Women's Cinema: The Contested ScreenWomen's Cinema provides an introduction to critical debates around women's filmmaking and relates those debates to a variety of cinematic practices. Taking her cue from the groundbreaking theories of Claire Johnston, Alison Butler argues that women's cinema is a minor cinema that exists inside other cinemas, inflecting and contesting the codes and systems of the major cinematic traditions from within. Using canonical directors and less established names, ranging from Chantal Akerman to Moufida Tlatli, as examples, Butler argues that women's cinema is unified in spite of its diversity by the ways in which it reworks cinematic conventions. |
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24 Hour Woman aesthetic Anna argues artist audience authorship avant-garde Bigelow binarism Blue Steel body British Film Institute camera Chantal Akerman characters codes complex concerns conventions counter-cinema critical cross-dressing cultural Deleuze Deren diegetic discourse Dorothy Arzner exile explores Export fantasy female femininity feminism feminist aesthetics feminist film theory fiction Film Studies film's function gaze gender genre global heterosexual historical identification identity ideology Iran Iranian Johnston Kaplan Kathryn Bigelow Lauretis lesbian London mainstream male masculine Mayne Mellencamp melodrama Meshes minor literature Moorti mother movie Mulvey narrative Neshat patriarchal performance play political cinema politics of location position post-colonial production protagonist Rainer relationship representation romance Schneemann screen self-inscription sequence sexual shot social spectator structure theorists Third Cinema tion Tlatli tradition transnational transvestism University Press Valie Export voice woman woman's film women directors women filmmakers women's cinema women's movement writing Yvonne Rainer