The Diccionario crítico de directoras de cine europeas represents an important contribution to film studies and feminist studies. It documents the life and work of women film directors in both Western and Eastern Europe from the late 1800s through 2009, offering brief biographies, filmographies, and appraisals of their work in the context of European cinema. Produced as a result of a research study conducted by the Grupo Intermedia y Género, Universidad de Oviedo [Gendered Intermedia Group at the University of Oviedo], a center for both feminist and media studies research, the dictionary helps trace the important role that women played in the history of film. Editors María del Carmen Rodríguez Fernández and Eduardo Viñuela Suárez have assembled a team of regional editors and contributors from the faculty at Oviedo to oversee entries for the various countries and geographical areas represented in the guide. This reference work provides a concise introduction to the many women directors and their part in shaping the many national cinemas of Europe from their infancy through the wartime era and dominance of Hollywood, 20th-century movements such as the Nouvelle vague [New Wave] in France, the rise of feminist film theory in academic circles, and the greater position of women in the motion picture industry of the new millennium.

The scope of the dictionary is limited to women directors of commercially released feature films, including documentaries. Female producers, cinematographers, actresses, and screenwriters are not included, although there are some exceptions; for example, the celebrated French actress Jeanne Moreau receives an entry for the three films she directed during her long career. Directors whose work appeared after 2009 are also excluded from this work. It is arranged in alphabetical order by the director’s last name. Each entry includes the name, dates of birth and death, and the country in which the director was born—modern names for the countries in cases in which the political boundaries have shifted in the last century. Though most entries are succinct, providing just the basic facts about each director and her films, they contain useful commentary and critical discussions of the director’s contributions that will appeal to film scholars and enthusiasts alike. The article on Alice Guy Blaché, the first known woman director and the first director and writer of a fictional narrative film, is one of the most comprehensive. It offers valuable insight into her relationship to pioneering French filmmaker Leon Gaumont and the instrumental part that she played in the early cinema of both France and the United States. A bibliography of contemporary books on Guy Blaché concludes the entry; then a list of films she directed, along with their release dates, appears after the main body of the article. Most entries do not go into such depth, but they all are scholarly and give the reader a good overview of the presence of women in European filmmaking. The dictionary concludes with an index of directors credited with only one film that is sorted by their country of birth. A complete national index of all the directors covered in the book would, however, have been a more useful feature for researchers.

The Diccionario crítico de directoras de cine europeas will be a valuable addition to a world cinema collection in academic libraries. It will complement older reference titles on European women directors such as Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary (Westport, Conn., 1995) and Tisiano Sossi’s Dizionario delle registre: l’atra metà del cinema [Dictionary of Women Directors: The Other Half of Cinema] (Rome, 2000), as well as film histories such as Concha Irazábal Martín’s Alice sí está: directoras de cine europeas y norteamericanas, 1896-1996 [Alice is Here: Women Directors of European and North American Cinema, 1896-1996] (Madrid, 1996). For Spanish and Portuguese directors, the ambitious, multivolume Diccionario del cine iberoamericano [Dictionary of Iberoamerican Cinema] (Madrid, 2011- ) may give more detailed assessments of their careers, but it lacks the pan-European perspective of Diccionario crítico de directoras de cine europeas and its exclusive focus on women who have sat in the director’s chair.

Screening Nostalgia: 100 years of German Heimat Film. [Silenced Voices: The Expulsion of “Jews” Alexandra Ludewig. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2011. 475 p. 23 cm. ISBN 978-3-8376-1462-6: EUR 39.80 [12-2]