Synopses & Reviews
And The Mirror Cracked explores the politics and pleasures of contemporary feminist cinema. Tracing the productive ways in which feminist directors create alternative film forms, Anneke Smelik highlights cinematic issues which are central to feminist films: authorship, point of view, metaphor, montage, and the excessive image. In a continuous mirror game between theory and cinema, this study explains how these cinematic techniques are used to represent female subjectivity positively and affirmatively. Among the films considered are
A Question of Silence,
Bagdad Café, and
Sweetie and the Virgin Machine.
Synopsis
Explores the politics and pleasures of contemporary feminist cinema.
About the Author
Anneke Smelik is Lecturer in Film and New Media, the University of Nijmegen and Co-Editor of
Women's Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments * Introduction * What Meets the Eye: An Overview of Feminist Film Theory * In Pursuit of the Author - On Cinematic Directorship--
The Subjective Factor * Silent Violence: On Point of View--
Dust and
Cruel Embrace * And the Mirror Cracked: On Metaphors of Violence and Resistance--
A Question of Silence and
Broken Mirrors * Forces of Subversion: On the Excess of the Image--
Bagdad Café and
Sweetie * The Navel of the Film: On the Abject and the Masquerade--
The Virgin Machine * Epilogue * Notes * Bibliography * Filmography * Index