Female Revolution behind the Camera

The paper addresses the issue of discrimination against women in the world of cinema. The author examines the successive stages of the struggle pursued by women of cinema for equality and fair treatment in an industry dominated and ruled by men. The discussion covers the most important campaigns and movements challenging gender discrimination, such as #MeToo in the U.S. or the European #nobodysdoll, as well as watershed events from the author’s point of view, including the Oscar for Kathryn Bigelow – the first woman in history to receive the award for best director, Harvey Weinstein’s conviction for sexual assault, and the leak of Sony’s confidential financial documents. The public disclosure of these facts triggered a process that should be referred to as gender equalisation in the film industry. The author also takes a look at the latest events in the industry, such as Agnieszka Holland’s election as president of the European Film Academy. In addition, the paper also comments on the aspect of feminine nouns in Polish and the attitude towards them on the part of the women they are supposed to describe. Information is provided on the U.S. and European cinema markets, as well as some diagnoses of problems appearing so far and suggested solutions.

From Pacifists to Cowboys to Torturers: The Different Representations of the US Military and Intelligence Agencies in Post-9/11 American War Films

The horrifying images of the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, in which three thousand civilians were killed, have become some of the most famous images ever committed to film or television. In the decade following the attacks, a wealth of war films were released, including Redacted (Brian De Palma, 2007), The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) and Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) amongst many others. Many films from this period of US cinema addressed both the 9/11 attacks as well as the US military’s conflicts in various countries suspected of harboring terrorist groups. When analyzing the ways the military and intelligence agencies (such as the CIA) are represented in some US films from this period, it becomes clear that such representations changed over just a few years: Redacted showed the military to be polarized–a place for pacifists, rapists and murderers. The Hurt Locker later depicted successful soldiers as having a “gung ho” attitude, and the military as a permanent fixture in Iraq. Finally, Zero Dark Thirty included scenes of CIA torture, which is suggested as being necessary and justified. Surprisingly, however, the ways the military and intelligence agencies are represented in these films did not necessarily mirror the political change that was occurring.

Female Power Uncensored

This chapter presents case studies of the work of four contemporary female directors from world cinema: Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Claire Denis, and Céline Sciamma. Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) self-consciously interrogates the contradiction by which the voyeuristic consumer of violent and misogynist ‘entertainment’ is taken out of the equation when assigning responsibility for these cultural phenomena. It offers a unique exception to stereotypical gender roles one would expect to find in a Hollywood action film. In The Piano (1993), Campion was able to make a feminist critique of an outdated and patriarchal way of seeing women. Meanwhile, Denis's Beau Travail (1999) is an example of how the female camera can deconstruct and represent the male sex in similar ways to how men have represented women in the past. Finally, Sciamma's Girlhood (2014) is an example of how a female writer-director can construct cinema that breaks gender stereotypes, uses a ‘female gaze’ in its cinematography, and represents women's problems and issues in a complex and compassionate way.

Representing torture in Zero Dark Thirty (2012): Popular culture as a site of norm contestation

The global war on terror (GWOT) is undoubtedly the most recent case where a government authorized ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, a euphemism for torture. In addition to shocking stories and photographs from Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA black site prisons, popular culture assists in the production of torture’s public image and indicates a site of norm contestation. Therefore, the aim of this article is threefold. First, the author shows that Zero Dark Thirty (2012, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) is constitutive for the public image of torture and its meaning-in-use. Second, she argues that the film’s representation of torture works as a popular site of contesting the anti-torture norm. Finally, she reflects on the continuum between popular culture and the politics of torture.

Into the Future

Sirk died in 1987. His films are his legacy, and they’ve already influenced several generations of cineastes. Among them are film critics in Europe, America and beyond and filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, Kathryn Bigelow and, more recently, Luca Guadagnino and Guillermo Del Toro. This chapter examines the legacy and the reasons particular films have been described as “Sirkian”.

Hollywood Transvestite: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker1

This chapter offers an analysis of the authorial persona of Kathryn Bigelow in relation to her Iraq War movie, The Hurt Locker (2008). Bigelow represents a cause célèbre for feminist criticism in terms of her apparent abandonment of her earlier experimental work for mainstream narrative fiction, her presumed subversion of Hollywood gender types and genres, her refusal of both feminist and gendered identities, and her ‘capitulation’ to the supposedly masculinist action genre. Bigelow’s work thus puts into tension the conjunction of women filmmakers, genre, authorship and the questions posed by feminist film criticism – issues dramatised by her nomination for the Best Director Oscar in competition with her former husband’s sci-fi film, Avatar (2009). In contrast to the readings that regret the lack of female characterisation or that place The Hurt Locker within the realist realm of signification – considering Bigelow’s aesthetics as a documentary gesture that transmits an accurate description of warfare – the chapter explores the director’s highly self-aware and metageneric approach to filming. While framing it within Bigelow’s authorial signature, the chapter argues that The Hurt Locker participates in the contemporary war film format, conceptualised by Robert Burgoyne (2013) as a ‘body genre’, concluding that the film creates tensions between abstract, mythical masculinity and the singular, material body at risk.