Introduction
Keyword(s):
The introduction explores the connections between the book’s two main periods: 1920-1940 and the 1970s. Each period evidences a unique combination of technological and social changes. Yet, they also share a deep commitment to thinking about the power dynamics between selves and others, filmmakers and filmed subjects, Americans and the globe. Revisiting the early ethnographic history of women in documentary opens new avenues of thinking about later developments in feminist filmmaking and feminist film theory, especially about the enduring practices of political realism that have remained noticeably dominant throughout women’s documentary filmmaking in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.