Films by Women-Chicago '74.pdf (original) (raw)

International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, 2020

Co-authored with Melanie Bell, Christine Gledhill, Shelley Cobb, Rashmi Sawhney, Laraine Porter, Ulrike Sieglohr. While 1970s/1980s feminist film theory questioned the representability of women within a male-dominated industry, renewed interest in early film history revealed unexpected numbers of women film makers. The international Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), an ever-growing database housed at Columbia University, New York, documents research into the pioneering work of women in cinema's first crucial decades as it became a mass and transnational medium. A surge of monographs has followed, focusing on women's diverse careers, the gendering of film studio organization and practices, and the cultural impacts of female audiences, campaigners, journalists, and critics. These discoveries are emerging in festival and film theater programming, film education, and local cultural activity. In Britain, the Women's Film & Television History Network-UK/Ireland, encourages research across the barriers between silence and sound, cinema and television. In what follows, the Network records key issues and figures emerging from the project of women's film history.

Independent Female Filmmakers: A Chronicle through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos

Independent Female Filmmakers presents original and previously-published essays, interviews, and manifestos from some of the most ground-breaking independent female filmmakers of the last 40 years. Featuring material from The Independent Film and Video Monthly—a leading publication for independent filmmakers for several decades—as well as new interviews conducted with the filmmakers specifically for this book, editor Michele Meek’s compilation provides unique access to the diverse voices of women filmmakers integral to independent film history from the 1970s to the present, spanning narrative, documentary, and avant-garde film. Independent Female Filmmakers also includes a biographical profile of each filmmaker, a history of The Independent Film and Video Monthly, and an essay about women in film through Meek’s introduction and a foreword written by Patricia White. Filmmakers include Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, The Kids Are All Right), Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, Stranger Inside), Miranda July (The Future, Me And You And Everyone We Know), Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Wildman Blues), Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love), Deepa Mehta (Fire, Earth, Water), Trinh T. Minh-ha (Surname Viet, Given Name Nam, Night Passage), among others.

Looking Back and Forward: A Conversation about Women Make Movies

Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 2013

In the summer of 1984 I interned at Women Make Movies, working closely with Debra Zimmerman, the organization's relatively new director and then sole employee. When I returned in 1988 to work in distribution, the organization had moved to Soho and taken on significantly more films and staff. I eventually joined the board in 2001 and currently serve as chair. As a teacher and scholar, I owe much of my perspective on feminist film to what I have learned from the staff, board members, filmmakers, consultants, funders, programmers, and nonprofit film professionals with whom I have come into contact through WMM-no one more than Zimmerman. An intense presence with a seductive voice and an infectious laugh, she taught me how to hail a New York City cab, read a budget, see more festival films in one day than would seem humanly possible, and turn a passionate commitment to women and film into a vocation. This is a distillation of our conversations in late summer 2012, as Zimmerman juggled real-estate issues, negotiations with a

The limits of exceptional women: the cinema of Stephanie Rothman and the trouble with archives

2016

This dissertation examines the role of gendered authorship in the U.S. film industry and focuses on how women's directorial labor is represented in film history and its accumulated archives. Specifically, the project evaluates women's labor in the cinematic paradigm of second wave exploitation films-films produced under the exploitation style from 1960 to 1980-and utilizes a case study of director Stephanie Rothman to articulate the lack of industrial, disciplinary, and archival attention paid to women's directorial labor and the reverberations of this absence on gendered labor parity in the contemporary film industry. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not be possible without the unfailing support of my doctoral committee. I have been incredibly fortunate in working with this group of amazing scholars. Prof. Valdivia has been a tireless advocate for me, my work, and for all graduate students in the Institute of Communications Research. We all owe her a great debt. Prof. Hay's consistent intellectual stimulation has been critical in my development, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity of being welcomed into the best restaurant in town. Prof. Rodriguez is a model of compassionate and unflinchingly progressive academic inquiry of which I can only hope to aspire. Lastly, Prof. Turnock's mentorship, generosity, and camaraderie have been beyond invaluable. Her passion for her work and her voracious appetite for knowledge are inspirational. Thank you so much, Julie. To my phenomenal network of Illinois friends, all the beautiful weirdos, you have been the best intellectual support and care system anyone could ask for. To those who made Champaign-Urbana home-especially Emily (who hates acknowledgements) and Meghanthank you does not begin to suffice. For the past five years I've said that this project would not have been possible without the aid of amazing staff of the Communications Library and I will say it again: Nick and Erik, you guys are the best. My gratitude to my parents is never-ending, who despite never being quite sure what I am talking about (except to know that I am doing it too loudly and quickly, which I am), support me unconditionally. Arnau and Martina: for life. That's it BD, it's done.

Surfacing: Canadian Women's Cinema

Cinema Canada

BY KASS BAN NING S ince Nell Shipman, writer and star of Back 10 God's Country, fled across the snow-blinding Canadian landscape back in 1919; since Jane Marsh's Women are Warriors called the house-bound Canadian woman to (industrial) arms by dissolving images of domestic appliances (irons and sewing machines for example) into images of factorv pistons: since Beryl Fox took her television crews into those dark psYchic and physical places of the sixties in SlImlller in Missi55ippi and The Mills of the Gods : Vietnam; since Joyce Wieland made Water Sark and Rill Life anri Diet ill North Alllerim on her kitchen table, Canadian women have been making mo\~es. Toronto's Festival of Festivals showcases this contribution to our national cinema with its retrospective Sliriaeillg: Callariiall WOlllell's Cinema. This is the first sizeable survey devoted entire/If to CmmduHI women's films . This year, veteran Festival of Festivals progra~mer Kay Armatage hit the archives, looking to the past, complementing her usual acti~ty of scooping the best of women's emerging international cinema. Armatage claimed she was faced by some tough decisions; narrowing the field to 21 program slots would mean omissions. After screening the films, her original goal-the familiar Canadian one of fair representation -gradually gave way to the quality factor. According to Amlatage, "sheer quality" guided her programme choices; the films stand up as simply goori films, without qualification, gender or othenvise. After screening most of the selections, I would, (for the most part) agree. Given women's belaboured culturaf history -the struggle for validation, within cinema or any other field, and the battle against the erroneous notion that selectivity is a neutral concept -the " weight " of such substantiating statements should not be Kilss Balilling is a Toroilio p'eelnneewrlter mile alld film leetllrer.