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, particularly the history of the American avant-garde.

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

Robin Blaetz is Associate Professor and Chair of the Film Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Visions of the Maid: Joan of Arc in American Film and Culture.

  

  

  

  

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks / Robin Blaetz 1
Swing and Sway: Marie Menken’s Filmic Events / Melissa Ragona 20
Different/Same/Both/Neither: The Polycentric Cinema of Joyce Wieland / Paul Arthur 45
Evacuating Visual Fields, Layering Auditory Frames: Signature, Translation, Resonance, and Gunvor Nelson’s Films / Chris Holmlund 67
Moving and Moving: From Minimalism to Lives of Performers / Noel Carroll 89
Eye/Body: The Cinematic Paintings of Carolee Schneemann / M.M. Serra and Kathryn Ramey 103
“Absently Enchanted”: The Apocryphal, Ecstatic Cinema of Barbara Rubin / Ara Osterweil 127
Amy Greenfield: Film, Dynamic Movement, and Transformation / Robert A. Haller 152
Barbara Hammer: Lyrics and History / Chuck Kleinhans 167
Chick Strand’s Experimental Ethnography / Maria Pramaggiore 188
Amnesis Time: The Films of Marjorie Keller / Robin Blaetz 211
In the Ruins of the Image: The Work of Leslie Thornton / Mary Ann Doane 239
Sounds, Intervals, and Startling Images in the Films of Abigail Child / Maureen Turim 263
Peggy’s Playhouse: Contesting the Modernist Paradigm / William C. Wees 290
Su Friedrich: Breaking the Rules / Janet Cutler 312
The Experimental “Dunyementary”: A Cinematic Signature Effect / Kathleen McHugh 339
Women’s Experimental Cinema: Some Pedgogical Challenges / Scott Macdonald 360
Appendix: Film Distribution 383
Bibliography 385
Contributors 401
Index 405