PROPERTIES OF FILM AUTHORSHIP

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Codruţa Morari
Keyword(s):  
Film Authorship

The Cellophane Wall

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
American Business ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
American Film ◽  
Business Enterprise ◽  
Collaborative Models ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Studio System ◽  
Film Authorship ◽  
Over Time

Between 1924 and 1954, Hollywood was, more than any other American business enterprise, enriched by women: women’s pictures, women audiences and fans, and women filmmakers. McLean, Head, McCall, Davis, Harrison, Hopper, and many other Hollywood women offered collaborative models of the studio system. These are difficult concepts for film historians to face. Recognizing that the Hollywood studio system enabled women’s careers between 1924 and 1954 forces a reconsideration of two ideologies that have held sway over American film and cultural history: the “great man” theory of film authorship, and the assumption that things for Hollywood’s women have improved over time, due to our faith in “progressive” history. Today, women trying to break into the industry are told that although things are difficult and women are not represented equally in the creative professions, the situation has improved since the bad old studio days. “Bunk!” as Bette Davis would have said.

Genre on the Surface: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette

2018 ◽  
pp. 173-208
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Public Image ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Image Building ◽  
Family Connections ◽  
Women's Film ◽  
Costume Drama ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
Film Authorship ◽  
American Film Industry

Sofia Coppola, one of the most visible indie directors in recent years, is clearly embedded in the ‘commerce of auteurism’ (Corrigan 1991), as she actively participates in constructing her public image. Building on existing scholarship on the filmmaker as illustrative of the new critical paradigm in studies of women’s film authorship, the first section of this chapter looks at the promotional and critical discourses surrounding her films to trace the various processes of authentication and de-authentication of Coppola as an auteur (family connections, the privileged position in the American film industry, her filmmaking style marked by a focus on flat affects and the mise-en-scène’s surface details, as well as her interest in postfeminist/neoliberal femininity which has divided critics, especially with her 2013 feature film, The Bling Ring). In the exploration of Coppola’s authorial status, the chapter sheds light on the issue of genre, arguing that her engagement with familiar conventions is far more complex than current analysis of her work has acknowledged. This is particularly evident in the case of Marie Antoinette (2006), a film which has been read variably as a costume drama and/or as a historical biopic. In establishing a dialogical relationship between biopic and costume drama scholarship, the chapter centres on self-conscious devices deployed in Coppola’s film, which are mobilised not against but through a logic of a feminised consumerist culture. The aim is not to reject the supposed ‘feminising’ aspects of the costume drama or to masculinise them in framing the film as a ‘self-conscious’ biopic, but rather to investigate the gender anxieties that underlay the labelling of genres by film criticism.

Subversive Auteur, Subversive Genre

2018 ◽  
pp. 34-59
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Women Directors ◽  
Auteur Theory ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Female Director ◽  
Film Authorship ◽  
Female Filmmakers ◽  
Death Of The Author

This chapter offers a theoretical revision of auteur theory as a gendered concept, as well as reconceptualisation of women’s cinema and film authorship in relation to genre theory. It starts by raising several questions: is the much-debated concept of auteur equally applicable to female filmmakers, and if so, how, and in what cultural and industrial contexts? Does the female director working in genre film ‘transcend’ the industrial form in the way that the male auteur is said to ‘transcend’ genre? The first section of this chapter briefly explores the gendering of the politique des auteurs and discusses the implications of the ‘death of the author’ for feminist criticism. It then goes on to consider new approaches to film authorship, which offer a more dialogical, ‘interactive’ relationship to wider film cultures than the previously discussed perspectives. The remainder of the chapter builds on Jane Gaines’s (2012) argument on the interchangeability of the critical categories ‘women’ and ‘genre’, and the problematic question of feminist/authorial subversion of mainstream forms. The chapter’s central argument is that rather than subverting genres, some women directors explore their aesthetic and imaginative power.

Trying to Sell Ketchup in a Salsa Bottle

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Mirasol Enríquez
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
Film Authorship ◽  
The U.S

Conceptualized as a comedy that would explore culturally specific experiences of three Latina characters, the screenplay Papi Chulo underwent a tumultuous development process before becoming what audiences know as Chasing Papi (2003). Midway through development, changes in studio management led to significant changes in their approach to the project. Rather than depict cultural nuances of the U.S. Latina/o experience, an unusually large number of writers transformed the script to appeal to a panethnic form of Latina/o identity and a broader audience. Marketed as “the first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America,” the film’s credits include writer/producer Laura Angélica Simón, director Linda Mendoza, and associate producer Christy Haubegger. The film was a critical and financial disappointment, and this study illustrates the detrimental effects studio regime changes can have on the creative process, and the negative effects misunderstanding film authorship can have for Latina/os in the industry.

scholarly journals From Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side to Rituparno Ghosh’s Shubho Muharat: Film Authorship and Transcultural Adaptation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akaitab Mukherjee ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Third Space ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Authorial Intention ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Transcultural Adaptation ◽  
Textual Politics ◽  
Film Authorship

In her book A Theory of Adaptation Linda Hutcheon uses the term “transcultural adaptation” to illustrate different context in which literary or other cultural texts are adapted. This relocation of text through adaptation often adds multiple interpretations or alters textual politics. Hutcheon further argues that transcultural adaptation can transform the text in unpredictable direction. The paper seeks to explicate eminent Bengali film director Rituparno Ghosh’s (1961-2013) Shubho Muharat (The First Day of the Shoot, 2003) which is influenced by Agatha Christie’s (1890-1976) novel The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962). The essay untangles Ghosh’s strategy to add Indian socio-cultural background in the western text. He expresses authorial intensions when he re-narrates of the novel on screen. The paper argues that the transcultural adaptation creates a “Third Space of enunciation” where the auteur uses the traits of detective film and repeats authorial intention. Following Janet Staiger’s reinterpretation of auteurism the essay argues that duplication of authorial impulse is Ghosh’s “technique of the self”.

The Films of Steven Soderbergh

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Baker
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Commercial Viability ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Film Authorship ◽  
Individual Style

This chapter examines the films of Steven Soderbergh. Soderbergh's twenty feature films present a diverse range of subject matter and formal styles. They range from his 1989 breakthrough hit Sex, Lies, and Videotape, about the sex lives of four twenty-somethings, to social-problem films such as Erin Brockovich and The Informant! (2009). Even the cost of making his films has shown great variety, ranging from the six-figure budget for Schizopolis (1996) to the star-studded Ocean's series blockbusters (2001, 2004, 2007) that averaged nearly one hundred million dollars to produce. The eclecticism in Soderbergh's movies would appear to invalidate a claim to the distinctive style typical of film authorship. However, the chapter argues that the variety of his work and the commercial viability of some of his films are prominent aspects of his individual style.

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