On Women’s Films: Across Worlds and Generations

Description

On Women's Films looks at contemporary and classic films from emerging and established makers such as Maria Augusta Ramos, Xiaolu Guo, Valérie Massadian, Lynne Ramsay, Lucrecia Martel, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Chantal Akerman, or Claire Denis. The collection is also tuned to the continued provocation of feminist cinema landmarks such as Chick Strand’s Soft Fiction; Barbara Loden’s Wanda; Valie Export’s Invisible Adversaries, Cecilia Mangini’s Essere donne. Attentive to minor moments, to the pauses and the charge and forms bodies adopt through cinema, the contributors suggest the capacity of women’s films to embrace, shape and question the world. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The trouble with women’s cinema Embodied configurations: Material and self-inscription Self and authorial inscriptions Subjectivities across cultural, (trans) national, and neoliberal logic Duration and (in)significance Silence, talking heads, and collective matters Women’s imaginaries, psychic spaces, same-sex worlds Notes Works cited Part 1: Phrasing (in)Significance Chapter 1: Wanda’s Slowness Loden before Wanda Fatigue archive “that passive and numb” Gestures of folding, the downcast gaze Wanda’s slowness Slow cinema’s blind spot Notes Works cited Chapter 2: “And It’s So Tiring” Ruminations and fatigue La Chambre-Akerman: The long take, the room apart Exhausted finales and sitting series Exhausting unknowing Stasis and swerve: “To make cinema you need to get up” Notes Works cited Chapter 3: When to Speak and When to be Quiet Notes Works cited Chapter 4: Social Realism, Melodrama, and the Mute Text Women and the question of silence The May Lady Under the Skin of the City Notes Works cited Part 2: Collective Voice and Documentary Poetics Chapter 5: Documentary Poetics as a Field of Action To be a woman, in Italy, circa 1965 Mangini and the poets Notes Works cited Chapter 6: On Talking Heads and Las muertes chiquitas The cross section talking head documentary In pursuit of a cosmic impression Margin/center dichotomy Managing the pitfalls of typology “Wait! One question” Notes Works cited Chapter 7: Agnès Varda and Ydessa Notes Works cited Chapter 8: Peace and Love, True and False Beautiful plastic Portraits of artists Avant-garde psychodramatics Notes Works cited Part 3: Embodied Configurations: Material and Self-inscription Chapter 9: She Carries the Film on Her Naked Body Genealogies of debt Marco’s drive Justine’s walk Notes Works cited Chapter 10: Ornaments and Sites of Self-suspension Digital ornaments The museum as a site of self-suspension Multimedial essayism Notes Works cited Chapter 11: Female Material Female material as intermediality From iconic female imagery to invisible adversary From invisible adversary to influencing machine Notes Works cited Chapter 12: “Dedicated to the One I Love” Immediacy and mediation Inscriptions of authorship Adaptation and authorship “Dedicated to the One I Love” Notes Works cited Part 4: Subjectivities Across Local, National, and Neoliberal Logics Chapter 13: She, a Chinese Director? Art cinema circuits and female auteurs Xiaolu Guo’s authorial persona Accented authorship She, a Chinese Notes Works cited Chapter 14: Floating Light and Shadows Daughter of the south “Women Make Waves”: The Feminist Tetralogy Casting light on overshadowed histories: The Postcolonial Trilogy Southern Night Notes Works cited Chapter 15: On Death and Dying Notes Works cited Part 5: Women’s Imaginaries, Same-sex Worlds Chapter 16: Soft Fictions Anthropological fictions Therapeutic fictions Same-sex fictions Hard fictions Notes Works cited Chapter 17: Perverse Angle Shame and its ways of seeing Feminist film, queer film Shame and women’s not-to-be-looked-at-ness: Denise Gonçalves’s Sound of Steps What happens when shame sees? Catherine Breillat’s A Real Young Girl Shame’s contagion and spectatorship Notes Works cited Chapter 18: Thinking Like a Holy Girl The vanishing auteur I’ve got that sinkin’ feeling Film-philosophy and the global auteur Kinematics (kinship + film auteurship) Belief, skepticism, and ineffable forces Notes Works cited Chapter 19: “Once Upon Her Time?” At work and play: Non-professional (and) child actors Life and death at the periphery (and center) Once upon her time Marginal techniques, minor cinema, or, the great in the small Notes Works cited Contributors Editors Contributors Index of Names and Titles