Today's director for our Female Filmmakers series is a powerhouse. She is a multi-award-winning film and television director with projects on nearly all of the streaming services around the world. She released a film earlier this year which had a great deal of nudity in it (finally), so we are going to highlight the work of Ursula MacFarlane.
Ursula MacFarlane comes to us from London, England, and she was educated at Oxford. Ursula is primarily a documentarian. Her debut came in 1997 when she directed the TV docuseries A-Z of Horror.
She followed that up with films that continued to pique people's interest: The Real Yoko Ono, The Life and Loss of Karen Woo,Untouchable, and many more. She loves following misunderstood women and giving them a spotlight which is how she came to direct the Anna Nicole Smith documentary.
The 2023 documentary Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me lets us all get to know the famous blonde bombshell in a way that we never did before. The buxom blonde was best known for getting married to a much much much older wealthy man. When he died, his family accused her of being a golddigger and took her to court over the money from her late husband's estate. She was embroiled in court cases for years over the matter and that - along with her short-lived reality show - might be what people now remember her best for.
Ursula showed us that Anna Nicole Smith was so much more than all of that. She was a small-town girl who got married and pregnant young. When she left her ex-husband, she worked as an exotic dancer to make ends meet and she lived with her longtime girlfriend. Yes, we found out that Anna Nicole liked ladies and men!
After she met her husband, her career was able to get started because he helped bankroll her. Everyone needs a wealthy benefactor! Hers led her to Playboy and to Guess Jeans where her curvy figure dropped jaws on billboards. Her hourglass shape evoked a certain Marilyn-esque star quality in the all-American young woman.
However, Anna Nicole could never really handle the pressure of the public eye all that well. Her life later became marred by drug use, scandals, and the loss of her son. The documentary tells us all of this and shows just how hard it was for Anna Nicole to get through life after the death of her son (which occurred shortly after the birth of her daughter).
It was clear from front to back that Anna Nicole Smith had a much more difficult life than any of us knew and we all have MacFarlane to thank for showing us that. We also have her to thank for showing us that while showing us why Anna was such a star: her hot body! The documentary does not shy away from nudity. Ursula MacFarlane did a skintastic job with this documentary and I hope that she does more like this!
