American Women Filmmakers 4219-SD160
We will watch a selection of 15 films. Directors to consider:
Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, A Study in Choreography for Camera, Ritual in Transfigured Time, Meditation on Violence, The Very Eye of Night
Dorothy Arzner, Dance Girl Dance, Christopher Young
Barbara Hammer, Double Strength, Sanctus, Maya Deren’s Sink
Shirley Clarke, Portrait of Jason
Donna Dietch, Desert Hearts
Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”
Lizzie Borden, Working Girls, Born in Flames
Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust
Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman
Sofia Coppola, Virgin Suicides
Su Friedrich, Damned If You Don’t, Sink or Swim, Hide and Seek, Odds of Recovery,
Kimberley Pierce, Boys Don’t Cry
Silas Howard and Harriet Dodge, By Hook or by Crook
Lisa Cholodenko, High Art, The Kids Are Alright
Patty Jenkins, Monster
Regina King, One Night in Miami
Greta Gerwig, Ladybird; Little Women
Sini Anderson, The Punk Singer
Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone, Leave no Trace
Kelly Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy, First Cow
Lilly and Julie Wachowski, Bound; Sense8
Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Ekwa Msangi, Farewell Amor
Sydney Freeland, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, Drunktown’s Finest
Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Type of course
Learning outcomes
The students will become familiar with selected films of American Women directors; they will learn how to watch and discuss a film, with attention paid to themes as well as genres and forms; they will learn about the differences between Hollywood and independent film; they will study film in a broad range of historical contexts and discover ways in which gender conditions both filmmaking and viewer responses.
Assessment criteria
1. Viewing questions (30%)
2. Class attendance and particiation (30%)
3. Final essay (40%)
Bibliography
Peter Wollen, “The Two Avant-Gardes, First published in Studio International, November/December 1975.
Laura Doane, “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body“
Todd McGowan, from The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan
Catherine Waldby, “Virtual Anatomy: From the Body in the Text
to the Body on the Screen”
Małgorzata Radkiewicz, Władczynie Spojrzenia
Yvonne Rainer, The Films of Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer, The Mind Is a Muscle
Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Carson et al.
Art and the Moving Image, ed. Tanya Leighton
Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors, ed. Redding and Brownworth
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Su Friedrich, “Radical Form: Radical Content”
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: