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TING FILM #Sr'* ,tvæ.. 2) þ tNv TING FILM :*. rr gTn'nx..n¡lj¿.,¡E¡.q¿O*fn- _ I q ¡{ IES and' rrrNlo ) rryt TTTE l{ES ßr*+pa6ç g** f*¿ ê f*F" LEE GRIEVESON IA}ü C]NEMA ;/sts¡r of l..onte.ge) tin, I'levsky :V.- a N'.ESTERIV EPIO $þ¡rered Ì'/agorirl L-*o ê'.-{, tdeE& EDITORS ffi nerolrTEsT snotroN EARTII¡I SCCIAIJ c fr *.€ hlftn.s,+tr -q i'. fl Fng* þeu *J¡ F"*-* s 6Ê\ êrt k-q #sr'*" ,¡1rnn' r+o4'++++ $ É44 €5er f É."ff ddt¿" fråÊ iB* #.s äd''+* ITTTTITT¡T¡TTTITIIITITTTT¡IIIT editons I f t f I I t I llttlrrrlrt¡IltrlrI LeeGrievesonand HaideeWasson, INVENTING FILM STUDIES Duke Universiþl Pr€ss I Durham and London I zooS Feminist Looks' caaerø obscura issues z, zo-zt, and,54 display the consistency and range of the journal's i¡terest feminism, in media culture, and imagining the va¡ious ways that women loolc camera obscura l,\û\ tl lr t.n\i!ü ¿il¡ | ¡h littù],t) camera obscura ^ , t èl r, lonhl 'ùil il ùtl tìh, 11Ì,qrl 4. ¿t (Re)Inventin g C amer a Ob s cura AMELIE HASTIE, LYNNE JOYRICH' PATRICIA WHlTE, AND SHARON WILLIS lÈ A man of about thirty strikes us as a youthful, somewhat unformed individual. ' . \ woman of the same age, however, often frightens us by her psychical rigidity and changeability. It ís as though, indeed, the difficult development to femininity exhausted tlie possibilities of the person concerned - Sigmund Freud, "FemininitY" The change seemed to have been accomplished painlessly and completely and in s Camera Obscura ísste z: Hitchcock's that Marnie and, feminist production looms a way that Orlando herself showed no surprise at it. Many people ' ' ' hold ' ' ' large in the early pages of the journal. a change of sex is against nature. It is enough for us to state the simple fac Camera Obscura such (Cover F.miñ¡h, CùlbG, !d Mðdi. Srudis. imagg from Marnie" Alfred, the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has Orlando was a man till Hitchcocls rg64) so ever slnce. Camera Obscura zo-zt:.More than sixty Virginia Wo olf , O rlan do - feminist ñlm and television scholars con_ sider the historical and theoretical impact Obscura turned thirty in zoo6. The editors eschewed, or neglect I Camerø of spectatorship studies in the special a unformed age, in favor marking the anniversary at twenty-frve, somewhat double-issue "Spectatrix.' (Cover image the celebration of a moment of remarkable potential-perhaps radical ofTheda Bara, publiciry still) abiliry as Woolf if not Freud, would have it. We are marking this histori Camera Obscura 54: With a focus on occasion by writing the history of the journal.' This essay therefore reflects feminist video production, this issue's . with the histor¡ theor¡ and practice of the journal as it has intersected cover recalls ea¡lier designs and displays , histor¡ theor¡ and practice ofthe discipline offrlm studies. the journaì's ongoing and widening con- cerns. (Cover Most notabl¡ Camera Obscura and its history have been unified by the ima ge fiom Fountain, Patty Chang, 1999) collective nature of the journal and thus through our shared intellectual lflllfr!fl,ffi][ir osity, theoretical goals, and political investments. In what follows, this unity ductions, and so on), both in relation to and in distinction from those of film. and our diferences are eqirally apparent. The following sections - each ponder- However, despite these changes and thevaried political, theoretical, and textual ing Camerø Obscura'slheory and practice, each written by one of our editors - commitments that theyrepresent, there is something that has always held (and interact and intertwine with one another. At times the observations interrupt continues to hold) the journal together: an ongoing intellectual verve-the one another; at other times they continue a thought, occasionally reiterating epistemological excitement of active cultural engagement-that both initiated a particular point and ocçasionally reframing the issues. Their organization is lhe Camera Obscura project and continues to fuel the journal today. The last modeled after a collectively written piece entitled 'Feminism and Film: Criti- section of the essay thus attempts to capture some of the flavor of this energy cal Approaches" that appeared in the first issue of the journal.2 This present and to clariff how it has both directed and redirected the journal over the essay thus embodies the history and original a;Lms of. Cømera Obscurø.Wehave, course of its history. nevertheless, altered the organization of that earlier model by refrning it to All of these issues overlap; the sections therefore overlap as well. In per- meet our current needs. In this wa¡ what follows embodiês the t¡ansforma- haps classic Camera Obscura fashion, this is a truly self-reflexive piece: one in tions-and even contradictions-that have been inherent to the journal from which the current editors reflect on their own and the journal's concerns; one its beginnings. The original statement by the collective used the following sec- in which the va¡ious contributions reflect one another; and one that, we hope, tion headings: context, text, methodology, production. We liked the simplicity reflects the theory and practice, intellectu4l and political engagements, and of those titles, but we have added to them more descriptive subtitles. Further- personal and professional motivations that define our work Such reflexivity is more, we have altered their original arrangement, which we feel better per- an intrinsic part of that work it undergirds both what we do (producing a text mits us to narrate the journal's history and its approach over the years. In this that situates and critically comments on other cultural texts that themselves can wa¡ the idealistic and prescriptive nature of the original piece is transformed be read as commenting on our cultural situation) and how we do it (process- into the retrospective bent of this current essay-though we also clearly main- ing such critique through our editorial practice ofcollective processing itself). tain the idealism of the original editors. Given our shared interests and history Our approach to this history and overview has thus been personal, anecdotal, similar points invariably emerge in all of the contributions here; yet given our collective, individual, and even sometimes contentious. It is a kind of living differences, each contribution also gives specific emphases to select topics, call- history that is as much about the present work of collectivity as it is about the ing attention to particular aspects ofour theory and practice. journal and its original aims. We believe that it therefore not onlydescribes but The first section, for example, tends to the journal's institutional history- itself enacts the way in which Camera Obscura operates. or, perhaps more accuratel¡ its anti-institutional history. Related to that is the historyof the journal's editorial collective, and so the second section considers Context: A Brief History the complicated practice of collectivity that has defined not only the journal's operation but also its political orientation. There are some aspects of that ori- Camera Obscura emerged as a collective feminist response to a paradoxical ten- entation that have remained constant over the journal's history- most notabl¡ sion between the presence of the image of women on screen in mainstream film a commitment to feminist theory and practice. Yet as section three elaborates, and the absence of women in both the fields of mainstream fi.lm production other aspects have shifted: no longer just interested in the question of sexual and the emerging disciplinary production of fiIm theory. Issues of the repre- difference as originally formulated, Camera Obscura is also now interested in sentation of women in frlm were central to the journal's original project, fore- questions of difference more broadly defrned, equally invested in analyses of grounded by an emphasis on alternative women's production and on psycho- race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender expression, and generation. In anal¡ic and ideological inquiries into commercial and avant-garde cinema. addition to broadening our political and theoretical scope to encompass such The journal was founded by four women who were just beginning graduate concerns, Camera Obscurahas also enlarged the scope of the texts it addresses, school at University of California, Berkeley: fanet Bergstrom, Sandy Flitter- moving beyond a consideration of cinema alone to other media formations man, Elisabeth Lyon, and Constance Penley. They met while working on the and institutions (television, music, photograph¡ medical imaging, digital pro- magazine Women and Film, which had moved from Los Angeles in 1973 to be 3O0 HASÏE, JOYRtCH, WHtTE, AND WtLLtS (REITNVENTTNG CAMERA OESCUPÁ sot somewhat informally housed in the Pacific Film Archive. The four founders left psychoanaþis, semiotics, and apparatus theory-was influenced by the jour- Women and Film after two years because they wanted to engage with theoretical nal's original editors who studied abroad in France with teachers like Christian issues that were beyond the scope of the magazine and to experiment with the Metz and Raymond Bellour. These theorists themselves were early contribu- ideals of collective work. Camera Obscura'sfrrst issue was published in 1976 and tors to the journal, and so Camera Obscura (alongside other journals such as featured discussions of |ackie Raynal's Deux Fois, the work of Yvonne Rainer, Screen) became an early leader in the larger turn toward continental theories in and fean-Louis Baudry's theoryof the cinematographic apparatus. Subóequent the evolution of film studies in the r97os. Psychoanalysis functioned as a tool of issues were produced sporadically for three years then largely were regularized interpretation for many Camera Obscura authors as this approach provided a at three issues per annum.
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