An examination of the directorial labor of one of the only women filmmakers working in second-wave exploitation.

"Thanks to Kozma’s interventionist scholarship, we can now set the record straight on filmmaker Stephanie Rothman, a woman whose discriminatory experiences in the film industry give lie to the idea of parity as the ultimate solution to the systemic sexism and misogyny women faced and continue to face at all levels in the profession."

- Kelly Hankin, professor of film studies in the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, University of Redlands

“People and films that take chances, that aren’t afraid to make the audience uncomfortable, to push them to places they haven’t been to before, or maybe didn’t necessarily want to go to. Films that won’t allow you to forget them, that you can’t stop thinking or talking about, the ones that buzz your brain. Those are the ones for me.”

Meet Alicia Kozma

“Yet far fewer women than men transition into the professional film industry. Many of the few women working in film today posit this is because young women professionals lack a deep knowledge of the ways women have already shaped the film landscape, while also having almost no women mentors to look up to, to guide them, and demonstrate the real possibility of a career in the industry.”

Women on Top: Spotlighting the Work of Global Women Filmmakers

“On a superficial level, international films are just that: films that cross national boundaries. Yet on another level, international films are a legacy of national cinema, that notoriously slippery term that encompasses a wide range of industrial, aesthetic, and economic strategies that countries across the world employed — and still do — to push back against the global dominance of Hollywood.”

New Americas Cinema: What is international about international cinema, anyway?

“While “neo-noir” has often become a type of shorthand to convey atmosphere rather than necessarily as connective tissue to an established noir aesthetic, thematic, and narrative style, Hanson’s film is a closely-linked descendent of the subsection of classic noir films concerned in some way with exposing municipal corruption — films like The Big Heat (1953), Touch of Evil (1958), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and I Wake Up Screaming (1941).”

Hush Hush and on the QT: The Noir Roots of L.A. Confidential

“Even today, defining an ‘art house film’ is notoriously difficult. The designation cannot claim a hard and fast identity and is often applied to any film that screens in an art house theater…Art house films often find themselves subject to the oft-quoted litmus test coined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his famous determination of what constitutes obscene art: ‘I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.’”

A Look at This Spring’s International Art House Series

“In short, film awards often reify the same normative film tastes, talents, and representation while narrowing the public’s understanding of the breadth and depth of the cinematic landscape. This is, of course, not to say that there are not benefits to an Oscar win, particularly for those rare films that are simultaneously low-profile for mainstream audiences but embraced by the Academy.”

The Awards Paradox

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