Female Agency and Documentary Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity and Activism

by Boel Ulfsdotter (Editor), Anna Backman Rogers (Editor)

Overview

This book, like its twin volume Female Authorship and the Documentary Image, centres on pressing issues in relation to female authorship in contemporary documentary practices. Addressing the politics of representation and authorship both behind and in front of the camera, a range of international scholars now expand the theoretical and practical framework informing the current scholarship on documentary cinema, which has so far neglected questions of gender.
Female Agency and Documentary Strategies centres on how self-portraiture and contemporary documentary manifestations such as blogging and the prevalent usage of social media shape and inform female subjectivities and claims to truth. The book examines the scope of authorship and agency open to women using these technologies as a form of activism, centring on notions of relationality, selfhood and subjectivity, and includes interviews with Hong Kong based activist filmmaker and scholar Vivian Wenli Lin and Spanish documentarist Mercedes Alvarez.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474431743
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/07/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Boel Ulfsdotter is Reader in Film Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her areas of research are rooted in theoretical perspectives on female subjectivity in visual and popular culture, with special focus on documentary cinema, visual style, and screen costume. She has also published on contemporary women’s power dressing, fashion exhibition practice, and screen costume. Boel Ulfsdotter’s latest scholarly publication is Documenting Fashion (2023), co-edited with Elena Caoduro. In 2018, Ulfsdotter co-edited a twin-volume on the topic of female authorship for Edinburgh UniversityPress: Female Authorship and the Documentary Image, and Female Agency and Documentary Strategies.

Anna Backman Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Notes on the Contributors ix

Foreword Kate Nash xiii

Introduction Boel Ulfsdotter Anna Backman Rogers 1

Part 1 New Media and Activism

1 The Pencil of Identity: Instagram as Inadvertent (Female) Autobiography Kris Fallon 9

2 Archetype and Authenticity: Reflections on Amalia Ulman's Excellences & Perfections Cadence Kinsey 23

3 Blogging the Female Self: Authorship, Self-performance and Identity Politics in Fashion Blogs Monica Titton 38

Part 2 Relationality, Selfhood and Subjectivities

4 'Scriptrix Narrans': Digital Documentary Storytelling's Radical Potential Gail Vanstone 57

5 Hybrid Practices and Voice Making in Contemporary Female Documentary Film Kim Munro 70

6 Record Keeping: Family Memories on Film - Rea Tajiri's History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashig and Wisdom Gone Wild Kerreen Ely-Harper 84

7 'Not Because my Heart is Gone; Simply the Other Side': Francesca Woodman's Relational and Ephemeral Subjectivity at the Limit of the Image Anna Backman Rogers 100

8 Other Women: Thinking Class and Gender in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary Film Carla Maia 114

Interview: 'Visualising Our Voices' - Hong Kong Scholar and Film Director Vivian Wenli Lin, in conversation with Boel Ulfsdotter 125

Part 3 Identity Politics of Documentary

9 From Visceral Style to Discourse of Resistance: Reading Alka Sadat's Afghan Documentaries on Violence Against Women Anna Misiak 137

10 Documenting Georgia in Transition: The Films of Salomé Jashi and Nino Kirtadze John A. Riley 156

11 Profession: Documentarist: Underground Documentary Making in Iran Lidia Merás 170

12 'Reflecting through Images': The Documentaries of Mercedes Álvarez Linda Ehrlich 184

Select Bibliography 194

Index 201

What People are Saying About This

That women are at the forefront of new documentary practices and forms should come as no surprise. Documentary, whether those writing its history have recognised it properly or not, has always had its female innovators, dating all the way back to Esfir Shub and Ruby Grierson. The focus on authorship, in relation to significant shifts, both technological and cultural, is useful and important especially considering how implicitly gendered discussions of authorship have been historically. But perhaps the most exciting contribution of this book is its feminist updating of activist media, another male dominated area of film/media studies, and one in which women’s contribution has been nothing short of profound. This volume writes the history of the latest transformations in documentary with women filmmakers from all over the world, and not just the global north, at the center. It serves as a corrective and a model for future attempts to narrate that history going forward.

Dr Alisa Lebow

That women are at the forefront of new documentary practices and forms should come as no surprise. Documentary, whether those writing its history have recognised it properly or not, has always had its female innovators, dating all the way back to Esfir Shub and Ruby Grierson. The focus on authorship, in relation to significant shifts, both technological and cultural, is useful and important especially considering how implicitly gendered discussions of authorship have been historically. But perhaps the most exciting contribution of this book is its feminist updating of activist media, another male dominated area of film/media studies, and one in which women’s contribution has been nothing short of profound. This volume writes the history of the latest transformations in documentary with women filmmakers from all over the world, and not just the global north, at the center. It serves as a corrective and a model for future attempts to narrate that history going forward.

Editorial Reviews

That women are at the forefront of new documentary practices and forms should come as no surprise. Documentary, whether those writing its history have recognised it properly or not, has always had its female innovators, dating all the way back to Esfir Shub and Ruby Grierson. The focus on authorship, in relation to significant shifts, both technological and cultural, is useful and important especially considering how implicitly gendered discussions of authorship have been historically. But perhaps the most exciting contribution of this book is its feminist updating of activist media, another male dominated area of film/media studies, and one in which women’s contribution has been nothing short of profound. This volume writes the history of the latest transformations in documentary with women filmmakers from all over the world, and not just the global north, at the center. It serves as a corrective and a model for future attempts to narrate that history going forward.

Dr Alisa Lebow