Search

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, is renowned for his unique cinematic style and profound insights into the complexity of human nature. Among the various female characters in his films, the mother figure holds a particularly significant place. This article proposes the concept of "maternal emptiness" to describe the predicament of the mother figures in Hitchcock's films, where they are often depicted as distorted, dark, and somewhat lacking in maternal essence. Drawing on psychoanalytic and feminist film theories, especially the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Laura Mulvey, this study aims to deconstruct Hitchcockian "maternal emptiness" and explore its deep-rooted causes. Through a systematic examination of the mother figures in Hitchcock's filmography, this article identifies the following three main categories: the mother roles of blonde women, the mother roles of female protagonists, and the mother roles of male protagonists. Close textual analysis reveals that these mother figures, despite their apparent diversity, share a common plight—a deviation from the maternal essence of love, care, and nourishment. This "maternal emptiness" is further traced back to Hitchcock's childhood traumas, the patriarchal ideology in the cultural context, and the changing status of motherhood in modern society. By engaging critically with existing Hitchcock scholarship, including the works of Tania Modleski, Paul Gordon, and Slavoj Žižek, this study situates the concept of "maternal emptiness" within the broader discussions of motherhood in cinema. It explores how Hitchcock's representation of mothers both reflects and challenges contemporary understandings of maternity. Furthermore, this study examines the enduring influence of Hitchcock's maternal representations on contemporary cinema, analyzing films such as Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!" (2017) and Ari Aster's "Hereditary" (2018) to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of "maternal emptiness" in modern film discourse. The study concludes by considering the legacy of Hitchcock's maternal representations in contemporary cinema, demonstrating the ongoing relevance of the concept of "maternal emptiness" in film analysis and its potential for reimagining maternal subjectivity in cinematic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Shawn Loht’s 2017 project delineating a Heideggerian phenomenology of film, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, I examine how productive Loht’s Dasein-centric account of the film viewer might be for considering diverse film-viewer experiences. Starting from Loht’s premise that the film–viewer relation is the constitutive ground of filmic disclosure, I raise two concerns regarding Heidegger’s account of Dasein that might obscure an account of the diversity of film viewers and associated heterogeneity of filmic disclosure: Dasein’s lack of concreteness with respect to lived experience, and Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment and bodily difference. I firstly argue that Dasein’s lack of concreteness is productive for theorising the diversity of film viewers by discussing the concept of Dasein through formal indication, a Heideggerian notion that Loht draws upon in order to account for filmic disclosure. I then examine a key objection, that Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment limits the productivity of a Dasein-centric account of film viewers for theorising diversity. I refer to Katharina Lindner’s interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world in a queer phenomenology of film, set out in “Questions of Embodied Difference: Film and Queer Phenomenology” (2012), to suggest a pathway for how Dasein’s being-in-the-world might offer an account of film viewing that takes into consideration the embodiment of diverse viewers.

This article focuses on Female Convict Scorpion, a Japanese women-in-prison film series (1972–1973), which exemplifies studio-produced exploitation cinema. The series is influenced by the contemporaneous yakuza cycle and its anti-authoritarian social realist agenda. Produced during a time of rapid political-economic-social change in the country, the Female Convict Scorpion series combines exploitative content – the display of nudity, violence, and sensational subjects – with an underlying feminist sensibility, a mixture that embraces the ambiguities of commercial genre cinema. Through close textual analysis, this research explains the contradictions in this women-in-prison series by 1) providing evidence of the female gaze and the subversive narrative tropes, which reveals the feminist subtext in these films, and 2) examining the stylistic and narrative effects of cinematic excesses. This article, thus, re-evaluates these popular genre films as in a time capsule, documenting the significance of their expression of gender politics in 1970s Japan through the distinctive production context and presentation of cinematic excesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Shawn Loht's 2017 project delineating a Heideggerian phenomenology of film, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, I examine how productive Loht's Dasein-centric account of the film viewer might be for considering diverse film-viewer experiences. Starting from Loht's premise that the film-viewer relation is the constitutive ground of filmic disclosure, I raise two concerns regarding Heidegger's account of Dasein that might obscure an account of the diversity of film viewers and associated heterogeneity of filmic disclosure: Dasein's lack of concreteness with respect to lived experience, and Heidegger's neglect of embodiment and bodily difference. I firstly argue that Dasein's lack of concreteness is productive for theorising the diversity of film viewers by discussing the concept of Dasein through formal indication, a Heideggerian notion that Loht draws upon in order to account for filmic disclosure. I then examine a key objection, that Heidegger's neglect of embodiment limits the productivity of a Dasein-centric account of film viewers for theorising diversity. I refer to Katharina Lindner's interpretation of Heidegger's notion of being-in-the-world in a queer phenomenology of film, set out in "Questions of Embodied Difference: Film and Queer Phenomenology" (2012), to suggest a pathway for how Dasein's being-in-the-world might offer an account of film viewing that takes into consideration the embodiment of diverse viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, is renowned for his unique cinematic style and profound insights into the complexity of human nature. Among the various female characters in his films, the mother figure holds a particularly significant place. This article proposes the concept of “maternal emptiness” to describe the predicament of the mother figures in Hitchcock’s films, where they are often depicted as distorted, dark, and somewhat lacking in maternal essence. Drawing on psychoanalytic and feminist film theories, especially the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Laura Mulvey, this study aims to deconstruct Hitchcockian “maternal emptiness” and explore its deep-rooted causes. Through a systematic examination of the mother figures in Hitchcock’s filmography, this article identifies the following three main categories: the mother roles of blonde women, the mother roles of female protagonists, and the mother roles of male protagonists. Close textual analysis reveals that these mother figures, despite their apparent diversity, share a common plight—a deviation from the maternal essence of love, care, and nourishment. This “maternal emptiness” is further traced back to Hitchcock’s childhood traumas, the patriarchal ideology in the cultural context, and the changing status of motherhood in modern society. By engaging critically with existing Hitchcock scholarship, including the works of Tania Modleski, Paul Gordon, and Slavoj Žižek, this study situates the concept of “maternal emptiness” within the broader discussions of motherhood in cinema. It explores how Hitchcock’s representation of mothers both reflects and challenges contemporary understandings of maternity. Furthermore, this study examines the enduring influence of Hitchcock’s maternal representations on contemporary cinema, analyzing films such as Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!” (2017) and Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” (2018) to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of “maternal emptiness” in modern film discourse. The study concludes by considering the legacy of Hitchcock’s maternal representations in contemporary cinema, demonstrating the ongoing relevance of the concept of “maternal emptiness” in film analysis and its potential for reimagining maternal subjectivity in cinematic representation.

The aim of this research is to find out the portrayal of women in animated movies and which types of roles are assigned to women as compared to men. This study is also being conducted to analyze different types of feminism in an animated movie "The Princess and the Frog". In this work there have been many female characters which are different from one another. The reasons behind those differences are needed to be identified. So this study is being conducted to analyze the difference between the women roles in comparison to each other as well as comparison to male in animated movies. This research is exploratory and data is qualitative in nature. Population and sample of this research was an animated movie "The Princess and the Frog". To make a framework of analysis, character analysis, thematic analysis and comparative analysis are done based upon Jane (2004) Feminist Film Theory. It provides in depth picture of feminine characters as well as their similarities and differences from men in projection. Findings showed that this animated movie "The Princess and the Frog" had significant feminine aspects. Its main protagonist is a female and she is a black American. She suffers from the very beginning of the movie. She faces struggles throughout the movie and society creates struggles against her destiny. Women are given less freedom as compare to men. This study revealed that there is a difference between men and women projection in animated movies. There are feminine perspectives present in the movie which shows that women are struggling from the very beginning of the story and achieve their destiny only with the help of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexist and misogynist attitudes towards actresses in the mainstream film industry and other media have been the target of feminists for decades. Stigmatized and stereotyped images of immigrants on the screen have also been scrutinized. However, very little attention has been given to the ways in which actresses with foreign background, not necessarily from Black communities, are portrayed and narrated. Addressing this issue would reveal how non-Western body images on screen are racialized according to certain Western beauty standards. Sweden is often described as the most gender-equal film industry in the world; however, this does not mean that marginalization and subordination of non-white actresses with foreign backgrounds, does not occur. Accordingly, using the framework of feminist film critique and drawing on the works of Homi Bhabba, Sara Ahmed and Patricia Hill-Collins, this article offers a reading of Swedish-Kurdish actress Evin Ahmad’s experiences to demonstrate how ‘beauty’ and ‘body’ culture involve a complicated terrain around race, skin colour and body image. This article argues that a generalized ideology of beauty and stereotypical images of a Middle Eastern woman imposed on Ahmad demonstrate that values and attributes such as beauty, appearance and sexual attractiveness should be understood in the context of social and cultural relations, rather than as universally valued or devalued individual characteristics.

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A wealth of scholarship exists around looking relations in cinema, but there is a paucity of research into looking relations in South African cinema. With this article we show that the examination of looking relations in South African cinema offers valuable insights and suggest that similar analyses of other South African films can only be fruitful. Through a close textual analysis of Nosipho Dumisa's Nommer 37 (2018), we interrogate the nature of the gaze directed at Pam, the woman protagonist. The works of María Lugones, Elaine Salo, Azille Coetzee and Louise Du Toit, and Pumla Dineo Gqola allow us to interpret and apply Laura Mulvey's male gaze within the raced and gendered South African context shaped by colonialism. We show that even though Dumisa displays an awareness of the power relations in looking, and even though she problematizes male looking, the way she uses the camera to frame the look continues to centre the gaze of the men in the film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a sample of over 250 films released in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014, and with the benefit of over fifty years of feminist film theorizing on the issue of the characterization of women in both Hollywood and foreign films, our analysis investigates whether a particular film genre – romance movies – has begun to provide a diverse range of depictions of its female characters or has it continued to favour a stereotyped understanding of woman as subservient to the men in their lives. The central focus of our analysis concerns the ways in which romantic couples exhibit behaviours that the sociological and psychological literatures describe as either 'masculine' or 'feminine'. In addition to summarizing these data, we also describe at length a number of films that illustrate the various gender stereotypes. We conclude our analysis by addressing the thorny question of whether and how Hollywood movies could lessen the extent of sexism and gender inequality in Western society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cadernos PAGU is the property of Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Portal de Periodicos Eletronicos Cientificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Gumushane Universty Electronic Journal of the Faculty of Communication / Gümüshane Üniversitesi Iletisim Fakültesi Elektronik Dergisi is the property of Gumushane Universitesi Iletisim Fakultesi Elektronik Dergisi (e-GIFDER) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of ESPIRAL: Revista de Docencia e Investigación is the property of Universidad Santo Tomas, Bucaramanga and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the 2017 allegations of sexual assault against director Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent trending hashtag “#MeToo”, sexual assault awareness has become a leading edge of fourth-wave feminism. This study explores the impacts of sexual assault awareness movements on Hollywood film by examining 18 films from 1999-2001, 2009-2011, and 2016-2018 and analyzing categorical data gathered to generate trend lines for various aspects of the portrayal of romantic interactions and gender tropes from 1999-2018. These trend lines and correlation coefficients show drastic changes aligned with the goals of fourth-wave feminism, particularly in camera angles, sexual interactions, heteroromantic relationships, and trope portrayal and, in some cases, show shifts directly aligned with the timing of Hollywood sexual assault scandals. These findings demon- strate the influence of American activism, specifically “#MeToo” and sexual assault awareness movements, on cultural markers, in this case, Hollywood film portrayals, and encourage further research on the implications of public activism on cultural and societal norms.

Rubber (2010) could be read as a monstrous replication of a male-dominated society that sees women subordinated and exploited simply for their "otherness" to men. This article, however, argues that when a dynamic reading is performed, Rubber can be seen to question Hollywood's dominant system of gender representation and should therefore be considered a feminist film. In dialogue with feminist theory, it will be claimed that by drawing attention to the artifice of cinema, Dupieux has delivered a feminine text that highlights and calls for change to inherently misogynistic codes and conventions present in traditional dominant cinema and society in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laura Mulvey's 5 decade old polemic essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema had long been the cornerstone of feminist film theory. Using Freud's theory of scopophilia she posited that the passive, helpless and usually eroticized female characters on screen only exist to drive the male characters to act, furthering the narrative and pleasing the male spectators. Her stance on the matter of the inescapable male gaze only persisted with the bibliography that followed. But what if a film's self-reflexively uses the heavily eroticized but active characters to consciously exploit the male gaze and ultimately assert their personal power" Investigating Harmony Korine's controversial 2012 film Spring Breakers through a third wave feminism lens and challenging Mulvey's paradigm on the exclusively sadistic gaze, this study aims to explore the nuances of female agency and Question the feasibility of a film simultaneously having strong and active female characters and appealing to the male gaze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging Carol Clover's influential Men, Women, and Chain Saws, this article attempts to situate the A&E television series Bates Motel as a progressive prequel to Psycho. Through a close reading of the series' formal and narrative components, vital distinctions are clarified between Psycho and Bates Motel, arguing that the latter achieves a unique mode of spectatorial address. This unique address is accomplished via three devices: a shift in genre away from the horror/slasher film to re-situate the backstory of Norman Bates within the melodrama – a genre traditionally geared to a female spectator; by playing Norman as an active investigative protagonist rather than the prototypical psycho-killer devoid of psychological complexity; and by opening up the narrative to dual protagonists via the inclusion of Norma Bates. Taken together, Bates Motel emerges as an adaptation of the iconic Hitchcock film whose very success is dependent on intentionally altering its mode of spectatorial address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Asparkía. Investigació Feminista is the property of Instituto Universitario de Estudios Feministas y de Genero Purificacion Escribano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An Asian woman filmmaker whose work is celebrated and financed in Europe yet produced in her hometown of Nara, Japan, Kawase Naomi's creative trajectory is often made to trace an economy of 'world cinema' sketching constructions of gender, race and nation in uneasy relation to actual patterns of reception and production. While her early self-documentary shorts are described according to artistic vision, her later arthouse features are judged for their circulation on the international film festival circuit. Yet these impulses toward aesthetic and institutional analysis are seldom integrated into a critical appreciation of the breadth of Kawase's work. This article examines a transitional period of the director's filmography in which scenes of home birth repeat across her dramatic and documentary work, placing them in context with discourses of self-documentary and personal filmmaking that aestheticize birth and sex to interrogate the act of self-expression, and challenge gendered constructions of the artist and formation of a 'natural' life against a cultural mainstream. While her work is criticized as narcissistically apolitical by a masculinist domestic film culture, approaching Kawase's material and institutional self-inscription reveals a feminist mediation in productive tension with neoliberal globalization's cinema of regional consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S.-based Latinas have generally been included in film history through an analysis of their on-screen representations and contributions as directors of short, experimental, and documentary films. Unfortunately, as far as the filmmakers are concerned, the shorter formats I mention fail to receive the level of popular, critical, and scholarly recognition that feature films receive. Particularly since the 1990s, the number of Latinas working on features has increased significantly. To put this in perspective, Martha M. Lauzen’s, “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in the Top 250 Films of 2007,” found women represented only 6% of directors that year.1 Although there are no statistics available with regard to what percentage of these women were Latinas, they account for only a fraction of that 6%. It is also important to note that even Latina directors who do gain access to the means of production still have only limited opportunities within the industry.2 The small number of Latina-made feature films available for analysis reflects Latinas’ marginalization within the industry, which has been reproduced in the writing of film history.

Boredom is a permeating, trespassing force – an intensity not necessarily recognized as such. This essay approaches the aesthetics of political failure, and in particular, the cinematic intensities of boredom as affective expressions of post-traumatic malaise. Lou Ye's Summer Palace (2006), one of only three Chinese narrative films to represent the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, draws upon an aesthetics of banality to dramatize the epistemological limits and resultant trauma of 6/4, a historical event subsequently repressed in mainland Chinese media. Refusing melodramatic catharsis, the film's stalling and stupefying effects perform both the amnesiac circumstances surrounding 6/4, as well as the compassion fatigue that followed. Even more surprisingly, Lou's overuse of sex, a dull instrument by the film's end, constitutes Summer Palace's privileged sight/site of boredom. Indeed, sex, rather than constituting the censored obscene act, stands in for something far more offensive. Summer Palace frenetically pivots around an open secret, the historical memory of Tiananmen, as nervous sensation is composed within and without the text, centering on women's bodies. Drawing on close textual analyses, this essay contends that the excessive contours and shapes of the memorial wound in Summer Palace take on the particularly anxious forms of dull sex in a messy Square. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the seventies, through the feminist theories, the phenomenon of Gender Studies has been coming up on the solid scientific and multidisciplinary base of Cultural Studies. Gender Studies analyze the features of development and the typical changes of social structures at any level. They are aiming at a possible emancipation of minorities, especially in the era of globalization. It becomes especially evident in the media that there is a new opening towards female topics in narrated stories. And Cinema, due to its eclectic nature and its artistic and social function, presents itself as the best example of analysis of this opening, highlighting the evolution from the initial establishment of patriarchal ideology, towards its gradual break-up and overcoming. Starting from a historical course of Gender theories inside the panorama of film studies it can be noticed that the female role, now released from patriarchal ideology, has changed within construction confirming women’s presence and re-launching new narrative structures as well as a new language and approach

Cultural and Gender Studies represent by now a fundamental instrument in the analysis of audiovisual language, both for the cinematographic and the television one, as shown by the growing academic attention for serial productions. This article intends to carry out a theoretical survey on Gender Studies underlying their use in the audiovisual language. The specific subject of our survey is the TV series «Top of the Lake» (2013) signed, among others, by the New Zealand director Jane Campion. The series has turned out to be particularly interesting in terms of modification of the cultural and gender imaginary related to the woman and to the binomial male/female. The «Top of the Lake» TV series creates and offers the audience a sophisticated critique of the traditional visual codes normally associated to the gender, in order to hinder all passive identification processes to the characters represented on the screen. This case of study proves to be not only an interesting mix between authorship and mainstream language, but it’s also particularly appropriate for a gender analysis, as it shows the ability of audiovisual language to convey a problematic representation of prevailing social models. The work of Jane Campion, in harmony with the feminist theory, takes advantage of the television serial format in order to reflect, in a new revolutionary way, on the links between masculinity and femininity in the contemporary Western culture, showing how audiovisual representation can be a privileged dimension in the construction of meaning and collective consciousness.

Sexist and misogynist attitudes towards actresses in the mainstream film industry and other media have been the target of feminists for decades. Stigmatized and stereotyped images of immigrants on the screen have also been scrutinized. However, very little attention has been given to the ways in which actresses with foreign background, not necessarily from Black communities, are portrayed and narrated. Addressing this issue would reveal how non-Western body images on screen are racialized according to certain Western beauty standards. Sweden is often described as the most gender-equal film industry in the world; however, this does not mean that marginalization and subordination of non-white actresses with foreign backgrounds, does not occur. Accordingly, using the framework of feminist film critique and drawing on the works of Homi Bhabba, Sara Ahmed and Patricia Hill-Collins, this article offers a reading of Swedish-Kurdish actress Evin Ahmad's experiences to demonstrate how 'beauty' and 'body' culture involve a complicated terrain around race, skin colour and body image. This article argues that a generalized ideology of beauty and stereotypical images of a Middle Eastern woman imposed on Ahmad demonstrate that values and attributes such as beauty, appearance and sexual attractiveness should be understood in the context of social and cultural relations, rather than as universally valued or devalued individual characteristics., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2023 Galip ÖB.)

Copyright of Trípodos is the property of Universitat Ramon Llull, Facultat de Comunicacio Blanquerna and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The work of media is twofold- one shaping individual perspective of the world and two, synchronizing thoughts with what is being represented through the medium. Although study on the violence inflicted by television has been subjected to research; nevertheless, studies on hyperreal instillation of social reality and stereotyping requires potential insight. The current study keeping in view the cultivation of stereotypes and social identities through hyper-reality i.e. video games, aims at analyzing implicit/explicit representation of feminist violence in the video game adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Dante's Inferno. The study employs Hutcheon's three modes of engagement i.e. 'telling, showing and interactive' as the theoretical basis to answer five W's of adaptation. The methodological rubric is built on the Mulvey's feminist film theory with cultivation theory of violence couched within to develop themes out of the textual/visual content of the two video games i.e. Alice- Madness Returns and Inferno. The results of the study reveal the representing, producing and spectating of female characters as violent and subjected to fetishism. Moreover, the depiction in Alice-Madness Returns exposes females perpetrating violence and that of Inferno victim of violence. The study highlighted the gender stereotyping specifically the representation of females subjected to obscenity. Apart from this, the study also contemplated the depiction of violence led various levels in the video games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista FAMECOS - Mídia, Cultura e Tecnologia is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since Laura Mulvey's corner stone essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), feminist film theories have analyzed the depictions of women's bodies in film. These theories, however, continually utilize the semiotics similar semiotics and stand the dangers of reiterating the discourse of corporeal female lack. In my essay, I call for a new film theory that breaks the cycle of the mind-body divide in an effort to change the discourse surrounding the female both in film analysis and without it. In this paper I combine the formal, fluid aspects of Gilles Deulze's movement-image and the very physical, existential elements of Vivian Sobchack's phenomenology to analyze Marian Ade's breakout, feminist-oriented film, Der Welt vor Läuter Bäumen (2003). Using this new combination of film theories, I emphasize moments in Ade's film in which the movement-image facilitates negotiation and collaboration between film and the spectator as a mind-body whole. Within such a method, the feminine body does not become re-centralized, but rather collaborates with the mind to form a cohesive whole in which the spectator, in all her physical and mental capacities, finally receives the agency to produce meaning, opening up the possibility to break out beyond current feminist film semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]