Visionaries: The Work of Women Filmmakers – serie

Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement is the first film-philosophy book on “radical, pioneer, visionary’ (Dargis 2013) filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the films she edited and directed. The book draws on film analysis, archival research, dance and film theory, and creative practice expertise, to think through Clarke’s work as a dancer turned multi-award-winning editor and director of dancefilm, fiction, documentary, and video art. This account of Clarke’s creative oeuvre offers the reader insight into a too long overlooked filmmaker. Its creative practice and distributed cognition framework provides tools for dismantling some of the exclusionary aspects of authorship theories and offers a novel method for analysis of films, filmmaking practices and cultures of film production.

Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement is the first film-philosophy book on “radical, pioneer, visionary’ (Dargis 2013) filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the films she edited and directed. The book draws on film analysis, archival research, dance and film theory, and creative practice expertise, to think through Clarke’s work as a dancer turned multi-award-winning editor and director of dancefilm, fiction, documentary, and video art. This account of Clarke’s creative oeuvre offers the reader insight into a too long overlooked filmmaker. Its creative practice and distributed cognition framework provides tools for dismantling some of the exclusionary aspects of authorship theories and offers a novel method for analysis of films, filmmaking practices and cultures of film production.

Dutch director Marleen Gorris is known chiefly for two films: A Question of Silence (1982), her fiercely feminist first film, in which three women meet by chance in a women's clothing boutique and ritually murder its male owner; and Antonia's Line (1995), her fourth film and winner of the 1996 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which traces four generations of Antonia's female 'line' in the matriarchal community she establishes in postwar rural Holland. Both have been extensively discussed, though rarely together, and appear on university syllabuses. Her second Dutch language film, Broken Mirrors (1984), and her five films in English, however, have received far less, and in some cases no critical attention. Using feminist reformulations of ideas of vulnerability and resistance, this first book-length study of her films examines their revisionings of narrative, time and space, and the possibilities they present of other narratives, other subjectivities and other relationships.

Dutch director Marleen Gorris is known chiefly for two films: A Question of Silence (1982), her fiercely feminist first film, in which three women meet by chance in a women's clothing boutique and ritually murder its male owner; and Antonia's Line (1995), her fourth film and winner of the 1996 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which traces four generations of Antonia's female 'line' in the matriarchal community she establishes in postwar rural Holland. Both have been extensively discussed, though rarely together, and appear on university syllabuses. Her second Dutch language film, Broken Mirrors (1984), and her five films in English, however, have received far less, and in some cases no critical attention. Using feminist reformulations of ideas of vulnerability and resistance, this first book-length study of her films examines their revisionings of narrative, time and space, and the possibilities they present of other narratives, other subjectivities and other relationships.

The Cinema of Paula Markovitch investigates the director's explorations of differently marginalized dwellers and their sensescapes as a vital feature of her oeuvre. By inviting the viewer into the socioemotional layers of homeless sites, hospice-like spaces, assisted-suicide intersubjectivities, and political displacements, Markovitch revitalizes the complexity of the margins in novel and expansive ways. Such dynamically intertwined socioemotional and sensory engagements at and with the margins are conceptualized in the book as contested marginality. This concept refers to the complexly interpersonal and ostensibly unanticipated manifestations of agentic potential through sensory experiences in peripheric sites and circumstances. Such aesthetic considerations of the margins also bring to light fecund modes for broader sociocultural critiques in Markovitch's films.

The Cinema of Paula Markovitch investigates the director's explorations of differently marginalized dwellers and their sensescapes as a vital feature of her oeuvre. By inviting the viewer into the socioemotional layers of homeless sites, hospice-like spaces, assisted-suicide intersubjectivities, and political displacements, Markovitch revitalizes the complexity of the margins in novel and expansive ways. Such dynamically intertwined socioemotional and sensory engagements at and with the margins are conceptualized in the book as contested marginality. This concept refers to the complexly interpersonal and ostensibly unanticipated manifestations of agentic potential through sensory experiences in peripheric sites and circumstances. Such aesthetic considerations of the margins also bring to light fecund modes for broader sociocultural critiques in Markovitch's films.

This book explores and theorises female visions of Japanese girlhood in the work of three women directors: Ninagawa Mika, Miyake Kyoko and Ando Momoko. These directors are all highly diverse in their production background, outputs and style, and yet all three share a common preoccupation with visualizing moments of both girlhood and female ageing. The book takes at its core the debate on the aesthetics of gender - something all three women have engaged in - and explores the idea of feminist film historiography.

This book explores and theorises female visions of Japanese girlhood in the work of three women directors: Ninagawa Mika, Miyake Kyoko and Ando Momoko. These directors are all highly diverse in their production background, outputs and style, and yet all three share a common preoccupation with visualizing moments of both girlhood and female ageing. The book takes at its core the debate on the aesthetics of gender - something all three women have engaged in - and explores the idea of feminist film historiography.

This is the first book to consider Gerwig as a writer-director. It argues that her three feature films to date—Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019) and Barbie (2023)—engage with debates about feminism and femininity through cinematic aesthetics. Her films are linked by heightened attention to material culture—through costume, production and set design. They meticulously recreate imagined worlds that resonate with viewers in the present for what they have to say about identity and relationships in contemporary culture, particularly how our lives, especially those of women, are fashioned through clothing, décor and architecture. They feature women who rebel by fashioning independent lives as fabricators—those who shape their worlds rather than being shaped by them. Considered together, Gerwig’s three features form a developing oeuvre tracing the contours of feminist refashioning.

This is the first book to consider Gerwig as a writer-director. It argues that her three feature films to date—Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019) and Barbie (2023)—engage with debates about feminism and femininity through cinematic aesthetics. Her films are linked by heightened attention to material culture—through costume, production and set design. They meticulously recreate imagined worlds that resonate with viewers in the present for what they have to say about identity and relationships in contemporary culture, particularly how our lives, especially those of women, are fashioned through clothing, décor and architecture. They feature women who rebel by fashioning independent lives as fabricators—those who shape their worlds rather than being shaped by them. Considered together, Gerwig’s three features form a developing oeuvre tracing the contours of feminist refashioning.

Celine Sciamma is the most visible and important feminist, and lesbian, director in contemporary international filmmaking. Her fourth feature, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019 and intervened directly in debates about the female gaze, sexuality and specifically how to look at and make a portrait of young women. In her approach to female, non-binary and queer identities, she has focused on the need for agency, binding this imperative into her aesthetic choices and modes of filmmaking. This is the first book-length study of Sciamma's films, focusing on the relationship of her work to the visual arts and exploring the relevance of feminist theory to her unique perspective.

The writer Marguerite Duras was a key figure in post-war French cinema, pioneering innovations such as the disjunction of film and image, and the primacy given to voices, silence and music. Her multisensorial approach opened up new spaces for the female experience to be expressed. Although she worked with some of the best French visual technicians and musicians of her time, critiques have often neglected the visual and sonic aesthetics of her films, and their effects on spectators. Drawing on theories of embodiment and spectatorship, this book analyses the tactility and multisensoriality of Duras’ films, and how they relate to her female-centred perspective.

Ana Kokkinos is an Australian screenwriter, producer and director who has worked in film and television for almost thirty years. Best known for her fictional films – Antamosi, Only the Brave, Head On, The Book of Revelation and Blessed – her work is often bold and confrontational in its exploration of the alienation, estrangement and visceral distresses of those outside the mainstream. In the first major study of the director, Ana Kokkinos: An Oeuvre of Outsiders offers new readings of and across her fictional oeuvre by broadly tracing the deployment of the outsider as an organising motif.

Explores how Armstrong’s films re-work conventions about literary adaptation, biography and realist storytellingExamines Armstrong’s work in light of new media scholarship and philosophies, including feminist cinematic ethicsSituates Armstrong’s achievements in the context of Australian film policies and historyProvides an examination of never-before-studied elements, including Armstrong’s short filmsIncludes a never-before-utilised oral history project with ArmstrongA commercially successful Australian director of over eighteen feature films and documentaries, including My Brilliant Career (1979), Gillian Armstrong is an early, notable example of a woman director connecting with mass audiences. Armstrong’s films are unique in their aesthetic expression and in the ethical relationships that they depict, framed through the language of gender inclusivity and due in part to her foregrounding of original, complex and nuanced female characters. This important book fills a gap in the literature on women screen practitioners and is a long overdue response to demands for new insight into the work of this significant director.

This volume focuses on contemporary Algerian feminist documentary filmmaker Habiba Djahnine as a 'memory-bearer' who gives voice to her compatriots to tell their own stories in her films. It provides the reader with exposure to key issues in contemporary Algerian culture and history (colonial, the Algerian War, the Black Decade of the 1990s), memory and women's and human rights. The book gives a brief overview of Algerian cinema, Algerian women filmmakers and situates Djahnine's oeuvre and its significance within the North African context. It examines her work as a feminist, teacher and poet and how she transmits this locally and transnationally. The book also explores how Djahnine uses documentary film form for personal and autobiographical explorations of Algerian history, culture, memory and trauma.

Explores how Armstrong’s films re-work conventions about literary adaptation, biography and realist storytellingExamines Armstrong’s work in light of new media scholarship and philosophies, including feminist cinematic ethicsSituates Armstrong’s achievements in the context of Australian film policies and historyProvides an examination of never-before-studied elements, including Armstrong’s short filmsIncludes a never-before-utilised oral history project with ArmstrongA commercially successful Australian director of over eighteen feature films and documentaries, including My Brilliant Career (1979), Gillian Armstrong is an early, notable example of a woman director connecting with mass audiences. Armstrong’s films are unique in their aesthetic expression and in the ethical relationships that they depict, framed through the language of gender inclusivity and due in part to her foregrounding of original, complex and nuanced female characters. This important book fills a gap in the literature on women screen practitioners and is a long overdue response to demands for new insight into the work of this significant director.

Ana Kokkinos is an Australian screenwriter, producer and director who has worked in film and television for almost thirty years. Best known for her fictional films – Antamosi, Only the Brave, Head On, The Book of Revelation and Blessed – her work is often bold and confrontational in its exploration of the alienation, estrangement and visceral distresses of those outside the mainstream. In the first major study of the director, Ana Kokkinos: An Oeuvre of Outsiders offers new readings of and across her fictional oeuvre by broadly tracing the deployment of the outsider as an organising motif.

This volume focuses on contemporary Algerian feminist documentary filmmaker Habiba Djahnine as a 'memory-bearer' who gives voice to her compatriots to tell their own stories in her films. It provides the reader with exposure to key issues in contemporary Algerian culture and history (colonial, the Algerian War, the Black Decade of the 1990s), memory and women's and human rights. The book gives a brief overview of Algerian cinema, Algerian women filmmakers and situates Djahnine's oeuvre and its significance within the North African context. It examines her work as a feminist, teacher and poet and how she transmits this locally and transnationally. The book also explores how Djahnine uses documentary film form for personal and autobiographical explorations of Algerian history, culture, memory and trauma.

The writer Marguerite Duras was a key figure in post-war French cinema, pioneering innovations such as the disjunction of film and image, and the primacy given to voices, silence and music. Her multisensorial approach opened up new spaces for the female experience to be expressed. Although she worked with some of the best French visual technicians and musicians of her time, critiques have often neglected the visual and sonic aesthetics of her films, and their effects on spectators. Drawing on theories of embodiment and spectatorship, this book analyses the tactility and multisensoriality of Duras’ films, and how they relate to her female-centred perspective.

Celine Sciamma is the most visible and important feminist, and lesbian, director in contemporary international filmmaking. Her fourth feature, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019 and intervened directly in debates about the female gaze, sexuality and specifically how to look at and make a portrait of young women. In her approach to female, non-binary and queer identities, she has focused on the need for agency, binding this imperative into her aesthetic choices and modes of filmmaking. This is the first book-length study of Sciamma's films, focusing on the relationship of her work to the visual arts and exploring the relevance of feminist theory to her unique perspective.

A philosopher-filmmaker, Kathleen Collins decisively redefined the parameters of African American film with The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982). This book uses detailed analyses of Collins’s films to contextualise her work in the African American, feminist and world film traditions, and it highlights her contribution to each of these canons. Exploring the philosophical aspects of Collins’s films and placing her in a genealogy of African American auteurs, Geetha Ramanathan argues that Collins uses film to integrate diverse elements of African American culture, showing how the medium can transform the visual and become a site of convergence for ideas on philosophy, otherness, art, aesthetics and the craft of filmmaking.

A philosopher-filmmaker, Kathleen Collins decisively redefined the parameters of African American film with The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982). This book uses detailed analyses of Collins’s films to contextualise her work in the African American, feminist and world film traditions, and it highlights her contribution to each of these canons. Exploring the philosophical aspects of Collins’s films and placing her in a genealogy of African American auteurs, Geetha Ramanathan argues that Collins uses film to integrate diverse elements of African American culture, showing how the medium can transform the visual and become a site of convergence for ideas on philosophy, otherness, art, aesthetics and the craft of filmmaking.

Since 2007 Mia Hansen-Løve has directed a series of meditative film dramas about families, love, vulnerability and growing up, all of them exceptionally attentive to film’s ability to convey the passing of time, separation and loss. As the first book-length study of the films of Mia Hansen-Løve, this volume introduces her cinema to both an academic and a general readership. Exploring her move from acting, via criticism, to directing, the book first investigates the complexity of her situation as a female auteur based in France. With detailed readings of her films up to Maya (2018), it then examines the precariousness of their families, their emphasis on vulnerability, failure, adversity and resilience, the particular candour of Hansen-Løve’s filming style, and the vital parts played by music and time in her cinema. It concludes that her cinema may best be regarded as a thoroughly contemporary one, distinguished by a tendency to transcendence that is both ethical and aesthetic.

Since 2007 Mia Hansen-Løve has directed a series of meditative film dramas about families, love, vulnerability and growing up, all of them exceptionally attentive to film’s ability to convey the passing of time, separation and loss. As the first book-length study of the films of Mia Hansen-Løve, this volume introduces her cinema to both an academic and a general readership. Exploring her move from acting, via criticism, to directing, the book first investigates the complexity of her situation as a female auteur based in France. With detailed readings of her films up to Maya (2018), it then examines the precariousness of their families, their emphasis on vulnerability, failure, adversity and resilience, the particular candour of Hansen-Løve’s filming style, and the vital parts played by music and time in her cinema. It concludes that her cinema may best be regarded as a thoroughly contemporary one, distinguished by a tendency to transcendence that is both ethical and aesthetic.

This monograph offers a critical study of Nahid Persson Sarvestani's documentary practice across three decades. Highlighting the filmmaker's at times limited opportunities to record visible evidence in situ, the book frames her involvement with new documentary film technology and its influence on her practice. From a discursive point of view, Boel Ulfsdotter introduces the concept liquid authorship to position Persson Sarvestani's work by sparring the films' production history against different iterations of post-millennium documentary theory. In a bid to move the boundaries of traditional documentary forward, the author also studies how Persson Sarvestani applies first-person filmmaking in relation to the subject of documentary, including the relationship between director and enunciator. The filmmaker's documentary output is reflected against the tenets of feminist theory. To establish their discursive urgency, Boel Ulfsdotter unpicks the films' fabric to comment on their aesthetic merits, narrative composition, including the impact of voice-over, vis-a-vis contemporary documentary practice.