(NB: This syllabus is a work in progress and is still subject to changes)
Women and Cinema
Jeremi Szaniawski
This course aims at investigating the representation and role of women in the history of filmmaking and film theory, all the while mapping a history of cinema through important works dealing with and made by women. Important directors whose works we will analyze in class include Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Marguerite Duras, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Kira Muratova, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Samira Makhmalbaf, Andrea Arnold or Lucretia Martel; and scholars used here will include Susan Sontag, Julia Kristeva, Miriam Hansen, Kaja Silverman, Judith Butler, Mary Ann Doane, and, of course, Laura Mulvey.
Week One: Introduction; women in classic cinema
Session one: Female auteurs in the 19th century and Cinematic pioneers; Cinema as gaze and cinema as body. A male-dominated industry.
Excerpts of prose and poetry by Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson, the Brontë Sisters, Anne Radcliffe, Jane Austen.
Cinematic Pioneers: Germaine Dulac (France), Lotte Reiniger (Germany), Maya Deren (USA), Esfir Shub (Soviet Union)
Screening: La Souriante Madame Beudet; Meshes of the Afternoon
Readings: Charles Musser, Lotte Eisner, Miriam Hansen
Session two: damsels in distress and photogénie; women and gender roles in Hollywood genre films
Screening: The Passion of Joan of Ark (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Other excerpts from The Lonely Villa, Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith), Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst), 42nd street (Lloyd Bacon), The Public Enemy (William Wellman), Jezebel (William Wyler); Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder); The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
Reading: Jean Epstein, Laura Mulvey, Mary Anne Doane, Molly Haskell, E. Ann Kaplan Week Two: Women, WWII and its aftermath
Session one: Women and fascism, Women in war
Screening: Una Giornata Particolare (Ettore Scola)
Excerpt from Triumph of the Will (Lenni Riefenstahl), Night Porter (Liliana Cavani), Landscape after the Battle (Andrzej Wajda)
Readings: Janet Maslin, Jill Stephenson, Kevin Passmore, Victoria De Grazia
Session two: Domesticity and feminism: Melodrama
Analysis of the photograph ‘Sailor kissing nurse’
Screening: All that Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk), an episode of Mad Men
Other excerpts of films shown in class: Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (R.W. Fassbinder)
Week Three: New Waves
Session one : the French New Wave
Screenings: Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda)
Other excerpts of films seen in class: Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais), La Pointe Courte (Agnès Varda), Breathless, My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard), Jules et Jim (François Truffaut), India Song (Marguerite Duras), Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
Readings: Claire Johnston, Hilary Radner, Anne Gillain
Session two: female filmmakers in Eastern Europe
Screenings: Daisies (Vera Chytilova)
Other excerpts of films shown in class: The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko), The Asthenic Syndrome, Three Stories (Kira Muratova), The Border Street (Wanda Jakubowska)
Readings: Jane Taubman
Week Four: Feminist cinema in the 1970s: renegotiating the gaze, the geste, duration.
Session One: Laura Mulvey
Screening: Riddles of the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen)
Session Two: Chantal Akerman
Screening: Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (Chantal Akerman)
Other excerpts of films shown in class: Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman), Dust (Marion Hänsel)
Readings: Laura Mulvey, Ivone Margulies, Marcelline Block
Week Five: Feminism and female filmmakers, ctd
Session one: New York state of mind
Screening: Girlfriends (Claudia Weill)
Other excerpts shown in class: Joyce at 34 (Joyce Chopra)
Session two: Documentary
Screenings: TBD
Readings: Susan Sontag, Gilles Deleuze, Marilyn Johns-Blackwell, Judith Butler, Richard Dyer
Week Six: Case studies
Session One: Claire Denis,
Screenings: Beau Travail (Alfred Hitchcock)
Session Two: Female filmmakers today: Lucretia Martel, Andrea Arnold, Kelly Reichardt, Athina Rachel Tsangari
Screenings: Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
Other excerpts shown in class: Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari), La Niña Santa (Lucretia Martel), Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
Readings: Kaja Silverman Closing remarks: Hollywood re-appropriations (Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Jane Campion); post-feminism
Other excerpts of films shown in class: The Piano (Jane Campion)
Readings: Tania Modleski, Angela McRobbie, Jeremi Szaniawski