[csaa-forum] Symposium: Feminists Making Movies Between Theory and Practice

[Wendy Haslem]

Dear CSAA colleagues,

Please join us on Wednesday 19th of July for our 'Feminists Making Movies: Between Theory and Practice' Symposium<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feminists-making-movies-between-theory-and-practice-tickets-667310121537?aff=oddtdtcreator> and for Professor Sarah Keller's Keynote<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/personal-private-public-political-feminist-thought-in-film-practice-tickets-667325718187?aff=oddtdtcreator> Address, 'Personal, Private, Public, Political: Feminist Thought in Film Practice'.

kind regards,
Wendy

________________________________
From: Wendy Haslem <wlhaslem at unimelb.edu.au>
Sent: Monday, April 3, 2023 10:53 AM
To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au <csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au>
Subject: Symposium: Feminists Making Movies Between Theory and Practice



Call For Presentations

Symposium: Feminists Making Movies Between Theory and Practice

Date: 19th of July, 2023.

Location: Arts West, University of Melbourne.



Feminist film theory has developed in uneven relation to feminist filmmaking. Initially prescriptive in its commentary, the field has since attended to a variety of practices and multiplied its analytical frameworks. Strangely absent from such work, however, is a dimension of self-reflexivity. Feminist film theory has done little to reflect on its influence on relevant practitioners, or indeed the role of the feminist filmmaker in the formation of its own paradigms. This one-day symposium aims to populate this critical gap, exploring the commerce between feminist film theory and practice across film history.



It is true that feminist film theory and practice have worked well together at certain historical moments. Perhaps most famously, Laura Mulvey put the ideas explored in her written manifesto, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), into action in her avant-garde film, Riddles of the Sphinx (1977). More recently, Céline Sciamma paid tacit homage to Mulvey as she characterised Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) as an exercise in the construction of a “female gaze”. Just as often, however, feminist film writing and making have existed in awkward opposition to one another. Experimental filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer, Marjorie Keller and Agnés Varda have been vocal about the role of the academy in the misrecognition, devaluation, or suppression of their work. Where these filmmakers depend on that space for viewership, legitimacy and even funding, the prejudices of feminist criticism carry very real weight. Recent developments in cinema studies have inverted this dynamic again. Once-key critics suggest that feminist film theory no longer exists as a distinct mode of inquiry but has instead become enfolded into parallel investigations (L. Williams, 2004). It could thus be said that feminist work within the academy depends now, more than ever, on feminist practice for its survival.



This symposium explores the relay between feminist film theory and feminist film practice. We intend “feminist” to refer to the disposition of the thinker or maker, who may or may not be woman-identifying. While the organisers recognise the importance of temporal markers for a counter field like feminism, we hope that papers will adopt a flexible relation to history, one that looks back to the 1970s and earlier, as well as forward to the future. While investigations within the realm of experimental cinema are of particular interest to the symposium, we also welcome submissions focused on documentary and narrative (feature or short) forms. Moreover, we are especially keen on submissions that explore the interchange between feminist film theory and practice in a local context, within Australia and New Zealand.



Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

  *   Productive, fraught, or otherwise dynamic relations between feminist film theory and practice (from early cinema to the present)
  *   Proto-feminist film theory, or looking back on earlier practices through the lens of feminist film theory
  *   Women filmmakers who also write about film (e.g., Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Marjorie Keller, Abigail Child, Peggy Ahwesh)
  *   Seminal feminist texts that inspired directions in feminist thought (e.g., Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [1975] and feminist temporalities; The Watermelon Woman [1996] and feminist archives)
  *   Problems or developments in archiving and restoration for the course of feminist film theory and/or practice
  *   Advents in film technology that have informed feminist film theory



Keynote Lecture: Professor Sarah Keller, University of Massachusetts Boston.



Please email an abstract (250 words) and short bio to Wendy Haslem wlhaslem at unimelb.edu.au by the 1st of May, 2023.


Organising Committee: Dr Alicia Byrnes, Professor Sarah Keller and Associate Professor Wendy Haslem.


***




Wendy Haslem

Associate Professor - Screen Studies

Faculty of Arts, School of Culture + Communication

W101 John Medley Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, 3010.

T: +613 8344 3409     E: wlhaslem at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:wlhaslem at unimelb.edu.au>


*****


I respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where I work and live, the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the Eastern Kulin Nations and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.




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