This programme looks at how some of the world’s greatest women directors depict political themes. Genres including comedy, melodrama, sci-fi, and thrillers also come under the spotlight. 'Women Make Film V' features screenings of six chapters from Mark Cousins’ documentary Women Make Film.

‘Politics’ presents the lucid relationship between cinema and politics. The next chapter, ‘Gear Change’, looks at surprises in film that replaces an unsuspecting mood by its opposite. ‘Comedy’ explains the fundamental—action and innocence—of film comedy, sometimes with political mockery that becomes darker and more absurd.

‘Melodrama’ shows the key aspects in which events, plot, and characters are sensationalised to escalated and sometimes volcanic, emotions that innovatively migrate into form and style. ‘Sci-fi’ explores the genre from being a bullet-time idea to its integration with the digital age: showing that the genre has no bounds. Finally, ‘Horror & Hell’ slides into scenes of real-life horror through clips about war, abuse, homelessness, torture, and torn relationships.

Mark Cousins (b. 1965, Coventry, England) is a filmmaker, critic, and programmer based in Edinburgh. He is known for The First Movie (2009), The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), A Story of Children and Film (2013) and The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018). He is the co-founder with Tilda Swinton of the 8½ Foundation.