Feminism and the Cinema of Experience

Feminism and the Cinema of Experience
Author: Lori Jo Marso
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478060212

From popular films like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) to Chantal Akerman’s avant-garde classic Jeanne Dielman (1975), feminist cinema can provoke discomfort. Ambivalence, stasis, horror, cringe—these and other affects refuse the resolution of feeling good or bad, leaving viewers questioning and disoriented. In Feminism and the Cinema of Experience, Lori Jo Marso examines how filmmakers scramble our senses to open up space for encountering and examining the political conditions of patriarchy, racism, and existential anxiety. Building on Akerman’s cinematic lexicon and Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological attention to the lives of girls and women, Marso analyzes film and television by directors ranging from Akerman, Gerwig, Mati Diop, Catherine Breillat, and Joey Soloway to Emerald Fennell, Michaela Coel, Audrey Diwan, Alice Diop, and Julia Ducournau. Through their innovative and intentional uses of camera, sound, editing, and new forms of narrative, these directors use discomfort in order to invite viewers to feel like feminists and to sense the possibility of freedom.

Feminist Film Theory

Feminist Film Theory
Author: Sue Thornham
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 1999-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814782442

For the past twenty-five years, cinema has been a vital terrain on which feminist debates about culture, representation, and identity have been fought. This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together the key, classic essays in feminist film theory. Feminist Film Theory maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this growing field-from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s, to post-colonial theory, queer theory, and postmodernism in the 1990s. Covering a wide range of topics, including oppressive images, "woman" as fetishized object of desire, female spectatorship, and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women, Feminist Film Theory is an indispensable reference for scholars and students in the field. Contributors include Judith Butler, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Michelle Citron, Mary Ann Doane, Teresa De Lauretis, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Molly Haskell, bell hooks, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Kaja Silverman, Sharon Smith, Jackie Stacey, Janet Staiger, Anna Marie Taylor, Valerie Walkerdine, and Linda Williams.

Women's Cinema, World Cinema

Women's Cinema, World Cinema
Author: Patricia White
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2015-04-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0822376016

In Women’s Cinema, World Cinema, Patricia White explores the dynamic intersection of feminism and film in the twenty-first century by highlighting the work of a new generation of women directors from around the world: Samira and Hana Makhmalbaf, Nadine Labaki, Zero Chou, Jasmila Zbanic, and Claudia Llosa, among others. The emergence of a globalized network of film festivals has enabled these young directors to make and circulate films that are changing the aesthetics and politics of art house cinema and challenging feminist genealogies. Extending formal analysis to the production and reception contexts of a variety of feature films, White explores how women filmmakers are both implicated in and critique gendered concepts of authorship, taste, genre, national identity, and human rights. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema revitalizes feminist film studies as it argues for an alternative vision of global media culture.

The Woman at the Keyhole

The Woman at the Keyhole
Author: Judith Mayne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1990-12-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780253115041

"[The Woman at the Keyhole is one] of the most significant contributions to feminist film theory sin ce the 1970s." -- SubStance "... this intelligent, eminently readable volume puts women's filmmaking on the main stage.... serves at once as introduction and original contribution to the debates structuring the field. Erudite but never obscure, effectively argued but not polemical, The Woman at the Keyhole should prove to be a valuable text for courses on women and cinema." -- The Independent When we imagine a "woman" and a "keyhole," it is usually a woman on the other side of the keyhole, as the proverbial object of the look, that comes to mind. In this work the author is not necessarily reversing the conventional image, but rather asking what happens when women are situated on both sides of the keyhole. In all of the films discussed, the threshold between subject and object, between inside and outside, between virtually all opposing pairs, is a central figure for the reinvention of cinematic narrative.

Chick Flicks

Chick Flicks
Author: B. Ruby Rich
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1998
Genre: Feminism and motion pictures
ISBN: 9780822321217

Part journalistic chronicle, part memoir, and 100% pure cultural historical odyssey, "Chick Flicks" captures the birth and growth of feminist film as no other book has done. 22 photos.

Women, Feminism and Italian Cinema

Women, Feminism and Italian Cinema
Author: Dalila Missero
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-11
Genre: Feminism and motion pictures
ISBN: 9781474463256

Represents the first comprehensive reconstruction of Italian women's film cultures of the 1960s and '70s.

Warriors, Witches, Whores

Warriors, Witches, Whores
Author: Rachel S. Harris
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814339689

Feminist reading of women’s representation and activism in Israeli cinema. Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema is a feminist study of Israel’s film industry and the changes that have occurred since the 1990s. Working in feminist film theory, the book adopts a cultural studies approach, considering the creation of a female-centered and thematically feminist film culture in light of structural and ideological shifts in Israeli society. Author Rachel S. Harris situates these changes in dialogue with the cinematic history that preceded them and the ongoing social inequalities that perpetuate women’s marginalization within Israeli society. While no one can deny Israel’s Western women’s advancements, feminist filmmakers frequently turn to Israel’s less impressive underbelly as sources for their inspiration. Their films have focused on sexism, the negative impact of militarism on women’s experience, rape culture, prostitution, and sexual abuse. These films also tend to include subjects from society’s geographical periphery and social margins, such as female foreign workers, women, and refugees. Warriors, Witches, Whoresis divided into three major sections and each considers a different form of feminist engagement. The first part explores films that situate women in traditionally male spheres of militarism, considering the impact of interjecting women within hegemonic spaces or reconceptualizing them in feminist ways. The second part recovers the narratives of women’s experience that were previously marginalized or silenced, thereby creating a distinct female space that offers new kinds of storytelling and cinematic aesthetics that reflect feminist expressions of identity. The third part offers examples of feminist activism that reach beyond the boundaries of the film to comment on social issues. This section demonstrates how feminists use film (and work within the film industry) in order to position women in society. While there are thematic overlaps between the chapters, each section marks structural differences in the modes of feminist response. Warriors, Witches, Whores considers the ways social and political power have affected the representation of women and looks to how feminist filmmakers have fought against these inequities behind the camera and in the stories they tell. Students and scholars of film, gender, or cultural studies will appreciate this approachable monograph.

Neo-Feminist Cinema

Neo-Feminist Cinema
Author: Hilary Radner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136995994

What lies behind current feminist discontent with contemporary cinema? Through a combination of cultural and industry analysis, Hilary Radner’s Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture shows how the needs of conglomerate Hollywood have encouraged an emphasis on consumer culture within films made for women. By exploring a number of representative "girly films," including Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, The Devil Wears Prada, and Sex and the City: The Movie, Radner proposes that rather than being "post-feminist," as is usually assumed, such films are better described as "neo-feminist." Examining their narrative format, as it revolves around the story of an ambitious unmarried woman who defines herself through consumer culture as much as through work or romance, Radner argues that these films exemplify neo-liberalist values rather than those of feminism. As such, Neo-Feminist Cinema offers a new explanation as to why feminist-oriented scholars and audiences who are seeking more than "labels and love" from their film experience have viewed recent "girly films" as a betrayal of second-wave feminism, and why, on the other hand, such films have proven to be so successful at the box office.

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism
Author: Patricia Erens
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780253206107

"This anthology makes it abundantly clear that feminist film criticism is flourishing and has developed dramatically since its inception in the early 1970s." —Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Erens brings together a wide variety of writings and methodologies by U.S. and British feminist film scholars. The twenty-seven essays represent some of the most influential work on Hollywood film, women's cinema, and documentary filmmaking to appear during the past decade and beyond. Contributors include Lucie Arbuthnot, Linda Artel, Pam Cook, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Mary C. Gentile, Bette Gordon, Florence Jacobowitz, Claire Johnston, E. Ann Kaplan, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Sonya Michel, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Gail Seneca, Kaja Silverman, Lori Spring, Jackie Stacey, Maureen Turim, Diane Waldman, Susan Wengraf, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.

Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas

Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas
Author: Christine Gledhill
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2012-01-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0252093666

This remarkable collection uses genre as a fresh way to analyze the issues of gender representation in film theory, film production, spectatorship, and the contexts of reception. With a uniquely global perspective, these essays examine the intersection of gender and genre in not only Hollywood films but also in independent, European, Indian, and Hong Kong cinemas. Working in the area of postcolonial cinema, contributors raise issues dealing with indigenous and global cinemas and argue that contemporary genres have shifted considerably as both notions of gender and forms of genre have changed. The volume addresses topics such as the history of feminist approaches to the study of genre in film, issues of female agency in postmodernity, changes taking place in supposedly male-dominated genres, concepts of genre and its use of gender in global cinema, and the relationship between gender and sexuality in film. Contributors are Ira Bhaskar, Steven Cohan, Luke Collins, Pam Cook, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Derek Kane-Meddock, E. Ann Kaplan, Samiha Matin, Katie Model, E. Deidre Pribram, Vicente Rodriguez Ortega, Adam Segal, Chris Straayer, Yvonne Tasker, Deborah Thomas, and Xiangyang Chen.