Introduction: Gender, Space, and Affects in Film

The way mobility and gender are perceived and analysed in the cinema needs to change. As this chapter retraces the scholarship on gender and space, it draws attention to the binaries, starting with the figure of the flâneur, that have portrayed women as being restricted in their movement and in their wilfulness. A transformation of women’s spatial imaginaries beyond patriarchal boundaries requires the consideration of space as fluid, practised, and affective rather than conceived and fixed. Placing feminist geographer Doreen Massey’s concepts of space-time and power-geometries in dialogue with feminist film theory and affect theory shows how cinema may act as a ‘way of thinking’ towards the world and contribute to transforming negative affects into productive forces, as advocated by Rosi Braidotti.