‘Why am I still imprisoned in your eyes?’: Re-visioning ‘leftover women’ and the female gaze in Send Me to the Clouds

Asian Cinema ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Faye Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Women ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Representational System ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Female Gaze ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Women's Film

This article studies how a recent Chinese women’s film Send Me to the Clouds (2019) explores different ways of looking as innovative cinematic strategies of constructing and empowering the precarious female subject against a postsocialist patriarchal ideology that dominates gendered narratives and audio-visual codes of the mainstream Chinese cinema. The film is centred upon a 30-year-old ‘leftover woman’ Sheng Nan’s distressful life experiences and her anger at the prevailing sexism and ageism. Rather than being tamed or domesticated, throughout the film the angry and restless woman is shown to be constantly on the motion, making every effort to experiment with alternative looking relations that seek to destroy the voyeuristic pleasure and disciplinary power of the privileged male gaze, as well as to explore possibilities of creating a self-reflective and critical female gaze. A contextualized critical study of the female authorship and agency on and behind the screen will shed new light on how contemporary Chinese women filmmakers take on ‘concrete and various negotiations’ with the structure of domination and its representational system via ‘their socially and politically conditioned cinematic practice or performance’.

scholarly journals Imagining a Woman's World: Roles for Women in Chinese Films

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Carolynn Rafman
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Women ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Chinese Films

Chinese cinema embraces a paradoxical relationship to its own traditions, especially concerning the abusive treatment of women. Films like Yellow Earth, Judou and Raise the Red Lantern which desire to uncover a repressed history, tend instead to reinforce and sustain an image of women's suffering to modern audiences. While exposing discrimination and injustice, some films perpetuate the stigma that women are still second class citizens. Three Chinese women filmmakers have challenged the dominant confusion ethos: "Male honorable, female inferior" (nan zun nü bei) by portraying women as independent and thinking individuals. This article analyses Passion (Zui ai) by Sylvia Chang, Song of the Exile (Ketu qiuhen) by Ann Hui and Three Women (San ge nüren) by Peng Xiaolian.

Director Guang Chunlan in Conversation

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Zhou Xia ◽  
Yiwen Liu
Keyword(s):  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Women Directors ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Fifth Generation ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Post Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chen Kaige ◽  
Xinjiang Autonomous Region ◽  
Made In

This interview features Guang Chuanlan, a Sibe director who has been active since 1976. Guang is known for establishing Chinese Muslim cinema made in the Xinjiang autonomous region in socialist China. Many of her films are released and awarded in Arabic countries and in India. Her enduring career exemplifies the key role women filmmakers have played in building Chinese cinema under state-driven film policies. While it is commonly believed that the Fifth Generation (represented by male directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang) put post–Cultural Revolution Chinese cinema on the international map, Guang's career (along with those of other women directors) compels us to reexamine Chinese film historiography and excavate a more complex constellation, especially with regard to women's authorship in intersection with race/ethnicity and the state, and inter-Asian film interactions based on a shared religion—a dimension oftentimes obscured by the dominant paradigm of East-West internationality.

Brazilian Women's Filmmaking

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie L. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Women Directors ◽  
Latin American Film ◽  
Women's Film

At most recent count, there are no fewer than forty-five women in Brazil directing or codirecting feature-length fiction or documentary films. In the early 1990s, women filmmakers in Brazil were credited for being at the forefront of the rebirth of filmmaking, or retomada, after the abolition of the state film agency and subsequent standstill of film production. Despite their numbers and success, films by Brazilian women directors are generally absent from discussions of Latin American film and published scholarly works. Filling this void, this book focuses on women's film production in Brazil from the mid-1970s to the current era. The book explains how women's filmmaking contributed to the reformulation of sexual, cultural, and political citizenship during Brazil's fight for the return and expansion of civil rights during the 1970s and 1980s and the recent questioning of the quality of democracy in the 1990s and 2000s. It interprets key films by Ana Carolina and Tizuka Yamasaki, documentaries with social themes, and independent videos supported by archival research and extensive interviews with Brazilian women filmmakers. Despite changes in production contexts, recent Brazilian women's films have furthered feminist debates regarding citizenship while raising concerns about the quality of the emergent democracy. This book offers a unique view of how women's audiovisual production has intersected with the reconfigurations of gender and female sexuality put forth by the women's movements in Brazil and continuing demands for greater social, cultural, and political inclusion.

scholarly journals TELAAH KRITIS ATAS RELASI AGAMA DAN BUDAYA PATRIARKI

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-295
Author(s):  
Fikri Hamdani ◽  
Moh. Muhtador
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Bias Interpretation ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is a critical study of the discourse on religion and patriarchal culture. The development of religious patriarchism results from the interpretation of spiritual teachings that have the impression of a gender bias; the gender bias interpretation model is one of the relationships that shows the interaction of patriarchal culture with religion. Disclosure of the relationship between religion and patriarchism to understand the boundaries of what is called religion and interpretation and other elements in the meaning of religion. This paper is library research that relies on literature data related to gender and religion by using the theory of gender criticism to find answers to religious alliances and patriarchism. This paper shows that epistemologically, a series of meanings related to women's lives is interpreted textually. The meanings that are born are motivated by elements of male culture. There is a patriarchal ideology that is still strong in the body of a religious community that interprets the meaning of religion as religion.

Female Authorship, Subjectivity and Colonial Memory in Tanaka Kinuyo’s The Wandering Princess (1960)

Tanaka Kinuyo ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 155-186
Author(s):  
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Keyword(s):  
National History ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Women's Film ◽  
Representations Of Women

Tanaka’s fourth film, The Wandering Princess (Ruten no ōhi, 1960), is the subject of Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández’s chapter. Based on the autobiography of Saga Hiro (1914-1987), a Japanese aristocrat who married the younger brother of the emperor of Manchukuo, The Wandering Princess was marketed as a ‘women’s film’ by highlighting the three women who occupied key positions in the production: scriptwriter Wada Natto, star Kyō Machiko and director Tanaka Kinuyo. With this in mind, Armendáriz-Hernández examines Tanaka’s work against more prevalent representations of women and national history in postwar Japanese cinema in order to argue that the film and, crucially, Tanaka herself occupied a liminal gendered position within early 1960s Japanese cinema.

Feminism and Women’s Film History in 1980s Turkey

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.

Out of the Margins of Feminist Filmmaking: Vibeke Løkkeberg, Norway, and the Film Cultures of 1970s West Berlin

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Ingrid S. Holtar
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
American Women ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
West Berlin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women's Film

This chapter addresses how 1970s films by Norwegian women filmmakers form an unexplored history of cinematic and feminist “elsewheres,” through their many international connections. In particular, the films by Vibekke Løkkeberg were part of the international women’s film festival circuit at the time. Foregrounding her Women in media (1974), shot while the director was participating at the First International Women’s Film Seminar in West Berlin in 1973, the chapter emphasizes connections to women’s filmmaking in the New German Cinema movement. Women in media is comprised of interviews with French, Italian, British and American women working in film and television who discuss the difficulties of gaining access to production. As a case study, Løkkeberg’s film provides an interesting document about the fight for equality in media in Western Europe, and contextualizing connections between a peripheral feminist national cinema (such as that of Norway at the time), and an emerging international feminist network.

Close up: The female gaze and ethnic difference in two Vietnamese women's films

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lan Duong
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
Female Gaze ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Women's Films

This article looks at two contemporary films by Vietnamese women. In Việt Linh's Travelling Circus (1988) and Phạm Nhuệ Giang's The Deserted Valley (2002), a female gaze is sutured to that of an ethnic minority character's, a form of looking that stresses a shared oppression between women and the ethnic Other. While clearing a space for a desiring female gaze in Vietnamese film, they nonetheless extend an Orientalist view of racialised difference. A feminist film optic, one that does not consider industry history and constructions of race, fails to mark out the layered relations of looking underlying Vietnamese filmmaking. This study attends to the ways women filmmakers investigate gendered forms of looking, sexual desire and otherness within the constraints of a highly male-dominated film industry.

scholarly journals A Critique of Marriage Within China Through The Lens of Feminism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Xiaoxue Chen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Chinese Women ◽  
Wearable Technology ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
Garment Design

<p>Within the traditional patriarchal ideology in China, feminism is gradually being accepted by the Chinese, especially Chinese women, and has brought benefits to women’s liberation today. However, inequality between men and women still exists. There is growing popularity among Chinese women artists to use their artistic status as their weapon to actively and effectively communicate the ideologies of feminism. However, their expression of feminism still mostly manifests through traditional artistic mediums. My research focuses on how wearable technology can depict and criticize gender inequality in Chinese marriage, and promote feminism. The garment design development is based on the results of a study I conducted about the perception of marriage equality in China, which revealed several areas of inequality in marriage. The final garment is designed for presentation, where movement and audience interaction are considered to enhance the opportunities of wearable technology to best communicate aspects of marriage inequality in China. My design research realises how ideologies of feminism, specifically marriage equality in China, might be advocated for through the design of contemporary garments and wearable technology.</p>

Queer Asian Cinema, Female Authorship and the Short Film Format

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Olivia Khoo
Keyword(s):  
Short Film ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Asian Cinema

This chapter examines how the short format film contributes to the formation of queer Asian cinema as a category that incorporates the efforts of women filmmakers. It pays attention to how unique qualities of the short film allow women filmmakers to actively engage with each other’s work within and across the region, and how this transnational connection is redefining how we might come to understand the figure of the individual ‘auteur’ of Asian cinema.

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