Duke University Press Women's Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms

In Women’s Cinema, World Cinema, Patricia White explores the dynamic intersection of feminism and film in the twenty-first century by highlighting the work of a new generation of women directors from around the world:  Samira and Hana Makhmalbaf, Nadine Labaki, Zero Chou, Jasmila Zbanic, and Claudia Llosa, among others. The emergence of a globalized network of film festivals has enabled these young directors to make and circulate films that are changing the aesthetics and politics of art house cinema and challenging feminist genealogies. Extending formal analysis to the production and reception contexts of a variety of feature films, White explores how women filmmakers are both implicated in and critique gendered concepts of authorship, taste, genre, national identity, and human rights. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema revitalizes feminist film studies as it argues for an alternative vision of global media culture. Review " Women's Cinema, World Cinema is an exciting book for the connections that Patricia White expertly draws and explicates between text and context, auteur and society, national and global. Her knowledge of the particularities of individual directors and national cinemas is remarkable, as is her familiarity with their relevant histories and critical literatures. Women's Cinema, World Cinema is a major work that will transform how these films and filmmakers are viewed and studied." Author: B. Ruby Rich, author of Source: New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut " Women's Cinema, World Cinema is the first book to offer a truly broad—dare I say global—perspective on the practices of feminist filmmaking as they have developed in the twenty-first century. Its balance of breadth and specificity makes it unique, and one of its strengths is Patricia White's willingness to step out of the narrow confines that have for too long shaped various constituencies in film studies. Women's Cinema, World Cinema provides exactly the context and the theoretical questioning that film studies needs." Author: Judith Mayne, author of Source: Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture “ Women’s Cinema, World Cinema is another smart, deep and open-hearted achievement I will choose to live beside. White lets us know, in this collection of essays, investigations, speculations, gossip and political insights that feminist cinema is now, in fact, a global event that defies national boundary…. It’s a book that succeeds in expanding  the reader’s consciousness with wit and bold intellectual drive.” Author: Sarah Schulman Source: Lambda Literary Review “Bringing these excellent, inspiring filmmakers into sharp focus, this comprehensive study is smoothly organized and could even serve as a text for a semester-long course on 21st-century feminist cinema.  Boldly illustrated and written in a clear, accessible style, this will be a key resource for those interested in contemporary film history, theory, and criticism…. Highly recommended. All readers.” Author: G. A. Foster Source: Choice " Women’s Cinema, World Cinema is a substantial victory in terms of scholarship and the ripple effect it could have on the far-flung communities of people who care about women’s cinema." Author: Erin Trahan Source: Women's Review of Books "With her brilliantly clear-sighted study,White bestows on her readers the right not to be defensive about female film authorship quantitatively any longer. Her work argues, instead, that 'women’s cinema' be understood, valued, and defended qualitatively as the key space of feminist film culture—as a 'discursive terrain . . . still very much at stake' (3)."   Author: Catherine Grant Source: Film Quarterly "A must-read for programmers, critics, teachers, and all viewers.... It’s both a brilliant reading of some of the most inventive current filmmakers... and an insightful lowdown of changes in film production, exhibition and reception over the last decade." Author: Sophie Mayer S