Acting as a corrective to the skewed avant-garde history that neglects women, Women and Experimental Filmmaking gathers essays by some of the top scholars in cinema studies dealing with women experimental filmmakers.Acting as a corrective to the skewed avant-garde history that neglects
women, Women and Experimental Filmmaking gathers essays by some of the
top scholars in cinema studies dealing with women experimental
filmmakers. Tracking the topic across racial, economic, geographic, and
even temporal boundaries, Jean Petrolle and Virginia Wexman's
selections reflect the deep diversity of methodologies and research.
The introduction sets out by addressing the basic difficulties of both
historiography and definition, before providing a historical overview
of how these particular filmmakers have helped shape moviemaking
traditions. The essays explore the major theoretical controversies that
have arisen around the work of groundbreaking women such as Leslie
Thornton, Su Friedrich, Nina Menkes, and Faith Hubley. With the
film-makers re-presentations of women's subjectivity ranging across
film, video, digital media, ethnography, animation, and collage, Women
and Experimental Filmmaking represents the full spectrum of genres,
techniques, and modes. Taken together, these essays comprise a
sustained analysis of the conjunction of aesthetics and politics in the
work of both pioneer and contemporary experimental women filmmakers.
Jean Petrolle is professor of English at Columbia College, Chicago, and
has published essays in journals including "Quarterly Review of Film
and Image: A Journal of Art and Religion". Virginia Wexman is professor
of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is the author of
"Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage", and "Hollywood Performance" and
"Conversations with Filmmakers: Jane Campion".