Women & Film
This unit of work emphasizes students’ individual research and part of the terminal test will expect students to discuss the nature and quality of research undertaken. In other words, this is a rather innovative module looking at how knowledge has been produced besides what has been discovered and insights gained.
The most obvious, immediate object of research is the representation of women in movies since the inception of film. Broadly this is women as pure, saintly, self-sacrificing figures or as ‘bad girl’ temptresses. Both representations have entailed utilising glamorous, iconic actresses. Other female representations include matriarchs or otherwise matronly roles and female children such as played by Judy Garland or Deanna Durban. Do be aware that you do not have to concern yourself solely with U.S. (Hollywood) output. We lock onto the mainstream Californian film industry at the cost of much major film production elsewhere in the world, much of it more deserving of, and rewarding to, study. Jane Campion is an immediate example of this.
Students should realise, however, that this module envisages research into the role of women more widely in film making, especially as directors. There are many female directors around the world but there are problems over the availability of their work for study. Also relatively few of these directors seem to have created a significant canon of work. Leading names of those working in the English language are Kathryn Bigelow, Amy Heckerling and Agnieska Holland (U.S.) and Jane Campion (New Zealand) whereas in French there are directors such as Catherine Breillat, who shot Romance. There can be problematic, probably ultimately unresolvable, issues about the control or ‘ownership’ of Bigelow’s and Campion’s films because of the heavyweight male figures scripting , producing and fulfilling technical roles in their film-making but there are similar ownership issues regarding most if not all film output. The degree of directorial control and methods of film-making vary widely with ,for instance, actors being treated as puppets here and allowed a huge range of improvisation there.
Students should also take careful note of, and explore, the kind of technical roles that are often, perhaps stereotypically, undertaken by women such as make up, hairstyling, costume design and creation, and casting. Some consideration should be given to conventionally non-female technical jobs on the film set and in pre- and post-production : why are they deemed ‘non-female’? Where students discover in their research women performing such ‘non-female’ roles, they should take special note.
