Gender, Genre and More General Indie Dimensions in Megan Griffiths’ The Off Hours and Eden

This chapter challenges essentialist assumptions often imposed on female-directed films by analysing two features by Megan Griffiths. Where her first feature The Off Hours (2011) supports the expectation that the female sensibility results in a film with a realistic, low-key aesthetic focused on characterisation and relationships and fostered by collaborative filmmaking, these same characteristics and production methods account for much of the (predominantly male) indie sector in general. Moreover Griffiths’ Eden (2012) adapts the male thriller genre to one woman’s experience as a victim of the international sex trade. As Griffiths’ practice suggests, rather than sharing some essential predisposition, female filmmakers transform and hybridise ‘indie’ modalities and existing genres to their own feminist ends.