Women Make SF

womenmakesf

Post-viewing/playing discussion of Science/Speculative Fiction films and digital fictions made by women.

  1. 11/13/2025

    Strange Days at 30

    In the NOVEMBER edition, we’ll be talking about Kathryn Bigelow’s underrated science fiction thriller Strange Days, which was originally released on 13 October 1995 in the US and worldwide in February 1996. In part a response to the police brutality of the LA Riots, Strange Days is a complex film about memory, addiction, and the desire to escape reality…

    1h 7m

  2. 10/31/2025

    ReproFutures: Parenting in the Anthropocene

    In the OCTOBER episode, we are joined by Dr Anna McFarlane (University of Glasgow), and we’ll be talking about recent women-directed SF with a focus on ReproFutures: imagined near futures of pregnancy, gestation, childbirth and child rearing. We’re focusing on recent films, The Pod Generation, written and directed by Sophie Barthes (who also made Cold Souls), and Fleur Fortuné’s The Assessment.

    1h 6m

  3. 09/11/2025

    Style over [the] Substance: Beauty is Pain

    We're back! On Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (2024) and Ninagawa Mika's Helter Skelter (2012) - re/introducing the project, talking about the films as science fiction and their approach to the male/female gaze, bodies and women in the film industry.

    1h 15m

  4. 07/27/2022

    Robot Boyfriends with Guest Scott Midson

    With Scott Midson (a man!) we chat about I'm Your Man (2021) and Making Mr. Right (1987).

    55 min

  5. 08/02/2021

    Interview with Cargo director Arati Kadav

    This is our second episode in a row with a guest! This week we welcome Indian filmmaker Arati Kadav whose Hindi-language SF Cargo was our more recent #WomenMakeSF film, which is notably the first Indian SF genre film directed by a woman. We are so excited to have the writer and director here to answer our questions! Cargo combines references to lots of key SF texts and a retro-futuristic analog aesthetic, with a distinctly Indian narrative that places reincarnation in a science fictional setting. We think about why women are often led to producing original low-budget content rather than also being allowed into the realms of franchise, and why women deserve their own science fictions. Women read, write, watch, play, and make science fiction - why can’t we shake the stereotype?

    1h 6m

  6. 06/07/2021

    Trans Representation and SF (Guest Cheryl Morgan)

    This week’s episode is our first look at the work of the Wachowski sisters - Lily and Lana - who are the most prolific SF creators on the WMSF list with their work expanding across several platforms. We watched Jupiter Ascending (Wachowskis) - our first screening since September - and are both avid fans of Sense8. We are joined this week by our special guest science fiction critic, writer, editor, and publisher Cheryl Morgan. After a run of fairly serious space and science/fiction films we wanted to watch some pure space opera - but this is a Wachowski storyworld it was never going to be that simple...

    1h 22m

  7. 05/19/2021

    Women in Space

    This week we are talking about women in space. How have space movies imagined women’s participation in space exploration and travel? Our cultural imaginaries have not always made space for women in space - despite the early SF positioning of women as part of humanity’s journey to the stars, much of contemporary SF see women as support for the male mastery of technologies and machines. We talk about #WomenMakeSF movies Aniara a Swedish SF directed by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, Claire Denis’ English language debut High Life alongside key examples like Gravity, Interstellar, and Alien.

    1h 10m

  8. 09/11/2020

    Finishing Schools of Fear

    This week we are looking at the film Paradise Hills and Level 16 both films are set at dystopian finishing schools where being the perfect girl is the goal. These young women are trapped in the trappings of femininity and sacrificed in the pursuit of an apparent notion of female perfection. We discuss this in relation to a recent TIME article that argues that women's genre filmmaking is “about women’s deepest anxieties”. Content warning: discussion of rape culture and violence against women.

    53 min
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About

Post-viewing/playing discussion of Science/Speculative Fiction films and digital fictions made by women.

Information

  • Creator
    womenmakesf
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2025
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Women Make SF