Robin Blaetz (ed.): Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks (2007)

“Women’s Experimental Cinema provides lively introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde women filmmakers, some of whom worked as early as the 1950s and many of whom are still working today. In each essay in this collection, a leading film scholar considers a single filmmaker, supplying biographical information, analyzing various influences on her work, examining the development of her corpus, and interpreting a significant number of individual films. The essays rescue the work of critically neglected but influential women filmmakers for teaching, further study, and, hopefully, restoration and preservation. Just as importantly, they enrich the understanding of feminism in cinema and expand the terrain of film history.

The contributors examine the work of Marie Menken, Joyce Wieland, Gunvor Nelson, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Rubin, Amy Greenfield, Barbara Hammer, Chick Strand, Marjorie Keller, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child, Peggy Ahwesh, Su Friedrich, and Cheryl Dunye. The essays highlight the diversity in these filmmakers’ forms and methods, covering topics such as how Menken used film as a way to rethink the transition from abstract expressionism to Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s, how Rubin both objectified the body and investigated the filmic apparatus that enabled that objectification in her film Christmas on Earth (1963), and how Dunye uses film to explore her own identity as a black lesbian artist. At the same time, the essays reveal commonalities, including a tendency toward documentary rather than fiction and a commitment to nonhierarchical, collaborative production practices. The volume’s final essay focuses explicitly on teaching women’s experimental films, addressing logistical concerns (how to acquire the films and secure proper viewing spaces) and extending the range of the book by suggesting alternative films for classroom use.”

Contributors: Paul Arthur, Robin Blaetz, Noël Carroll, Janet Cutler, Mary Ann Doane, Robert A. Haller, Chris Holmlund, Chuck Kleinhans, Scott MacDonald, Kathleen McHugh, Ara Osterweil, Maria Pramaggiore, Melissa Ragona, Kathryn Ramey, M. M. Serra, Maureen Turim, William C. Wees.

Publisher Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2007
Open access
ISBN 9780822340232, 0822340232
viii+421 pages

Reviews: Harriet Margolis (NWSA Journal, 2009), Beth Hutchison (Signs, 2009), Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2011), Jan-Christopher Horak (Screening the Past, 2008), David Sterritt (Cineaste, 2008), Phoebe Hart (M/C Reviews, 2008).

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF, PDF

Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties (2004)

“Lines of Resistance is a major collection of writings by and about Dziga Vertov. The book follows the development of his work and opinions from 1917 to 1930, and chronicles contemporary reactions to them, including such personalities as fellow directors Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Eisenstein, artists Aleksandr Rodchenko and Kazimir Malevich, and theorists Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer.”

Published on the occasion of the first comprehensive retrospective of the films of Dziga Vertov, presented at the 23rd edition of Le Giornate del cinema muto, Sacile, 2004.

Edited and with an Introduction by Yuri Tsivian
Translated by Julian Graffy
Publisher Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Gemona (Udine), 2004
ISBN 8886155158 9788886155151
xv+422 pages

Reviews: John MacKay (Film Quarterly, 2007), Bohdan Y. Nebesio (Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2007).

WorldCat

PDF (47 MB)

Nicole Brenez, Christian Lebrat (eds.): Jeune, dure et pure! Une histoire du cinéma d’avant-garde et expérimental en France (2001) [French]

“L’expérimental dans l’expérimentation scientifique et technique – Le cadre aux surprises – Problèmes figuratifs, devenirs abstraits – ” La sagesse ne viendra jamais “. Dada, Surréalisme – Une terrible invention à faire du vrai – Recherches plastiques dans la fiction, travail des formes narratives – Les années 30 – ” L’angoisse et la douleur et l’inhumanité de la race humaine ” – Les années 50 – Americans in Paris – Le cinéma a déjà commencé ? Lettrisme – L’internationale situationniste – Performances et cinéma des plasticiens – ” Les Kamikazes de l’amour “. L’Underground français (et inassimilés) – Zanzibar – Engagements, combats, débats – Formes expérimentales narratives – Melba – Le cinéma du corps – Recherches scientifiques, propositions visuelles – Poèmes ethnographiques – Portrait, collections / Autoportrait, fictions – Paysages – Figurativité du montage – Recherches optiques, inventions sonores et narrativité – Abstractions chromatiques, domaines sensibles – Dispositifs – Le mouvement des Laboratoires – Constellations – Poèmes, pérennités de l’avant-garde.”

Publisher Cinémathèque française, Paris, and Mazzotta, Milan, 2001
ISBN 882021461X, 9788820214616
591 pages

Review: François Bovier (1895, 2008).

WorldCat

PDF (100 MB)
English trans. of Introduction