Feminism and film
In: Oxford readings in feminism
In: Oxford readings in feminism
"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."
Abstract: The article analyzes the political and theoretical potentialof cinematographic language to express and rebuild the relationship between sexual and gender differences. As cultural products, the three films analyzed - A Casa Assassinada (1972), Sunday, bloody Sunday (1971) and Les Amities Particulières (1964) - allude to feminist issues of the time, as well as instigating a reading of gender beyond the narratives, by historicizing the visibility of the female body, heteronormativity, and the subversiveness of forbidden loves as represented through the films' structure. The text argues, from a queer perspective, that the aesthetic nature of twist cinema, within the limits of each style and period, was precisely the boldness to run risks in its visual grammar, not making political concessions in challenging the moral canons of current society.
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The article analyzes the political and theoretical potential of cinematographic language to express and rebuild the relationship between sexual and gender differences. As cultural products, the three films analyzed - A Casa Assassinada (1972), Sunday, bloody Sunday (1971) and Les Amities Particulières (1964) - allude to feminist issues of the time, as well as instigating a reading of gender beyond the narratives, by historicizing the visibility of the female body, heteronormativity, and the subversiveness of forbidden loves as represented through the films' structure. The text argues, from a queer perspective, that the aesthetic nature of twist cinema, within the limits of each style and period, was precisely the boldness to run risks in its visual grammar, not making political concessions in challenging the moral canons of current society.
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In: Ralahine utopian studies volume 16
In: Ralahine classics
This book works to complicate and push against common arguments that the Western from its inception is an anti-feminist genre. By focusing on representations of women professionals in Westerns, it shows that women in cinematic and televisual Westerns sometimes do acquire agency and empowerment in the private and public realms, despite our culture's tendency to gender the former as feminine and the latter as solely masculine. The study reviews the relationship of these progressive Westerns to both explicit and latent feminist ideologies relevant to their times, as the films evolved from the 1930s to the twenty-first century.
This book works to complicate and push against common arguments that the Western from its inception is an anti-feminist genre. By focusing on representations of women professionals in Westerns, it shows that women in cinematic and televisual Westerns sometimes do acquire agency and empowerment in the private and public realms, despite our culture's tendency to gender the former as feminine and the latter as solely masculine. The study reviews the relationship of these progressive Westerns to both explicit and latent feminist ideologies relevant to their times, as the films evolved from the 1930s to the twenty-first century
In: Women & politics, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 90-92
ISSN: 0195-7732
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.
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In: Contemporary approaches to film and television series
In my dissertation I analyze how politics and film interact in Lusophone (i.e., Portuguese- speaking) countries in Europe (Portugal), South America (Brazil) and Africa (Mozambique and Angola) between the 1950s and the 1980s. During this period the countries in question were undergoing significant political changes, and film was an important medium used in the process of transformation. Portugal went from a fascist dictatorship to a democracy in 1974, Angola and Mozambique became independent in 1975, and Brazil became a military dictatorship in 1964. One of the purposes of my study is to explore and contrast the film-related policies in effect under different governments. In the case of Portugal, fascist colonialism used film as a form of propaganda to support its occupation of Mozambique, Angola, Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau. With the 1974 April revolution that ended the dictatorship, film was used to advance the democratic values of the revolution. The previously mentioned African countries, especially Angola and Mozambique, used Third Cinema as a counter-discourse to Portuguese propaganda, showing in a series of documentaries how their struggle for independence was legitimate. In the case of Brazil, directors of Cinema Novo criticized neocolonialism in Brazil; the movement began in the late fifties, but underwent through significant changes when a military coup established a dictatorship that would last until 1985. In spite of the extensive common ground among the diverse Lusophone countries, very few studies have thus far used a transatlantic approach. I start from Gilroy's conception of the Atlantic Ocean as a space of cultural exchange, and from Shu Mei Shih and Fran?oise Lionnet's notion of minor transnationalism to explore such issues.
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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
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