Book Review: Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight (Eds), Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future

This book examines film history with the goal of reframing it to accommodate new approaches to women's filmmaking. It brings together a wide range of case studies investigating women's work in cinema across its histories as they play out in different parts of the world from the pioneering days of silent cinema through recent developments in HD transmissions of live opera. It also tackles a range of conceptual and methodological questions about how to research women's film history—how, for example, to reconceptualize film history in order to locate the impact of women in that history. Furthermore, the book looks at the debates over relations among gender, aesthetics, and feminism. In this introduction, a number of interrelated themes and issues that can be grouped into four broad problematics are discussed: evidence and interpretation; feminist expectations of both contemporary and past women's filmmaking; the impact of women's film history on existing historical narratives and theories; and factors that determine the visibility of women's films and build audiences for them.

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Doing women's film history: reframing cinemas, past and future

Choice Reviews Online ◽

10.5860/choice.195503 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 53 (08) ◽

pp. 53-3431-53-3431

Keyword(s):

Film History ◽

Women's Film

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Feminism and Women’s Film History in 1980s Turkey

10.5406/illinois/9780252039683.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Eylem Atakav

Keyword(s):

Film Industry ◽

Film History ◽

Feminist Movement ◽

Women Filmmakers ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Turkish Cinema ◽

History Of ◽

Women's Film ◽

Film Texts ◽

The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between feminism and women's film history in the context of 1980s Turkey. In discussing women's film history, the chapter includes not only the history of women filmmakers and the films they have made but also the link between the history of Turkish film industry and feminism. It begins with a historical overview of the feminist movement in Turkey and then examines its visible traces in film texts produced during the 1980s in order to argue that those films can be most productively understood as explorations of gendered power relations. The chapter then considers how the enforced depoliticization introduced in Turkey after the 1980 coup opened up a space for feminist concerns to be expressed within commercial cinema. It also shows how this political context gave rise to the newly humanized, more independent heroine that characterized Turkish cinema during the period, but suggests that the films were nevertheless made largely within the structures of a patriarchal commercial cinema.

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Doing Women's Film History

10.5406/illinois/9780252039683.001.0001 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Film History ◽

The United States ◽

Film Production ◽

The Past ◽

Women's Participation ◽

Production Distribution ◽

Dynamic Growth ◽

Women's Film ◽

The Impact

Research into and around women's participation in cinematic history is enjoying a period of dynamic growth. A broadening of scope and interests encompasses not only different kinds of filmmaking (mainstream fiction, experimental, and documentary) but also practices (publicity, journalism, distribution and exhibition) seldom explored in the past. Cutting-edge and inclusive, this book addresses women's filmmaking in Europe and the United States while also moving beyond to explore the influence of women on the cinemas of India, Chile, Turkey, Russia, and Australia. The book grapples with historiographic questions that cover film history from the pioneering era to the present day. Yet it also addresses the very mission of practicing scholarship. Chapters explore essential issues like identifying women's participation in their cinema cultures, locating previously unconsidered sources of evidence, developing methodologies and analytical concepts to reveal the impact of gender on film production, distribution and reception, and reframing women's film history to accommodate new questions and approaches.

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The Women's Film History Project and Women and the Silent Screen

Screen ◽

10.1093/screen/hjn052 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 49 (4) ◽

pp. 462-467 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

K. Armatage

Keyword(s):

Film History ◽

Women's Film

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Book Review: Hollywood Heroines: The Most Influential Women in Film History

Reference & User Services Quarterly ◽

10.5860/rusq.59.1.7242 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 59 (1) ◽

pp. 85

Author(s):

Robin Imhof

Keyword(s):

Doctoral Student ◽

Film History ◽

English Department ◽

Valuable Resource ◽

Hollywood Cinema ◽

History Of ◽

Industry Professionals ◽

Major Occupation ◽

Silent Era

Covering film history from the silent era to the present day, Laura L. S. Bauer (doctoral student in Claremont College’s English department) and a team of scholars and industry professionals have created a timely and valuable resource that “highlights the contributions exceptional women have made throughout the history of Hollywood cinema in every major occupation of filmmaking” (xiv).

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Digital opportunities for feminist film historiography

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media - Researching Creative Practice: Terminology, Policy, Models ◽

10.33178/alpha.20.14 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 191-204

Author(s):

Lisa Stead

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Film History ◽

Public Institutions ◽

The South ◽

Turn On ◽

South West ◽

Methodological Challenges ◽

Feminist Film ◽

Women's Film ◽

The University

This paper discusses some of the key methodological challenges emerging from the AHRC project Reframing Vivien Leigh: Stardom, Archives and Access, led by PI Dr. Lisa Stead at the University of Exeter. This twenty-month project examined how the legacies of screen star Vivien Leigh are archived and curated by a range of public institutions in the South West of England, taking audiences behind the scenes of local archives and museums. The paper reflects on how researching within rural heritage centres and volunteer run archives encourages the introduction of new voices and new case studies within women’s film history, by encompassing the archival labour of a network of volunteers, amateurs and professionals within a broader heritage sector whose historical actions and choices produce alternative kinds of women’s film history. It reflects in turn on the challenge involved in finding new ways to present these histories in interactive, digital and physical forms for audiences beyond the academy and to make meaningful impact from this kind of research.

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