Film Studies

Women stars in Hollywood were invariably in two categories, said director Otto Preminger. One group was of women who were exploited by men, and the other, much smaller group was of women who survived by acting like men.

Independent Female Filmmakers collects original and previously published essays, interviews, and manifestos from some of the most defining and groundbreaking independent female filmmakers of the last 40 years. ...

The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication comprises more than 250 entries by an international team of both established and emerging scholars in the field. This innovative resource explores how gender is represented in media, who produces the content, and the ways in which audiences receive and understand media messages. ...

Histories of women in Hollywood usually recount the contributions of female directors, screenwriters, designers, actresses, and other creative personnel whose names loom large in the credits. Yet, from its inception, the American film industry relied on the labor of thousands more women, workers whose vital contributions often went unrecognized. Never Done introduces generations of women who worked behind the scenes in the film industry--from the employees' wives who hand-colored the Edison Company's films frame-by-frame, to the female immigrants who toiled in MGM's backrooms to produce beautifully beaded and embroidered costumes. Challenging the dismissive characterization of these women as merely menial workers, media historian Erin Hill shows how their labor was essential to the industry and required considerable technical and interpersonal skills. ...

This companion is both an overview of, and intervention into the field of cinema and gender. The essays included here address a variety of geographical contexts, from an analysis of cinema. Islam and women and television under Eastern European socialism, to female audience reception in Nigeria, to changing class and race norms in Bollywood dance sequences. A special focus is on women directors in a global context that includes films and filmmakers from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North and South America. ...

Sue Thornham's study explores issues in feminist filmmaking through an examination of a wide range of films by women filmmakers, ranging from the avant-garde to mainstream Hollywood, and from the 1970s to the present day, discussing directors including Sally Potter, Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Patricia Rozema and Lynne Ramsay.

A timely intervention into debates on the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture.

If there was a moment during the sixties, seventies, or eighties that changed the history of the women's film movement, B. Ruby Rich was there. Part journalistic chronicle, part memoir, and 100% pure cultural historical odyssey, Chick Flicks--with its definitive, the-way-it-was collection of essays--captures the birth and growth of feminist film as no other book has done. ...

Contested Images: Women of Color in Popular Culture is a collection of 17 essays that analyze representations in popular culture of African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American women. The anthology is divided into four parts: film images, beauty images, music, and television. ...

The release of Skyfall in 2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. It earned over one billion dollars in the worldwide box office and won two Academy Awards. Amid popular and critical acclaim, some have questioned the representation of women in the film. From an aging M to the limited role of the Bond Girl and the characterization of Miss Moneypenny as a defunct field agent, Skyfall develops the legacy of Bond at the expense of women.

The 1950's era of science fiction film effectively ended when space flight became a reality with the first manned orbit of Earth in 1962. As the genre's wildly speculative depictions of science and technology gave way to more reality-based representations, relations between male and female characters reflected the changing political and social climates of the era.

The first book by influential filmmaker Barbara Hammer, whose life and work have inspired generations of queer, feminist and avant-garde artists and filmmakers. The wild days of non-monogamy in the 1970s, the development of the queer aesthetic in the 80s and the fight for visibility during the culture wars of the 1990s, Hammer's search for meaning as she contemplates mortality in the past 10 years, Hammer! includes text and images from all these periods to create a memoir as innovative and disarming as her work on screen has always been.

Heroes, Lovers, and Others tells the fascinating history of Latinos in film, from the birth of the movies to the present, through a series of stories about Hollywood's most famous and enduring stars. The book features such Latino legends as Dolores del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Ramon Navarro, Desi Arnaz, Anthony Quinn, Raquel Welch, Selma Hayek, and Antonio Banderas. ...

No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some cases perpetuate conventions curtailing women's freedom. ...

This book explores the role film and television stardom has played in establishing, reinforcing, and challenging popular ethnic notions of Latina/os in the United States since the silent film era of the 1920s. In addition to documenting the importance of Latina and Latino stars to American film and television history, Mary C. Beltrán focuses on key moments in the construction of "Hollywood Latinidad" by analyzing the public images of these stars as promoted by Hollywood film studios, television networks, producers, and the performers themselves. ...

Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia records the contribution of women of Latin American birth or heritage to the economic and cultural development of the United States. This encyclopedia is the first comprehensive gathering of scholarship on Latinas. ...

In October 2017, actress Alyssa Milano sparked the #MeToo movement. The ensuing protests quickly encompassed far more than Harvey Weinstein and the entertainment industry. They expressed women's outrage at male workplace behavior in every sector and social class and even helped elect a new generation of women leaders in 2018. But what has been the effect of #MeToo in the entertainment industry itself? This book traces the movement's influence on the stories being told, on changing representations of women's lives and bodies, and on the slow changes among the producers who shape the stories. ...

From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions. But few fans know that behind these ground-breaking features was an incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under the radar for decades. ...

In the early 1970s, a new breed of film emerged that would completely change the way black people were presented in movies. With their afros picked to spherical perfection and their guns blazing, big bad soul brothers and super sexy sisters lit up movie theaters across the country. Never before had black men and women appeared on screen in quite this way. In time, these films would be called "blaxploitation." And while it has long been debated exactly which film launched the blaxploitation era, the financial success of Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Gordon Parks's Shaft helped open the flood gates for the more than 200 films that are now considered blaxploitation. Reflections on Blaxploitation: Actors and Directors Speak is a collection of interviews with many of the men and women who defined the genre. ...

In this deeply engaging account Michelle H. Raheja offers the first book-length study of the Indigenous actors, directors, and spectators who helped shape Hollywood's representation of Indigenous peoples. Since the era of silent films, Hollywood movies and visual culture generally have provided the primary representational field on which Indigenous images have been displayed to non-Native audiences. These films have been highly influential in shaping perceptions of Indigenous peoples as, for example, a dying race or as inherently unable or unwilling to adapt to change. However, films with Indigenous plots and subplots also signify at least some degree of Native presence in a culture that largely defines Native peoples as absent or separate. ...

This book covers Theda Bara, Barbara Lamarr, Pola Negri Mae Murray, Clara Bow and other actresses in the silent era.

American women who contributed their talent to the silent film industry are still largely unrecognized today. In The Silent Feminists, Anthony Slide shows how " during the first three decades of its existence, the American film industry was, in many ways, a woman's world." His work documents the lives and careers of America's first women directors and provides an introduction to the subject of women in the American silent-film industry. ...

What difference does it make when a woman wields the camera? Women Filmmakers: Refocusing casts a critical eye on the often-overlooked work of women filmmakers. It provides a rich sampling of the wealth of thought and experience of women in the film industry and brings together in a unique way the views of creators and critics from around the world.

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema portrays a group of important contemporary women filmmakers working across the Sinophone world including Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and beyond. The book delineates and conceptualizes their cinematic and trans-media practices within an evolving, multifaceted feminist intimate-public commons. The films by these experienced and emerging filmmakers, including Huang Yu-shan, Yau Ching, Ai Xiaoming, Wen Hui, Huang Ji and others, represent some of the most innovative and socially engaged work in both fictional and non-fictional modes in Chinese-language cinema as well as global women's cinema. ...

Explores how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media's limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women, which make it difficult for the average girl to see herself as powerful.

The first director to tell a story on the screen ... The highest paid director in the silent days ...The pioneer of socially conscious films. The first editor to receive solo screen credit ... All Were Women. Based on the groundbreaking edition, Reel Women: the First Hundred Years, by Ally Acker, Jodie Foster takes us on a sweeping journey that looks at the remarkable achievements of female filmmakers from 1896 into the 21st century who transformed the way we look at movies. Using rare footage, and exclusive interviews with filmmakers all over the globe, Reel Herstory corrects the notion that women behind the scenes held adjunct or peripheral careers, and restores them rightfully to their pioneering status. Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women is an unforgettable look at pioneering women all crafts behind the scenes who helped shape the history of motion pictures, but whose contributions have been long ignored.

There were more women working in influential positions behind the scenes in film before 1920 than at any other time in history. Filmmaker, author, nationwide lecturer Ally Acker, takes us on an archival journey of the pioneering female filmmakers who have transformed the way we look at movies from 1896 to the present. This compelling event has toured the country. Features: Katharine Hepburn, Lillian Gish, Sherry Lansing, Rita Moreno, Euzhan Palcy, Margarethe von Trotta, Marcia Nasatir, Jay Presson Allen, Harriet Frank Jr. Lee Grant and Dede Allen. [Filmmakers on Film, 10]

Unladylike2020 is a series of 26 short films and a one-hour documentary profiling diverse and little-known American women from the turn of the 20th century, and contemporary women who follow in their footsteps. ...

“Women and Film” encompasses numerous issues in academic film studies, including the histories of female practitioners in the industry; the works they produced; female audiences; female critics, historians, archivists, and theorists; and the portrayals of women on the movie screen. In the early years of cinema, women played a significant role in filmmaking (e.g., the director Lois Weber and the scenarist Frances Marion in the United States), but these individuals were soon forgotten as the industry became male dominated.

Research on women and the silent screen examines the role gender plays onscreen and behind the scenes in early film cultures worldwide. This vibrant sub-field emerged in the 1990s in response to the rise of scholarship on early cinema that began after the Brighton conference in 1978 and the emergence of feminist film theory earlier in that decade. Scholars of women and silent cinema add a historical perspective to feminist film theory, while demonstrating the formative role that gender and sexuality played in early film-making, film-going, and film culture. ...

The Bronze Screen honors the past, illuminates the present, and opens a window to the future of Latinos in motion pictures. From silent movies to urban gang films, stereotypes of the Greaser, the Lazy Mexican, the Latin lover and the Dark lady are examined. Rare and extensive footage traces the progression of this distorted screen image to the increased prominence of today's Latino actors, writers and directors.

Blonde, beautiful and talented, Marion Davies was the first and funniest of the screwball comediennes. She combined zany slapstick with exuberant mimicry. This combines archival film clips with interviews and rare home movies to explore her life and work.

Explores the current role of Hispanics in the media including interviews with Geraldo Rivera, Moctesuma Esparza, David Valdez, Rita Moreno, Elizabeth Peña, Jimmy Smits and Isiah Morales.

A series of films which examines the Indian stereotype portrayed in movies and questions what the effect this Hollywood image has been on Indians' own self-image.

Profiles women leaders in the fields of politics, business, military, space, motion pictures, and comedy.

Travelling through the heartland of America, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond examines how the myth of the movie "Injun" has influenced the world's understanding - and misunderstanding - of Natives. With clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, and candid interviews with celebrated Native and non-Native directors, writers, actors and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell, Charlie Hill and Russell Means, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema's depiction of Native people from the silent film era to the present day.

Describes racial and gender stereotyping of Asian women in U.S. motion pictures as well as other filmic media, with Reloaded updating the original documentary by noting the effects of globalization and a changing population within the past 25 years. Includes interviews with actresses and other Asian American women who describe their experiences of such stereotyping.

Inter-medial and trans-national in its approach, Feminist Media Histories examines the historical role gender has played in varied media technologies, and documents women’s engagements with these media as audiences, users and consumers, creators and executives, critics, writers and theorists, technicians and laborers, educators, activists, and librarians.

What makes women and the silent screen a compelling field of research – one that engages scholars, students and film-going publics – is the opportunity to explore film history anew. As this special dossier demonstrates, presumptions about industrial, cultural, artistic, national, political and social change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are challenged when an apparently simple question is posed: who were making films, writing about films, and enabling the industry’s popular expansion? ...

This index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

A comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.

Performing Arts Periodicals Database covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television and more.

This resource includes references from a variety of Women's Studies bibliographic databases.

The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.