Cinematic Women, From Objecthood to Heroism: Essays on Female Gender Representation on Western Screens and in TV Productions

Cinematic Women, From Objecthood to Heroism: Essays on Female Gender Representation on Western Screens and in TV Productions

Author: Lisa V. Mazey

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1622739213

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Women have fulfilled film roles that exhibit their historically subservient or sexualised positions in society, among others. Over the decades, the gender identity of women has fluctuated to include powerful women, emotionally strong women, lesbian women, and even neurologically atypical women. These identities reflect the change in societal norms and what is now acknowledged as more likely and more mainstream. The evolution of society’s views of women can be mapped through these roles; from 1950’s America where women were depicted as the counterpart to male characters and their masculinity either as a threat or support to the patriarchal norms; to more recent times, where these norms have been questioned, challenged, deconstructed and reconstructed to include women in a more equitable balance. The fight for equal access, equal pay and equal standing still exists in all walks of life and different cultures requiring continued scrutiny of the norms that made that fight necessary. The essays offer a unique vantage of the changing culture and conversations that allowed, encouraged, and praised an evolution of women’s roles. They strive to represent the issues faced by women, from the early heyday of Hollywood through to films as recent as 2007; examining depictions of the masculine gaze, mental and physical oppression, the mother figure, as well as how these roles may develop in the future. The book contains valuable material for film students at an undergraduate or post-graduate level, as well as scholars from a range of disciplines including cultural studies, media studies, film studies and women’s and gender studies.


Women in the International Film Industry

Women in the International Film Industry

Author: Susan Liddy

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-08

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 3030390705

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The chapter Experiencing Male Dominance in Swedish Film Production” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.


Women and Film

Women and Film

Author: E. Ann Kaplan

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780415027649

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Analyzes the treatment of women in American movies and examines the themes of a variety of contemporary movies made by women.


Pink-Slipped

Pink-Slipped

Author: Jane M Gaines

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2018-02-23

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0252050487

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Women held more positions of power in the silent film era than at any other time in American motion picture history. Marion Leonard broke from acting to cofound a feature film company. Gene Gauntier, the face of Kalem Films, also wrote the first script of Ben-Hur. Helen Holmes choreographed her own breathtaking on-camera stunt work. Yet they and the other pioneering filmmaking women vanished from memory. Using individual careers as a point of departure, Jane M. Gaines charts how women first fell out of the limelight and then out of the film history itself. A more perplexing event cemented their obscurity: the failure of 1970s feminist historiography to rediscover them. Gaines examines how it happened against a backdrop of feminist theory and her own meditation on the limits that historiography imposes on scholars. Pondering how silent era women have become absent in the abstract while present in reality, Gaines sees a need for a theory of these artists' pasts that relates their aspirations to those of contemporary women. A bold journey through history and memory, Pink-Slipped pursues the still-elusive fate of the influential women in the early years of film.


The Woman at the Keyhole

The Woman at the Keyhole

Author: Judith Mayne

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1990-12-22

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780253115041

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"[The Woman at the Keyhole is one] of the most significant contributions to feminist film theory sin ce the 1970s." -- SubStance "... this intelligent, eminently readable volume puts women's filmmaking on the main stage.... serves at once as introduction and original contribution to the debates structuring the field. Erudite but never obscure, effectively argued but not polemical, The Woman at the Keyhole should prove to be a valuable text for courses on women and cinema." -- The Independent When we imagine a "woman" and a "keyhole," it is usually a woman on the other side of the keyhole, as the proverbial object of the look, that comes to mind. In this work the author is not necessarily reversing the conventional image, but rather asking what happens when women are situated on both sides of the keyhole. In all of the films discussed, the threshold between subject and object, between inside and outside, between virtually all opposing pairs, is a central figure for the reinvention of cinematic narrative.


Liberating Hollywood

Liberating Hollywood

Author: Maya Montañez Smukler

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2018-12-14

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0813587492

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Winner of the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award​ from the Theater Library Association Liberating Hollywood examines the professional experiences and creative output of women filmmakers during a unique moment in history when the social justice movements that defined the 1960s and 1970s challenged the enduring culture of sexism and racism in the U.S. film industry. Throughout the 1970s feminist reform efforts resulted in a noticeable rise in the number of women directors, yet at the same time the institutionalized sexism of Hollywood continued to create obstacles to closing the gender gap. Maya Montañez Smukler reveals that during this era there were an estimated sixteen women making independent and studio films: Penny Allen, Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill. Drawing on interviews conducted by the author, Liberating Hollywood is the first study of women directors within the intersection of second wave feminism, civil rights legislation, and Hollywood to investigate the remarkable careers of these filmmakers during one of the most mythologized periods in American film history.


The Body and the Screen

The Body and the Screen

Author: Kate Ince

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1623562929

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since the 1980s the number of women regularly directing films has increased significantly in most Western countries; in France, Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat have joined Agnès Varda in gaining international renown, while British directors Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold have forged award-winning careers in feature film. This new volume in the “Thinking Cinema” series draws on feminist philosophers and theorists from Simone de Beauvoir on to offer readings of a range of the most important and memorable of these films from the 1990s and 2000s, focusing as it does so on how the films convey women's lives and identities. Mainstream entertainment cinema traditionally distorts the representation of women, objectifying their bodies, minimizing their agency, and avoiding the most important questions about how cinema can "do justice" to female subjectivity. Kate Ince suggests that the films of independent women directors are progressively redressing the balance, reinvigorating both the narratives and the formal ambitions of European cinema. Ince uses feminist philosophers to interpret such films as Sex Is Comedy, Morvern Callar, White Material, and Fish Tank anew, suggesting that a philosophical understanding of female subjectivity as embodied and ethical should underpin future feminist film study.


The Women who Write the Movies

The Women who Write the Movies

Author: Marsha McCreadie

Publisher: Carol Publishing Corporation

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Hollywood's youth, women pioneered in screenwriting for silent films, often networking between friends: Jeannie Macpherson, Frances Marion, and Adela Rogers St. Johns, among many others, were billed alongside the top directors. With the advent of talkies and into the 1930s and 1940s, famous writers Dorothy Parker and Anita Loos wrote scripts for box-office hits such as A Star Is Born and Jean Harlow's Red-Headed Woman. And Catherine Turney wrote the searing Mildred Pierce - uncredited until now. After World War II, women writers began to drop out of sight, with notable exceptions such as Ida Lupino, Betty Comden, and Dorothy Kingsley. And in the 1960s and early 1970s innovative scripts were written by Elaine May and Penelope Gilliatt, followed by screenplays from contemporary writers like Nora Ephron and Leslie Dixon. McCreadie's extensive research details the fascinating careers of all the important contributors so far, from Elinor Glyn, herself a noted actress, who wrote It, starring Clara Bow, which redefined the title word and made the "It Girl" an international sensation; up to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose beautifully detailed and literate films win accolades everywhere; to Callie Khouri, whose script for Thelma and Louise broke new ground in portraying the battle of the sexes. You will find here not only a treasury of new information about women screenwriters, but examples of the scripts themselves and plenty of photographs of the women who write the movies.


Encyclopedia of Arab Women Filmmakers

Encyclopedia of Arab Women Filmmakers

Author: Rebecca Hillauer

Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 9789774249433

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Arab women filmmakers: Who are they? What drives them? What are their experiences in a male-dominated profession? How do they function within the contexts - and constraints - of patriarchal societies? The answers are complex and sometimes surprising, as complex and surprising as the vastly different films these women direct. In this unprecedented book, Rebecca Hillauer assembles a comprehensive and penetrating look into the history of Arab women's filmmaking, as well as the political and social background of the countries - Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, among others - from which these artists emerged. In addition to the biographies, filmographies, and discussions of their most important works, lively, in-depth interviews allow us to hear from the filmmakers themselves. Collectively, these women, who hail from a wide range of professional, religious, and social backgrounds, provide a varied and vivid picture of what it means to work in creative and journalistic fields in the modern Arab world. For Hillauer, the subject of a film, its genesis, and the personal story of the artist who created it reveal far more than a particular approach to cinematography. Arab women filmmakers and their main characters (who are often semi-autobiographical) not only afford us a look at seldom-seen facets of Arab societies, they personify an alternative women's 'model,' one that is far removed from western clichés. Broad in scope, and rich in insight, Arab Women Filmmakers is a must read for cineastes as well as students of film, feminism, and the Middle East.