Netherlands, there are many women in the Dutch film industry, particularly so given its small size in the European context. Secondly, this paper aims to show that many of the myths that have been commonly associated with Dutch cinema, such as its inability to produce good fiction films or to handle important socio-political issues, can be easily dismantled after seeing the work of Dutch women filmmakers. Although it is certainly much easier to find documentaries than dramas among their works, it is nevertheless true that they have also produced many of the latter. Moreover, in both categories they have explored complex and controversial themes that are highly relevant to their society, as well as opening up new thematic paths along which male directors had never travelled. Issues related to the new national identities resulting from the multicultural contexts of present-day Europe are among the former, while the latter is best represented by topics traditionally dealt with by feminism, such as the question of abortion, rape or women’s submission in patriarchal societies, among others.