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"As film stars, actresses have throughout film history contributed to the film industry's glamorous surface, providing audiences with visual attraction and different representations of femininity. To talk about women in film as "invisible" may thus seem odd or even wrong. This book, however, is concerned with the paradox that on the other side of the camera, women are clearly underrepresented. This is true of contemporary film culture, and has been true historically, despite significant variations between countries/geographical areas, historical time periods and different roles/professions in film production, distribution and exhibition. This anthology recovers forgotten aspects of women's work and memory, tracing women's film work through the lens of Swedish film history, with a few forays into international film ventures. Using a variety of methods and approaches, including careful study of previously neglected archival material, lived experiences, interviews, and theoretical reflections on feminist historiography, the book explores themes of women's agency and (lack of) visibility in a cultural context very different to Hollywood, thus providing readers with a healthy counterweight to the dominance of Anglo-American material in film scholarship published in English. The articles deal with women's agency in a wide range of roles, in film production, exhibition and criticism, but also with new perspectives on stars/actresses and their agency, and including LGBT and queer identities.
The research presents material evidence of women's involvement in film culture being obscured and ignored because of its status as "women's work", and/or of marginal rather than mainstream interest. The book is divided into two parts, where the first part collects chapters that cover neglected dimensions of silent film culture and the use of archival film as cultural memory in documentary work from various time periods, whereas the second part of the book is focussed mainly on films and filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s."

Introduction -- Women filmmakers and feminist authorship -- Spectatorship and reception -- Cinema and the body -- Stars: gendered texts, circulating images -- Documentary: local realities, (trans)national perspectives -- Feminism and experimental film and video -- Narrative film: gender and genre -- From film to new media: emergent feminist perspectives

What would a good world for women look like? How would we get there from where we are and how would we have to change ourselves in the process? This book examines a critical moment in recent American and western European history when the utopian dimension of political movements was particularly generative and feminism was at their core. The imaginative literature that emerged out of American, French, and German feminisms of the 1970s engaged the dialectic between the actual and the possible in radically new and creative ways. Ranging from conventional utopian and science fictions to avant-garde and experimental texts, they countered the idea of utopia as a pre-set goal with the idea of the utopian as a process of «dreaming forwards.»This book explores the transformative potential of feminist visions of change, even as it sees their ideological blind spots. It does more than simply look back to the 1970s. Instead, it looks ahead, anticipating some of the shifts and changes of feminist thought in the following decades: its transnational scope, its critique of identity politics and the gendered politics of sexuality, and its embrace of affect as an analytical category. The author argues that the radical utopianism of second wave feminisms has not lost its urgency. The transformations they envisioned are still our challenge, as the vital work of social change remains undone

Feminism is a series of activities in various fields such as social, political, and ideological activities with the aim of achieving gender equality in all aspects of life such as social, political, and economic. Film is a mass communication tool that can be used as a medium in the feminist movement, the messages and ideologies contained in a film can influence the audience both in terms of cognitive, affective, and conative. Mulan is a film adapted from a Chinese folk tale. Mulan tells the story of a brave woman, a determined warrior named Hua Mulan. The character of Hua Mulan carries a message of feminism. A woman is described as an independent and responsible figure, in contrast to women usually only described as a weak figure, and always in need of protection from men. The research is a qualitative research with data analysis techniques using the semiotic method with an analytical knife using the theory of television codes by John Fiske. This study aims to find out how to represent feminism in the film Mulan, hence the semiotic code of feminism at the level of reality, level of representation, and level of ideology. The results of the research show that the Film Mulan shows the values of Feminism at the level of reality through the code of appearance, costume, makeup, environment, behavior, dialogue, movement, and expression. In the representation level, feminism is shown through camera codes, characters, actions, and dialogues. At the ideological level, feminism values are represented through liberal feminism, radical feminism, and Psychoanalysis and gender ideology.

Gaze Regimes is a bricolage of essays and interviews showcasing the experiences of women working in film, either directly as practitioners or in other areas such as curators, festival programme directors or fundraisers. It does not shy away from questioning the relations of power in the practice of filmmaking and the power invested in the gaze itself. Who is looking and who is being looked at, who is telling women's stories in Africa and what governs the mechanics of making those films on the continent?The interviews with film practitioners such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Jihan El-Tahri, Anita Khanna, Isabel Noronhe, Arya Lalloo and Shannon Walsh demonstrate the contradictory points of departure of women in film from their understanding of feminisms in relation to lived-experiences and the realpolitik of women working as cultural practitioners. Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann, Nobunye Levin, Dorothee Wenner and Christina von Braun are some of the contributors.

The Italian Communist Party's peak of popularity in the mid-1970s, during its so-called 'Eurocommunist' turn, coincided with a surge of feminist struggles in Italy. While scholarship has treated Communist Party politics and feminism as unrelated historical phenomena, this article provides evidence for their multi-layered 'interweaving'. The term was employed by PCI women themselves to conceptualise how struggles against social and gender inequalities interlock, but also to stress that overcoming women's oppression in Italian society (and beyond) presupposed a reckoning with male dominance – and the peripheral role of the 'women's question' – within their party. The ensuing intra-party debate, reconstructed through sources from the turning-point year of 1976, is a revealing instance of PCI activists' reception of 1970s feminism.

Gaze Regimes is a bricolage of essays and interviews showcasing the experiences of women working in film, either directly as practitioners or in other areas such as curators, festival programme directors or fundraisers. It does not shy away from questioning the relations of power in the practice of filmmaking and the power invested in the gaze itself. Who is looking and who is being looked at, who is telling women's stories in Africa and what governs the mechanics of making those films on the continent? The interviews with film practitioners such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Jihan El-Tahri, Anita Khanna, Isabel Noronhe, Arya Lalloo and Shannon Walsh demonstrate the contradictory points of departure of women in film – from their understanding of feminisms in relation to lived-experiences and the realpolitik of women working as cultural practitioners. ; Katharina von Ruckteschell: Foreword Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann: Introduction: By Way of Context and Content Beti Ellerson: African Women in Cinema: An overview Ines Kappert: 'I am a feminist only in secret'. Interview with Taghreed Elsanhouri and Christina von Braun Christina von Braun: Staged Authenticity: Femininity in photography and film Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann: 'Power is in your own hands': Why Jihan El-Tahri does not like movements. Interview with Jihan El-Tahri Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry: Aftermath – A focus on collective trauma. Interview with Djo Tunda wa Munga and Rumbi Katedza Antje Schuhmann: Shooting Violence and Trauma: Traversing visual and social topographies in Zanele Muholi's work Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry: PUK NINI – A Filmic Instruction in Seduction: Exploring class and sexuality in gender relations Nobunye Levin: I am Saartjie Baartman Jyoti Mistry: Filmmaking at the Margins of a Community: On co-producing ELELWANI Jyoti Mistry: On Collective Practice and Collected Reflections. Interview with Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo Max Annas and Henriette Gunkel: 'Cinema of resistance'. Interview with Isabel Noronha Anita Khanna: Dark and Personal Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry: 'Change? This might mean to shove a few men out'. Interview with Anita Khanna Katarina Hedrén: Barakat! means Enough! Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann: 'Women, use the gaze to change reality'. Interview with Katarina Hedrén Dorothee Wenner: Post-colonial Film Collaboration and Festival Politics Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann: Tsitsi Dangarembga: A Manifesto. Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga