Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Ma?wenn [Paperback]

Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Ma?wenn is the first book to link these five filmmakers together through an analysis of the relationship between filming ones own body and the creative body. Through engaged artistic practices, these female filmmakers turn the camera to their bodies as a way to show the process of artistic creation and to produce themselves as filmmakers and artists in their work from 19872009. By making visible their bodies, they offer a wider range of representation of women in French film. Through avant-garde form, in which tangible corporeal elements are made image, they transform representational content and produce new cinematic bodies with the power to influence signifying practices in contemporary French culture. By rendering visible their artistic practice and praxis and their camera in their workreflexive practices that also unite these filmmakersthese women also visually claim the role of filmmaker and creative subject. Thus they establish their authority in a film industry in which womens participation and recognition of their achievements have historically been lower than that of their male counterparts.Cybelle H. McFadden is assistant professor of French and is also a member of the Womens and Gender Studies Program faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

McFadden presents an original and thought-provoking overview of a particular strategy in women's filmmaking, which will be of interest to any future researchers of this theme, in France or further afield. French Studies

Chapters function both independently and inter-dependently, which is a great advantage for those who teach French cinema, as chapters can easily be pulled as readings, just as the entire book can be assigned for courses on Contemporary French Cinema or Womens Filmmaking in France. The book is a welcomed addition to scholarship on all five filmmakers, particularly to the few published explló%