Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers

Description

Examines the significance of women’s participation in popular genresHonorable Mention in the the ESSE Book Awards 2020!Interrogates how women filmmakers participate in changing U.S. cinema cultures by tapping into the generic formulas of horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedyAnalyses both the different socio-cultural circumstances and the textual implications of women’s involvement in generic productionsPrompts new avenues of inquiry on the complexity and diversity of women’s impact on and participation in cinemaGenre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers examines the significance of women’s contribution to genre cinema by highlighting the work of US filmmakers within and outside Hollywood – Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Nancy Meyers and Kelly Reichardt, among others. Exploring genres as diverse as horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedy, Katarzyna Paszkiewicz interrogates questions of ‘genre’ authorship; the blurring of the borders between commercial and independent cinema and gendered discourses of (de)authorisation that operate within each sphere; ‘male’–‘female’ genre divisions; and the issue of authorial subversion in film and popular culture in a wider sense.With its focus on close analysis of the films themselves and the cultural and ideological meanings involved in the reception of genre texts authored by women, this book expands critical debates around women’s cinema and offers new perspectives on how contemporary filmmakers explore the aesthetic and imaginative power of genre.