Women and Film Representation

Since it began in the 1970s, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood. This book focuses on the groundbreaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, and Barbara Creed. Each of these thinkers has opened up a new and distinctive approach to the study of film and this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideas. It illuminates
the following six key concepts and demonstrates their value
as tools for film analysis:

• the male gaze
• the female voice
• technologies of gender
• queering desire
• the monstrous-feminine
• masculinity in crisis.

Shohini Chaudhuri shows how these four thinkers construct their theories through their reading of films as well as testing their ideas with a number of other examples from contemporary cinema and television. She concludes that the concepts have not remained static over the past thirty years but have continually evolved with the influence of new
critical debates and developments in film production, signalling their continuing impact and relevance in an era that is often unthinkingly branded as ‘post-feminist’.

New feminism is a continuation of earlier feminisms but differs slightly as it emphasizes on the idea that woman is an individual with an equal worth as man while accepting the natural sexual differences. Indian Films have always portrayed women in the stereotypical roles of passive, submissive and dependent objects of visual pleasure. British Feminist Film Theorist Laura Mulvey, in her essay titled 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', talks about the Male Gaze and how women are presented as the object of voyeurism, which means 'to-belooked-at-ness' objects. This paper attempts to look at the changes brought in the representation of woman from the stereotypical pleasurable object to the emancipated lead actor who overcame the male gaze and became an independent and strong woman. The paper observes this change of representation in Gouri Shinde's film "English Vinglish". The film is about an Indian woman who overcomes the patriarchal obstacles and becomes successful and independent. The focus is also on the contemporary Indian female directors. Unlike most of the male directors, these female directors break away from showing the woman as passive and pleasurable objects. They represent their emancipation through independent women characters who are not dependent on men.

Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and moderate's voices in art and film, from the perspective and professional life of a feminist artivist mamactivist.

I explore three major examples :
A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men.
A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary.
The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Renewed and updated by Author -2016.
Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?"
(link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/

"CINEma oltre. Donne e pratiche audiovisive in Italia"
di Lucia Cardone, Elena Marcheschi e Giulia Simi
_ isbn 9788874903160 _ Con saggi di: Luisa Cutzu, Lucia Di Girolamo, Francesca Gallo, Sandra Lischi, Jennifer Malvezzi e Bianca Trevisan, Raffaella Perna, Simona Pezzano, Farah Polato, Maria Teresa Soldani, Deborah Toschi, Lucia Tralli.

In 1980, famed film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel released a special episode of their show Sneak Previews. The special episode, titled “Women in Danger,” featured Ebert and Siskel discussing a large-scale trend of slasher films, which they classified as “women-hating” films, or women-in-danger films, in the late 1970s through 1980. At first glance, He Knows You’re Alone, a slasher film from 1980, appears to defy Ebert and Siskel’s simple categorization. Seemingly, the film both punishes women for their promiscuity while also creating developed women characters who create space for the expression of women’s sexuality and doubts on traditional marriage. However, the true nature of the film may be far more insidious than just a neatly packaged depiction of women’s terror. When viewed through the eyes of someone who has been radicalized by misogynistic communities, He Knows You’re Alone can become a representation of one’s beliefs.

In 2001, the feminist director Jutta Brückner wrote that films by women were the product of an often arduous "quest for traces. " 1 Her comment echoed an interview three decades earlier, when Brückner had spoken of film as a means to "reconstruct symbolically" the "disrupted physical integrity" of women in history. 2 The reference in both instances was not only to her own work but in general to filmmaking by women who seek new forms of articulation for feminine subjectivity and experience. Brückner's observations have resonance too for a different cultural practice of retrieval, that of history-writing in respect of women's film. This chapter attempts a reconstruction of key moments in German women's filmmaking, which we explore in particular, but not solely, in its relation to feminism. Like Brückner's film narratives, our history-which for reasons of space is necessarily partial-starts from an assumption of "disrupted integrity, " though not, as for Brückner, in the physical or symbolic body of woman, but in the similarly fractured cinematic body of work by women over twelve decades of German film. It is, moreover, not only Brückner's understanding of film as a medium capable of lending tangible presence to an otherwise invisible or fragmented gendered experience that is useful for this chapter. Her filmmaking method offers further helpful insights for approaches to women's cinema history. Early in her filmmaking career, in films including the experimental documentary Tue recht und scheue niemand (Do right and fear nobody, 1975) and the semi-autobiographical Hungerjahre (Years of Hunger, 1979), Brückner used newsreel inserts, still photographs, voice-over, and found sound to "suggest the complexity of a whole period": in Tue recht, five decades of one woman's mid-twentieth-century petit bourgeois existence; in Hungerjahre, the 1950s as viewed from the perspective of a bulimic adolescent. Brückner's juxtapositions of archive image and sound with memory fragments and fictional narrative revealed female subjectivities in a state of emergence, developing as "the result of a long cultural process" that is "constituted by … history. " 3 Analogously, the history of women's filmmaking-of the moments, then, in which women become the active subjects of cinematic perception as well as social actors in film production and circulation-demands an approach that registers traces of feminine subjectivity and agency as the products of specific conditions of historical emergence: conditions that may at one moment facilitate women's filmmaking and at others suppress female participation in the film industry or cinematic practice. Examples from early film history should serve to illustrate the point. Three women who would later move into production and directing-Henny Porten, Asta Nielsen (see Chapter 5), and Leontine Sagan-began careers in acting at a historical moment in which film performance and stardom belonged to, indeed were significantly shaping an early twentieth-century culture of public visibility for women. In Emilie Altenloh's pioneering sociological study of early cinema audiences, Asta Nielsen in particular figures not merely as an audience magnet for a cross-class community of female fans. 4 Feminist historians including Miriam Hansen, Heide Schlüpmann, and Andrea Haller have also shown how the mass presence of women in the film audience may be understood as part of a broader early twentieth-century challenge to the "dominant organization of public experience" around masculine norms. 5 That challenge was rooted in socio-historical developments including the expansion of women's education, the advance of 31 FEMINISM AND WOMEN'S CINEMA

The aim of this introduction is to provide a context for the articles that follow in this cluster on Women’s Lives on Screen. Starting with some reflections on how biopics can matter to audiences, I propose the use of ‘mattering’ as a concept for the study of women’s biopics which helps consider their objectification of women as biographical ‘material’ on screen in tandem with their emancipatory refiguring of women as biographical subjects that are made to matter. The introduction also offers a brief overview of biopic studies as they relate to the subject of women’s lives on screen. It ends by sketching the breadth of topics covered in this cluster with a summary of the eleven articles.

პოპულარული კულტურის მიერ გაგზავნილი მესიჯები, ქალების გარეგნული და პიროვნული თვისებების შესახებ, მეტ-ნაკლებად აყალიბებს საზოგადოებრივ შეხედულებებს მათ მიმართ. სწორედ ამიტომ, კვლევის მიზანს წარმოადგენდა ახალგაზრდა ქალების რეპრეზენტაციის შესწავლა 21-ე საუკუნის ჰოლივუდის ფილმებში. კერძოდ, ის, თუ როგორ ხასიათდებიან ახალგაზრდა ქალები ფილმებში, როგორია ახალგაზრდა ქალ და მამაკაც პერსონაჟთა ურთიერთდამოკიდებულება და როგორია დამოკიდებულება თავად ახალგაზრდა ქალ პერსონაჟთა შორის. ამ საკითხების უკეთ შესასწავლად შეირჩა თვისებრივი სოციოლოგიური კვლევის ერთ-ერთი მეთოდი - კონტენტ-ანალიზი. კვლევის ფარგლებში გაანალიზდა შემთხვევით შერჩეული 10 ჰოლივუდური დრამის შინაარსი. კვლევისას მოპოვებული ინფორმაციის დამუშავების შედეგად გამოვლინდა, რომ ახალგაზრდა ქალები ძირითადად წარმოდგენილნი არიან ფემინური გარეგნობითა და თვისებებით და აქვთ დაბალი თვითშეფასება. ისინი წარმოადგენენ მამაკაც პერსონაჟთა ემოციურ მხარდამჭერებს და მზად არიან, უარი თქვან საკუთარ კარიერულ განვითარებაზე ოჯახის შესანარჩუნებლად. რაც შეეხება ახალგაზრდა ქალებს შორის ურთიერთობებს, ეს უკანასკნელი, უმეტესად, გამოხატულია პაექრობასა და კონკურენციაში, თუმცა, აგრეთვე გვხვდება მათი მეგობრული დამოკიდებულებაც. შეჯამების სახით, კვლევამ აჩვენა, რომ ახალგაზრდა ქალ პერსონაჟთა რეპრეზენტაციისას დომინირებს მათი მოწესრიგებული იმიჯი, ემპათიური, მგრძნობიარე ბუნება და არასაკმარისი თავდაჯერებულობა, რის გამოც, შერჩეულ ფილმებში მათ, ხშირად, პასიურ და დაქვემდებარებულ პოზიციებში ვხვდებით.

საკვანძო სიტყვები: ახალგაზრდა ქალები; რეპრეზენტაცია; გენდერი; ფილმი; კონტენტანალიზი.

Sarah-Mai Dang geht in ihrer Dissertation der Frage nach, warum sich Frauen chick flicks (‚Tussi-Filme’) ansehen. Den titelgebenden Sammelbegriff verwendet sie für „US-amerikanische Genreproduktionen, die seit den 1990er Jahren ins Fernsehen und ins Kino kommen, kommerziell höchst erfolgreich sind und sich vor allem an Frauen zu richten scheinen“ (S.7).

Forming a family and having children constitutes an adulthood rite of passage, one of the tacitly assumed requirements of a fulfilled life. What happens, then, when the "family dream" does not materialize? This paper addresses the dark sides of the "family imperative" by focusing on representations of involuntary childlessness (i.e. childlessness not by choice) in film. It advances the argument that popular culture, far from being "mere entertainment" has an important role in wider processes of stigmatization, silencing and, as a result, exclusion of those who do not have a family. The analysis, which is informed by a broader study into the structure of silence surrounding childlessness, presents the findings of a comparative qualitative content analysis that examined the (troubling) representations of involuntary childless individuals in 50 films from Italy, Norway, the US. It discusses their far reaching cultural and political implications, making practical suggestions to counter their stigmatizing effects.

In social reality, illness and death occur in myriad ways, yet Hollywood films have historically preferred spectacular, violent death over realist depictions of the terminal stages of life. Yet an ever-growing number of popular films, which I term neo-infirmity films, incorporate episodes of women characters debilitated by illness or injury. Operating at the intersection of melodrama and realism, the scenes are instrumental in staging contemporary cinema’s gender politics. I argue that women’s deathbed and hospital-bed scenes in contemporary cinema validate anew the maternal role and the figure of the mother, transporting the woman-centered discursive space of melodrama into narrative terrain often hostile to women’s presence. Through this relocation, the films emphasize her importance to sons in particular (and less often to daughters, husbands, and the larger family unit). Many such scenes simultaneously undermine women’s agency, reducing mothers to principally symbolic, literally immobile roles. Ailing women can become catalysts for male psychological transformation occurring through grief, action, or both in combination. In all, such scenes speak to continued ambivalence surrounding women’s representation in popular cinema, and to continued patrolling of the boundaries of female power. This essay compares selected texts from contemporary Hollywood cinema, alongside three parallel discourses that also deploy melodramatic modes of articulation: nonfiction amateur video as relayed via television news programs, international art cinema, and U.S. independent cinema. Arguing for homologies across multiple fields of textual production, I seek through this comparison to generate insights into the cultural work done by filmic representation.

As a practitioner, I am interested in using moving image poetically to express metaphysical truths about women's experiences, both contemporary and throughout history. My work encompasses experimental narrative film and video installation. I loosely weave filmic tropes together to create a latticework of 'gaps' into which a viewer contributes their own frame of reference in an imaginary dialogue with the work. The resonance of the work is thus extended to reveal 'the '3 rd meaning' i.e. new meaning created when 2 or more elements are juxtaposed. This paper investigates the nature and creation of this 'third meaning' by the juxtaposition of poetic elements in moving image art and film, including case studies of the author's own work. The paper explores whether the medium of moving image can behave in the same way that poetry or music does in directly accessing emotional responses in the viewer, providing a gateway to the imagination. Can film be a truly 'immersive' medium? What implications does this have for the position of women as 'makers' rather than 'bearers' of meaning (Mulvey, 1973); The impact of new technologies on artistic filmmaking is also considered.

This paper evaluates the way in which historical narratives portrayed in film re-envision and re-articulate American public memory.  In particular, I evaluate the way in which power circulates within interactions between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in the 1995 film, Jefferson in Paris.  I conclude that by removing power from Jefferson as a slave master and instead presenting the 14 year old mulatto slave girl,  Sally Hemings as powerful in the movie's first sexual counter, the film preserves Jefferson as moral.  At the same time, Hemings is seen as sexually deviant and willful when necessary to advance the plot and secure the public historical memory.  By doing so, it obscures the true power relationships that occur between slave master and slaves and the ways in which black women's bodies were subject to the sexual violence of slave masters.  Once again, black bodies become the battle ground of democracy and the nation.

Este número contiene el dossier monográfico “El género (i)limitado: márgenes, rupturas y transgresiones en el cine luso-hispánico” a cargo de la Dra. Vania Barraza (University of Memphis). Incluye también una entrevista a la cineasta mexicana Alejandra Marquez Abella, poesía de Yuliana Ramos Orta y 6 reseñas.

Presented at ATOMWA: Australian Teachers of Media, Perth, Western Australia.

Film is an ideological force that shapes and is in turn shaped by social and cultural discourse. What this means is that film holds the power to shift our cultural landscape – it enforces and reinforces popular modes of thinking and representing people, places and ideas. Misrepresentation, the forging of myths that erased or whitewashed Australian history, and the perpetuation of a broader, though locally nuanced, kind of patriarchy that has largely kept women in front of the camera as object, and behind closed doors rather than behind the camera.

Thankfully, film is an ideological force that can also challenge those popular modes of thinking and of representation.