Description
Book SynopsisThis volume offers introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde American women filmmakers.
Trade Review“
Women’s Experimental Cinema is an invaluable resource for students and devotees of experimental cinema and feminist film, fields defined by remarkable films and a dearth of critical attention. It brings to light the social and political roots and cultural impact of women’s experimental film, and the specific female, feminine, and feminist practices of an exceptional group of women artists.”—
Alexandra Juhasz, editor of
Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video“This definitive volume on U.S. women’s experimental cinema fills a significant and long-lamented gap within film studies, and in feminist film studies in particular. Together, these essays offer us a richly nuanced picture not only of women’s experimental film but of avant-garde filmmaking in general from the 1940s to the present.”—
Sharon Willis, author of
High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film“A truly remarkable collection on feminist independent cinema, this is one of the most comprehensive and well thought out books on the subject to appear to date. . . . [T]he book moves from strength to strength to create a collection that is as cohesive as it is authoritative. . . . Well illustrated with behind-the-scenes production shots and frame blow ups from the films themselves, and written by some of the most gifted critics working in the field today, this collection is both deeply felt and rigorously detailed. Essential. All readers, all levels.” -- W. W. Dixon * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks / Robin Blaetz 1
Swing and Sway: Marie Menken’s Filmic Events / Melissa Ragona 20
Different/Same/Both/Neither: The Polycentric Cinema of Joyce Wieland / Paul Arthur 45
Evacuating Visual Fields, Layering Auditory Frames: Signature, Translation, Resonance, and Gunvor Nelson’s Films / Chris Holmlund 67
Moving and Moving: From Minimalism to Lives of Performers / Noel Carroll 89
Eye/Body: The Cinematic Paintings of Carolee Schneemann / M.M. Serra and Kathryn Ramey 103
“Absently Enchanted”: The Apocryphal, Ecstatic Cinema of Barbara Rubin / Ara Osterweil 127
Amy Greenfield: Film, Dynamic Movement, and Transformation / Robert A. Haller 152
Barbara Hammer: Lyrics and History / Chuck Kleinhans 167
Chick Strand’s Experimental Ethnography / Maria Pramaggiore 188
Amnesis Time: The Films of Marjorie Keller / Robin Blaetz 211
In the Ruins of the Image: The Work of Leslie Thornton / Mary Ann Doane 239
Sounds, Intervals, and Startling Images in the Films of Abigail Child / Maureen Turim 263
Peggy’s Playhouse: Contesting the Modernist Paradigm / William C. Wees 290
Su Friedrich: Breaking the Rules / Janet Cutler 312
The Experimental “Dunyementary”: A Cinematic Signature Effect / Kathleen McHugh 339
Women’s Experimental Cinema: Some Pedgogical Challenges / Scott Macdonald 360
Appendix: Film Distribution 383
Bibliography 385
Contributors 401
Index 405
