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78 dga quarterly PHOTOS: PHOTOFEST C L A S S I C S ly in Yiddish with English subtitles. It chronicles the tale of a Jewish im- migrant to the U.S. who does not want to assimilate and her husband who does. Silver gently mimics the style of early cinema to underline that our foremothers were feminists too. Her subsequent 1970s films, Between the Lines (1977) and Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), held out the promise of a long and prolific career as a feature director. Yet the path to that goal did not run smoothly. Though she directed a few more features, her later efforts failed to gain traction either with distributors or at the box office, and her career continued largely in television. Aside from theatrical features, female directors had long been as- sociated with documentaries. Nancy Hamilton and Shirley Clarke directed Oscar-winning documentaries about, respectively, Helen Keller and Robert Frost. In 1976 Barbara Kopple became the first woman to win a solo Oscar. Harlan County U.S.A., her unapologeti- cally pro-union movie about coal miners who refuse to sign a contract with a non-strike clause, emphasized the voices of female folk singers and activists fighting for better wages, health, and living conditions. Its urgency and subsequent popularity paved the way for the partisan documentary filmmakers of today who reject the impartial approach to their subject. It is not an overstatement to say Kopple changed the course of documentary. Just as impor- tant, she maintained a career (winning a second documen- tary Oscar, in 1991, for American Dream) in a way few female filmmakers of the 1970s were able to. Like Kopple, Claudia Weill was a significant force in non- fiction film as the co-director, with Shirley MacLaine, of The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975). Their Oscar-nominated film chronicled the experiences of seven American women learning Chinese medicine, among other things, from their counterparts Weill's Girlfriends (1978) is an intimate account of a young photographer (Melanie Mayron) unmoored when her best friend and roommate moves out to get married. Weill employed a cinéma vérité style to lend a documentary feel to the story of a woman more focused on making a ca- reer than on getting married. She has casual sex (and is not punished for it, unlike the doomed heroine of Looking for Mr. Goodbar the previous year). Unfortunately, Girlfriends was released in the middle of a newspaper strike in New York, and with few reviews, it failed to find a wide audience. But there was strong word of mouth, and women, especially, were thrilled to see themselves represented on screen in a more realistic way. Weill would direct another feature, It's My Turn (1980), an affable romance with Jill Clayburgh, many plays, and work consistently in episodic television, including Cagney & Lacey and Girls. But when her second feature failed to connect with audiences, she too had trouble getting financ- ing for another big-screen project. The same thing happened to Joan Darling. Darling, a pioneer television director who received a 1976 Emmy nomination for the celebrated "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and helmed many episodes of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, directed only two feature films. First Love (1977), an unusually sensitive coming-of-age tale, told the story of a college boy who believes love is the context for sex. The sex sequences between William Katt and Susan Dey are very poignant, but were considered old-fashioned in the era of Porky's. Darling didn't get an- other feature film opportunity until 1986, and continued to direct for TV. Joan Tewkesbury, who wrote Nashville and Thieves Like Us for director Robert Altman, made her directorial debut with the feature Old Boyfriends (1979). Starring Talia Shire as a recently widowed psy- chiatrist who looks up old beaus to find how she got to her present place in life, the film featured excellent performances by Shire and John Belushi. Her feature was a one-off, and for the rest of her long ca- reer she continued to work as a director on movies for television (The Tenth Month, The Acorn People) and episodic shows. Australian-born Gillian Armstrong made her feature debut with Joan Darling, First Love (1977) Joan Micklin Silver, Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)