Women Filmmakers

Undergraduate

The seminar surveys the extraordinary contributions that female filmmakers have made to cinema and to film theory, ranging from the beginning of cinema to the most recent examples, from narrative cinema to experimental practice. We examine films by Lois Weber, Alice Guy Blache, Germaine Dulac, Leontine Sagan, Leni Riefenstahl, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Maya Deren, Agnes Varda, Vera Chytilova, Barbara Hammer, Julie Dash, Claire Denis, Lucrecia Martel, Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Alice Rohrwacher, Céline Sciamma, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Mati Diop. We read texts written by women writer, filmmakers, and critics such as Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Barbara Hammer, Julie Dash, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Laura Mulvey, and Manohla Dargis. The cinema is approached from a variety of historical and theoretical discourses such as production history, feminism, world cinema, and post-colonial studies among others. There is an option for a practical component that might include a curatorial project, an interview with a filmmaker, or an audio-visual essay (in consultation with the instructor). WR , HU Th 4pm-5:55pm, T 7pm-9pm