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-authored productions was seen as ending the historical marginalisation of women film-makers: ‘Fini, le temps des “films de femmes!” ’ [The time of ‘women’s films’ is over!] (Trémois 1995 : 18). Among the major successes of 1994 were Marion Vernoux’s Personne ne m’aime , Pascale Ferran’s Petits arrangements avec les morts and Tonie Marshall’s Pas très catholique (A Dubious Business ). That year also saw female
collectives) to women filmmakers as well as international recognition for the work of individual directors, which has helped to legitimise their efforts vis-à-vis a series of state film agencies (especially Embrafilme and ANCINE). Indeed, international recognition – taking the form of festival awards and a transnational, collegial ‘call and response’ beginning in the 1970s – carries weight in a national
While women directors continue to be a minority in most national and transnational film contexts, there are those among them who rank among the most innovative and inventive of filmmakers. Filmmaking by women becomes an important route to exploring what lies outside of and beyond the stereotype through reflexivity on violence and conflict, and through visual and narrative explorations of migration, exile, subjectivity, history or individual and collective memory. By documenting and interpreting a fascinating corpus of films made by women coming from Latin America, the US, Portugal and Spain, this book proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. It critically examines the work of Hispanic and Lusophone female filmmakers. It 'weaves' several 'threads' by working at the intersections between feminist film theory, gender studies and film practices by women in Latin America, the US, Portugal and Spain. The book explores the transcultural connections, as well as the cultural specificities, that can be established between Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American and Latino contexts within and beyond the framework of the nation state. It suggests that the notion of home and of Basque motherland carry potentially different resonances for female directors.
In contrast to the canonical history of cinema and film theory, often dominated by academic texts and Western and/or male voices, this article presents a casual conversation held in 1961 between four of the most influential women in the post-war Japanese film industry: Kawakita Kashiko,,Yamamoto Kyōko, Tanaka Kinuyo and Takamine Hideko. As they openly discuss their gendered experience in production, promotion, distribution and criticism, their thoughts shed light on the wide range of opportunities available to women in filmmaking, but also on the professional constraints,and concerns which they felt came along with their gender. Their conversation reveals how they measured themselves and their national industry in relation to the West; at times unaware of their pioneer role in world cinema. This piece of self-reflexive criticism contributes to existing research on both womens filmmaking and the industry of Japanese cinema, and invites us to reconsider non-hegemonic film thinking practices and voices.
Part III Migration, transnationalism and borders Implicit in the very idea of bringing together the work of women filmmakers from Hispanic and Lusophone contexts is the notion that these cultural categories must necessarily be viewed in terms of their migratory and transnational histories. This is so simply by dint of the vast geographical and geopolitical spaces and networks that constitute the Hispanic
un couffin – perceived by French audiences and by many critics as a feminist comedy – the gap between the French and the Anglo-Saxon receptions and perceptions of her work seems extremely wide. Without analysing this point in detail, I would prefer to focus on the wider issue of women in contemporary French cinema from the mid-1980s onwards. In the conclusion of her book on French Women’s Writing 1848–1994, Diana Holmes emphasises the dilemma women writers were confronted with and which many women filmmakers in France
repeated trope of abandoned rural spaces, where isolation and the violence of the margins are most keenly felt. Three women filmmakers, in particular, stand out for their nuanced explorations of the dynamics of displacement that afflict rural areas: in her documentary Aguaviva (2005), Ariadna Pujol teases out the complexities of cohabitation when the mayor of the village of Aguaviva puts out a call for
against structures aimed at granting them only a subordinate status. Consequently, this historical recapitulation highlights the social role of women filmmakers and acknowledges their position in the public sphere. Rather than viewing women through the prism of exclusion, or at best their marginal status, we must recognise women filmmakers as social and cultural transgressive subjects who created a social agency for their
Our contribution to this volume offers an analysis of contemporary Cuban women filmmakers in whose work we see direct and indirect conversations with Sara Gómez (1943–74), whose 1960s–1970s film practice revolutionised the way in which the gender–nation–revolution nexus could be argued cinematically. Sandra Gómez, Susana Barriga and Gloria Rolando work at the intersection
women plays, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, a vital role in revisiting and revising questions and perceptions of history and memory. While this is not a gender-specific concern, it is nevertheless the case that the contribution of women filmmakers is crucial. Demarcations between history and memory have become destabilised by the many scatterings and ruptures of postmodern culture, whereby the constructed, and hence