Women's Pictures: Feminism and CinemaThis pioneering and influential work of feminist theory has been extensively updated by the author to chart the changes in feminist film theory and practice between the eighties and the nineties. Readers, whether engaged in the making of films, the study of them, or simply the pleasure of viewing them, will appreciate the way in which the author discusses and demystifies the current methods of analysis, including semiotic and psychoanalytical approaches. The films used as points of discussion are drawn from both mainstream and alternative cinema, institutions which are themselves examined in relation to their production, distribution and exhibition practices. The thesis proposed by Annette Kuhn is an exciting one: namely, that feminism and cinema, taken together, could provide the basis for new forms of expression, providing the opportunity for a truly feminist alternative cinema in terms of film language, of reading that language and of representing the world. |
Contents
Passionate Detachment | 3 |
Dominant Cinema | 19 |
Textual Gratification | 49 |
19 | 57 |
Feminism and Film Theory | 65 |
Trouble in the Text | 82 |
The Body in the Machine | 106 |
Feminism and Film Practice | 125 |
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Common terms and phrases
approach argued argument art cinema audiences Born In Flames Britain camera Chapter character characteristic cinematic address cinematic apparatus cinematic representation classic Hollywood cinema closure codes constitute constructed context debate deconstructive cinema defined direct cinema discourse discussion distribution and exhibition dominant cinema enunciation example fact female spectator female spectatorship feminist film practice feminist film theory fictional film makers film texts film's forms gender genre historical identification ideological operations independent cinema independent film institutional issues Janie's Johnston kind language look male Mildred Pierce modes of address Mulvey notion organisation particular perhaps pleasure point-of-view political pornographic apparatus pornography position psychoanalytic psychoanalytic film theory question reading reception regarded relationship representations of women scopophilia semiotic sexual difference shots signifiers social socialist realism specific spectator-text relations Stella Dallas story structures suggests textual analysis textual operations Thelma and Louise unconscious viewing subject voice-over woman woman's picture women's cinema Women's Film