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The article details the editorial transition at periodical, with Rebecca Prime stepping down after six years and J. M. Tyree taking over as editor. Topics include Tyree's background and contributions, the departure of other key figures like Marc Francis and Girish Shambu, and the journal's upcoming features on trans cinema, Ousmane Sembene's Xala, and female directors.

Hyped, discussed, and anticipated: Barbie is surely the film of the year. Even before its premiere at the height of the summer blockbuster season, the Barbie movie had achieved a level of public celebration and saturation that is uncommon in twenty-first century media culture. Today, buy-in for Barbie can still be witnessed in the proliferation of online memes, cross-promotions official and unofficial, and huge box-office profits. Barbie is also significant for being the highest-grossing feature film by a single woman director, an important achievement given Hollywood’s marginalization of women in directorial roles, and the film has also been explicitly described as a feminist movie by its producer and star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig. As Gerwig explains, “It’s feminist in a way that includes everyone.”1This introduction posits Barbie as both a landmark film and a way of measuring feminism’s place in popular discourse. The authors consider whether Barbie is the best evidence yet of the popularity of fourth-wave feminism in integrating feminist discourse into the mainstream, or simply another co-optation of feminist ideas. They also investigate the film’s negotiation of issues affecting contemporary women, including the cultural meanings of femininity, women’s aspirations and limitations, intersectionality, and the manosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Mexican cinema highlights women and mothers as protagonists and filmmakers in many of its films. These mothers are different from the old model of the suffering and silent mother. The stories that are now being told speak of mothers who search for their missing loved ones, fight against impunity and lies, show solidarity in collectives, and inspire hope. They highlight the work of Mexican women filmmakers who show a particular sensitivity towards the realities of the country. Some notable films from the past five years include "Los lobos" by Samuel Kishi, "Sin señas particulares" by Fernanda Valadez, "Las tres muertes de Marisela Escobedo" by Carlos Pérez Osorio, and "Noche de fuego" by Tatiana Huezo. The Mexican film "Tótem" by Lila Avilés received the Ecumenical Jury Award in Berlin 2023 for its complex and sensitive representation of the love that unites a family. The mentioned films present stories of strong women who confront social reality and seek a different future. These films address topics such as the disappearance of people, sexual abuse, and motherhood from a perspective of psychological terror. The films are available on digital platforms such as Prime Video and Netflix. [Extracted from the article]

This document provides brief biographical information about various contributors to the Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds and have expertise in fields such as law, gender studies, literature, history, sociology, and art. Their research interests cover a wide range of topics including queer studies, reproductive justice, feminist theory, climate justice, and international law. The contributors have published books, articles, and essays on their respective areas of expertise and are actively engaged in academic and activist work. [Extracted from the article]

Guy Standing (2016) observes how in Eastern Europe, the post-1989 neoliberal order determined the working class to morph into what he names the precariat. This newly formed segment of society has to adapt to forever changing market imperatives in order to survive. Concomitantly, the Romanian state apparatus abruptly mutated from an overwhelming patriarchal structure into an all-out absent one (Bucur and Miroiu 252), thus making it more difficult for women to manage both patriarchally imposed roles and to find a workplace. Women filmmakers like Ana Căpățână-Juller (Aici...adică acolo [Here... meaning there], 2012) and Teodora Mihai (Waiting for August, 2014) decide to turn their cameras onto women characters engaged in a struggle for survival. Both filmmakers deal with the same theme, the lives of children who have to raise themselves, as their parents have gone abroad in order to gain better incomes than in Romania. Working with Sybille Krämer's "second person model of witnessing," where testimony is associated with concepts such as social interaction manifested through trust and authority (Krämer 34), I will examine how the two filmmakers particularly engage with their subjects and the differences between two directorial perspectives: one that approaches reality from a top down perspective, while the other is enmeshed with the characters in the historical world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender equality measures are now common in the policies of European film industries and can be an important tool for rendering visible gender inequalities. Recent research, however, indicates that top-down institutional gender mainstreaming might mean better conditions for some women in certain aspects, but structural inequalities tend to remain, including lack of an intersectional approach. In this article, these issues are addressed by analysing gender equality policies currently implemented in the Swedish and Spanish film industries. Following Carole Lee Bacchi's argument that the way in which a problem is represented must be analysed backwards, by looking at the solutions suggested, we unpack what inequalities gender equality measures render visible and, in so doing, highlight the aspects that remain invisible. We also discuss how such problem representation plays out for women in the film industries of both countries and consider the counter-practices women deploy to cope with continuing gender inequality in the film industries of Spain and Sweden. Our main argument is that Swedish and Spanish gender equality policies, despite having increased the presence of women film workers, still fail to render visible the structural basis of inequalities cemented by androcentric film governance structures and a male norm around which the film industry has been built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 the Albanian Cinema Project's restoration of Tomka Dhe Shoket e Tij (Tomka and His Friends, 1977) premiered on Turner Classic Movies in their "Women Make Film" series. This event marked the culmination of my work to bring the films of Albania's first female film director, Xhanfise Keko, into global distribution. A key aim for these projects was to begin to open up a space for Albanians at home and in the diaspora to address the silences that persisted around their years under an extreme, isolationist dictatorship. This article maps the project of re-education that I embarked on as an archivist, curator, and media historian. Now, with ACP shuttered and the benefit of hindsight, I reflect on the work of restoring and re-releasing Albanian films as a project of re-programming (double entendre intended) Albanian socialist-realist cinema for contemporary, global publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I show the potential of feminist film archiving to unsettle dominant paradigms in Peruvian film historiography. I describe my work as a curator of Rebeldes y Valientes (1913–2019) (Rebels and Braves, 1913–2019), the first digital archive that sheds light on the participation of women filmmakers in the history of Peruvian cinema. I argue that Rebels and Braves has challenged the overrepresentation of male filmmakers constructed by Peruvian film historiography, even as it was constrained in its capacity to redress the structural conditions that erase and delegitimize women's contributions to film. This article also makes the case for a disruptive archive that visualizes a feminist approach to curation and film history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the widespread material loss of silent films today, this article constitutes a playful exercise in curating a selection of nonextant films directed, written, and produced by early women filmmakers. After an introduction to the exercise, which sets up the feminist and film curatorial stakes of such an endeavor, I present my thematically organized film program (curatorial statement and program notes) to the reader. Drawing together films by women who worked in Peru, Croatia, Egypt, China, Mexico, Poland, and the United States, I argue that curating lost films not only makes space for a more inclusive picture of women's contributions to cinema history; this exercise is also a call for more imaginative approaches to feminist film and media curatorial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "Making a Scene in Documentary Film: Iconic Filmmakers Discuss What Works and Why" by Maxine Trump. The book provides an analysis of American independent documentaries through interviews with renowned filmmakers. It focuses on specific scenes and explores the choices and circumstances that filmmakers face. The book is technical yet approachable, making it suitable for non-fiction film producers, editors, cinematographers, and aspiring directors. It also examines the evolution of documentary-making procedures and aesthetics over time. However, the book overlooks the longer histories of independent documentary filmmaking in America and the practice of making documentaries within institutional structures. [Extracted from the article]

This article centers on two documentaries about migrant women in their home: At Jolie Coiffure (Chez Jolie Coiffure, 2018) and Delphine’s Prayers (Les Prières de Delphine, 2021), both directed by by Rosine Mbakam. I put in conversation the home as a private space and the home as a national construction which creates categories of exclusion and restrictions. I argue that Rosine Mbakam performs an act of “decolonial framing” by taking an antiethnographic approach and creating documentary events—including the filmmaking process, the film viewing, and real-life interactions centering on the film. This transnational cinema of confrontation creates community for Black, diasporic, and African audiences while reversing the gaze against white audiences. Mbakam films the home to showcase instances of resistance to institutional racism and colonial duress. Showing the home on screen also opens the way to create better homes for all through multiple avenues of participation. First, I analyse Mbakam’s filmmaking process and her own involvement on screen as a co-creative act, I then look at her composition which reflects the complex dwellings of the protagonists and how they are shaped by architecture. Finally, I look at the reception of her films to show how her mobile cinema activities provide the infrastructure for making new home spaces.

Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut Lady Bird (2017) hit screens during an extraordinary cultural moment in which stories of the abuse women suffer at the hands of powerful men were receiving unparalleled visibility. The #MeToo movement prompted the entertainment industry to reflect upon issues of diversity, equality, and women's roles on and off screen. As a woman filmmaker on the press circuit at the time, Gerwig was symbolically recruited and operationalised as part of the #MeToo/Times Up project. This article examines the dominant discourses circulating around women filmmakers in a post #metoo landscape, using Gerwig as a case study. In so doing, it seeks to revaluate feminist theories of authorship during a supposed watershed moment for the industry. It argues that the spectre of the (masculine) auteur not only endures in post #MeToo film culture but has actually been emboldened by the movement to further ghettoise women in the film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of British director Andrea Arnold and her award-winning films addresses auteur theory and its implications for woman filmmakers. I argue that the important difference between men and women in assuming the director's chair has been opportunity – and not a matter of essentialized gender differences. Pivoting to readings of Arnold's films, the analysis addresses the stylistic signatures and thematic motifs that characterize her feature films: Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009), Wuthering Heights (2011), American Honey (2016) and the short films Milk (1998) and Wasp (2003). I will discuss the implications of Arnold's film style vis-à-vis gender and the discourse on what constitutes social realist film in the U.K. As for thematic motifs, Arnold's films return to voyeurism, primal scenes and nature's persistence in seemingly denatured environments. The analysis further examines identities (marked by age, class and gender) as motifs that circulate through Arnold's work; a concern with identity that, nonetheless, refuses sentimentality and essentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue of the 'Archival Notes' column describes two richly intertwined archival collections, one personal and one institutional. Both are held at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin (MNC, Italy) and house documents pertaining to the activities of MNC's founder and film historian Maria Adriana Prolo (1908–91). The column provides a brief personal profile, details her personal and professional challenges – which led her to compare notes with Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque française – and sheds light on the plans, accomplishments and never-realized projects of Italy's first (and for decades only) woman film museum director. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Procesos Historicos is the property of Universidad de Los Andes (Venezuela) 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.)

On 13 August 2021, Sahraa Karimi posted a letter from her Twitter account. I write you with a broken heart and a deep hope that you can join me in protecting my beautiful people, especially filmmakers, from the Taliban. In the last few weeks, the Taliban have gained control of so many provinces. They have massacred our people, they kidnapped many children, they sold girls as child brides to their men, they murdered a woman for her attire.... It is a humanitarian crisis, and yet the world is silent.... We need your voice. The media, governments, and the world humanitarian organizations are conveniently silent as if this "Peace deal" with the Taliban was ever legitimate. It was never legitimate. Recognizing them gave them the confidence to come back to power. The Taliban have been brutalizing our people throughout the entire process of the talks. Everything that I have worked so hard to build as a filmmaker in my country is at risk of falling.... I do not understand this world. I do not understand this silence. I will stay and fight for my country, but I cannot do it alone. I need allies like you. Please help us get this world to care about what is happening to us. Please help us by informing your countries' most important media what is going on here in Afghanistan. Be our voices outside of Afghanistan... Days after publishing this letter, Sahraa had to flee from Afghanistan as the Taliban took control of Kabul. Within several weeks, I made this interview with her. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including new editor's commitment to inclusivity; female filmmakers, and French cinema; and a reflection on the journal's origins in wartime Hollywood.

This article analyses (self)representations of women filmmakers active in the Swedish and Spanish film industries, looking at how "technologies of gender," as theorised by Teresa de Lauretis, work to resist change within the industry's "gender regimes" (as conceptualised by Raewyn Connell), but are also simultaneously reinvented by women film workers. Even though the gender regimes of Spain and Sweden are quite different, and despite the diversity of positions adopted by women film workers concerning cinema—as art, commodity, and socio-political technology—there are striking similarities in the obstacles faced by women in a male-dominated industry. We identify these similarities in a series of interviews with women filmmakers from both countries. What emerges as shared across both contexts is the ambivalent negotiation that women film workers have to carry out in their self-representations, when entering an industry built around a male norm. But along with these representations marked by the relation to patriarchal technologies of gender, many women creators also search for bottom-up narratives and appropriations of such technologies to construct themselves and their works outside and beyond the androcentric model of the current film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The video essay "Filling (Feeling) the Archival Void" delves into the systematic erasure and archival dispossession of works by early women filmmakers, using the case study of Helena Cortesina and her lost film Flor de España (1922), which was falsely attributed to a male director. Through a counterhegemonic, provocative, "accented" approach, the video essay challenges established, patriarchal film histories and exposes the lies hidden within their seemingly rigorous discourse. First, it pays homage to the authorship of an almost forgotten filmmaker, Helena Cortesina, while also making her lost film visible, ensuring that at least some of its images are brought to light. Second, it explores the potential of the video essay as a feminist archive—a practice-based counterarchive, capable of producing counterhegemonic discourses that subvert the status quo. Third, by challenging the presumed "objectivity" of traditional film scholarship through openly poetic, subjective, and imaginative modes of expression, it establishes and validates a new epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This video essay uses multiple horror films in different languages from around the world to explore not only what rage looks like on screen, but also why, as women, we might feel the need to rage (Please view this video essay with subtitles enabled and wear headphones).

Appropriating relevant elements from Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy's formulation of an 'Accented Cinema' (2001) that addresses various aspects of diasporic filmmaking and filmmakers 'situated in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices' (4) as guiding tropes for analysis, this paper focuses on the depiction of the post-Taliban period through a contextual and critical reading of Nelofer Pazira's first documentary film Return to Kandahar (2003) and her debut feature film Act of Dishonour (2009) on the topic of 'honour-killing.' The paper examines how these films portray 'accented' images captured and relayed by a diaspora Afghan woman filmmaker to appeal to distant and unversed Western/foreign audiences and film festivals. In addition to Naficy's formulation of the 'accented cinema', I argue that Pazira uses a formulaic accent and variances (also to be read as her emphases) in her depictions that are aimed specifically at appealing to Western audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.)

This article examines femininity construction in Narjiss Nejjar’s film L’Amante du Rif (2011). This work has stirred a heated debate among cinema critics and movies goers regarding Nejjar’s rebellious representation of women. The study of female identity in films directed by a Moroccan female filmmaker would certainly contribute to the understanding of the complex relationship between the filmmaker’s gender and the discourse they produce; films directed by women offer the opportunity to have women’s experiences, concerns, and aspirations reported by women, which helps the audience and critics alike find out how the filmmaker’s gender has an impact on femininity construction. This article tries to deconstruct women’s cinematic discourse and gauge the extent to which their films can be of help to the women’s emancipation project. No doubt, the cinematic work or the film is the manifestation of a cluster of elements such as politics, ideology, and gender that interplay to produce meaning or a certain reality. Amidst these variants, the content analysis seems to be a suitable method that can situate Nejjar’s film within the women’s filmmaking map. The paper adopts a feminist approach to test the extent to which Nejjar’s unconventional gender representation has served women’s cause. The paper concludes that Nejjar has tried to introduce a rebellious feminist perspective by tackling taboo issues and using obscene language. However, according to some critics, Nejjar’s film was not appreciated by a large segment of the Moroccan audience because it does not respect the local specificities of Moroccans. Moreover, the tragic fate of the two main characters, Aya and her mother, aligns with Carter's notion of women's defeatism in film endings (Carter: 2009, 309). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the recent flourishing of research and pedagogy in higher education that seeks a greater rapprochement between criticism and creativity, bringing together diverse media, disciplines, and modes of knowledge production and expression. It focuses on transformations in film and screen studies and on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of conducting creative, intermedial research through filmmaking, drawing on the author's recent, first-hand experiences of conducting such research through her making of two films about the African women filmmakers Judy Kibinge (from Kenya) and Bongiwe Selane (from South Africa). The author gives specific examples from her filmmaking process to show how she has attempted to unsettle the generic space between documentary filmmaking, curatorial practice, and video-essay making to engage in a collaborative research practice with Kibinge, Selane, and their communities, as well as her research teams. Grounding itself in a decolonial feminist framework, this article draws on the perspectives of a wide range of thinkers and filmmaker scholars to explore ways in which the colonial, patriarchal values that have haunted many academic institutions can be reformed to allow for the envisioning of new futures that will lead to a more self-reflexive, socially just higher education environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appropriating relevant elements from Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy’s formulation of an ‘Accented Cinema’ (2001) that addresses various aspects of diasporic filmmaking and filmmakers ‘situated in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices’ (4) as guiding tropes for analysis, this paper focuses on the depiction of the post-Taliban period through a contextual and critical reading of Nelofer Pazira’s first documentary film Return to Kandahar (2003) and her debut feature film Act of Dishonour (2009) on the topic of 'honour-killing.' The paper examines how these films portray ‘accented’ images captured and relayed by a diaspora Afghan woman filmmaker to appeal to distant and unversed Western/foreign audiences and film festivals. In addition to Naficy's formulation of the 'accented cinema', I argue that Pazira uses a formulaic accent and variances (also to be read as her emphases) in her depictions that are aimed specifically at appealing to Western audiences.

Some films produced during the Popular Unity - UP government (1970-1973) entered the canon not only of Chilean cinema, but of Latin American cinema. Consequently, they have been studied a lot over the years, while another part of the filmography made in Chile in that period had little or no visibility. Examples of this second case are the cinematographic works directed by women in the early 1970s, although, fortunately, some of these filmmakers are increasingly the subject of studies and exhibitions. However, even in the recent bibliography, the productions with women filmmakers made in the days of the UP were not conceived together. It is this contribution to research on women's cinema in Latin America that is the purpose of this article. After carrying out a survey based on several sources, we arrived at a corpus of 15 works, which were analyzed from the following aspects: composition of the direction; Format; narrative genre; form of financing and production structure; if it has an interview; if it has narration; if there is music (if so, what is its role); from which logics are built the relations between image and sound; assembly logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, documentary has become an important tool of communication for Lithuanian women filmmakers since their number and visibility on national and international screens has grown significantly. Better gender balance in documentary-filmmaking noticeably increased the exposure to greater stylistic and thematic diversity, as well as paved the way for the new cinematic approaches to national and world history, politics, warfare, collective identity, and other issues traditionally assigned to men. This article examines creative documentaries directed by Giedrė Žickytė, Jūratė Samulionytė and Vilma Samulionytė, Martina Jablonskytė and Ramunė Rakauskaitė. First, it investigates how these films combine subjective, analytical, and critical approaches to examine and mediate complex phenomena in Lithuanian history. Second, it discusses how these women documentarists engage with the past and in what ways their approaches and languages differ from conventional historical documentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feeling of being caught between immersion in cinematic fictions and having one's attention pulled away from them by a range of distractions has shaped the experience of cinema for many decades. In the 1910s, several developments emerged in tandem with each other: the promotion of films and their stars/directors, narrative becoming the dominant form of cinema production, and the materialization of tension between immersion and distraction for audiences. The environment in which 1910s promotional and narrational strategies thrived set the stage for how we have thought about the bodies of women on screen, behind the camera, and in the seats of the theater. This essay focuses on the example of Cleo Madison as a filmmaker, actress, and a site of discursive energy to explore these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With sensuality and innovation, French cinéaste Germaine Dulac illuminated the flaws in bourgeoise relationships. Her earliest extant film La Cigarette (1919) exposes the self-contempt that marriage breeds as it follows a husband's suicidal mission. Fixated on living an "ideal," patriarchal marriage, the husband falls into despair when his wife refuses to stay at home. His obsession reflects Sara Ahmed's notion of happiness as a social obligation rather than a sincere feeling (The Promise of Happiness 2010). Beyond the diegesis, Dulac's creative process and Marshall McLuhan's analysis of the socio-technical climate's influence on the psyche dovetail. Dulac aimed to transform the "unique ratios of sense perception" that McLuhan analyzes in The Medium is the Massage (41), and she succeeded by deploying all the technology at her disposal. In La Cigarette, color filters, iris lenses, and typographical variations collapse the happy marriage and wife-as-object norms. This disruption occurs most notably as the female body engages with music. Aurality along with visual-verbal texts exemplify what I am calling "media affects," or the affective responses that emerge from Dulac optimizing her medium. This reading of La Cigarette synthesizes a media theory of perception (McLuhan), the affective object (Ahmed), and existing research on Dulac's cinematography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a joint interview, shortly after the release of In Between (2016), writer-director Maysaloun Hamoud and lead actress Mouna Hawa proclaimed that the primary aim of the film was to render visible the otherwise invisible lives of young Palestinian women living in Tel-Aviv-Jaffa—an unclassifiable group that forms a minority within a minority within a minority. By what means can a minority relegated to an invisible existence be represented and what is the ethical import of films which grapple with the absence of a feminine space and the impossibility of its representation? These challenges take center stage in several works of contemporary Israeli and Palestinian women filmmakers. While the historical (and present) circumstances and contexts underlying the production of their work differ, the directorial sensibilities which populate the aesthetic fabric of such films point to the emergence of collective assemblages of enunciation that transgress essentialist categorizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with filmmaker Aurora Guerrero about her film "Mosquita y Mari" is presented. Topics discussed include how Aurora became a filmmaker, the influence of women of color writers and queer women of color cultural workers on her career, the motivation behind the narrative style of her film "Mosquita y Mari," and how she came up with the film and its reception.

In view of the increasing production and use of data in the course of digitalization, the goal of feminist film historians to increase the visibility of women's work has taken on a new urgency. Through the production, processing, and dissemination of data, blind spots in a research field such as feminist film history can be maintained or amplified, but also minimized. Access to data as well as the critical reflection on that data is therefore one of the greatest challenges for humanistic scholars today. Against this backdrop, this article discusses how digital data visualization can enhance and transform research on women in early cinema. Presenting a case study on the Women Film Pioneers Explorer, I argue that data visualizations can help us reflect on our own (feminist) film historiographical approaches, epistemological premises, and representative conventions and thus on the "situatedness of knowledges." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]