Women/Theory/Film

Description

This course investigates the changing place of women in film: as glamorized spectacle and cultural commodity, as spectators and consumers, but also as creators and theorists.  We will explore the development of feminist filmmaking and film theory within an international context, focusing specifically on the interrelation between American films and filmmakers and New Zealand, Australian, and French national cinemas.  We will address topics that have historically engaged women filmmakers, theorists, and scholars.  These include: images of women on the screen; the notion of countercinema; the use of psychoanalytic theories; issues of female spectatorship; women's place in film genres, and issues related to race, class, and sexual preference as they intersect with feminism.

We will begin with an introduction to the principles of feminist film analysis.  Through close interrogation of the workings of classical Hollywood cinema, we will locate ways that hegemonic culture has defined gender roles, sexual identities, and domesticity in the twentieth century.  Our attention to film genres will include a reappraisal of the contributions of Dorothy Arzner, a woman director who was able to constitute a body of work during Hollywood’s classical era.  To expand upon this discussion of a feminist countercinema, we will analyze constructions of femininity in national cinemas, addressing the auteurist works of Claire Denis, Agnès Varda, and Jane Campion.  The impact of women writers, such as Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, on feminist film theory and filmmaking will also be addressed.  Class discussion will focus on issues of memory and identification, agency and the female voice, friendship between women, auto-portraiture, and the coming-of-age girl.  We will closely analyze those films, such as Claire Denis' Chocolat, which complicate our understanding of gender identity by acknowledging its intersection with other kinds of identification - in particular racial, class, national, and that of sexual orientation.