The Female Gaze in Documentary Film: An International Perspective 3030680932, 9783030680930

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The Female Gaze in Documentary Film An International Perspective

Lisa French

The Female Gaze in Documentary Film “This book will make a fabulous contribution to the field. It will have currency amongst a burgeoning generation of scholars, including undergraduates and postgraduates who are interested in the questions of aesthetics, politics and mechanics of female documentary filmmaking. It will also find an audience with scholars interested in the growing field of film festival studies. It draws on a set of interviews conducted and facilitated at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival and attends to the function of the female gaze and its attendant qualities in relation to several other festivals. It will be a “goto” resource in film studies.” —Dean Williams, Monash University, Australia “This book delves into the fascinating topic of the ‘female gaze’ and how it can be understood in relation to documentary. The viewpoints of contemporary female documentary directors are explored to unravel their ideals, practices and experiences as women filmmakers. This analysis is contextualised within a history of women’s contributions to global documentary circuits, informing readers what women have contributed to the genre and illuminating why it is essential for our screen industries to achieve a gender balance.” —Helene Granqvist, President, Women and Film and Television International (WIFTI)

Lisa French

The Female Gaze in Documentary Film An International Perspective

Lisa French School of Media and Communication RMIT University School of Media and Communication Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-68093-0    ISBN 978-3-030-68094-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Filmmakers Marie Mandy, Kim Longinotto, Gillian Armstrong, Nancy D Kates, Nishtha Jain, and Pirjo Honkasalo photographed by Mark Poole. Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my collaborator and partner Mark Poole whose support, intellect and enthusiasm have sustained this and many other projects.

Preface

Over the past twenty-five years or more, I have been thinking and writing about women in screen industries. I began in 2003 with my first edited book Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia. In more recent times, I have turned my attention to global contexts. With The Female Gaze in Documentary Film: An International Perspective, I was inspired to find out more about the contribution of female documentarians to the genre. Attention is given to production environments and letting practitioners speak for themselves. I have written the text I was looking for when I was undertaking research in order to teach a documentary course as part of a Cinema Studies minor. I wanted to find the significant women in the form, but in the mid-2000s, documentary histories rarely included women, and feminist film criticism and scholarship had paid relatively little attention to documentary in comparison to fiction filmmaking. I was also looking for a text that might model a variety of approaches to the documentary form, as I have undertaken in the case studies here, with textual analysis, poetics, transnational feminism and auto-ethnography. For students, I have also included a glossary. My approach to pedagogy is underpinned by an idea I discovered through my work with UNESCO, a concept called ‘Gender Mainstreaming’. What this means is that before you act, you interrogate the gender perspective. For example, if developing a course, one might ask: are there films, writings and guest lectures by women included? This gender equality method is useful beyond curriculum development. A gender lens can be adapted to policy, recruitment or any activity. It is my hope that this book will enable vii

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and promote Gender Mainstreaming in screen studies courses so that future students won’t finish their studies without encountering the rich and wonderful practices of women documentarians and their ‘female gaze’. Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Lisa French

Abstract  The Female Gaze in Documentary Film: An International Perspective makes a timely contribution to the significant rise in interest in recent times in the status, presence, achievements and issues for women in contemporary screen industries. The central preoccupation of the book is to interrogate what might constitute a ‘female gaze’, an inquiry that has had a long history in filmmaking, film theory and women’s art. It fills a gap in the literature which to date has not substantially examined the work of female documentary directors. Moreover, research on sex, gender and the gaze has been relatively infrequently the subject of scholarship on documentary film, particularly in comparison to narrative film or television drama. A distinctive feature of the book is that it is based on interviews with significant female documentarians from Europe, Asia and North America. Keywords  Female gaze • Gaze • Documentary film • Women in film • Female subjectivity • Feminisms • Aesthetics • Film industry • Directors • Women filmmakers

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Acknowledgements

I am thankful for the support I have received from friends, colleagues, my family and the School of Media and Communication at RMIT. In particular, Mark Poole and Julie Stafford, whose support has been invaluable across a range of research projects. I also thank Olivia Grant, Tania Lewis, Mollie Cowell, Jess Minett, Ania Ostrowska and Shelley Cobb. Special thanks to the filmmakers who generously gave me their time for many long and interesting conversations about their work and women in documentary: thank you, Phie Ambo, Sepideh Abtahi, Gillian Armstrong, Chris Hegedus, Pirjo Honkasalo, Nishtha Jain, Nancy D Kates, Mina Keshavarz, Kim Longinotto, Marie Mandy, Margot Nash, Nahid Rezaei, Sahar Salahoor and Ilena Stanculescu. I was fortunate to have the support and assistance of Olympia Szilagyi and Catherine Gillam at the Australian Film Institute Research Collection (AFIRC), a wonderful treasure-filled archive run by staff who truly love the moving image. I am grateful to John Hughes who led me to this project, and I thank the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), in particular Raul Nino Zambrano, who made this research possible by inviting me to the festival as a guest researcher and gave me access to the many inspiring events and screenings. I thank Teresa de Lauretis and Toril Moi for their intellectual leadership and inspiration.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 Part I   4 Part II   7 References  11 Part I Women’s Documentary Practice, Theory and Histories  13 2 Women and Documentary 15 Introduction  15 Women and Documentary: Historical Highlights  17 Female Participation and Access  26 Female Subjectivity  29 Politics  32 The Woman Filmmaker  34 References  42 3 The ‘Female Gaze’ 53 Foregrounding Female Subjectivity  54 A Woman’s Look  56 Markers of the Female Gaze  60 A Women’s Poetics and the Female Gaze  61 Feminisms and Representation  63 Resonant Themes  65 xiii

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Conclusion  67 References  68 4 Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender 71 Introduction  71 A ‘Female Aesthetic’  74 A Feminist Aesthetic  75 A Feminine Aesthetic  77 Female Experience  78 A Female Perspective  79 Identification  81 Circularity and a Lack of Closure  82 Emotion and Feeling  83 Detail  85 Conclusion  87 References  88 5 Feminisms, Feminist Theory and Documentary Practice 91 Introduction  91 Feminist Documentary  92 Feminist Documentary Practices  94 Women Documentary Filmmakers as Change Agents  96 Feminist Documentary and Film Studies  98 Theory and Practice: The Debate About Realism  99 Female Authorship 102 Conclusion 105 References 107 Part II Case Studies: Female Documentary Directors in Focus  111 6 Documentary as Artform: Pirjo Honkasalo’s Cinematic Poetics113 Introduction: Pirjo Honkasalo 113 Style, Approach and Poetics 115 Women in Finnish and Transnational Filmmaking Contexts 117 Interview with Pirjo Honkasalo 118 Conclusion 129 References 130

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7 Transnational Feminism in the Cinema of Kim Longinotto133 Introduction: Kim Longinotto 133 British and Transnational Contexts 135 Feminisms, Transnational Feminism and Longinotto’s Films 137 A Female Gaze and Aesthetic 140 Interview with Kim Longinotto 141 Conclusion: Longinotto and the Female Gaze 153 References 154 8 Nishtha Jain: An Auto-ethnographic and a Postcolonial Feminist Gaze159 Auto-ethnography 161 Activism 162 Women Documentarians in India 163 Postcolonial Feminism and What It Means to Be a Feminist 165 Interview with Nishtha Jain 166 Conclusion: Jain and the Female Gaze 173 References 174 9 Marie Mandy: Female Subjectivity and Aesthetics177 National and Production Contexts 178 Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film 180 The Body in Representation and Image 181 A Colonised Gaze 183 Interview with Marie Mandy 185 Conclusion 193 Female Agency and the Possibility of a Women’s Cinematic Language 193 References 196 10 A View from the Margins: The Films of Nancy D Kates199 Marginalised by Sexual Identity 200 Queer Voices 201 A Female World View 202 Writing and Books 204 Documentary and Women in the United States 204 Interview with Nancy D Kates 205 Conclusion: Kates, Power and the Female Gaze 213 References 215

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11 Gillian Armstrong: The Line Between Fact and Fiction219 Introduction 219 ‘A Gillian Armstrong Film’ 221 Being Typecast 222 A Girl’s Eye View 223 Critical Reception 225 Docudrama 226 Armstrong’s Dramatised Documentaries 227 Women and Documentary in Australia 230 Interview with Gillian Armstrong 232 French: Armstrong 232 Conclusion 242 References 245 12 Conclusion: Rendering Female Reality249 References 253 Glossary255 Film Index261 Name Index267 Subject Index271

About the Author

Lisa  French is Professor in Screen and Media, and Dean of RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication. She has published extensively on women in film, produced documentaries, is co-chair of a UNESCO 19 global university research network on media, gender and ICTs, and is a member of Screen Australia’s Gender Matters Taskforce.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Female Gaze in Documentary Film—an International Perspective makes a contribution to the significant rise in interest in recent times in the status, presence, achievements and issues for women in contemporary screen industries. It fills a gap in the literature, which to date has not substantially examined female documentary directors. Research on sex, gender and the gaze has been only infrequently the subject of scholarship on documentary film, particularly in comparison to narrative film or television drama. The central preoccupation of the book is the question of what might constitute a ‘female gaze’, an inquiry that has had a long history in filmmaking, film theory and women’s art. The ‘female gaze’ is understood as a plural idea that each woman will have her own singular gaze, but a major influence on each woman’s creative expression is her female subjectivity—the experience of living as female. This book does not claim that any woman filmmaker speaks for anyone other than herself. However, it is still fruitful to investigate whether (and how) the gender of a filmmaker may be influential and, in particular, the ways in which it can be observed in the documentarian’s practice and in her films. This text is designed to provide a non-essentialist, historically contingent, social understanding of women’s contribution to the documentary genre. This is underpinned by an interest in film aesthetics, history, global documentary industries, and how feminisms manifest in documentary practice today. The attention of the book is largely contemporary, although there is recognition in the first chapter that women have created documentaries © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_1

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throughout the history of the genre and have been innovators of the form. Whilst film is a collaborative process, the director is the focus of this book for two reasons. Firstly, it is very common that as well as being the director, women in documentary often hold a range of roles, often also writing, shooting and producing a film. Secondly, it is a way of limiting this book to a manageable size and scope; however, it is not intended to deny the contribution of other creatives in making documentaries. Throughout the book the creative practice of each documentarian is understood as influenced by her individual context. Gender identification is acknowledged as only one part of any person’s identity and subjectivity (noting that some people do not identify with female/male binaries). However, this text is nonetheless interested in the exploration of the impact, concerns, aesthetics, national, industrial and social contexts of documentaries made by contemporary filmmakers who identify as female. Documentarians from many countries across the globe appear within the text, and the research for this book has revealed that throughout film history, there have been many women non-fiction directors. Indeed, there are too many to mention all of them here in a text that is not a history but has a specific enquiry into the question of the ‘female gaze’. This term is used here to refer to the representation produced by a female filmmaker, and, as such, it may focus on any subject and take any form. The singular term is employed, but there are many female gazes. Each woman has her own unique female gaze, which reveals how she is engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences that inflect her life, body and thinking onto her aesthetic approach. Each woman has a unique experience in her life and her body, but as academic Shilyh Warren has observed, female documentary filmmakers ‘have long shared key questions, especially about identity, difference, and solidarity, although they have attempted to answer them distinctly, depending on their political, social, discursive, and economic contexts and personal ambitions’ (Warren 2019, 18). The female gaze reveals an awareness of Otherness or difference between the sexes, which is not used here as an axis of value (e.g. that one is better), but one of difference. A woman is not one thing nor necessarily anything. As Anne O’Brien has observed, not ‘everybody occupies gendered identities or the category of “woman” in exactly the same fashion’ (O’Brien 2019, 83). Any woman is a human being who lives in a female body and that fact exposes her to the experience of patriarchal as well as gendered cultural practices and traditions that situate her as ‘Other’ (not

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man). At the core of the interest here is her experience of being female in her individual life, and this may variously connect to sex (biological or physiological characteristics) or gender (socially constructed roles based on sex). However, this book is centrally interested in this female experience and the experiences that women share because of living in a female body, a gender identity based on identification as female.1 This subjectivity constructs a female gaze. This chapter is organised around introducing the contents of this book. A distinctive feature of the method used is that it is substantively based on interviews with internationally significant female directors whose practice spans the last four decades. There is an interest in screen industries and practitioners’ perspectives. These interviews with female directors from Europe, South-East Asia and North America form a unique qualitative global dataset, particularly as each filmmaker was asked to respond to the question of whether they believe there is a ‘female gaze’. Whilst each woman’s experience is unique and cannot be generalised to all women, this work nonetheless offers a substantial examination that draws out commonalities across the output of female documentarians. A second distinguishing aspect is that it privileges female directors’ perspectives and experiences as creative practitioners, and the use of interviews distinguishes it from texts that only consider the film texts and available research or scholarship. From a diverse range of cultures and experiences, they give insight into their documentaries from the perspective of their individual worldview and experience, including as women. Women across the world do not face the same forms of discrimination, although achieving equity and equality are issues for women everywhere, as is illustrated by this book which features individual documentarians from a range of cultural contexts.2 Each woman’s documentaries are informed by a background that is shaped by an amalgam of influences that include history, race, sexual orientation, gender identification, nationality, religion, age and social class. As intersectional feminists have observed, any of those might affect an individual person’s subjugation, and are produced from an interplay of diverse, often overlapping elements that are personal, intellectual, bureaucratic, economic, psychological and cultural. The issue that the interplay of elements is complex and cannot be attributed solely to sex and gender has been a significant tension for feminist researchers wanting to reconcile an interest in ‘femaleness’ and female subjectivity. Indeed, feminist theorists have for decades debated the complex issues around female-centred, gendered enquiries, and the conflict

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between essentialist (that men or women have an innate essence) and constructionist views (that humans are produced and constructed through social interaction rather than by genetics or biology). The way this is approached in this text is to consider individual contingent circumstances. This is influenced by feminist scholar Luce Irigaray who said that she felt the most important strategy was to expose the exploitation common to all women and to find the struggles that are appropriate for each woman, right where she is, depending upon her nationality, her job, her social class, her sexual experience, that is, upon the form of oppression that is for her the most immediately unbearable. (Irigaray 1985, 166–167)

This is not just an approach of this book but also something women filmmakers have been interested to explore in their documentaries.

Part I As a text about documentary, this book is concerned with non-fiction filmmaking, although the form does not preclude it from deploying fiction techniques. Documentaries are films that are indexical in that they have a direct connection or relationship to the real referent that was in front of the camera (the profilmic event). They represent the filmmaker’s view or mediation on something that actually occurred. However, it is never a simple presentation of events; rather it is always a construction by the filmmaker that could be described as an argument or proposition, and, in this book, is understood as the filmmaker’s perspective. Therefore, it has a relationship to reality rather than status as ‘truth’ (truth is a slippery, subjective thing and one filmmaker’s truth will be different to another’s). Documentary filmmakers tell their audiences something about the real world from their point of view; they set up an ideological context and/or ethical argument or position. The connection films make with audiences and their worldviews give documentaries meaning. For example, a documentary will be more seamlessly received (the ontological position accepted) if it aligns with the worldview of the audience, which will shift from culture to culture and person to person. For example, an audience is less likely to accept a film’s feminist ideology if they do not share that belief system or its critique of the dominant ideology (and vice versa). Documentary filmmakers interpret actuality, taking a perspective on the

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subject through recording ‘social, cultural and personal, as well as natural, institutional and political phenomena in order to inform us about these people, events, places, institutions and problems’ (McLane 2012, 21). The position taken by the founder of the British documentary movement, John Grierson in 1932, that documentary is the ‘creative treatment of actuality’ rather than a ‘mechanistic observation or reflection of the real’, is still current (Chapman and Allison 2009, 9). After the introduction, there are two parts to this book. In the first, there are four chapters that introduce women in documentary, outline the ‘female gaze’, examine the influence of gender on documentary aesthetics, and offer an overview of feminisms and feminist theory as they relate to documentary practice. Throughout the text, films are included from all regions of the world. In the second part, there are six international case studies that are contextualised within different elements of documentary: poetics, transnational feminism, auto-ethnography, postcolonialism, female subjectivity, queer stories and documentary that includes fictionalisation. These are situated within the industrial and national contexts in which the documentarians work across Europe, South-East Asia and North America. The specific countries are Finland, Britain, India, Belgium, North America and Australia. Chapter 2, ‘Women and Documentary’, begins with a historical overview of women in documentary. It is not intended to be a definitive history but to provide a representative indication of the international presence of women across the last century and to capture some of the examples of their significant innovation. This is followed by an overview of the involvement of women as documentary directors and an outline of the reasons that, across the world, it is the form where women have achieved the largest numerical participation. That is placed alongside a discussion of some of the existing systemic issues and barriers that continue to inhibit women working in the form. Following this, female subjectivity, a key marker of the female gaze and major exploration throughout this book, is introduced. It is discussed in regard to representation, aesthetics, and the complexity of identification and identity. Following that is a view on the concept: the personal is political, which provides an insight into how the relationship between a woman’s social political situation and her subjectivity is important to her filmic vision. Understanding the political dimensions necessarily comes from knowing how women live their lives—the personal. The chapter concludes with some of the issues for women, including the label ‘woman filmmaker’. Some examples are given in

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relation to the access women have to their subjects and how being female can sometimes be an advantage. Also discussed is the possibility that social conditioning might influence the process or the way female documentarians are treated as filmmakers. Chapter 3 offers definition to the way in which the female gaze is conceived and examined in this book. It is conceived as a plural concept: each filmmaker will have her own gaze, given her experience is influenced by contexts and contingent circumstances where gender is just one aspect of identity. Acknowledging that opinion is polarised, the chapter offers ways to think about and understand the female gaze and distinguishes it from ‘the male gaze’ theorised by Laura Mulvey. There is a focus on how female directors have expressed themselves as people who identify as female. Resonant themes are conceived as tendencies in documentaries by female directors, including the telling of stories from female points of view and an interest in issues that particularly impact on women or social struggles. Key markers for a conception of the female gaze are also identified. Chapter 4 is titled ‘Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender’. Whilst the link between the aesthetics of a film (the expressive, creative, formal or stylistic qualities) and the artist who produced it is generally acknowledged, the question of whether aesthetics can be understood as responding to and reflecting the lived experience of a particular author’s gendered experience has rarely been examined in regard to documentary. This chapter takes up this question as the central idea, exploring whether one can identify how the films of individual women directors might be interpreted as offering aesthetic approaches that are informed specifically by her gender. The approach acknowledges that historical, cultural and psychologically varying contexts influence each woman in her specific time or location. A female aesthetic, which is described as one where the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of a documentary are constructed from female subjective positions (as diverse as they might be), is framed as being central to understanding the female gaze. Chapter 5 describes the connections between feminisms and documentary film, and, in particular, the relationship of feminist film theory to documentary, including its influence on practice. The plural use of ‘feminisms’ acknowledges that there are many kinds of feminisms that might be adopted, but they all share an interest in social transformation, addressing inequality and opposing patriarchy and sexism. The feminism of contemporary female documentary filmmakers is evident in the ways they shine a light on women’s contingent circumstances and act as agents of social,

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political, cultural, creative and economic change. Their films enable and promote women’s agency and female subjectivity, which are hallmarks of feminist documentary practice and the female gaze. There are five key explorations in the chapter: (1) ‘feminist documentary’ and its expression today; (2) the notion of a ‘feminist documentary practice’ and what that entails; (3) the role of female documentarians as change agents; (4) authorship and (5) the connections between feminist documentary and film studies.

Part II In the second part of the book, the importance and influence of gender and feminism are examined through six case studies that concretely offer first-person testimony from the directors. This is undertaken in combination with the textual, theoretical and industry analysis of their works, which are considered within the context of their own cultural and global settings. The selected filmmakers are largely involved in the production of feature length documentaries, the kind that might be seen in film festivals, and therefore that is the substantive focus of this book.3 The majority of the interviews were conducted at the 2014 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, which is the world’s largest documentary film festival.4 At this festival there was a special focus on the ‘female gaze’ and the key enquiry was ‘does a “female gaze” exist within the documentary genre?’ (Driessen 2014). Other questions informing programming and festival talks were about the kind of documentaries women make, how women are depicted, whether it is different when the filmmaker is a woman herself, and whether women make different kinds of documentaries than men. The curation recognised that there has been ample research on the representation of women in media, but virtually none had been undertaken in relation to documentaries. Fifteen of the world’s most prominent female documentary filmmakers were invited to screen their own film and nominate a documentary that had inspired them.5 In addition, data was produced on the participation of women in the festival and its awards, and this resulted in a change of policy that ensured women’s participation on selection and awards panels. That was undertaken because the data showed that where the panels did not have a gender balance, women were less frequently programmed or given awards (Driessen 2014). In the first chapter of the second part of the book (Chap. 6), the work of artist and maverick Pirjo Honkasalo, one of Finland’s most celebrated

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and award winning filmmakers, is considered. Working in documentary and fiction, she was the first female cinematographer in Finland and the first woman to shoot a feature film. This chapter considers Honkasalo’s oeuvre through the central lens of this book, the female gaze. It offers insight into her style, aesthetics and approach, with a particular emphasis on poetics and her artist’s vision, thematic preoccupations and her feminism. This is set within her national and industrial Finnish context with consideration of her transnational practice and the place of documentary in the country. An interview with Honkasalo responds to questions such as whether one can discern from the film itself if it were directed by a man or a woman, whether living in a female body has influenced her films, and the idea of men making ‘feminine’ films. Chapter 7 considers the transnational, feminist practice of Kim Longinotto, one of the  UK’s foremost independent documentarians. Through her prolific career she has given a voice to women’s stories and to those marginalised in their society and culture, making over twenty full length feature documentaries, including the BAFTA winning 1998 Divorce Iranian Style and Cannes CICAE Award winner Sisters in Law (2005). This chapter introduces the British and international contexts in which she works, offering a discussion of her contribution as a transnational feminist filmmaker. It features an interview with her on the subject of the female gaze. Her style, aesthetic and the relevant feminisms that characterise her work are introduced. She is positioned as a political filmmaker with a strong interest in human rights. The idea of documentary as a form of witnessing trauma is discussed in relation to her work, and there is an overview of her co-directed collaborations with women in other countries (e.g. she has co-directed with Ziba Mir-Hosseini in Iran and with Florence Ayisi in central Africa). Chapter 8 focuses on Indian filmmaker Nisha Jain, whose films include Gulabi Gang (2012) and Lakshmi and Me (2009). Her filmmaking is read through postcolonial feminist and auto-ethnographic lenses and is introduced through the interests that frame her filmmaking: representing women’s stories and issues; marginalised groups, activism, Indian culture and history; and intersectional factors such as class, race and gender. Jain’s gaze is a reflexive one, intently focused on where she is located as a filmmaker, and, through this, expressing her unique perspective, politics and her female gaze. The act of filmmaking is how she understands and questions her own gaze, which she regards as a ‘feminist gaze’, one that is deeply aware of class, caste, colonialism and gender. An interview with

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Jain is featured in the chapter, and the documentary industry in India is introduced in relation to female documentarians. In Chap. 9, Belgian filmmaker Marie Mandy’s documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film (2000) is featured. Through a textual analysis of her film, and an interview with Mandy, it examines female subjectivity and female and feminist aesthetics. This is undertaken via the central exploration of her film: the question of whether there is a discernible ‘women’s cinematic language’. This is contextualised via the feminist premise of the documentary, which presents the gaze as formed (or colonised) by male dominated histories of gazing and women’s cinema as offering an alternative gaze, or another ‘code’ to the dominant one. Mandy’s strategy is to use interviews with women filmmakers to spotlight how each approach to the filming and the representation of female desire illustrates a premise that the body is ‘the most direct way to understand women’s filmmaking’. Her documentary does this through interviews that describe the approaches and offer the insights of filmmakers interviewed. These include Sally Potter (UK), Agnès Varda (France), Catherine Breillat (France), Deepa Mehta (India), Safi Faye (Senegal), Patricia Rozema (Canada) and Jane Campion (Australasia). Chapter 10, ‘A View from the Margins: the Films of Nancy D Kates’, introduces this multi-award winning independent American documentary filmmaker whose practice has been focused on the telling of stories about minorities or outsiders whose lives have been absent from the screen. Kates’s interests include a focus on significant cultural and historical figures marginalised by their sexual identities. Her films include Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003) and Regarding Susan Sontag (2014). She recognises the importance, but the absence, of queer stories, and in an interview, she speaks of how she feels a responsibility to fill this void as a lesbian filmmaker who is aware of a gap, that there is a very real need for those stories to be told. Documentary scholar Bill Nichols claims that Kates’s approach typifies the voice of documentary today, which he sees as having an affinity with both the avant-garde and narrative storytelling. Kates has developed a niche through pursuing two passions: her interest in history and in putting gay and lesbian subjects front and centre. Chapter 11 considers the films of Australian director Gillian Armstrong as someone who has worked consistently across both documentary and drama throughout her career of more than forty years. Armstrong has been a trailblazer for Australian female filmmakers and she has inspired them to follow her. Her extensive body of work is largely centred on the

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depiction of women on screen. This is something she has identified as an empathy that exists because she is able to see the world through female eyes. She has been regarded as a feminist filmmaker but has described herself as most interested in human behaviour over time. In this chapter Armstrong responds to being labelled a ‘woman filmmaker’. The difference between docudrama and fiction are examined in the context of her films. An interview with Armstrong is included in the chapter. Chapter 12 (‘The Conclusion’) provides a summary of the study of the concept of the female gaze presented in this book. This is substantially realised by case studies that offer an examination of how women directors of documentary communicate female experience and subjectivity. Each director has her own female gaze. It is not homogenous to women as a group, but it is a gendered gaze informed by unique individual contextual circumstances. Gender is just one element amongst many diverse situations or influences that inform individual identity and creative output. As this book illustrates, women have created alternate social subjects that construct different objects and subjects of vision whilst addressing the spectator as female. As this book illustrates, female documentary directors make all kinds of non-fiction films with enormous success. Internationally, the genre has the largest number of women participating, in comparison to other sectors of global screen industries. Each woman director has her own gaze, and the aesthetic approaches, experiences and films of female directors are as diverse as their individual life situations and the cultures in which they live. Whilst a gender-equal global screen industry has not been achieved, and barriers to participation continue, women have maintained a significant presence and are innovators in the field. The contribution of female documentary filmmakers globally has been enormously productive in understanding women’s circumstances and worldviews in relation to personal, intellectual, bureaucratic, psychological and cultural influences. The documentary form has been a key site for the expression of female perspectives and concerns, creating space for gendered understandings that potentially disrupt the patriarchal norms that have dominated representation thus far. For these reasons, it is critical that within representation there are equal opportunities for female perspectives and subjectivities—that is, for the female gaze.

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Notes 1. Transgender women, or intersex people who identify as female, would logically be included here but this is not taken up in any detail in this text. Some people are gender fluid (no fixed gender) or reject gender binaries (e.g. that there are distinct and opposing feminine or masculine qualities). 2. The author acknowledges privilege and her own intrinsic perspectives, for example, as a white, Western person. 3. There are other forms, such as reality television, which are non-fiction and highly popular, but not dealt with in this text. Reality television is not ordinarily regarded as documentary, although it is factual programming. 4. I am indebted to the festival and to Raul Nino Zambrano for the invitation to be a guest researcher at the festival and the access this provided. 5. The selected filmmakers were Phie Ambo, Rakhashan Banietamad, Heidi Ewing, Safi Faye, Rachel Grady, Chris Hegedus, Heddy Honigmann, Pirjo Honkasalo, Nishtha Jain, Barbara Kopple, Kim Longinotto, Marie Mandy, Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez, Ileana Stanculescu, Jessica Yu and Jamila Zbanic. They selected films by filmmakers such as Shirley Clarke, Jennie Livingston and Agnès Varda. In all, twenty-eight films were selected for a programme called ‘The Female Gaze’.

References Chapman, Jane L., and with contributions by Kate Allison. 2009. Issues in Contemporary Documentary. Cambridge: Polity Press. Driessen, Kees. 2014, November 21. The Female Gaze. IDFA. https://www.idfa. nl/en/article/65865/the-­female-­gaze/. Accessed 25 September 2020. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One (Catherine Porter trans. with Caroline Burke). New York: Cornell University Press. McLane, Betsy A. 2012. New History of Documentary. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. O’Brien, Anne. 2019. Women, Inequality and Media Work. London: Routledge. Warren, Shilyh. 2019. Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Filmography Jain, Nishtha. 2012. Gulabi Gang. India: Raintree Films. Kates, Nancy. 2003. Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. United States: The American Documentary. ———. 2014. Regarding Susan Sontag. United States: HBO.

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Longinotto, Kim. 1998. Divorce Iranian Style. Iran: Twentieth Century Vixen. ———. 2005. Sisters in Law. United Kingdom: Vixen Films. Mandy, Marie. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. Belgium: Saga Film.

PART I

Women’s Documentary Practice, Theory and Histories

CHAPTER 2

Women and Documentary

Introduction Throughout the world, women have directed documentaries since the earliest days of cinema, passionately engaging with every possible kind of subject, community, aesthetic and approach. Across cultures and contexts, they have done this with no budget, large budgets and with crowdfunding. Women were working as film directors, producers, writers and editors from the early 1900s (Easen 2013–2014). They have been present at the key turning points within the evolution of documentary and have made significant contributions to the genre and film history. Despite this, female filmmakers, especially documentarians, have been neglected in film histories, which rarely include women making non-feature films. In addition, documentaries from Western countries tend to be the most visible in histories that do exist. Female documentary filmmakers have, however, been present across global film cultures. For example, there is a long and rich history in the Arab world (twenty-two countries across the Middle East and North Africa) where, from ‘the silent era on, these regional cinemas have produced some remarkable works—especially by women’ (Reardon 2019). In Lebanon, for instance, there are more women in their film industry than there are men (Jones 2019). Today, documentary film is an area where women’s participation, including as directors, is higher than other filmmaking genres, particularly narrative feature production. This is the case across many film and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_2

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television industries globally (Florio 2018;  French 2014; Hockenhull 2017;  Kay 2016). Women’s participation has been slowly increasing (Screen Australia 2019; Lauzen 2019; Scarparo and Luciano 2010, 488), with women directors constituting over forty per cent in some countries, such as in the Arab world, particularly in Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia (Haj 2017, 13), or at least fifty per cent in some countries such as the US (Hockenhull 2017, 102). In many countries globally over the past four decades there have been policy initiatives to develop and support female participation in screen industries. These have made a small but important difference, although the barriers and systematic structural issues continue.1 However, despite ongoing glass ceiling problems, women are also receiving more accolades in documentary than in other genres (Morfoot 2016). For example, women have been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards every year for the last twenty years (2000–2020), winning nine out of nineteen awarded.2 At the major international film festivals that screen documentaries, women’s names have become as prominent as the men’s (Silverstein 2008). Women documentarians have played a significant role as global citizens: as part of a solution for climate change (Hockenhull 2017); as change agents (French 2019); and through making films that challenge the ideologies of the political and cultural contexts in which they were made. As this book illustrates, they have done all this from the perspective of their sex and gender, each through the lens of her individual female gaze, revealing female subjectivity and how women are engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences. This chapter begins with a historical overview of some of the activity of women in documentary over time. It is not intended to be a definitive history, but to provide a representative indication of the international presence of women throughout the history of the documentary form, and to capture some of the examples of their significant innovation. An overview of the participation of female documentarians follows, with a view on the reasons why there are so many women in documentary. That is placed alongside some of the existing systemic issues and barriers that continue to inhibit female participation. Following this, the female subjectivity, a key marker of the female gaze and major exploration throughout this book, is introduced. It is discussed in regard to representation, aesthetics and the complexity of identification and identity. Following that, the idea that ‘the personal is political’ still has currency is taken up. The relationship between women’s social political situation and their subjectivity is important to

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their filmic vision. Understanding the political dimensions necessarily comes from knowing how women live their lives—the personal. The chapter concludes with an overview of some of the issues for women of being labelled women filmmakers, of where being female might advantage the documentary filmmaker, how social conditioning might influence the process or the way female documentarians are treated, and, finally, what women bring to understanding how women live in the world they occupy.

Women and Documentary: Historical Highlights In the silent film era, women made a notable contribution to ethnographic filmmaking. American Osa Johnson completed her first film Cannibals of the South Seas with Martin Johnson in 1912, making films across Asia and Africa.3 Zora Neal Hurston, who was possibly the first African American woman filmmaker, documented African American life in the late 1920s (Dixon 2013). Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub pioneered the documentary subgenre, the ‘compilation film’, and her first work as a compilation director was The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty in 1927, a celebration of the Bolshevik Party (Dogo 2013).4 Kathleen Romoli, an expatriate American living in Colombia, made Gold Platinum (1932), the only known silent Colombian film by a woman (Arredondo 2018). Film editor, director, writer and archivist Elizaveta Svilova collaborated extensively on early documentary films with her husband Dziga Vertov from the 1920s through to the late 1940s. Her intellectual and creative contributions were significant to early Soviet film and global film history given that Vertov’s ‘filmic theory and practice focused on montage as the fundamental guiding force of cinema’, and she was both editor and collaborator in their ground-­ breaking experimentation, one which significantly advanced the early principles of cinematic montage through her command of ‘the editing table’ that ‘established the heyday of the Soviet avant-garde’ (Molcard 2020). Her directorial debut was Bukhara (1927), a travelogue that documented daily life, and she had a leading role in Vertov’s Kinoki group, which posited that documentary film would capture the reality of everyday life in the Soviet Union (Molcard 2020).5 One of their most well-known early collaborations was The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov 1929). In addition, Vertov and Svilova’s teamwork led to the newsreel becoming ‘a significant element of early avant-garde montage theory and practice’ and

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also to their collaboration on Enthusiasm (1930), the Soviet Union’s first documentary sound film (Molcard 2020). In the early sound period, German Leni Riefenstahl began directing documentaries in 1932, going on to produce, direct, co-write and edit the famous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will in 1935. It won the ‘Best Foreign Film’ at the 1935 Venice Film Festival, the ‘Grand Prix’ at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, and its fame endures to this day. During the ‘golden age’ of British documentary in the 1930s–1950s women’s contributions to documentary have barely been acknowledged (Haggith 2006, 73). However, British documentarian Ruby Grierson directed films from 1935, making a film about the everyday life of people in London Wakes Up (1936). Ruby and Marion, sisters to John Grierson, ‘who is said to have coined the word “documentary” in 1926’, are often forgotten in histories of his foundational work but ‘arguably deserve co-­ credit as the [British] national genre’s originators’ (Johanson 2016). Ruby Grierson’s film They Also Serve (1940) was a feminist film in capturing unseen women’s work and their ‘emotional’ labour in the war effort (Johanson 2016). According to Johanson, Ruby might have been one of the first documentarians to die in the course of her work. In 1940, she was making a film about ninety children who were evacuating to Canada when the ship they were on, the SS City of Benares, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine during the Second World War. In the 1940s, female documentarians continued to stand out. In 1940, Canada’s first known female filmmaker, Judith Crawley, directed the first Canadian film in colour, Four New Apple Dishes, a film about recipes for apples. Crawley is quoted as saying that John Grierson called her wanting to know if she could cook. When she asked why, he said: ‘I think we can get some money from the Department of Agriculture to try a film about cooking apples, because there is a surplus’. This enabled the Canadian National Film Board (NFB) to finance its first colour film, something it had not had the funds to do previously (CWFD database n.d.). Crawley worked for the NFB with other pioneering women in film who played a significant role in the rise of the Board’s international reputation. These included American freelancer Laura Bouton whose films about Inuit culture became internationally famous (e.g. Eskimo Arts and Crafts 1943), although these would be regarded today as paternal and racist in the tradition of Robert J. Flaherty.6 Another was Canadian Jane Marsh whose film Women Are Warriors (1942) was ‘the only war propaganda that might reasonably be deemed unabashedly feminist’, and all of these women

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arguably played an important part in cementing Canada’s National Film Board ‘as a major force in national filmmaking’ (Johanson 2016). The Second World War offered opportunities to women who were able to take on key creative roles in documentaries of all kinds. For instance, Japan’s first female director, Tazuko Sakane, directed ten documentaries on the wartime conditions in Manchuria between 1936 and 1944.7 She has written that her interests in her films were to ‘portray the true figure of women, seeing from the realm of women’ (Constable 2019). Very little of her work survives and the ‘freedom she had during the war disappeared in peacetime, when she could no longer find work as a director and was reduced to working as a script girl’ (Johanson 2016). This shrinking of opportunities happened to many women in the film industry after the Second World War due to the return of men to work, and a general post-­ war decline in demand for documentaries. The 1950s became more conservative and women were more restricted compared to the war years. This gave rise to feminist activist films such as British documentarian Jill Craigie’s To Be a Woman (1951), a film arguing for gender equality, particularly in work (commissioned by the trade union). It canvassed the opinions against equality in the context of unconscious bias and women’s actual achievements. In the film, a male voice tells the audience that ‘all political parties agree with the principle of equal pay, it’s simply that now isn’t the time’ and a female voice retorts ‘Now never is the time’—which turns out to ring true given the gender pay gap continues to be an issue seventy years later. This illustrates how women influenced representation when given the opportunity, although at that time ‘few of the filmmakers would have described themselves as feminists’; however, their perspectives were important because women filmmakers ‘tended to portray women and their concerns in a progressive and less patronizing fashion than was usual’ (Haggith 2006, 73). There is evidence that in other countries in the world feminism was stirring; for example, as depicted in the student documentary Barrier-Breaking Women in Indian Cinema (Paulina Sobczak 2020); in 1954, 13,000 Indian women signed a declaration with the objective of changing the portrayal, including the stereotypical representation of women in Indian films (University of Arkansas 2020). In the later 1950s, women started to look to self-expression in the avant-garde and experimental documentaries. Among them was French filmmaker Agnès Varda who was part of the French New Wave movement of the 1950s and 1960s. At the time of her death in 2019, she had

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seventy-­two awards (mostly for documentary), including an Honorary Academy Award. Varda had an express interest in the female gaze. As Smith has observed, her films have examined ‘the problems of constructing female identity outside a fixing male gaze’ and ‘how to be a woman outside of male opinion?’ (Smith 1998, 106). Among Varda’s central interests were ‘presenting the subjectivity of a principal character through her perceptions of her surroundings’, in films from the beginning of her career; for example, the 1958 L’Opéra-Mouffe/Diary of a Pregnant Woman (1958). Also, in the 1950s, the introduction of television provided a significant platform for documentaries (initially with black and white programming), and it formed a new financial, distribution and exhibition source. The initial documentary forms were news and compilation documentaries, largely produced by journalists in-house for networks or local stations (Ellis 2020). This created competition for audiences that did not help the documentary film sector; also women were not generally employed as non-fiction television directors as it was a male dominated medium for decades (with women beginning to make inroads in the new millennium).8 There is, however, a record of Hungarian Matúz Józsefné who created the first independent news programme in 1957 and remained director in charge of prime time news for twenty-nine years and, therefore, ‘virtually the entire socialist history of Hungarian TV news centred around one woman’ (Imre 2016, 196). From the 1960s into the 1970s, a dominant style in North America was the unstaged ‘fly on the wall’ observational documentaries, featuring the device of the filmmaker’s presence. It was a shift in style that aimed to record the profilmic event in a way that was unaffected by the presence of the camera. Examples include Shirley Clarke’s 1967 Portrait of Jason, a shoot conducted continuously over twelve hours at New York’s Chelsea Hotel. It has been described as about ‘psychology rather than action’ (Hegedus 2014b). Clarke’s presence is felt in her directions, which use a self-referential technique that creates awareness in the viewer of her voyeurism; for example, one hears her say ‘keep the sound running’, whilst the inebriated Jason participates in his own objectification, ‘demonstrating the camera’s ability to become a predator’ (Foster 1995, 82). Another is Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA (1976), a product of the direct cinema movement that documented the long-running struggle of Kentucky miners who were striking for their rights.9 The film has been widely regarded as feminist for the repeated references to the centrality of miners’ wives in the planning and carrying out of protests and because of

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the film’s message about ‘the growing influence of women, both domestically and publicly, in the latter half of the twentieth century’ (White n.d.). It was rewarded with an Academy Award (with women having a consistent presence in the Oscars for ‘Best Documentary’ from the 1970s10). The 1970s was a period in some parts of the world where women were first starting to make documentaries. For example, the first documentary made by a woman in Egypt was Ateyyat El Abnoudy’s short Horse of Mud (1971), which observes the impoverished lives of ordinary people. Her humanist focus was aimed at showing the ‘reality of society’, which she has undertaken in her films in relation to her country’s complex political circumstances, and she has been called the ‘mother of Egyptian documentary’ (Van de Peer 2017, 39 & 2). Another marker film was Lebanese filmmaker Heiny Srour’s The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974), which, in 1974, was the first film (and documentary) by an Arab filmmaker to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It documented the war in the late 1960s when Dhofar rose up against the Sultan of Oman by way of a feminist guerrilla movement. In the film, one woman says: ‘I do not allow my family and tribe to paralyse me more … I participate in all the revolution’s activities’. International Women’s Year was marked by the UN in 1975 and documentaries that were identifiably feminist were a visible part of the landscape over the next decade, although in some parts of the world this feminism was silenced; for example, the first documentary by Tunisian Selma Baccar, Fatma 75 (1975), a feminist essay film, was banned for thirty years (Fahim 2019). The ability or liberty to engage in feminist activism, or creative practice, varies across the world and has been and continues to be difficult in non-Western countries. During the 1970s, there was a proliferation of feminist film collectives for production, distribution and exhibition of films in many parts of the Western world.11 Feminist scholars had an impact on the screen landscape with documentaries that aimed to challenge or intervene in patriarchal representation. Among these was Laura Mulvey, who with Peter Wollen made the documentary Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), which explores concerns ‘central to Mulvey’s writings: the position of women in relation to patriarchal myth, symbolic language and male fantasy’ (Cooper Gallery 2017). The 1970s and 1980s were also a booming time for feminist political documentaries, and in relation to women’s stories on screen, particularly in documentary. The Criterion Channel has released many of these films as a collection called ‘Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories’, a series curated by Nellie Killian that ‘celebrates female

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filmmakers who took the simple, radical step of allowing women the space and time to talk about their lives’ (Criterion 2020). Amongst the films that contain four decades of documentaries are important productions that were catalysts for women’s liberation, including Growing Up Female (Reichert and Klein 1971). The film was made when Reichert and others established a consciousness-raising group; the film, her capstone university project in which women talked about their lives and social norms, was distributed through New Day Films, achieving wide exhibition and providing momentum to the women’s movement (Aufderheide 2019). In 1972, the First International Festival of Women’s Films was held in New York, and, at that event, 120 films gave a voice to women. The event was described in Women & Film as revealing a trend through ‘a fount of documentaries that highlighted the vexing banalities of women’s lives, drawn from the candour and fury of their everyday’ (Chen 2020). In 1978, Julia Lesage identified ‘how feminist filmmakers, as part of the second wave of feminism, were drawn to documentary as a storytelling device that could be mobilised to tell the missing and powerful “ordinary details of women’s lives”’ (Kuhn 1982, 148). This was expressed in the 1980s through the production of ‘herstories’, films that put women back into history and were part of a consciousness-raising of what women had achieved; for example, Connie Field’s The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980).12 As described later in this book, these realist films were markers of the politics and aesthetics of the period in which they were made. From the mid-1980s, documentary rose as an entertainment medium in the West with filmmakers such as Ross McElwee (Sherman’s March 1985) and Michael Moore (Roger and Me 1989) engaging in a trend scholar Bill Nichols has described as ‘filmmaker as protagonist’ (Nichols 1991, 71). This has not been a particularly strong interest for female documentary filmmakers. As academic Stella Hockenhull has noted in her study of the British industry, women documentary filmmakers rarely ‘act’ or even appear on screen, but instead, generally ‘give a voice to the other and are decentred’, functioning as ‘mediators activating their subjects to provide explanations and to express feelings’ (Hockenhull 2017, 60). Women more often mark their presence in films in which they participated by their voiceover rather than acting as a persona to camera (particularly in the 1980s). This has continued into the present, and, even in films that might be described as memoirs, this tends to be the case. For example, Kirsten Johnson’s 2016 memoir documentary Camera Person engages with her work, her life and the relationship between the camera person

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and her subject. A sense of Johnson’s presence is subtly evoked in her sneeze in the soundtrack of the title sequence, by her shadow or reflection, and her engagements with her subjects from behind the camera. In other parts of the world in the 1980s, documentary production evolved relative to the specific cultural, political and social contexts. For example, in the 1980s in Taiwan, political activism evolved in response to martial law and strict censorship, and ‘activist video was a crucial means of spreading alternative information and contesting the government controlled media’ until the advent of democratic systems in 1987 (Berry 2018, 205). Documentary became more important in Taiwan because audiences sought images of themselves and their society, with women playing a prominent role in the sector and making up a large proportion of the documentarians from that time until the present (Berry 2018, 205). The result has been the emergence of documentaries offering new subjectivities that are attentive to gender nuances. These have included women’s professional space and gender politics, intersectional insights gained from indigenous or ethnic perspectives, or understanding of technology in everyday life—all of which not only positioned women documentarians as socially significant but also supported the prominence of females in Taiwanese society more broadly (Chiu and Zhang 2014, 11). An example in China in the 1990s is the ‘new documentary movement’. Films of this group were trying to differentiate themselves from mainstream didactic documentaries and were thematically interested in those marginalised by the reforms in the post-Mao official discourse (Berry and Rofel 2010, 137). They were at first realist (jishi zhuyi) and then strongly influenced by the spontaneity of cinéma vérité and direct cinema, examining themes not dealt with in the mainstream (Berry and Rofel 2010, 142). The first woman in this movement was Li Hong, ‘China’s first independent female documentarian’, who started making documentaries in 1991 and produced the ‘ground-breaking’ work Out of Phoenix Bridge (1997). That film, which follows four young rural women who sought work in Beijing, charts the ‘conflicts between the changes in women’s roles’, along with their dreams and hopes (Women Make Movies n.d.). The film embodies the ‘alternativeness’ of this movement in that her subjects are those who are outside of the neoliberal era, where the elite are lauded, and she challenges representation presenting migrant women who articulately critique their own situation (Berry and Rofel 2010, 138). From a feminist perspective, the film emphasises that the women aren’t just pursuing narrow economic interests, the dominant stereotype for

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their class (as rural women making lives in the city), but trying to escape the patriarchal existence that was the only way of life that was available to them in the countryside (Berry and Rofel 2010, 138). From the 1990s, and into the new millennium, digital storytelling was on the rise and documentaries were produced on a range of media, including cell phones, and they were distributed in new ways online. As White has observed, with ‘the advent of digital filmmaking, women’s work in documentary is more vital, varied, and widespread than ever’ within multiple national and global media fields (White 2015, 8). It had a democratising effect through enabling access, reducing costs, facilitating mobility and offering new distribution opportunities. According to academic Anne O’Brien, new forms of subscription and streaming bypassed traditional gatekeepers and created interconnecting distribution flows across platforms (O’Brien 2020, 118, 120). However, there is a digital divide in some parts of the world, and many do not have access to computers, internet or mobile phones, and, where this is a problem, it is more often women who have less access than their male counterparts. Despite this, in the new millennium women found new digitally enabled ways of doing things. This included funding; for example, British filmmaker Fanny Armstrong was one of the first, if not the first, to crowdfund a documentary with the comic vegan society video The Truth or Dairy (Armstrong sisters 1994), which offered an introduction to veganism. She went on to deploy this methodology in later films, such as the crowdfunded hybrid drama-­ documentary-­animation film The Age of Stupid (2009), which examines climate change through archival film combined with docudrama and animation (Hockenhull 2017, 65–66). Armstrong also innovated in pioneering a new ‘Indie Screenings’ distribution system that facilitates licences to screen social action independent films with revenue going to the person screening it; for example, an organisation could screen the film to raise funds whilst at the same time creating awareness of an issue depicted in a given film. Women made the most of the new forms of distribution; for example, platforms such as YouTube Red (the subscription arm of the video platform), where films such as Barbara Kopple’s This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous (2017), a documentary about gender transition that examines trans identity and questions of whether gender is a false construct, became the first YouTube original to premier in the official selection at the Sundance Film Festival.13 Whilst it has been available to them, in 2020, women documentarians do not appear to have favoured cell phone production. The format has been largely used for short films and more often

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narrative fiction, with a few exceptions such as Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjellou’s Academy Award winning Searching for Sugar Man (2012), which was partially shot on an iPhone (Dudley-Nicholson 2013).14 However, women have notable achievements with new technology and innovation, for example, at the 2020 Emmy Awards for ‘Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary’, the nominees were five women and one man, and it was won by Australian Lynette Wallworth for her production Awavena (2018)—her second Emmy in this category (the first being Collisions 2016). Wallworth works with emerging technologies such as virtual reality and digital video installations and has a practice straddling art and documentary film and worked with indigenous communities on both of these Emmy winning productions. Contemporary female documentarians examine all topics and issues, bringing their perspectives as women as one lens from which they explore the big picture questions that broadly preoccupy society. As Waldman and Walker have written, women ‘don’t shirk from difficult, multidimensional, and topical issues’ (1999, 2). These include large questions such as immigration, the rise of populist movements, economic anxiety, the environment and public health. Making sense of these concerns is frequently undertaken with strong humanist inflections. Danish filmmaker Mira Jargil’s Reunited (2020) reveals the human face of migration and the consequences of the policies governments make. It follows a Syrian refugee family who are divided by war. They are in three different countries; each parent is separated and their children are alone. The film captures their emotions as they try to maintain hope of being reunited across years of separation. Jargil has described it as being about ‘love, loss, despair, desperation, and longing for just being together … it has also been a study of how you uphold your strength in an inhumane situation’ (Gheron 2020). The rapid rise of populist movements in response to nations attempting to retain power in the face of globalisation (e.g. Brexit, Donald Trump) caused momentum for right-wing politics and gave rise to films about these movements. One example is Canadian American Astra Taylor’s film What Is Democracy? (2018), which philosophically contemplates the film’s title through giving voice to a range of people of different kinds, particularly those who are traditionally excluded: women, African Americans, incarcerated people—even the emotional memories of a young Syrian refugee. Critic Maryanne Johanson has observed of this film that Taylor’s documentary is ‘proudly intellectual, decidedly feminist’, and asks audiences to consider whether we need to rethink our paradigms and develop

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new ones—especially the ones in which wealth and privilege rule—something she writes that the film does ‘by featuring mostly women and people of colour as its expert talking heads’ (Johanson 2019). Greek Australian filmmaker Mary Zournazi’s documentary Dogs of Democracy (Mary Zournazi 2017) deals with the new economic anxiety. Shot in Athens, it is centred around the idea that Greece has become the ‘stray dog of Europe’. She uses the many stray canines in the city streets as a motif of hope for the anti-austerity movement. It also communicates human courage, compassion and dignity despite a crisis surrounding them. The environment, particularly climate change, or environmental activism, has received a lot of attention from women documentarians, some of whom have substantially based their careers on such films; for example, Australian Cathy Henkel whose film The Burning Season (2008) documents the destruction of pristine rainforest in Indonesia or Sally Ingleton whose feature Acid Ocean (2014) examines the urgent environmental challenge of ocean acidification. In the public health and science arena, Emmy Award winning Australian director Sonia Pemberton has made highly successful television broadcast documentaries on vaccines, vitamins and uranium. Whilst acknowledging that women documentarians explore every topic within our world today, this book is interested to explore how individual women filmmakers include a gender lens, a ‘female gaze’, in the myriad of topics to which they turn their attention.

Female Participation and Access Across the world, documentary is the film industry sector with the largest numbers of women. This higher participation and success, as compared to features or television sectors, are attributable to five key reasons. The first is to do with money. As the Sundance Institute’s former director of the documentary film programme Cara Mertes has noted, ‘the doc field is notoriously not a good way to make a living and men tend to be interested in things where there is a lot of potential for a pay-off so they will gravitate towards fictional films’ (Silverstein 2008). In the same vein, documentary director and producer Liz Garbus (What Happened to Miss Simone 2015) has observed that there are more female documentary directors because ‘the pay is less. The threshold for entry is less. The budgets are less’ (Kaufman 2020). The second reason is to do with gatekeepers. As documentary director Dawn Porter (Trapped 2016) observed: ‘[t]here are fewer gatekeepers in

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documentary film—less sitting around and waiting for a green light’ (Budowski 2017). According to Sean Farnel, who previously held the post of programming director at Canada’s premium documentary festival Hot Docs, a higher participation by women could be because ‘a lot of the funders in the broadcast world are also women’ (Silverstein 2008)—this point is arguable and might not be widely true in other countries. A third reason is that there are qualities of the documentary medium that many women find attractive. Filmmaker Marie Mandy has stated that documentary is a part of the film industry where ‘there is still some freedom and liberty. It’s still a kind of laboratory where you can invent for example new narrative modes, where you can propose new things. … women like to investigate … they are attracted to … the relationship with reality’ (Mandy 2014). Director Phie Ambo has said of the process that she can do it herself, ‘I don’t have to discuss with anyone, and if I choose to turn the camera, I just do it. So that’s, part of the pleasure for me, that is the ultimate freedom’ (Ambo 2014). A fourth central reason is evident in the credits of the documentaries that women make: women create their own opportunities, often by acting as the writer, director, producer cinematographer and/or editor. And they often give other women work as well; a fifth reason for the higher participation of women in documentary is that the more women there are in a field, the higher the numbers of women. This was evidenced in a 2018–2019 study by academic Martha M.  Lauzen, which noted that women directors have been more likely to employ women; for example, women accounted for 45 per cent of editors on female documentary projects and only 21 per cent on those of men (Lauzen 2019). Women are also more likely to create films about female subjects as noted by screen producer Sue Maslin, who observed: ‘who is actually taking the risk on women’s stories? For a start, female directors are. Their films are overwhelmingly about female protagonists’ (Maslin 2015). There is some evidence that social enculturation also makes women well suited to documentary. Traits that are traditionally coded as feminine traits, such as empathy and sensitivity, have been identified as building strong connections between filmmaker and subject. For example, the 2019 documentary feature Oscar winner Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (director of Free Solo 2018 with Jimmy Chin) has observed that it is not that men aren’t empathetic, but that women are able to meaningfully tap into their empathy; there is:

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something about the tenacity required to make a documentary and the ability to listen that traditionally, women are very good at … It’s a mix between a really deep commitment to social issues and the issues that affect our lives, an ability to empathize, and an identification [with] people who have been subjugated in some way or discriminated against. (Bentley 2020)

In the same vein, O’Brien has noted in relation to her research on women’s labour position in film and television that ‘women are “pulled” into documentary because they bring social and emotional skills to projects, such as a capacity for empathic engagement, but, on the other hand, they are also “pushed” out as a minority’ (O’Brien 2020, 120). There are gender dynamics at play, and it isn’t always an advantage because they are at times burdened with this work whether they wish to do it or not (O’Brien 2020, 121). O’Brien writes that documentary is not always female-friendly and that there are many ways in which women’s approaches and work are questioned or they are overlooked in gendered ways that men don’t experience. However, women state they would recruit other women in ‘ways that negate gender stereotyping’ (O’Brien 2020, 120). That is an important reason why gender diversity is required in film and television industries. Today, there is still a range of obstacles to female participation in global screen industries. In countries with government film agencies that have programmes aimed at supporting greater gender equality (e.g. Swedish Film Institute and Screen Australia), the rationale for this support is that there continues to be systematic barriers for women such as unconscious bias, male/female dominated fields, non-inclusive professional networks, work environments that are not family-friendly, lack of role models and women’s films being viewed as niche. There are also sociocultural issues— such as that women are primary carers, silence on sexism and sexual harassment—and financial issues, including pay disparity and precarious work, with women more highly represented in part-time work (Pearson 2011). As is the case across all genres, women filmmakers have reported a range of systemic issues that today still make getting documentary projects more difficult. These include funding mechanisms where even Academy Award winners like Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA 1976) struggle with raising money; or others have noted unconscious bias where ‘women’s storytelling is seen as too risky to financially back up’; or gatekeeper issues where broadcasters are not interested in films with ‘a strong woman’s point of view’ (Turin 2015). Some female filmmakers, such as Heidi

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Ewing (Jesus Camp 2006—with Rachel Grady), have admitted to feeling ‘compelled to only use her first-name initial to hide her gender’ (Turin 2015). Maintaining a sustainable career is difficult for filmmakers, and budgets in documentary are generally lower than other genres. According to Deborah Zimmerman, CEO of Women Make Movies, funding inequities continue, women ‘still rarely get the million-dollar documentaries; it’s mainly men. We did a funding study and learned that films by women and about women get the least amount of money, and the least attention. Films by men and about men get the most money’ (Cole 2013). These issues point to the conclusion that O’Brien has made in her analysis of women and media work, ‘women do not lack confidence, they experience exclusion’ (O’Brien 2019, 3). This is despite evidence that documentaries made by women directors are amongst the best performing, not just at awards, but in terms of box office. For example, RBG (Julie Cohen and Betsy West 2018), a documentary about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was among the top one hundred box office grossers of 2018, taking more than US$14 million, and Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s 2018) documentary (about rock climber Alex Honnold) took more than US$17.5 million worldwide (McDonald 2018).

Female Subjectivity There is evidence that women are interested in telling stories about women, and in examining female subjectivity, and that this is an element that is inflected in the work of women directors more strongly than in work by male directors. Women directors are creating many women’s stories, and this arguably will impact on female audience identification. As Debra Zimmerman of Women Make Movies in the US has described: ‘I had never seen my experiences reflected back on me on film. It was so powerful … I still hear people saying the same thing, audiences talking about the power of realistic portrayals of women’ (Aufderheide and Zimmerman 2004, 1455–1456). In the documentary In the Company of Women (Klainberg and Riticker 2004), actor Tilda Swinton spoke of her own spectatorship, her interest in films that connect with female experience: A lot of us are constantly looking in the cinema for women that we can recognize and women’s lives that we can recognize as something close to and as interesting as lives we lead ourselves—as complicated and as fractured and

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as confusing. Women tend to know how interesting women’s lives are in a way many men don’t. (Hankin 2007, 67)

Comments such as Swinton’s indicate that there is an absence of representations of women that have authenticity for women audiences. In addition, many Western screens lack diversity; for example, ‘the visual landscape is that much more barren for women of colour and lesbians’ (Hankin 2007, 68). It is powerful to see others who are like you on screen and it is disempowering for those who are left out of screen representation because their worldviews and identities are not validated. The view women bring, drawn from their lives as women, imbues their work and influences their style or aesthetic. In Marie Mandy’s documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema (2000), director Sally Potter, who is interviewed in the film about her approach to filming desire, said: ‘a love scene is not something visual, it’s something experiential’. What she identified was an aesthetic approach to her subject that is neither voyeurism nor spectacle. The effect is to engage senses and feelings.15 The value of this is not just located in identification for women audiences in framing women as subjects of their female experience and desire but also gives access to female perspectives, particularly their interiority. The selection of material, the themes and subjectivities that female documentarians explore in their films are often described as ‘different’ to ‘men’s films’ (Aufderheide and Zimmerman 2004, 1457). Whilst men might be attracted to similar subject matter, and exceptions can always be observed, one of the interests of female filmmakers is telling stories about women from female perspectives. Each filmmaker is subject to her own context (and its power relations) and has her own experience that is subject to and contingent upon personal, cultural and historical specificity. But women who live in the world as women also experience that world from the perspective of that sex and gender, and this influences subjectivity. Women directors construct what Chantal Akerman has identified as addressing the spectator as female, constructing a horizon of meaning that describes women’s gestures, actions, body and look, something she thinks female filmmakers achieve through defining ‘the space of our vision, the temporality and rhythms of perception’ (de Lauretis 1987, 132). This will always be inflected by other intersectional elements; for example, Akerman’s documentary Dis-Moi (1980) conveys her subjects accounts of their lives as women, but also as Jewish people who experienced the

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disaster (Shoah) of the Holocaust, and who lost the world they lived in. In the mix is her position as the daughter of one of these women (only heard in voiceover), in the context of a series commissioned for French television about elderly women and as a film that embodies her oeuvre. Roberts has described it as ‘a reimagining of history, and the creation of a new form that Akerman has followed up on ever since’ (Roberts 2014). By this he refers to the themes but also to her approach where Akerman arrived to share coffee and cakes, and amid stories of food, love and family, she captured their life experiences with respect and framed them as important, allowing them or empowering them to speak and share the texture of their lives. There is evidence that contemporary documentaries have been foregrounding female subjectivity, and whilst not explicit or overt, are nevertheless a site of contemporary feminism in documentary. For example, scholars Scarparo and Luciano have observed, quoting Vito Sagarrio, that a feature of the new generation of contemporary Italian filmmakers is the rise in documentary filmmaking and the increase in women in key creative roles. They describe three documentaries that are all underpinned by the search for the mother and the mother’s perspective, and which encourage the viewer to be self-reflexive to understand gendered experience: For One More Hour With You/Un’ora sola ti vorrei (Alina Marazzi 2002), From Mother to Daughter/Di madre in figlia (Fabiana Sargentini 2005) and The Third Eye/Il terzo occhio (Susan Nicchiarelli 2003). They state that these films are ‘not overtly feminist’, but the feminism is evident in that these women have been making documentaries ‘which increasingly foreground a desire to engage, create and conceive of female subjectivity on screen’ and to challenge traditional representations of women in Italian cinema (Scarparo and Luciano 2010, 488). They make the conclusion that the personal is still political and female agency has received a new focus that enables a different social subject for the audience, one that addresses the spectator as female and enables women as speaking subjects.16 In short, it is a move towards films by and for women. The politics they identify is of ‘a new understanding of oneself, and of the world, that must necessarily be reconfigured and rethought beginning from one’s own gendered experience (as somebody who is either a man or a woman)’ (Scarparo and Luciano 2010, 490).

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Politics The idea that ‘the personal is political’ still has currency and is reinforced by the specificity of female oppression in different parts of the world. Film critic and filmmaker Norma Marcos has said that she is a Palestinian and a woman who has suffered political and social oppression. But ‘it took me three years to really understand the “woman’s question”, although I am part of this society’ (Hillauer 2005, 218). It took time because it is complex to understand what it is to be a woman living in Gaza and the West Bank, where the society is dominantly Muslim and there aren’t any women in politics. For this reason, she has been critical of Western filmmakers who ‘go to an Arab country for a week, pretend they know everything about the “Third World”, and then go back and make a documentary about us’ (Hillauer 2005, 218). As Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain has observed, there are ramifications when Western women filmmakers speak on behalf of others if they don’t have an understanding of ‘the complexity of social and cultural specificity of those places, then reductionism, superficiality, sensationalism and even racism are possible results’ (Turin 2015). In her film The Veiled Hope: Women of Palestine (1994), Marcos aimed to counter Western myths, such as women as Oriental, refugees or terrorists, but primarily she wanted to speak to Palestinians who ‘deal with images differently’ (Hillauer 2005, 219–20). This is the specific understanding that comes from being inside of a culture, although she is also outside it, given she is an expatriate who has lived in Paris most of her adult life. This is a good illustration of what academic Shilyh Warren has described as the subjects of reality at stake in women’s documentary filmmaking, which are ‘vigorously shaped by political ideologies of race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality’ (Warren 2019, 145). In Latin America and Africa, a ‘Third Cinema’ movement critical of neocolonialism, capitalism and Hollywood has different concerns to those in the West. Despite variances in focus or approach, women have shared a battle to be liberated and documentary film has played an important part in that. So, for example, Arab women filmmakers in the 1970s for the first time they showed in their films that emancipation can also be an end in itself. Many films by their male colleagues presented women’s emancipation only as serving the cause of national independence. In these films women would fight side by side with men, but after their common goal was

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achieved they had to return to their traditional place in the home and family. (Hillauer 2005, 15)

The significance of this is that men and women in the same situation may have completely different experiences. Hillauer’s observation is that Arab women brought a difference in emphasis, a shift that was not the same as their male counterparts who were subject to identical political issues. Women saw it from a female point of view, and it was based in the oppression that they felt in their own immediate lives. This is significant; it flags two important positions—that there is difference, but also that women share some experiences, such as being subject to patriarchy. The idea of a difference of emphasis or perspective arising out of what women might see, or find of interest, is a significant consideration in the discussion of female subjectivity. For example, Romanian filmmaker Ileana Stanculescu made a film called The Bridge (2004), which was set on the river Tisa where a bridge dividing Romania and the Ukraine was being rebuilt. It had been destroyed in the Second World War and this had divided communities. Stanculescu, a film student at the time, was making a film about it. She has said of her film, which was made with a female team, ‘the first scene with the mother and the child, probably a man wouldn’t have discovered it or wouldn’t have found it so interesting’ (Stanculescu 2014). Whilst this could be disputed, she says that the film was initially to be about the construction of the bridge. Her ‘professor, who was a man, told us you should spend every single day at the construction site because that’s where things happen’ (Stanculescu 2014). She says that she wasn’t interested in the technical parts and she and her all-female crew met a little boy waiting by the river and started to talk to him about why he was waiting there. He told them it was because ‘once a week my mother comes and then we can talk to each other, and I miss her’ (Stanculescu 2014). This had occurred because the destruction of the bridge not only divided two countries but also divided families and communities. So, the filmmakers went to the other side and met the mother, eventually becoming close to her and recording the exchanges between the mother and son. Stanculescu recalled that ‘actually we were like part of her family’ and she wondered: ‘maybe you have a different access to such a protagonist if you are a woman than if we would be a crew of men, or a bigger crew?’ (Stanculescu 2014).

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The Woman Filmmaker Many female filmmakers have observed that they do not want to be labelled a ‘woman filmmaker’, that they would prefer to be known merely as a director, not a ‘female director’. However, women continue to be described in this way in the press, while men are never given the label ‘male director’. Australian director Gillian Armstrong took up this point when she stated that she hates the label of ‘woman director’; she wants people to think of her work as Gillian Armstrong films. Her view is that every woman, and every person, has a unique personality, taste, style and set of beliefs (Armstrong 2015). There is a risk if women avoid their female subjectivity, and, as feminist scholar Toril Moi argues, a genuinely feminist position would not make women choose between their profession and their gender (Moi 1999, 205–206), and the point of arguing against essentialism is to stop sexist generalisations about women as a whole ‘class’—not to deny that this class exists (Moi 2001, 178). In a similar vein to Armstrong, Danish director Phie Ambo has also raised this issue, saying: ‘I’ve been reluctant to talk about this for many, many, years, I don’t want to be labelled as a female director’ (Ambo 2014). But she is aware that ‘there are differences in how we [women] look at the world’, something she knows because she has two daughters and she can see ‘how they’re treated differently than little boys, and of course it influences the way they look at the world’ (Ambo 2014). She came to realise that ‘we have to talk about it’ because ‘men are equally pressured by this inequality’ and ‘treating people by their gender is not fruitful for any of us’ (Ambo 2014). Being female is only one element, and, as intersectional feminists have noted, there are many other aspects of identity that intersect with what a person is, and which inform an individual’s subjectivity. Although she was very interested in the experiences and condition of women, the late French filmmaker Agnès Varda once said: ‘I would never think that I was born to express what women suffer and what women have to change in society. I am a human being and some things can be understood as a human being. You don’t have to emphasize all the time that you are a woman’ (Levitin 1974, 63). Whilst widely denying labels, women have nonetheless acknowledged the impact on their work of their sex and gender. Documentarian Marie Mandy has noted that many female filmmakers refuse to call themselves female directors, but ‘[t]hey live in a woman’s body and theirs is a female experience of the world. To pretend this does not affect their creative

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process is to deny something of their own identity’ (Turin 2015). The importance of this observation is that the denial of female subjectivity is a threat to its expression. As feminist scholar Toril Moi has argued: if women deny their specific gendered subjectivity (as they might if they want to be considered just human beings, rather than female human beings), then therefore do they have recourse to the full range of their own experiences, something that men have not been prevented from having because of their sex? (Moi 1999, 128)

It is understandable that women want their work to be understood as the output of an individual creative person, which it always will be. However, their experiences and perceptions are in part coloured by the life they lead in female bodies, and how their sex and gender are regarded or treated in their culture. This is a core interest of this book, without denying other aspects of identity that influence creativity. Whilst acknowledging all influences are interdependent, the position taken here is to assert this aspect as worth interrogating, and, more than that, it is essential to understand the contribution of women to the field. As filmmaker Chris Hegedus has observed, ‘everybody brings their own sensibility to a film. But I think probably women bring something different than men in a way that they may have a particular view of the world that’s maybe impacted by how they were brought up as a woman’ (Hegedus 20 November 2014a). This book is deeply interested in the ways in which being a woman influences what appears on the screen, both from the vantage of what women see, and how gender influences that seeing. There is some evidence from women themselves that being female can sometimes be an advantage in the documentary filmmaking process (French 2017, 18). For example, Barbara Kopple has explained that she wasn’t sure a man could have made her film Harlan County USA because ‘people talked to me and they maybe told me things that they wouldn’t tell a man because I like to do films that are very intimate’ (IDFA 2014). While at first, she was regarded as a spy, she was eventually included, living with the miners on the picket line and being protected by them. Other filmmakers have similarly identified this advantage. Kim Longinotto has described how being female enabled her filmmaking process when she made her film Pink Saris (2010), a film about Indian activists for gender equity, equality and the prevention of violence against women. The film involved Longinotto, her translator and sound recordist making the film in very close proximity

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with the subject (Sampat Pal Devi). In that instance, she recalled that although we cannot generalise, in some instances ‘it is a real advantage if you are a woman’ (IDFA 2014). In that situation it was a case of biological sex allowing the participants to be in close proximity and therefore growing a close relationship—something Longinotto felt would be much harder for a man to achieve in that context given they were staying in the home of their film subject. A further example was given by Australian director Gillian Armstrong who said of her documentary Smokes and Lollies (1976) that because she was a young woman making the film about teenage girls, the girls opened up to her and ‘told her things they probably would not have told a typical filmmaking team at the time because in the 1970s the teams sent by broadcasters were generally men in suits’ (Armstrong 2015). These experiences indicate that women sometimes gain access to their subjects as a consequence of being female. Documentarian Phie Ambo has also spoken of the ways in which women are socialised, or the way gender is enculturated, and how that might enter the process: I can only talk about my own work … a lot of the time I have to take my pride and put it in a very small place, just take it away. And I think that’s a little bit easier for women because we’ve done that ever since we were girls, we’ve been raised to suppress ideas a little bit and be more like a service person and take care of others. So when we’re filming we’re doing that with the main characters too, if they want something, it’s not so difficult to set aside my own needs and do something else, so it doesn’t hurt so much for me to do that because I’m used to it. (Ambo 2014)

Ambo’s 2014 documentary Good Things Await is set on a farm in Denmark that is an exemplar for alternative biodynamic agriculture. The documentary, a winner of the Green network FIFE Grand Prix, has an early scene with the farmer, Niels, delivering a calf. Ambo was shooting her film, but she was asked to join in and help with the breech birth. Ambo included it in the film to show she is not an objective viewer but is part of what is going on (because she spent a year forming relationships on that farm to make the film). But she has said, ‘I’m not sure if I were a male director and I was standing there with my equipment, I’m not sure that … [Niels] would have asked him to come and drag the calf out instead of making the film’ (Ambo 2014). She explained that the reason for this is ‘a female thing’, as she became ‘part of the family in a way, and there are

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good things about that and there are some bad things about that. The bad things are that sometimes you’re asked to drag out a calf instead of making that movie … it’s just sort of a funny thing that happens a lot’ (Ambo 2014). From the examples above it would appear that there are two ways in which intimacy can be understood as a strong feature of women’s documentary practice. On the one hand, they illustrate that some women documentary filmmakers have noted an intimacy that they have been able to develop through the fact of their being female—it has for various reasons provided them with an access they believe is directly a result of their sex. On the other hand, there is an intimacy derived from being a woman in relation to dealing with female subjects. An example of being a woman making a film about women can be observed in Helke Misselwitz’s film Winter Ade (1989). The filmmaker took a train across East Germany a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, speaking to women on the trains and in places along the way. Although the audience doesn’t see her, she created a sense of intimacy through beginning the film at the site of her own birth (in an ambulance in front of a train crossing). She continues this with her (filmmaker) voiceover in conversation with the female subjects whom she films going about their daily lives. It clearly shows that women in the German Democratic Republic have not achieved gender equality. The factory workers, single mothers or teenagers all represent the tension between work and domestic lives. Academic Anna Stainton has written that Misselwitz holds up her own life for comparison with her subjects and that this common ground contributes to the intimacy created by the film. Stainton observes that ‘many reviewers were excited by the film’s insight into women’s private lives’, describing a review by Norbert Wehrstedt that stated it was ‘life as it is. It is the everyday in its pure form, raw, without a rosy glow and not some retouched image … This is reality on the street … it surprises by virtue of its focus on the everyday and its suggestive qualities, through private intimacy, through personal concern’. Although that reviewer seemed to have comprehended those aspects of the film, the lament is that the subjects ‘do not talk about sex’! (Stainton 2014, 89)

Presumably Stainton’s point is that the filmmaker was not as interested in the sex act as the male reviewer, and that he has not entirely comprehended her preoccupations.17 While it is a film by a woman, and it is centrally about women, she does however reveal that a lot of their conversation

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is about men—those they married and those they meet. Through this the film locates them as living within patriarchy and largely colonised by it (its key feminist act). When Misselwitz asks the female workers in a fish factory during a break: ‘What do you wish for yourself in the future?’ the first woman replies: ‘Good health for all the family. My children—that they marry well. And my two sons. That’s all at present’. The other women agree, and a couple laughingly add more worldly things such as money, but none steps outside of their duty as mothers and wives. It is not the focus of the discussion offered here, but in particular contexts a filmmaker’s access is not equal because within some societies, males and females are segregated. There are cultural protocols around the mixing of men and women, and sometimes around whether knowledge can or cannot be shared between the sexes. For example, French filmmaker Jean Rouch has recalled that as a male filmmaker interested in African subjects, he could only be a part of the male society because of cultural protocols restricting access: ‘if you want to make films about African women, you have to be a woman. A man cannot enter the women’s society. It’s just impossible. It is forbidden. … There are many things that have to do with women that I could never show’ (Rouch 1977, 483). In relation to what women can show, Canadian (Anishinaabe Algonquin) director April Mullen has said of her docudrama Real Detective 201618 that whilst she can only answer from her personal experience, she creates with her body and spirit: ‘my work comes from deep within me’, from a vulnerability and connection to ‘a depth of emotions that I can see and feel in certain moments of truth’ (Mullen 2017). Being true to herself and her voice is important and has value: the female gaze is transparency—the veil between audience and filmmaker is thin, and that allows people in more. Females allow for silences, moments of compassion, space to feel. We don’t force the audience into thinking or feeling … we give them the choice. When I create, I give my everything … It’s all-encompassing’. … The female gaze offers a unique perspective on human beings. Women see the world differently than men. How exciting is that? (Mullen 2017)

If the world cannot be seen through the eyes of women, from a gendered lens (a female gaze), then the perspectives of half the world’s population would be left out. This is not just true in regard to the participation of creative practitioners, but in relation to stories of women on screen.

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However, women will tell stories about men, and whilst more women on screen is as vital as more women in production, it is important that women have the freedom to explore any subject, and this is what the women filmmakers in this work have been doing. Any story is inflected from the storyteller’s point of view, and men or women telling any story will do so from their position as a male or a female (if they gender identify). So, a story about men that is made by a woman will necessarily take her female point of view on the subject. As documentarian Chris Hegedus has observed, in ‘terms of the female gaze … what’s most important is that they [women] feel empowered to tell all the stories that they want to tell’ (Hegedus 2014a). Female experience, creativity, worldviews or explorations of subject matter must not be limited by sex and gender. The insight into our world that is achieved by inclusion and diversity cannot be understated. As this chapter has shown, the documentary sector is leading screen industries since this is where (although a gender-equal global screen industry has not been achieved) women have solid representation internationally and are increasing their participation. They are well placed to support more inclusive practices and visions, especially as the battle to be included has given many women an insight into being left outside of the dominant systems, as being the ‘Other’, and as having first-hand experience of social injustice. Women have been present throughout the history of documentary production and they have been significant innovators in the form. Whilst barriers continue to restrict female participation in documentary, women continue to be a significant presence and to innovate in all sectors of non-fiction screen industries today.

Notes 1. For a case study of the 2015 Australian Gender Matters initiative, which injected five million dollars into production development and careers, see French (2020). That chapter outlines the systemic issues and barriers. It is in a book on women in international screen industries, written by scholars from those industries. There is a need for research into which policy initiatives have or have not worked and why. 2. They are all shared with male filmmakers in the last twenty years (2000–2020). That fact might indicate that successful and innovative teams are gender balanced or it may say something about the selection continuing to favour men.

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3. According to Horak (2013), Osa’s creative and life partner (husband) consistently described Osa as an equal collaborator but she rarely received credits for her work on the projects. She made fourteen feature documentaries with him and only became visible when she continued her work after his death in 1937. She is now known for her work as a producer, director, writer, cinematographer and ethnographic filmmaker (Horak 2013). There were other pioneering women directors of documentary at that time, including American/Canadian Aloha Wanderwell Baker and Mexican sisters Adriana and Dolores Ehlers. 4. According to Dogo (2013), she underwent specialist training to remove politically incorrect scenes from films so that they were suitable for Soviet audiences. Viewed today, the film has an anti-war tone with its technology as a means of destruction and intertitles such as ‘ships of death’. It is possible that the English translations vary the meaning. Various sections of the film are available on YouTube; this one relates to the discussion here: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdnK3vd_QaE/. 5. Vertov, Svilova and the Kinoki group were interested in the organisation and structuring of reality (the ‘Kino Eye’) by a camera that could show the profilmic event in a manner that reveals more than the human eye (slowing down, speeding up, going closer). There was an interest in enabling viewers to understand films reflexively, as conveying ideology, and that economic and material conditions shape reality. This asks audiences to become more ideologically aware of themselves. This was undertaken through the communication of Marxist ideology and the world from a Communist perspective. For example, in The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov 1929), a shot of the worker is superimposed onto the machinery to show her in harmony and idealogically convey the happy worker (and the economic basis) for Lenin’s Russia. 6. However, her film is observational and not set up to tell a fictional story, as in Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922). Flaherty uses the term ‘my Eskimos’ as he indulged in ideological myth-making, one of asserting the superiority of Western civilisation or the ‘noble savage’. Flaherty had Nanook pretend that those with him were his family in order to facilitate his romantic narrative. The stereotype of the happy-go-lucky Inuit resulted from the Inuits convulsing with laughter at Nanook’s set-ups and therefore were always smiling and laughing in the film (see Rony 1996, 123). 7. Sakane was mentored by filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi from around 1930 until his death. She first assisted with the script (uncredited) for Tojin Okichi (1930) and then became assistant director on it. Very little of her work survives (McDonald 2017). Accounts of her career indicate that she had ­significant issues with sexual harassment and unconscious bias and

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even that she cut her hair and wore men’s clothing in order to fit in (Woodward 2017). 8. Ida Lupino worked in fiction but there were few women directors in early television. 9. Direct Cinema arose in US in the early 1960s with the advent of lightweight cameras that allowed an unobtrusive method (dispensing with the need for heavy, obvious equipment). It developed alongside cinéma vérité in France and was underpinned by an aspiration to achieve objective truthfulness through invisibility of the filmmakers and a faith in an observational approach whereby the filmmaker does not intervene. 10. The Oscars have an awards database, and one for speeches at https:// www.oscars.org/oscars/awards-­databases-­0 and there is a list of ‘Female Academy Award winners and nominees for non-gendered categories’ at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees_for_non-­gendered_categories#Best_Documentary_ Feature/. Both accessed 2 September 2020. 11. For example: Women Make Movies in New  York was established in September 1969; the London Women’s Film Group began in 1972; and the Sydney Women’s Film Group was founded in Australia in 1972. 12. These herstories have continued to be made into the present. Examples include Louisa Wei’s documentary Golden Gate Girls (2013), which documents the extraordinary career of the first woman director from Southern China, Ester Eng, an open lesbian who for a period in the 1940s was the only woman directing features (Constable 2019). Another is Brazen Hussies (Catherine Dwyer 2020), a film about social change achieved by the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia from 1965 to 1975. It focuses on collective action but tells personal stories, including those of people battling for gay rights, or for equality for Aboriginal women, and it is a social and political history of women’s struggles for equality in Australia. A further example are two documentaries called Women Who Loved Cinema (Marianne Khoury, Part 1 & Part 2: 2002), which document the vibrant screen culture driven by female pioneers in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s. 13. Gigi Gorgeous (family name previously Lazzarato) did shoot a lot of the footage herself prior to collaborating with Kopple. 14. He used an iPhone app called 8  mm Vintage Camera (Dudley-­ Nicholson 2013). 15. In Chap. 5 there is a discussion of aesthetics in regard to emotion, feelings and affect. 16. ‘The personal is political’ was a slogan for second wave feminism. It flagged the connectedness of the personal to broad social and political structures in that men dominated women at home and in the public sphere. There is a relationship between this social political situation and women’s subjectiv-

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ity. Understanding the political dimensions necessarily comes from knowing how women live their lives—the personal. 17. There is an issue that most critics are white men over forty-five and what they are interested in is what dominates the writing about films. See French (2015). 18. She directed two episodes of this television series that re-enacts real murders with the commentary of actual detectives. She has directed episodes into twelve different television shows, mostly in fiction. She went on to direct Dead Before Dawn (2012) and became the first woman to direct a stereoscopic 3D feature film. For her feature Below Her Mouth (2016), she hired an entirely female crew.

References Ambo, Phie. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. Armstrong, Gillian. 2015. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Sydney. January 28. Arredondo, Isabel. 2018. ‘Kathleen Romoli’. In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta. New  York: Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-3gfd-ng57/. Accessed 23 September 2020. Aufderheide, Patricia. 2019. Julia Reichert and the Work of Telling Working-Class Stories. Film Quarterly 73 (2): 9–22. https://doi.org/10.1525/ fq.2019.73.2.9. Aufderheide, Pat, and Debra Zimmerman. 2004. A to Z: Conversations on Women’s Filmmaking. Signs 3 (1): 1455–1456. Berry, Chris. 2018. Being a Woman Documentary Maker in Taiwan—An Interview with Singing Chen and Wuna Wu. In Female Authorship & Documentary Film, ed. Boel Ulfsdotter and Anna Backman-Rogers, 205–213. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Berry, Chris, and Lisa Rofel. 2010. Alternative Archive: China’s Independent Documentary Culture. In The New Chinese Documentary Movement, ed. Chris Berry, Lisa Rofel, and Xinyu Lu, 135–154. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Budowski, Jade. 2017, May 18. How Female Directors Dominate the Documentary World. Decider. https://decider.com/2017/05/18/how-­female-­directors-­ dominate-­the-­documentary-­world/. Accessed 28 August 2020.

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Canadian Women Film Directors Database (CWFD). n.d. Four New Apple Dishes. http://femfilm.ca/film_search.php?film=crawley-­four&lang=e/. Accessed 23 August 2020. Chen, Phoebe. 2020, June 27. The Films of Women’s Liberation. The New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/27/the-­films-­ of-­womens-­liberation/. Accessed 11 September 2020. Chiu, Kuei-fen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds. 2014. New Chinese-Language Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place. Abingdon: Routledge. Cole, Janis. 2013, May 9. Feminism Motivates the Doc Mogul. Point of View Magazine. Issue 90. http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/feminism-­ motivates-­the-­doc-­mogul-­debra-­zimmerman/. Accessed 25 September 2020. Constable, Harriet. 2019, April 16. The Taboo-busting Women of Chinese Film. BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190410-­the-­taboo-­ busting-­women-­of-­chinese-­film/. Accessed 28 August 2020. Cooper Gallery. 2017. Screening Programme: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. Cooper Gallery (Contains panel discussion with Mulvey). https://www. dundee.ac.uk/cooper-­g allery/exhibitions/lauramulveyandpeterwollen/. Accessed 18 September 2020. Criterion Channel, The. 2020. Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories. https://www.criterionchannel.com/tell-­me-­women-­filmmakers-­women-­s-­ stories/. Accessed 11 September 2020. Dixon, Aimee. 2013. ‘Zora Neale Hurston’. In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta. New  York: Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-qvay-6n29/. Accessed 23 September 2020. Dogo, Dunja. 2013. ‘Esfir Shub’. In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds.  Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta. New York: Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-7jyf-d183/ Dudley-Nicholson, Jennifer. 2013. Oscar Award for Best Documentary Goes to Searching for Sugar Man Film Shot on Apple iPhone. The Daily Telegraph. https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/oscar-­award-­for-­best-­documentary-­goes-­ to-­searching-­for-­sugar-­man-­film-­shot-­on-­apple-­iphone/news-­story/6e3788 63ae042d7d2c83d9e41f70fe1e/. Accessed 21 August 2020. Easen, Sarah. 2013–2014. Women Non-Fiction Filmmakers 1930–1960. BFI Screenonline. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/594220/index. html/. Accessed 23 August 2020. Ellis, Jack C. 2020. American Documentary in the 1950s. Encycopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/ar ts/culture-­m agazines/american-­ documentary-­1950s/. Accessed 18 September 2020. Fahim, Joseph. 2019. Female Arab Directors: 11 Films That You Need To See. Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/female-­arab-­ directors-­11-­films-­you-­need-­to-­see-­indiewire-­100/. Accessed 25 August 2020.

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Florio, Angelica. 2018, March 9. More Women Direct Documentaries Than Narrative Movies & The Reason Why Is Infuriating. Bustle. https://www.bustle.com/p/more-­women-­direct-­documentaries-­than-­narrative-­movies-­the-­ reason-­why-­is-­infuriating-­8263282/. Accessed 13 August 2020. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. 1995. Women Film Directors: An International Bio-­ critical Dictionary (1995). Nebraska: ETD collection for University of Nebraska, Lincoln. French, Lisa. 2014. The International Reception of Australian Women Filmmakers. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 28 (5): 654–665. ———. 2015, October 8. The League of Men: Why Are There So Few Female Critics? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-­league-­of-­men-­ why-­are-­there-­so-­few-­female-­film-­critics-­47470/. Accessed 21 September 2020. ———. 2017. Women in the Director’s Chair: the ‘Female Gaze’ in Documentary Film. In Female Authorship & Documentary Film, ed. Boel Ulfsdotter and Anna Backman Rogers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (EUP). ———. 2019. Women Documentary Filmmakers as Transnational ‘Advocate Change Agents’. Interdisciplina Journal 7 (17): 15–29. http://www.revistas. unam.mx/index.php/inter/issue/view/5093/. ———. 2020. Gender Still Matters: Towards Sustainable Progress for Women in Australian Film and Television Industries. In Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power, ed. Susan Liddy, 271–291. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gheron, Meghan. 2020, June 15. Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2020 Women Directors: Meet Mira Jargil  – ‘Reunited’. Women and Hollywood. https:// womenandhollywood.com/human-­r ights-­w atch-­f ilm-­f est-­2 020-­w omen-­ directors-­meet-­mira-­jargil-­reunited/. Accessed 28 August 2020. Haggith, Toby. 2006. Documentary Filmmakers. In Encyclopedia of British Women’s Writing 1900–1950, ed. Ashlie Sponenberg, Esme Miskimmin, and Faye Hammil, 73–75. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Haj, Yasmine. 2017. Mapping Arab Documentary Report. In Dox Box Mapping Arab Documentary. https://dox-­box.org/wp-­content/uploads/2018/11/ DOXBOX-­MappingArabDoc-­Report2017Eng.pdf/. Accessed 28 August 2020. Hankin, Kelly. 2007. And Introducing … The Female Director: Documentaries about Women Filmmakers as Feminist Activism. NWSA Journal 19 (1): 59–88. Hegedus, Chris. 2014a. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. ———. 2014b, November 20. Portrait of Jason with Extended Q&A [Tracy Metz interviews Chris Hegedus]. International Film Festival Amsterdam. Recorded by Lisa French from the audience.

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Hillauer, Rebecca. 2005. Encyclopedia of Arab Women Filmmakers. Trans. Allison Brown, Deborah Cohne, and Nancy Joyce. Cairo, NY: American University in Cairo Press. Hockenhull, Stella. 2017. British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Horak, Laura. 2013. ‘Osa Johnson’. In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta. New York: Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-8mvr-9566/. Accessed 24 September 2020. IDFA. 2014. The Female Gaze. Industry Talk, November 22. Imre, Anikó. 2016. TV Socialism. Durham: Duke University Press. Johanson, Maryanne. 2016, July 11. From Alice Guy-Blaché to Barbara Kopple: The Pioneering Women of Documentary Film. Independent Lens Newsletter (PBS). https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/from-­alice-­guy-­blache-­ to-­barbara-­kopple-­the-­pioneering-­women-­of-­documentary-­film/. Accessed 24 August 2020 ———. 2019, January 6. Movie of the Week: What Is Democracy? Alliance of Women Film Journalists. https://awfj.org/blog/2019/01/06/movie-­of-­the-­ week-­january-­11-­2019-­what-­is-­democracy/. Accessed 26 August 2020. Jones, Emma. 2019, December 10. The Women Revolutionising Middle-Eastern Film. BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191206-­the-­ female-­directors-­revolutionising-­middle-­eastern-­film/. Accessed 30 August 2020. Kaufman, Amy. 2020 January 31. At Sundance, Two Female Filmmakers Share the Struggle of Jumping from Documentary to Narrative. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-­arts/movies/story/2020-­01-­31/ liz-­garbus-­heidi-­ewing-­female-­directors-­sundance/. Kay, Alina. 2016. Women in Documentary Filmmaking. The Knowledge, June 7. https://www.theknowledgeonline.com/the-­k nowledge-­b ulletin/ post/2016/06/07/women-­in-­documentary-­filmmaking/. Accessed 16 January 2020. Lauretis, Teresa de. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lauzen, Martha. 2019. Indie Women: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in Independent Film. 2018–19. San Diego: Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University. https://womenintvfilm.sdsu. edu/wp-­content/uploads/2019/06/2018-­19_Indie_Women_Report.pdf/. Levitin, Jacquline. 1974. Mother of the New Wave: An Interview with Agnes Varda. Women & Film 1 (63): 5–6. Mandy, Marie. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 24.

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Maslin, Sue. 2015, December 3. We’re Right to Make a Scene about Gender Equity in the Australian Screen Industry. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/were-­r ight-­t o-­m ake-­a -­s cene-­a bout-­g ender-­e quity-­i n-­t he-­ australian-­screen-­industry-­51728/. Accessed 12 September 2020. McDonald, Keiko. 2017, September. Daring to Be First: The Japanese Woman Director Tazuko Sakane (1904–1971). Asian Cinema 18 (2): 128–146 https://doi.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1386/ac.18.2.128_1/. McDonald, Kathy A. 2018. Digital Platforms Boost Documentary Financing. Variety, November 9. https://variety.com/2018/film/awards/documentaries-­ bank-­on-­digital-­platforms-­1203020211/. Accessed 10 October 2020. Moi, T. 1999. What Is a Woman? New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge. Molcard, Eva. 2020. 'Elizaveta Svilova'. In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta. New York: Columbia University Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-­y8we-­0736/. Accessed 23 September 2020. Morfoot, Addie. 2016, February 18. Oscars: Examining Gender Bias in the Documentary Categories. https://variety.com/2016/film/news/gender-­ bias-­documentary-­industry-­1201708404/. Accessed 12 September 2020. Mullen, April. 2017, April 26. How Being Called a ‘Female Filmmaker’ Helped Me Understand the Future of Cinema. Talkhouse. https://www.talkhouse. com/female-­filmmaker-­understand-­future-­cinema/. Accessed 20 September 2020. Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. O’Brien, Anne. 2019. Women, Inequality and Media Work. London: Routledge. ———. 2020. Documenting Documentary: Liberated Enclave or Pink Ghetto? In Women in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Storytellers, ed. Susan Liddy, 117–134. Cork: Cork University Press. Pearson, G. 2011, March 8. Gender Equality, a Huge Issue in the Australian Screen Industry. https://mumbrella.com.au/gender-­equality-­a-­huge-­issue-­in-­ the-­australian-­screen-­industry-­7094/. Accessed 11 August 2020. Reardon, Kiva. 2019, April 12. Here and Now: Contemporary Women Filmmakers. TIFF Festival 2020. https://www.tiff.net/the-­review/here-­and-­now-­ contemporary-­arab-­women-­filmmakers/. Accessed 25 August 2020. Roberts, Adam. 2014. Dis-moi – A Break-Through Work by Chantal Akerman. Huffpost. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adamroberts/dis-­moi%2D%2D-­ a-­break-­through-­work-­by-­chantal-­akerman_b_4896364.html?guccounter=1/. Accessed 20 September 2020. Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1996. Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. In The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, 99–126. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Rouch, Jean with Dan Georgakas, Udayan Gupta, and Judy Janda. 1977. The Politics of Visual Anthropology. In The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism, ed. Jonathan Kahana, 478–489. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scarparo, Susanna, and Bernadette Luciano. 2010. The Personal Is Still Political: Films ‘by and for Women’ by the New Documentariste. Italica 87 (3): 488–503. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25780742/. Accessed 20 September 2020. Screen Australia. 2019, May. Documentary Filmmakers: The Number and Proportion of Male and Female Producers, Directors and Writers of Australian Documentaries, 1988–2016. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-­ finders/people-­a nd-­b usinesses/gender-­i ndustr y-­w ide/documentar y-­ filmmakers-­1988-­2016/. Accessed 28 August 2020. Silverstein, Melissa. 2008. The Success of Women Documentary Filmmakers. Movie Mix. https://www.alternet.org/2008/06/the_success_of_women_ documentary_filmmakers/. Accessed 10 August 2020. Smith, Alison. 1998. Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stainton, Anna. 2014. Reading Helke Misselwitz’s Winter Ade as Multivocal Autobiography. In The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Film, ed. Robin Curtis and Angelica Fenner, 87–110. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Stanculescu, Ileana. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 23. Turin, Svetla. 2015, November 2. Beyond the Female Gaze and Towards a Documentary Gender Equality A Female Gaze of Unequal Proportions. POV Point of View Magazine. http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/beyond-­ the-­female-­gaze-­and-­towards-­a-­documentary-­gender-­equality/. Accessed 19 September 2020. University of Arkansas. 2020, August 13. Communication Students Produce Documentary about Women in Indian Cinema. University of Arkansas News. https://news.uark.edu/articles/54402/communication-­students-­produce-­ documentary-­about-­women-­in-­indian-­cinema/. Accessed 30 August 2020. Van de Peer, Stefanie. 2017. Negotiating Dissidence: The Pioneering Women of Arab Documentary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Waldman, Diane, and Janet Walker, eds. 1999. Feminism and Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Warren, Shilyh. 2019. Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. White, Patricia. 2015. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms. London: Duke University Press.

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———. n.d. Swathmore/Bryn Mawr/Haverford Library Collection: A Partial Guide to Films by and about Women. https://femfilm.swarthmore.edu/films/ harlan-­county-­usa/. Accessed 13 August 2020. Women Make Movies. n.d. Out of Phoenix Bridge. Women Make Movies Catalogue. https://www.wmm.com/catalog/film/out-­of-­phoenix-­bridge/. Accessed 12 September 2020. Woodward, Daisy. 2017, June 26. Eight Female Filmmakers Who Changed the Face of Cinema. AnOther. https://www.anothermag.com/design-­ living/9958/eight-­female-­filmmakers-­who-­changed-­the-­face-­of-­cinema/. Accessed 24 August 2020.

Filmography Akerman, Chantal. 1980. Dis-Moi. France: Institut National de l’Audiovisuel. Armstrong, Gillian. 1976. Smokes and Lollies. Australia: 1:1 Films. Armstrong, Franny. 2009. The Age of Stupid. United Kingdom: Spanner Films. Armstrong, Franny, and Rachel Armstrong. 1994. The Truth or Dairy. United Kingdom: The Vegan Society & World Pictures Ltd. Baccar, Selma. 1975. Fatama 75. Tunisia: Société Anonyme Tunisienne de Production et d’Expansion Cinématographique. Bendjellou, Malik. 2012. Searching for Sugar Man. Sweden: Red Box Film. Bentley, Jean. 2020. Actually Female Directors Are Dominating In Documentaries. Elle, February 8. https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a30814476/ oscars-documentaries-female-directors/. Accessed 8 May 2020. Bouton, Laura. 1943. Eskimo Arts and Crafts. Canada: National Film Board of Canada. Chai Vasarhelyi, Elizabeth, and Jimmy Chin. 2018. Free Solo. United States: Little Monster Films. Itinerant Films and Parkes/MacDonald Image Nation. Clarke, Shirley. 1967. Portrait of Jason. United States: Shirley Clarke Productions. Cohen, Julie and Betsy West. 2018. RBG. USA: CNN Films, Storyville Films, Better Than Fiction Productions. Craigie, Jill. 1951. To Be a Woman. United Kingdom: Outlook Films. Crawley, Judith. 1940. Four New Apple Dishes. Canada: Crawley Films. Dwyer, Catherine. 2020. Brazen Hussies. Australia: Film Camp. El Abnoudy, Ateyyat. 1971. Horse of Mud. Egypt. Field, Connie. 1980. The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter. USA: Clarity Films. Friedrich, Sue. 1990. Sink or Swim. USA: Downstream Productions. Grierson, Ruby. 1936. London Wakes Up. United Kingdom: Strand Films. ———. 1940. They Also Serve. United Kingdom: Realist Film Unit. Hong, Li. 1997. Out of Phoenix Bridge. China.

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Jargil, Mira. 2020. Reunited. Denmark: Moving Documentary. Johnson, Martin, and Osa Johnson. 1912. Cannibals of the South Seas. United States: Robertson Cole Company. Khoury, Marianne. 2002. Women Who Loved Cinema (Two parts). Egypt: MISR International Films. Klainberg, Lesli and Gini Riticker. 2004. In the Company of Women. USA: Orchard Films. Kopple, Barbara. 1976a. Harlan County USA. United States: Cabin Creek Films. ———. 2017. This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous. United States: Select Next and Cabin Creek Films. Kuhn, Annette. 1982. Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. Mandy, Marie. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. Belgium: Saga Film. Marazzi, Alina. 2002. For One More Hour with You/Un’ora sola ti vorrei. Italy: Venerdi. Marcos, Norma. 1994. The Veiled Hope: Women of Palestine. France: Solera Films. Marsh, Jane. 1942. Women Are Warriors. Canada: National Film Board of Canada. McElwee, Ross. 1985. Sherman’s March. United States: First Run Features. Moore, Michael. 1989. Roger and Me. United States: Dog Eat Dog Films. Mullen, April. 2012. Dead Before Dawn. Canada: WANGO Films. ———. 2016a. Real Detective. Canada: Montreal Casting. ———. 2016b. Below Her Mouth. Canada: Serendipity Point Films. Nicchiarelli, Susan. 2003. The Third Eye/Il terzo occhio. Italy: Panda Societa per L’Industria Cinematografica. Poitras, Laura. 2014. Citizenfour. United States: HBO Films. Porter, Dawn. 2016. Trapped. United States: Big Mouth Productions. Reichert, Julia, and Jim Klein. 1971. Growing Up Female. United States: New Day Films. Riefenstahl, Leni. 1935. Triumph of the Will. Germany: Reichsparteitag-Film. Sargentini, Fabiana. 2005. From Mother to Daughter/Di madre in figlia. Italy: Lula Production. Shub, Esfir. 1927. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. Soviet Union: Sovkino. Sobczak, Paulina. 2020. Barrier-Breaking Women in Indian Cinema. USA: University of Arkansas Communication Student Works. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/commstuwo/2. Accessed 8 May 2020. Srour, Heiny. 1974. The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived. Lebanon: Srour Films. Stanculescu, Ileana. 2004. The Bridge. Romania: Art Doc. Svilova, Elizaveta. 1927. Bukhara. Soviet Union. Taylor, Astra. 2018. What Is Democracy? Canada: Zeitgeist Films. Vertov, Dziga. 1929. The Man with the Movie Camera. Soviet Union: Vseukrainske Foto Kino Upravlinnia (VUFKU).

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———. 1930. Enthusiasm. Soviet Union: Ukrainfilm. Wallworth, Lynette. 2016. Collisions. Coco Films. ———. 2018. Awavena. Coco Films. Wei, Louisa S. 2013. Golden Gate Girls. Hong Kong: Blue Queen Cultural Communication Ltd. Zournazi, Mary. 2017. Dogs of Democracy. Greece: Ronin Films.

Female Documentary Filmmakers to Win Academy Awards ‘Documentary Feature’ (with Winning Year: 1948–020)

for

Berman, Brigitte. 1986. Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got. Canada: Bridge Film Productions. Briski, Zana. 2004 (shared with Ross Kauffman). Born Into Brothels. United States: Red Light Films. Chai Vasarhelyi, Elizabeth, and Shannon Dill. 2018 (shared with Jimmy Chin and Evan Hayes). Free Solo. United States: Little Monster Films. Florio, Maria, and Victoria Mudd. 1985. Broken Rainbow. United States: Earthwork Films. Hamilton, Nancy. 1955. Helen Keller in Her Story. United States: Albert Margolie and Nancy Hamilton Presentation. Kernochan, Sarah. 1972 (shared with Howard Smith). Marjoe. United States: Cinema X. Kopple, Barbara. 1976b. Harlan County. United States: Cabin Creek Films. ———. 1990 (shared with Arthur Cohn). American Dream. United States: Cabin Creek Films. Lee Mock, Freida. 1994. Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. United States: American Film Foundation. Light, Allie. 1991 (shared with Irving Saraf). In the Shadow of the Stars. United States: Light Saraf Films. Marrs, Audrey. 2010 (shared with Charles Ferguson). Inside Job. United States: Representational Pictures. Oppenheimer, Deborah. 2000 (shared with Mark Harris). Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. United Kingdom: Sabine Films. Orner, Eva. 2007 (shared with Alex Gibney). Taxi to the Dark Side. United States: Jigsaw Productions. Poitras, Laura, and Mathilde Bonnefoy. 2014 (shared with Dirk Wilutzky). Citizenfour. United States: HBO Films. Raymond, Susan. 1993 (shared with Alan Raymond). I am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School. United States: Video Verite Films.

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Reichert, Julia. 2019 (shared with Steven Bognar and Jeff Reichert). American Factory. United States: Higher Ground Productions. Rogers, Caitrin. 2013 (shared with Morgan Neville and Gil Friesen). 20 Feet from Stardom. United States: Tremolo Productions. Slesin, Aviva. 1987. The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table. United States: American Masters. Trent, Barbara. 1992 (shared with David Kasper). The Panama Deception. United States: Empowerment Project. Waterlow, Caroline. 2016 (shared with Ezra Edelman). O.J.: Made in America. United States: ESPN Films.

CHAPTER 3

The ‘Female Gaze’

The question of what might constitute a ‘female gaze’ has had a long history in filmmaking, film theory and women’s art. In the early 1970s, there was a desire to invent a female gaze with women shooting films for and by women, with an aim to discover whether a new and different language to that of ‘fathers or lovers’ could be established (Babette Mangolte in Tefler 2018). In feminist film theory, Laura Mulvey’s exploration of the fetishistic, voyeuristic and controlling ‘male gaze’ shone a light on power relations and the gaze in classic Hollywood cinema. She distinguished pleasures of looking (scopophilia) in three kinds of look that split ‘active/ male’ and ‘passive/female’ relations: from camera to event; from spectator to screen action; and between characters in the film. She theorised that men were bearers of the look, women were spectacle, and the look of the spectator was aligned with the non-eroticised male character (Mulvey 1975).1 Mulvey’s seminal work is important to the history of theorising the gaze and as such is background to the female gaze. However, it is not what is being explored in this book that is specifically concerned with how women directors look, and not with the gaze in classical Hollywood films, or with the gaze as Mulvey theorised it. As it is explored here, the female gaze is not the inverse of Mulvey’s male gaze; it is centred on female subjectivities as expressed in film. This chapter examines the concept of the female gaze in documentary film with specific reference to women directors. The female gaze is not homogeneous, singular or monolithic, and it will necessarily take many © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_3

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forms. Any individual’s identity is equally informed by contexts other than sex and gender; for example, race, sexuality, culture, class, religion, wealth and physicality. As I have written elsewhere, every director is an artist in her own right and female directors make every kind of documentary (French 2018, 9).2 The aesthetic approaches, experiences and films of women directors are as diverse as their individual life situations and the cultures in which they live. The ‘female gaze’ is not intended here to denote a singular concept. There are many gazes. The reference to a female gaze is to how female directors have expressed themselves as humans who identify as female. Of specific interest is how they represent their experience and perspectives from that sex and gender. Whilst acknowledging many differences are possible between women filmmakers, and conceding that any director would only be properly understood through her films and the world/s each woman constructs and represents, this chapter examines how the ‘female gaze’ might be understood. This sets the context for the second part of the book that has a focus on this question in relation to individual women documentary directors.

Foregrounding Female Subjectivity A woman’s vocabulary exists, linked to the feminine universe. Agnès Varda (Smith 1998, 92)

As many critics and theorists have convincingly argued, the gaze ‘is a key element in the construction of modern subjectivity, filtering ways of understanding and ordering the surrounding world’ (Mulvey 2001, 5). The experience of gender, of living as a woman or as a man, is likely to affect any individual’s subjectivity. The key marker of the ‘female gaze’ is the communication or expression of female subjectivity—a gaze where female agency is privileged and which is shaped by a female ‘look’, voice and perspective—in effect, the subjective experience or perspective of someone who lives in a female body. French filmmaker Agnès Varda has spoken of women filmmakers reflecting a world they see from the point of view of living life through the concrete experience of being female. In Marie Mandy’s documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema (2000), Varda observed that

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To be a woman is to be born in a woman’s body … Simone de Beauvoir’s view [that] we are nurtured into womanhood has to do with thoughts of the mind, [but] the fact remains we’re born into a female body. How can that not be an essential fact whether you’re a film director, cleaner, mother, whether you have children or not? We women inhabit a female body.

Varda’s comments reflect a feminist politic in asserting a refusal to deny female subjectivity, a call for women to resist having their gaze colonised by another, and also the importance of having self-determination over representation. Her words underline the notion of difference caused by experiencing gender and also allude to connections between women. It implies a sensibility to female experience (as multifaceted as that might be). While the argument that subjectivity relates to the sexed body could be critiqued as essentialist, it is not the contention here that women have the same experiences in their lives or their bodies, but rather that gender causes an inflection that might be described as an awareness of difference or being ‘Othered’, and that women share this and recognise it (as a factor of the experience of patriarchal culture). Melissa Silverstein, founder and editor of Women in Hollywood, said that ‘men and women tell stories differently, not better, just different’ (IDFA 2014). Filmmakers also make this observation; for example, Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong has noted that ‘even though I don’t like being labelled [a woman filmmaker], I do believe that women do see a lot of things differently’ (Armstrong 2015). Marie Mandy identified autobiographical films as providing an example of difference in regard to the aesthetic approach: when directors make films about themselves or their families … if you look at films made by men you will see that they occupy the screen a lot. They tell their story but they are on screen and we could do an exercise and count the number of shots and so on where you have a woman dealing with an intimate story—family or autobiographical story she would be more present with the voice; hands; reflection; but she won’t just go and be there like that. (Mandy 2000)

A film does not have to be about, or to feature women, to show aspects of a ‘female gaze’. The documentary Startup.com (Hegedus and Noujaim 2001), a film about two men who ‘make it big’ in a dot.com business, is an instructive one to note on this point. Film critic Michael West wrote

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that ‘We never see what sort of cars they drive. What did they buy when all those dollars were flooding in? Where did all the money go? No answer’ (West 2001, 36). The critic has missed the point and arguably the female gaze of this film: the directors of Startup.com were not interested in the big story of cars and money, but rather they were interested in the two men, a study of masculinity, and in human behaviour. Hegedus has said about the film: I was very interested in making a personal story; a very personal story, … what interested me the most was the relationship [and] the generational difference between men at that age and I really loved that Tom and Kaleil had this really close friendship that they weren’t embarrassed to kind of hug each other and show emotion and say that they loved each other. It was particularly interesting for me to see and watch how they worked this relationship through business and friendship. And you know in the end, which do you compromise, the business or the friendship? (Hegedus 2014)

Also relevant to this chapter is that this is a film focusing on men, but the filmmakers have expressed what interested them, which arguably evolved from their female sensibility or perspective.

A Woman’s Look [W]hen I look at the movies, film theorists try to tell me that the gaze is male, the camera eye is masculine, and so my look is also not a woman’s. But I don’t believe them anymore, because I think I know what it is to look at a film as a woman. I do because of certain films … have shown it to me; they have somehow managed to inscribe in the film my woman’s look. (de Lauretis 1987, 113–114)

Scholar Gertrud Koch argued there have been decades of debate that still has not resolved ‘whether the female look through the camera at the world, at men, at women and objects will be an essentially different one’ (de Lauretis 1987, 134). Positions on the question of whether a female gaze can be discerned are frequently polarised. On the one hand, there are those who claim to recognise the female gaze, and, on the other, there are filmmakers who strongly resist the idea of a female gaze or any binary that implies only two different languages. Therefore, the question of whether it is possible to tell if a woman has made a film is a divisive one. Some say that they can tell that a woman made a film and others completely reject the idea or prefer to avoid it for inclusion reasons (e.g. because some

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people do not gender identify or find binaries too simplistic and lacking inclusivity). There is just as much division on the question of a female sensibility. For instance, in the documentary Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema (Beti Ellerson 2002),3 a vox pop with women from Africa illustrates that some women are ‘unequivocal about there being a female perspective’ (Valerié Kaboré Silga and Oumena Mamadali); others think it exists but it ‘is fragmented along national and racial lines’ (Ngozi Onwurah and Florentine Yaméogo), and, in contrast, Fanta Régina Narco points to the ‘female perspective’ of a male directed film on Algeria to identify what she simply calls a ‘human sensibility’ (Kelly 2007, 66). American director Barbara Koppel doesn’t feel that she can tell whether a man or woman directed a documentary because there are films she feels would undermine that idea—the exceptions to the rule if you like (IDFA 2014). English filmmaker Kim Longinotto has noticed such exceptions and views it as difficult to generalise: I don’t use the word masculine and feminine any more or male or female because … when you’re growing up you’re told that’s masculine or that’s feminine, we’re all questioning [that] … For example, masculine’s adventurous and confident and competent and practical, and women are becoming that or definitely wanting to be that, and women are meant to be intuitive sensitive emotional gentle and a lot of men are that and they’re saying well, I want to be, I’m that. (Longinotto 2014)

Longinotto is flagging the masculine and feminine as a cultural construction, but also that the binary and prescriptive nature of these constructions is oppressive for both sexes (as they are for those who do not gender identify) and they restrict each person from embodying both or either of them as their nature determines. Other filmmakers are strongly of the view that they can tell if a man or a woman made a film. Mina Keshavarz, one of the directors of the documentary Profession Documentarist (Abtahi et al. 2014), put it this way: ‘I think that there is difference between woman and man when they want to make a film or write something because … we see around us different from the man because of our experience, because of our living’ (Abtahi et al. 2014). On the same question, her co-director, Nahid Rezaei, said that they did not decide to make something for women or with the gaze of a woman, ‘but we wanted to be together and do something and … we believe in the body of the woman’ (Abtahi et al. 2014). Rezaei observed

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that the great Iranian poet and film director Fourough Farrokhzad was asked many years ago if her poetry ‘is the poetry of woman? And her reply, ‘Yes because I’m a woman, … it’s my life, my body, my thinking …’ (Abtahi et al. 2014). Director Jill Soloway has also located identification of the female author in a recognition of emotional and bodily ways of being: ‘I can tell a woman directed this because I feel held by something that is invested in my feeling, in my body, that my emotions are being prioritized over the actions’ (Soloway 2016).4 Peruvian-born Dutch director Heddy Honigmann has said, ‘for sure, it is easier to know it is a man who has done it’ (2014). When asked if she felt there was a ‘female gaze’, she said that gave her problems but for her the idea of a ‘feminine gaze’ made more sense (acknowledging that some men have a feminine gaze). However, she said even with Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008), she could tell it is made by a woman because she ‘stays with the character … remains with him for a long time’, adding (in response to my question of whether she believes there is a ‘female gaze’): space is something where you can feel there is a woman, length of shot you can feel there is a woman, [she] has more tendency to be more patient in looking, time passing. We [women] are used to wait … [we] wait for 9 months, for a man to say he wants to marry me, to wait looking at your mother while she is cooking [reference to her 2004 film Food for Love – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There]. This waiting is in our blood and has great potential for making film. (Honigmann 2014)

Honigmann identifies what women bring to the screen to convey the patterns of female lives, providing a sharp eye on the details, pacing of life and patience. Danish director Phie Ambo has given the example of a film called Waiting for August by Romanian director Teodora Mihai (2014) as a film she knew was made by a woman: from the first scene I know it’s a woman who’s filmed it. It’s very difficult to say exactly how but she’s filming a scene in a kitchen where there are five kids and they are sort of hanging on a door and playing with a meat cleaver and everything is pretty chaotic. And the way the whole thing is constructed, I can just feel that it’s a female in the room. (Ambo 2014)

Waiting for August examines the phenomena of the ‘left behind children’. The observational documentary witnesses the life of Georgiana, a

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fifteen-year-old in Bacau Romania who has to look after six younger siblings when her mother, Lilana, a single mother, must take up work as a migrant worker in Torino (Italy) and will not be back until August. The girl struggles but is resilient as she balances this responsibility and her adolescence. For Ambo, it is difficult to explain without being too general but the key identifiers for her of a woman director in this film are the pace in the scenes, the slowness, that the person who is looking at the people is making the film is ‘sometimes doubting her own project … she doesn’t have a specific goal with the scene to begin with. And that is I think a little bit a more feminine way of working’ that it follows and changes its course along the way (Ambo 2014). Ambo identifies Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo’s Tanjuska and the 7 Devils (1993) as another film that does the same thing. Honkasalo begins making a documentary about a Catholic pastor doing an exorcism and shifts her attention, and the story, to Tanjuska, a ten-year-old Belarusian little girl. Leading filmmaker from Helsinki, Finland, cinematographer and director Pirjo Honkasalo has said in the interview in this book that she believes she can tell whether a man or a woman made a film. During 2014, Honkasalo sat on the jury of a local Finnish festival and undertook an experiment to view all the films without looking at their credits (so without knowing the sex of the person that directed them). Of the thirty films in competition, she correctly guessed the sex of the filmmakers without making any mistakes. She recalled ‘it was obvious, even from the animation. It was a surprise to myself’ (Honkasalo 2014). She interrogated her own gaze as a viewer to understand ‘where did I read it?’ For her, the markers were ‘female aesthetics’, which she located in attention to certain details and their movement within the frame. She also noted a gender difference in the handling of certain themes, or a worldview, so from this perspective she was reading an ontological difference. Whilst she couched these observations as generalisations, and noted it would need a deep study, she perceived a differential in the treatment of subject. Examples she gave included that ‘violence in women’s films I think almost always has a social cause, and for men I think violence, it’s kind of a challenge between two men’ (Honkasalo 2014). Palestinian filmmaker May Masri made similar points when she identified films by women as having ‘similar patterns’, having a predominance of female protagonists, a ‘focus on intimacy, details, autobiographical touches. Women’s films rarely focus on violence, crime or spectacular special effects. They are usually human stories which strive to be sensitive and thought-provoking … usually made on smaller

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budgets’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 19). In a similar vein, French/Belgian documentary filmmaker Marie Mandy has said, ‘every story in life can be told from a man’s point of view or a woman’s point of view I guess and it’s not the same—it’s like telling a war from the point of view of the winner or the loser. It’s never the same point of view. And it’s interesting to have both’ (Mandy 2014). This is an identification of difference.

Markers of the Female Gaze In 2018, New York’s Lincoln Center film society screened thirty-six films by female cinematographers, many of whom were also documentary directors. Director and cinematographer Joan Churchill offered the observation that the ‘“male” gaze seeks to devour and control, and the “female” gaze is more a frame of mind, where approach to subject and material is more emotional and respectful’ (Tefler 2018). For her the female gaze denotes an understanding of what it means to be female in a patriarchal society. Others that were part of this programme identified a range of characteristics of the gaze with Ashley Connor identifying speaking to female experience but also observing the desire not to be limited by a world bound by gender binaries. But as Natasha Braier observed, each has their own gaze, skills and style, and that only having an idea of two types of gaze, one male and female, might not make a lot of sense, especially if one is thinking about a cinematographer working with different directors each time, and the cinematographer’s goal of manifesting the director’s vision resulting in a combined gaze (Tefler 2018). At the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), practitioner Jill Soloway described the female gaze in three parts. Whilst she was reflecting on her work in fiction, it could be usefully applied to thinking about non-fiction. Firstly, relating it specifically to her direction in prioritising the feeling body; secondly, how it feels to be seen or the object of the gaze; and finally, returning the gaze to take up subjectivity and not be the object of the gaze. The first, prioritising the feeling body, or what she calls ‘a way of feeling seeing … a subjective camera, one that attempts to get inside the protagonist … [and] uses the frame to share and evoke a feeling of being in feeling rather than looking at the character’ (Soloway 2016). As a director, she aims to get the audience to understand that she is not just showing something but wanting them to feel it. The second idea, how it feels to be seen, is about returning the gaze and not wanting to be an object anymore. Soloway describes it as the protagonist gaining

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power but it is also clearly about agency. Soloway’s third idea is about something she says is very daring, ‘returning the gaze’ in order to say, ‘I see you seeing me’, reflecting on the experience of having been seen but now to claim a place for one’s own subjectivity. Director Agnès Varda said something similar when she observed: ‘The first feminist act is to say okay, they look at me, but I can look too, it’s to decide to look, not see the world and oneself through another’s eyes’ (Varda in Mandy 2000). The female gaze is frequently described as what it is not. Women filmmakers often assert that their gaze is underpinned by knowledge of what the gaze of a camera can do, and what they would not. For example, documentarian Nishtha Jain has said that she ‘would never want to be an object of male voyeurism or I wouldn’t want myself to be objectified, as women are objectified in cinema, or in life. I think my filmmaking begins from there so it’s the way I look at things’ (Jain 2014). Global film editor of Time Out, Phil de Semlyen, declared it easier to define the female gaze in terms of what it isn’t. He has written that ‘it’s not about objectifying the female form, offering representations that align with male sexual fantasy or using visual tropes common to pornography aimed at men’ (Smith 2019). So, a female gaze would appear from that vantage to be about decolonising the gaze, returning a different angle that results in unsettling and critiquing dominant, normalised paradigms. This is not a simple task as ideology is not easily sidestepped and the gaze in the cinema has been historically colonised by masculine modes of looking.

A Women’s Poetics and the Female Gaze5 Academic Josephine Donovan has proposed a ‘women’s poetics’ (Donovan 1984). In her article on the subject, she describes it as based in a contextual and relational women’s epistemology, framing knowledge acquisition as having a particular connection to women’s lived cultural experience and practice. Whilst it is based in gynocritics (the study of women writers), it is nonetheless a useful lens to apply to an understanding of the female gaze. Donovan argues for a plural conception of poetics, and her insight is in regard to common denominators that unify women’s experience. She is interested in how thematic and stylistic elements express female ways of seeing, and how their practice is affected by contexts such as the psychodynamics of female creativity, career trajectories and historical traditions as they relate to women. She describes six structural conditions common across cultures that shape female experience and that are frequently

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expressed in works by women; they are useful ideas to think about in relation to the examination of a concept of a female gaze. The first condition is ‘Otherness’. Women ‘share a condition of oppression, or otherness, that is imposed by governing patriarchal or androcentric ideologies. Women as a group, therefore, share certain awarenesses that are common to oppressed groups’ (Donovan 1984, 101). Donovan refers to the internalisation and experience of ‘Otherness’ that leads to the creation of art that has a context (the social and political oppression in which it is created), which offers insight into social reality from female viewpoints (coming to a consciousness linked to women as a group). It leads to revolutionary practice with potential for social transformation through creating visibility of that which was silent (female subjectivity). The second condition is domesticity, that women have been consigned to domestic or private spheres. Within this is the understanding that the projects of husbands and children in a household ‘have priority’ in this ‘daily world of concrete [domestic] realities’ (Donovan 1984, 102). This is linked to the third condition, that of the household. Donovan describes this as women experiencing the domestic environment as a space where they have creative control over their time and the products they design and execute and where knitting or sewing are artmaking (Donovan 1984, 102). It is a space of concrete realities/material life. The fourth condition is physiological experiences that link many women (e.g. menstruation, childbirth) giving a ‘consciousness of repetition and the interruptibility of one’s projects’ (Donovan 1984, 104). This is linked to the fifth condition, childrearing or maternal practices and the ways in which the practice of mothering engenders a particular maternal consciousness and practices. Women do not have the same experiences in their bodies or their lives but it is notable that mothers are much more frequently the subject of documentaries by women than by men—although there are several notable exceptions such as How Mum Decolonised the Screen (Heperia Mita 2018) and The Disappearance of My Mother (Beniamino Barrese 2019). Films by men about mothers tend to claim a place in history and the achievements of the legacy of their mothers, or speak to mothers more broadly (e.g. Mothers on the Edge, Louis Theroux 2019), rather than to focus on relationships with mothers and family stories that reveal the filmmakers’ very personal stories (e.g. as is seen in films such as The Silences (Margot Nash 2015) or Sophia Turkiewicz’s 2013 Once My Mother).

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The sixth condition is gender personality, which is a reference to modes of thinking or difference in moral reasoning caused by how gender personality is conditioned. Whilst this might be contested, and this is the most essentialist in this list of denominators that unify women’s experience, according to Donovan, Carol Gillian discovered difference in moral reasoning in men and women. The argument was that through gender-­ based nurturing, women’s thought processes are more contextually orientated, less concerned with abstract balancing of rights and more with discriminating among ‘conflicting responsibilities’ (Donovan 1984, 105). Whether or not these could be upheld, the point here is that cultures construct sex and gender norms, and that influences female (or male) subjectivity and that, whilst variable according to a given context, is broadly experienced by everyone.

Feminisms and Representation For some filmmakers the ‘female gaze’ embodies feminism. Today, and historically, there have been many feminisms or feminist movements. They feature differing priorities that are often born out of their specific cultural locations and the situation of women in those particular societies. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote: ‘[s]urely a woman is, like a man, a human being … The fact is that every concrete human being is always in a specific situation’ (Moi 1999, 8). The issues that concern women directors vary from country to country as Kim Longinotto has offered: ‘in Africa and Iran there is a war going on, people get shot in the head for going to school or they get locked in the house’ (Longinotto 2014). Mina Keshavarz’s 2020 film The Art of Living in Danger takes up this very point, with the film offering that in her country Iran, no laws protect women, the majority have experienced gender-based violence against them (90 per cent in the home), there is no divorce or inheritance rights, and women are not only disposable but can be killed with impunity (her own mother was killed by her father to save his honour). The one light in the face of femicide or other violence and injustice against women is the hope provided by women’s rights activists. Filmmaker Nishtha Jain has stated that living in a woman’s body does influence her vision, but it is also culturally specific: ‘whatever my lived experience is … [to be] living in a woman’s body in India in itself comes with, with a lot of conflict’ (Jain 2014) and she believes that is transmitted through her films that take up this specificity from a feminist (and female)

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perspective. For example, Gulabi Gang (Jain 2012) depicts women’s activism in rural India in opposition to gender violence and oppression through following a central female character, the activist Sampat Pal Devi, a leader of an Indian activist group. They encounter the murder of a sixteen-year-­ old girl who, having been married off at only eleven, has been disposed of (murdered) by a husband who no longer wants her. We are told in the film that the patriarchal society conspires to accept it—just as they also agree to the notion that it would be acceptable to murder your sister if she married for love. This reinforces the importance of being cognisant that each woman is, as de Beauvoir says, in a specific situation (Moi 1999, 8). Jain has commented that for her, ‘it’s not a female gaze but a feminist gaze. And I think that makes much more sense to me’, noting that men dominated production and therefore representation (Jain 2014). For Jain it is an issue of representation and there are fundamental questions: ‘How are we looking, how are the women being portrayed? How do men look at women? How do women look at women?’ (Jain 2014). Women often make the point that they make films about women because those are the stories they are interested in, and that it is a natural thing to do—which is not to say they should make films only about women, only that they are more likely to do so. The implications of this are that having more women filmmakers will likely lead to more films about women, so equal participation in production arguably promotes gender diversity in representation. On this issue, Kim Longinotto said in response to whether she thinks her sex and gender plays a role in her work: ‘I think it does … [because, for her] the stories that seem to be good stories seem to be women’s stories’ (Longinotto 2014). Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong has similarly observed: ‘the stories that I read and the stories that I react to, so often have a female character. And it hasn’t been, and for my part, a political decision that I want to make a story about a woman, it’s because I can see the world through her eyes’ (Armstrong 2015). The implication of these statements is that women may be drawn to ‘women’s stories’, and as women they will tell them from their gendered point of view: this is important to emphasise because the problem with not having the same numbers of men and women in gatekeeper or key creative roles is that men have more opportunity to have stories they are interested in making, which is a natural thing for them to do—but it can leave female-centred stories untold and female audiences untapped.

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Resonant Themes In what follows, I observe some resonant themes in the work of women documentarians. These could potentially be found in the work of male directors and not found in the work of some women directors. I acknowledge that this is a limited study and there are likely to be exceptions. For this reason, I am framing these observations as tendencies that are common to the work of women, particularly in combination. The themes discussed under the poetics section in this chapter are also common: ‘Otherness’, domesticity, physiological experiences and ideology linked to societal gender norms. I have further delineated themes from research, including interviews with filmmakers, and from watching many films made by women directors. Those that emerged included an interest in issues that particularly affect women (noting that women make films about all subjects); expressions of female experience or point of view (including women’s social struggles or struggles for agency); a tendency to focus on feeling and psychological perspectives or inner lives; a humanist interest (particularly in human behaviours and relationships); personal stories; and a strong interest in familial spheres. Some of these are selected for discussion below. The apparent strong interest by female directors in issues that profoundly affect women is very strong in documentaries. American co-­ directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s film 12th & Delaware (2010) depicts American women, some of them only children themselves, being confronted by anti-abortion protesters wielding photographs of mutilated aborted foetuses. The film illustrates the contemporary challenge to women’s reproductive rights. In her documentary To Kid or Not to Kid (2019), Maxine Trump surveys the social biases and stigma on women who choose not to become mothers; for example, that childless women can never be happy, are useless if they don’t become a mother, and are not complete women. Rebecca Barry’s 2013 documentary I Am a Girl examines the unique challenges of being born a girl and that being born female means greater exposure to violence, disease, poverty and disadvantage purely because of being of that sex. Leading Iranian director, Rakshan Banietemad, who works in both fiction and documentary, made the film We Are Half of Iran’s Population (2009), which she describes as a story about problems concerning women (in particular, women’s rights activists). She wanted to show ‘problems that women had in common’.6 Kim Longinotto has a long history of films that point to problems women face, including Sisters

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in Law (2005), a documentary that reveals violence against women living in Cameroon under Islamic (Sharia) law, highlighting rights issues for women and children. She has made a number of films about extraordinary women activists: Salma (2013) and Pink Saris (2010) and her film The Day I Will Never Forget (2002), which tells the stories of Kenyan women faced with the practice of female genital mutilation. There is evidence from female filmmakers that emotion and feeling are important. For example, Kim Longinotto stated her ambition for her practice as wanting to make films ‘which create a situation where the audience gets close to another individual, often from a completely different background, and feel a shock of understanding. I want the whole experience to be a strong and emotional one’ (Macdonald and Cousins 1996). Emotion is a common thread in documentaries, but in films by women filmmakers it is strongly linked to feeling; as Longinotto further offered, her intent is ‘to allow the audience to make a sort of leap where they can feel what the person in the film is feeling’ (Smaill 2007, 181).7 Jain has said in the interview in this book: ‘I feel that …’ (Jain 2014). An example can be seen in the work of Bosnian Jasmila Zbanic’s documentary Images from the Corner (2003); she constructs her film around a particular spot where a young woman was badly injured in the 1992 siege of Sarajevo. Zbanic traces this one small scar on the city and examines how this spot makes her feel when she goes there. In so doing, she foregrounds both subjective experience and the feeling her emotion evokes. This indicates emotion is not just a psychic response but ‘integral to the way subjects experience public spheres at particular historic moments’ (Smaill 2010, 5). The proposition here is that feelings are a stronger line than emotion for female documentarians, and as academic Belinda Smaill points out, emotions are significant to social life and confer cultural meanings onto others through their public circulation in documentary (Smaill 2010, 3–4).8 In documentaries by women there is a tendency for the behaviour and psychology of the subject to be of more interest than following action. A prevalence of films with psychological interiors or interiority is also common in documentaries by women. In Profession Documentarist, director Mina Keshavarz uses voiceover extensively, showing her shadow on the pavers, a woman holding a camera, the voice telling of her yearning to live abroad. The humanist focus frequently offers an intense emphasis on shifting relationships, particularly personal stories, often with domestic environments or private spheres, particularly the family. Heddy Honigmann’s Food for Love – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There (2004) explores the life

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history of her mother’s family (all killed by Nazis in the 1940s), taking a horrific journey through an intimate time where a mother and daughter are cooking and talking. In Good Husband, Dear Son (2001) Honigmann takes her audience through a massacre in a small town outside Sarajevo through the recollections and voices of the widows, mothers and daughters—those who were spared the genocide that killed all the men and boys in their village. The interiority of these films directly connects to women’s life stories and female experience, including of the filmmakers themselves.

Conclusion As stated, the key marker of the ‘female gaze’ is the communication or expression of female subjectivity—a gaze shaped by a female ‘look’, voice and perspective—the subjective experience or perspective of someone who lives in a female body (female agency is privileged). The knowledge of gender difference, of living as a woman, is what connects women, and the reason they often claim to identify with films made by women and recognise the gendered experience each captures in their ‘female gaze’ (as multifaceted as that might be). Part of this recognition is due to visible female aesthetic approaches, worldviews, and treatments of subjects, themes and the overall privileging of female subjectivity. Female documentary directors make all kinds of films with great success and it is important that within representation there are equal opportunities for their vision, which are as Melissa Silverstein observed, not better, just different—each bringing her ‘female gaze’ (IDFA 2014).

Notes 1. Mulvey later rethought this article in relation to whether or not a female spectator might find herself out of key with the masculinisation—the pleasure on offer (see Mulvey 1981). 2. The author acknowledges that some parts of this chapter have been reworked from French 2018. 3. It is a book as well as a film. See http://www.africanwomenincinema.org/ AFWC/Film_2.html/. 4. This is one type of female gaze that Soloway identified and which she says audiences might perceive. 5. See the glossary in this book for a description of poetics. 6. IDFA, ‘The Female Gaze’, Industry Talk, 22 November 2014.

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7. See the chapter in this book titled ‘Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender’ where the difference between feeling and emotion are discussed. There, I have outlined how female filmmakers recurrently express feeling, which differs from the immediate reactionary qualities of emotion. Feeling is more subjective and experiential—emotion causes feeling. I propose there that a female aesthetic frequently leans towards individual female experience and the creator’s feelings about that experience. 8. Smaill (2010) has examined how emotion is produced and how audiences are addressed by this emotion, noting knowledge has been privileged over emotions through the longstanding opposition in Western thought and popular imagination between feeling and thinking.

References Abtahi, Sepideh, Mina Keshavarz, Nahid Rezaei, and Sahar Salahsoor. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 27. Ambo, Phie. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. Armstrong, Gillian. 2015. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Sydney. January 28. De Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Donovan, Josephine. 1984. Toward a Women’s Poetics. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature (Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship) 3 (1/2): 98–110. French, Lisa. 2018. Women in the Director’s Chair: the ‘Female Gaze’ in Documentary Film. In Female Authorship & Documentary Film, ed. Boel Ulfsdotter and Anna Backman-Rogers, 9–21. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hegedus, Chris. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. Honigmann, Heddy. 2014. Retrospective Q&A Following Screening of Food for Love  – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There and Good Husband Dear Son. International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), November 25. Honkasalo, Pirjo. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 23. IDFA. 2014.The Female Gaze: Industry Talk, November 22. Jain, Nishtha. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. Kelly, Hankin. 2007. And Introducing … The Female Director: Documentaries about Women Filmmakers as Feminist Activism. NWSA Journal 19 (1): 59–88. Longinotto, Kim. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 21.

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Macdonald, Kevin, and Mark Cousins. 1996. Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber and Faber. Mandy, Marie. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 24. Moi, Toril. 1999. What Is a Woman? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16 (3): 6–18. ———. 1981. Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946). Framework 15 (17): 12–15. ———. 2001. Unmasking the Gaze: Some Thoughts on New Feminist Film Theory and History. Lectoria: Devista de Dones i Textualitat 7: 5–15. https:// pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a2a6/29682189298fc7ab73003db9ddc758a7 bb0b.pdf/. Accessed 18 July 2020. Smaill, Belinda. 2007. Interview with Kim Longinotto. Studies in Documentary Film 1–2: 177–187. https://doi.org/10.1386/sdf.1.2.177_7. ———. 2010. The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture. UK: Palgrave Macmillian. Smith, Alison. 1998. Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smith, Anna. 2019. Female Directors Offer a Different Viewpoint on Adolescence, Poverty – And Seduction, Argues Anna Smith, Exploring the Films that Topped Our Poll of 368 Critics. BBC Culture. November 28. https://www.bbc.com/ culture/article/20191127-­the-­100-­films-­directed-­by-­women-­what-­is-­the-­ female-­gaze Accessed 16 July 2020/. Accessed 18 July 2020. Soloway, Jill. 2016. Jill Soloway on The Female Gaze | MASTER CLASS | TIFF 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnBvppooD9I/. Accessed 21 July 2020. Tefler, Tori. 2018, August 2. How Do We Define the Female Gaze in 2018? Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/how-­do-­we-­define-­the-­female-­ gaze-­in-­2018.html/. Accessed 11 February 2020. West, Michael. 2001. A Dotcommon Tale of Mucky Greed Shines on Big Screen. The Australian (Business news), August 31:36.

Filmography Abtahi, Sepideh, Shirin Barghnavard, Mina Keshavarz, Firouzeh Khosrovani, Nahid Rezaei, Sahar Salahsoor, and Farahnaz Sharifi. 2014. Profession Documentarist (Herfeh: Mostanadsaz), Independent. Banietemad, Rakshan. 2009. We Are Half of Iran’s Population. Noori Pictures. Barrese, Beniamino. 2019. The Disappearance of My Mother. Nanof & RYOT Films. Bigelow, Kathryn. 2008. The Hurt Locker. Voltage Pictures/Grosvenor Park Media/Film Capital Europe Funds/First Light Production/Kingsgate Films/ Summit Entertainment.

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Ellerson, Beti. 2002. Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema. Women Make Movies. Grady, Rachel, and Heidi Ewing. 2010. 12th & Delaware. Ewing, Loki Films. Hegedus, Chris, and Jehane Noujaim. 2001. Startup.com. Noujaim Film/ Pennebaker Hegedus Films. Honigmann, Heddy. 2004. Food for Love – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There (Een Sjtetl die niet meer bestaat). Idéale Audience. Honkasalo, Pirjo. 1993. Tanjuska and the 7 Devils. Baabeli. Jain, Nishtha. 2012. Gulabi Gang. Real/Piraya Film A/S/Raintree Films. Keshavarz, Mina. 2020. The Art of Living in Danger. Mina Keshavarz/Mindoc Film Production. Longinotto, Kim. 2002. The Day I Will Never Forget. Vixen Films/HBO/ Cinemax Documentary Films. ———. 2005. Sisters in Law. Vixen films/Film Four. ———. 2010. Pink Saris. Vixen Films. ———. 2013. Salma. Channel 4. Mandy, Marie. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. Belgium: Saga Film, The Factory/ARTE/RTBF TV. Mihai, Teodora. 2014. Waiting for August. Clin d’oeil Films & A Private View. Mita, Heperia. 2018. How Mum Decolonised the Screen. Ā rama Pictures. Nash, Margot. 2015. The Silences. Ronin Films. Theroux, Louis. 2019. Mothers on the Edge. BBC Two. Trump, Maxine. 2019. To Kid or Not to Kid. Helpman Productions. Turkiewicz, Sophia. 2013. Once my Mother. Change Focus Media and Kalejdoskop Film. Zaatari, Akram, and Myriam Sfeir. 1999. Questionnaire for Women Film and Video Makers. AL-Radida, 86–87. Zbanic, Jasmila. 2003. Images from the Corner. Deblokada/Ohne Gepäck Berlin.

CHAPTER 4

Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender

Introduction Aesthetics are widely understood to be the expressive, creative, formal or stylistic qualities of a work. The link between the aesthetics of a film and the artist who produced it is generally acknowledged.1 However, rarely examined, particularly in regard to documentary, is the question of whether the aesthetic of a screen work can be understood as responding to and reflecting the lived experience of a particular author’s sex (a person’s anatomical biology as male or female), or experience of her gender (socially constructed attributes attributed in a culture to be male/masculine or female/feminine). This chapter takes up this question as the central idea, exploring whether one can identify how the films of individual women directors might be interpreted as offering aesthetic approaches that are informed specifically by their female sex and gender, and whether there are any observable commonalities. The central interest is the way in which women filmmakers draw on their own lived experience of their gender and their sex and express this in their work. A female aesthetic is central to understanding the female gaze. Each woman director has her own individual style and creative preferences. The aesthetic approaches to documentary film by women directors are as individual and diverse as the filmmakers’ specific life situations, experiences, material conditions, cultures, sexualities and other axes of difference—so there isn’t any claim here that there is any singularity or © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_4

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homogeneity of the work or approach of women documentary filmmakers. Each individual filmmaker will always create from her own standpoint or contingent circumstances (the historical, cultural and psychologically varying contexts for being a woman at any specific time or location). This text does not argue that all women filmmakers have the same perspective, aesthetic approach or experience but seeks to explore commonalities. Sex and gender are not the only aspects that might inform stylistic and formal practices. As intersectional feminists have observed, there are various interlocking sources of marginalisation: race, class, socioeconomic conditions, sexuality, age and disability. All of these are likely to influence creative expression. Writer director Najwa Najjar noted this when she observed that ‘many issues affect my perception in film and video, one of which is my being a woman. But I am also a Palestinian and living under an occupation in a region which is still underdeveloped and undemocratic’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 21). However, there is still value in interrogating the influence of sex and gender, despite the acknowledged limitation of the difficulty of separating them from other aspects of an individual’s identity, and for this reason, case study discussions in part two of this book consider the other contingent and contextual influences on the filmmakers discussed. The position taken here is to contend that being male or female is a significant influence on the subjectivity expressed in any film and therefore one of the fundamental foundations of an individual’s creativity. There is no universal aesthetic or fixed way to understand aesthetics, which constantly evolve (including due to advances in technology). A range of cross-cultural, social, technological factors, and the diversity in artists’ intentions, creativity and experiences all come into play, and there could be a variety of ways to read the aesthetic of any given audio-visual production. This scholarship takes a particular lens in examining the influence of sex and gender on aesthetics. Whilst some non-binary people do not identify with either gender, this chapter does not examine this. It is concerned with filmmakers who identify as female and live their lives in that sex and gender. It is about identification and identity, and the contingent experience living as female, as well as experiencing the world through social constructions around that identity. There is no specific discussion here of transgender, but it is acknowledged that all who live their lives as women are subject to, and impacted by ‘Othering’, patriarchy, unconscious bias and gender discrimination. The approach taken adopts a metaphysical feminism: that women share the experience of living lives inflected through the experience of their

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female sex and gender. This is a feminist ontology—the nature of existence for women is one that has shared elements because women everywhere are subject to patriarchy, a shared history of oppression and consciousness of marginalisation, and to the experience of dominant masculine versions of creative expression. From that perspective, one woman’s experience is arguably linked to all women’s experience although there are significant transnational differences for women across different nations and in relation to individual contingent circumstances. Relations of looking and the gaze have a long history of being colonised. This has been well elaborated by Palestinian filmmaker Azza El-Hassan who has observed that a woman still interacts with what’s around her as a woman. I think if a woman film director is conscious of her being, her camera movement would defiantly express that. … sometimes one sees women film directors treating their subjects as if they themselves are men, but I think this is because they have been trained to see the world from the man’s perspective and they are not yet conscious of their own gaze. (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 20)

This has value for feminist theorising and is a central concern of this text; on the one hand, where are the cameras pointed and with what sensibility? On the other hand, what is the aesthetic treatment of the subject matter? Having decided to look, what do women see and express? Are there commonalities in what they see, where they look, and modes of expression they create? The hallmarks of what might be understood as ‘female aesthetics’ have long been examined, particularly in relation to art (Bovenschen 1977) and also to cinema (de Lauretis 1987). Opinion has historically remained divided on the worth or viability of examining an ‘aesthetic’ linked to sex and gender. For example, as Gertrud Koch observed, ‘the issue remains whether … the female look through the camera at the world, at men, women and objects will be an essentially different one’ (Koch 1985, 144). This work is not contending an ‘essential difference’ or taking an essentialist position (the principle that women and men have essences that are prescribed by, or essential to, male or female biology). Instead it argues a social constructionist view, that differences are socially/experientially constructed. It seeks to observe what women express, in particular the ways in which they articulate how sex and gender have informed their lived

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experiences—their female views of the world. At the heart is the examination of female subjectivity and its aestheticisation in film. There are several reasons why the project to discuss a female aesthetic might be rejected or debated. Firstly, there have been those who are opposed to thinking about women’s work separately. This concern is shared by women practitioners themselves who want to be described as filmmakers rather than ‘women filmmakers’, particularly because it draws attention to only one aspect of their identity and distracts from the full range of possibilities their work might represent. Others might resist a sex and gender lens with a view to upholding the individuality of any person’s practice. Alternately, there are many non-binary filmmakers whose identities are not aligned with male/female, masculine/feminine gender binaries. For them, discussing a female aesthetic is not inclusive because the experience of someone whose identity is non-binary is not accounted for. And for others, it is equally incomplete for not accounting for what intersectional theory has posited as multiple sources of oppression (something dealt with in this book by examining individual case studies). On the other hand, there are likely to also be those who want to look at women’s practice. This may be drawn from a view that there is a difference in experience. For example, men and women arguably have different experiences of workplaces or social experience, particularly due to discrimination or exclusion.

A ‘Female Aesthetic’ A ‘female aesthetic’ is discussed in this book as one whereby the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of a documentary are constructed from female subjective positions (as diverse as they might be). Female subjectivity is understood as a woman’s individual ‘conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions … her sense of self, and her ways of understanding her relation to the world’ (Weedon 1997, 32). Films with a female aesthetic would encourage viewers to occupy a female subjectivity, and, through this, female experiences and ways of seeing their worlds are made visible. The method applied here is to gather together examples in films by women documentary filmmakers and which enable knowledge of the subjective experience of someone who lives in a female body. The method here is to examine identifiable and observable approaches, or stylistic and formal qualities, that resonate strongly with the practices of women, and,

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therefore, whether there are favoured approaches that can be observed. It is not absolute; it is a collection of attributes building what can be arguably described as a ‘female aesthetic’. They would evolve as new work is made, and exceptions might be found given there are many variables influencing practice. This is considered in relation to how this subjective experience is constructed semiotically, historically and is contingent on cultural and historic specific situations or circumstances (e.g. where a woman might be located, which will be historically variable). Although it is expressed here as ‘a female aesthetic’ (singular), it is understood in this book as a plural idea whereby expressing female subjectivity might take a variety of forms.

A Feminist Aesthetic A female aesthetic is distinct from a feminist aesthetic. It is logical that a ‘female aesthetic’ may also be a feminist aesthetic given that to take the position to represent female subjectivity and knowledge is a political act, a feminist act (although just because someone is female does not mean she is a feminist, and men can also be informed by a feminist perspective). However, understanding what constitutes a feminist aesthetic is arguably more straightforward than a female aesthetic, which does not have the same history of political theorising to guide an interpretation. There are many feminisms, and they have evolved over time as new feminisms have emerged (e.g. Islamic feminism, postmodern feminism, transnational feminism). They are not unified but do share a feminist politics in advocacy for women’s rights (including for self-determination), equal opportunity, the end to discrimination based on sex, and broadly seek social change to achieve these aspirations. Maggie Humm has argued ‘feminist aesthetics focuses on women’s social subjectivity, not simply on visual imagery, and feminist art aims to transform the asocial, sexist values of traditional aesthetics’ (Humm 1995, 10–11). A feminist aesthetic, as it is described here, works towards a perspective or voice that aims to counter patriarchal culture and to achieve a speaking position for women. It might reflect any of the many feminisms, but a feminist aesthetic is one that has the feminist politics described above. Feminist films can be read as responding to particular historic moments in feminist film production and the aesthetic deployed can be seen as born out of or common to that era or political agenda. For example, Connie Field’s The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) was made in a period

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when feminist filmmakers were consciousness-raising and constructing ‘herstories’.2 Realist documentaries were seen as a useful tool for feminist filmmakers because it was thought that they could tell women’s stories and put them back into the histories that had excluded them. However, feminists began to theorise a problem with realism, that it potentially created spectators who took what they saw to be real (as truth or reality) and did not therefore critique the values or worldviews offered to them (e.g. they potentially just regurgitated the dominant patriarchal ideology). As a consequence, some feminist filmmakers saw this problem and moved to avant-garde modes, for instance, Sue Friedrich’s Sink or Swim (1990), a film made ten years after Rosie the Riveter. It was an example of ‘counter-­ cinema’, which was a feminist strategy for filmmaking at that time.3 It used anti-realist strategies to reveal the workings of ideology. The film abstractly uses language to show how women have been constructed by patriarchy, and, through the inclusion of myth, the filmmaker reveals how far back sexist gender constructions go. Academic Michael Zryd has observed that through Friedrich’s ‘image track’ of home movies and found footage, she ‘tempers the painful and urgent personal emotion of the film by offering aesthetic pleasures effected by the exquisite textures of her visual and aural style’ (Zryd 2000). Friedrich has said: ‘I do like to play with the frame, the surface, the rhythm, with layering and repetition and text, and the other filmic elements’ (MacDonald 1990, 29). Whilst these are very different aesthetic approaches (realist and anti-realist), they have in common a desire to make an effective political intervention, to challenge and critique the dominant ideology of patriarchy, and to contribute to bringing about change towards gender equality. Both expressed female perspectives, voices and feminist narratives and therefore can be read as having a feminist aesthetic. A readily identifiable feminist approach or aesthetic is less visible in contemporary filmmaking. Feminist perspectives find expression in more subtle ways, particularly through a female aesthetic, which directly conveys female subjectivity. If an approach were to be identified today, it might be described as metaphysical feminism (as already described, as linked to what women share because they are, or identify, as female). An example is Jennifer Fox’s Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (2006). In six one-hour episodes, Fox examines modern female life. With a particular focus on the universal issues all women face, she includes her own life and the narratives of women from seventeen countries around the world. The series is about the way women speak as women, and the film interrogates

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what connects women across the globe and whether women have a special language. She deploys a multicultural or multiracial feminism that examines dominance with a consideration of the influence of social constructs (e.g. culture, ethnicity, traditions), and also a comprehension of each individual’s unique contingent circumstances whilst aiming to examine similarities and differences between women in different locations and circumstances.4 In an interview, she says that she had shifted in her thinking. Originally, she had thought that whatever happened to her was personal and linked to her particular circumstances (e.g. being Jewish or middle class), but she discovered and aimed to express what she learnt creating the series: That in fact much of what happened to me in my life, and things I suffered from, are because I’m a woman or was a girl, and that women suffer and enjoy very much the same things everywhere across class and culture. … that I was a white, Jewish woman who can totally relate to a South African woman … or a woman who’s wearing a scarf in Pakistan, and in fact, a lot of what we’re dealing with isn’t culture, but it’s gender. (KosherAudio 2008)

A Feminine Aesthetic A ‘feminine aesthetic’ is different to, and distinct from, a ‘female aesthetic’ or a ‘feminist aesthetic’. Cultural and psychological norms determined to be ‘feminine’ are neither natural nor innate to women (therefore female), nor embodied by all women. Men might be feminine or adopt a feminine aesthetic. The work of any filmmaker, regardless of their biological sex identification (or non-identification), could display a feminine aesthetic given femininity is ideologically, socially and culturally constructed according to cultural assumptions, values and beliefs. Arguably, it would however be more likely to be found in the work of females given that they are subjected to patriarchal ideology that works to naturalise stereotypes of women and to represent femininity as an aspect that is desirable for females. It is also arguable that a ‘feminine aesthetic’ might be one preferred by women for the characteristics outlined below. In this text a ‘feminine aesthetic’ is understood and described as a style. It is used to describe characteristics, or distinctive and identifiable forms. It is not regarded as innate or essential to women filmmakers. I acknowledge the feminine/masculine binary, and its roots derived from a masculine-­feminine binary system, denoting essential feminine values and

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meanings (woman as nature/man as culture) within the dominant gender ideology (Richard 2004, 29). It is an aesthetic that might be adopted by anyone—women or men—although it is one that the examples in this book illustrate is more often adopted by female filmmakers. The characteristics of this style can be found in various theoretical descriptions. Annette Kuhn has theorised ‘feminine cinematic writing’ as an alternative to male-centred discourse through constructing and privileging a ‘feminine voice’ that sets up sexual difference in spectator-text relations through ‘relations of looking, narrativity, narrative discourse, subjectivity and openness against closure’ (Kuhn 1982, 169). Writer Julia Knight has described a feminine aesthetic as marked by a ‘tendency to explore how their protagonists experience or perceive things’ [as much as] ‘the way they represent what those protagonists experience’, calling it a ‘way of looking’ that is specifically feminine and could be described as a ‘feminine aesthetic’ (Knight 1992, 122–123). Mollie Haskell has written of it as a vision of women who are not presented for male objectification and robbed of their autonomy, and instead, as characterised by a shared ‘attitude toward, and treatment of sex that distinguishes them from their male counterparts and that—using the word with all due caution—might be characterised as feminine’ (Haskell 1977, 73). Numerous filmmakers have made commentary about the feminine aspects of their work, including Australian filmmaker Solrun Hoaas who identified this as existing in ‘an interest in human relationships, sensitivity to what goes on the inside, detail, subtexts, circular structures (as opposed to resolution-orientated linear structures), repetitions, internal echoings, and layering as bringing a common texture to women’s work’ (Hoaas 1994). While these features are obviously not exclusive to women’s filmmaking, what appears to be evident is that they are more common; for example, French filmmaker Diane Kury’s work has been described as owing a ‘debt to what are often considered “feminine” modes of expression … a more “feminine” inflection by their (partial) centring on a female character, their lack of strong, linear plotting and their problematic, open endings’ (Tarr 1999, 147).

Female Experience It is notable that many have observed something they pronounce to recognise as ‘female’; for example, de Lauretis has described

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the feeling of an internal distance, a contradiction, a space of silence, which is there alongside the imaginary pull of cultural and ideological representations without denying or obliterating them. Women artists, filmmakers and writers acknowledge this … difference by attempting to express it in their works. (de Lauretis 1987, 134)

As a woman, I frequently recognise what de Lauretis refers to: for me there is what I term ‘a shock of recognition’. By that I refer to the surprise or even psychological impact caused by the expression that was previously absent, a discernible visibility of something I recognise as linked to or emerging from my female experience. It is something that is not shaped by a dominant masculine culture. The recognition is caused by the contrast: that historically, women have not been given a lot to identify with on screen. Identification for female audiences is related to the ways in which women experience the world (which may be different to the ways in which men experience it). Female filmmakers achieve identification by way of their aesthetic, representational and thematic approaches. This is through the form, as well as what women chose to represent (the dominant interests and common subjects). In what follows in this chapter and book, I consider all of these, but particularly focus on describing how the films discussed represent a ‘female aesthetic’, which is a central hallmark of a female gaze. This text offers substantiation that there are certain aesthetic qualities that are repeatedly identified in descriptions of female creativity in documentary film. This does not necessarily imply that male filmmakers do not adopt them, but rather that they are common in the work of women. I illustrate concrete examples of markers or traits that constitute a female aesthetic: a female perspective, circularity and a lack of closure, emotion and feeling, and detail. In the second part of the book, these ideas are further developed in relation to individual filmmaker case studies.

A Female Perspective There is ample discussion indicating that sex and gender influence storytelling and that there is a female consciousness in the sense of awareness of women’s issues and an obligation to support them, as well as an interest in expressing the inner lives of women. Lebanese filmmaker Nadine El-Khoury (Better Days, 2016) observed that each director or writer has their own personality and perception but that ‘being a woman’ is part of

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her, ‘it affects my sensitivity, my personality and my perception of the issues I’m dealing with … [and I] do not allow myself to create characters or situations that may reinforce some ideologies women are fighting against’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 20). Palestinian filmmaker Najwa Najjar has specified that women’s cinema offers her a ‘sensitivity’ she can relate to, and she has identified three characteristics of that cinema which she finds distinctive. These include the foregrounding of the woman character who has an active role rather than being reduced to a secondary role (to the male character); that characters are more rounded; and that the structure and storyline are cohesive, and there are ‘enough emotional qualities that give a deeper dimension to the story’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 22). There are many claims that female perspectives are not the same as male ones. Academic and Melbourne Women in Film Festival director Sian Mitchell has observed that ‘women have a different perspective on the world and that’s seen in the stories that they tell’ (Bunbury 2019). After undertaking more than forty interviews with practitioners, including documentarians, Melissa Silverstein, founder and editor of Women in Hollywood, wrote in her book In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing, ‘Men and women direct differently. Not better, not worse, just different. We have different life experiences and those experiences affect our work’ (2013, Preface). There is substantive evidence of female filmmakers making this observation; for example, Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong has noted that ‘even though I don’t like being labelled [a woman filmmaker], I do believe that women do see a lot of things differently’ (Armstrong 2015). The ‘difference’ being identified is that of a female perspective. For female audiences, this is an opportunity for identification (which is expressed above as recognition). It has been observed since early feminist theorising and it creates what scholar Silvia Bovenschen has designated as an alternate pleasure, as found in ‘the very different way in which women experience things, their very different experiences of themselves, enable us to anticipate different imaginations and means of expression’ (Bovenschen 1977, 20). A useful way of understanding this comes from de Lauretis, whose insight has been to argue that women’s cinema forms another ‘social subject’ and ‘effects another vision’ (de Lauretis 1987, 134). It is this vision that is at the heart of what is described here as a ‘female aesthetic’ and female gaze. Mandy’s documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film (2000) illustrates the way in which numerous globally successful filmmakers film love, desire and sexuality (e.g. Sally Potter, Agnès Varda,

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Catherine Breillat, Doris Dörrie, Deepa Mehta, Moufida Tlatli, Safi Faye and Jane Campion). As part of an interview with Doris Dörrie, Mandy cuts to the film being discussed, Dörrie’s ¿Bin ich schön? (Am I Beautiful? 1998). In this film a man and woman are having sex. He groans and is in the moment of his own pleasure. Her voiceover centres the action on her perspective. The monologue reveals how hungry she is, how she has lost so much weight on her diet, how proud she is of herself; she is not at all present in the act she is engaged in. The two of them are clearly not on the same page, but, more significantly, this scene is speaking through the body and psyche of a woman—which, as Mandy discusses with Dörrie in her documentary, is the point and value of the sequence (and also, a key marker of a female perspective). It is psychologically female and expresses a feminist ontology, by which I am thinking of the nature of existence as described in the way women experience it. A female worldview is privileged through the female monologue voiceover, through the approach to the filming of a woman’s body and through her concerns. As a representation of sexuality, it isn’t colonised by the dominant masculinist viewpoint that generally communicates a narrative of the virile man—something Dörrie seeks to disrupt in her work and which Mandy exposes through her film.

Identification Whilst the imagery used by each female filmmaker will be as unique and diverse as they are as individuals, and no trait could absolutely belong to one gender, some theorists and filmmakers have identified and described (rather than locked down) what they understand as the commonalities of female aesthetics, often linked to the feminine. Traits, patterns or formal qualities might prompt emotional or intellectual responses in audiences that encourage an understanding of something that might be recognised as female. This ‘female aesthetic’ appears to trigger a recognition in female spectators; for example, Marie Mandy has said that ‘from my experience as a spectator I can feel differences in films made by a woman and films made by a man most of the time, and I would say that the main difference regards identification … I just have more pleasure because I can recognise things that really talk to me’ (Mandy 2014). The inverse is potentially true; for example, Zeina Osman has noted of her own films that ‘I do often find it difficult to deal with male characters or male viewpoints in my films. They always come out as

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purposefully one dimensional or very mysterious’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 22). While this is only a difficulty one filmmaker has encountered, rather than an issue for women filmmakers, it implies a possible difference in identification for Osman, that she feels her sex and gender, as a female director, influences her ability to access gendered perspectives.

Circularity and a Lack of Closure Academic Barbara Creed has suggested that, historically, women’s films have favoured narratives that are open-ended and refuse closure, ‘perhaps because they adopt an oppositional stance in relation not only to their subject matter but also in relation to conventional cinematic practices’ (Blonski et al. 1987, 309). This is evident in what directors say about their own practice and that of others. For example, Marie Mandy claimed that, in her view, women tell stories in more circular and meandering ways, building stories with different layers rather than going directly from one thing to another. According to Mandy ‘a lot of male films are driven by a strong narration A to B, which is not the case of most of the films made by women’ (Mandy 2014). This circular feature is arguably an aspect of a ‘female aesthetic’ and possibly means that the films themselves have less of a drive towards closure and more interest in what is going on where the filmmakers are. In the documentary Profession Documentarist (Abtahi et al. 2013) there is a repeated lack of closure, the audience doesn’t see the new house Sahar is moving into nor is it revealed if Mina gets her wish to go to film school, but instead they observe their reality as they live it at the time the film was made in Iran. Another Iranian short documentary Murderer or Murdered (Mahvash Sheikholeslami 2004) is based on interviews with women which she conducted in a Tehran maximum security prison. It captures women telling of their arranged marriages and violent lives, including of husbands who molested their children. The film has been described as having a ‘lack of closure’ with the explanation that ‘this incompleteness is emblematic of the intractable social situations which women still find themselves in’ (Naficy 2011, 148). Whilst this link to the real world is always there, documentaries are nevertheless structured and often scripted, and the form of these scripts can be circular. From that perspective, screenwriting approaches to shaping and crafting a story are relevant to the discussion of documentary. In general, these discussions have largely focused on the fiction film, but

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arguably there are similarities that can be perceived to the ways in which documentaries are structured. Producer Sara Duvall has observed a non-­ linear tendency: ‘[w]omen don’t dwell on the action moment. They consider everything leading up to it as the story. Women want the build up, the tension … The process, how you get there, is more important than what happens when you get there’ (Seger 1996, 137). African American director Julie Dash (Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, 2017) has observed ‘It’s like a circle’, ‘[t]hings keep revealing themselves like an onion’ (Seger 1996, 137). Seger claims women’s films change the focus, often emphasise ‘the character’s emotions, behaviour, and psychology above the character’s actions’ (Seger 1996, 118). This tendency appears in both the fiction and the non-fiction film.

Emotion and Feeling Documentaries are frequently interested in emotion and often touch audiences through an emotional register. If we understand the aesthetic of a given work as having perceivable formal elements that may evoke emotional or cognitive responses in audiences, then the question in the context of this chapter is whether women induce that emotion in their documentaries through any particular tactics or take other approaches. Affect theory is potentially useful here in drawing attention to how the senses of the audience are engaged, accounting for the range of feelings experienced. It is my observation (and this is only conjecture) that women filmmakers recurrently express feeling, which differs from emotion because the latter (emotion) has an instinctual, immediate and reactionary quality. Emotion generates feeling, for example: if someone expresses the emotion of anger, this may make them feel resentful and bitter. Feeling is more subjective and experiential, and I find it to be a common characteristic or trait that women utilise to express emotional terrains: what women feel or their female subjectivity. This potentially opens up space for the production and transmission of affect. That is, how a film affects audiences’ senses (see Affect Theory; e.g. Gregg and Seigworth 2010). ‘Affect’ is a term that encompasses a broad range of feelings that people can experience. It embodies both emotions and moods. An emotion is an intense feeling that is short term and is typically directed at a source. Affect is often, but not exclusively, used as a synonym for passion, sentiment, mood, feeling or emotion. The supposition put here, and further explored in the chapters on individual filmmakers, is that a female aesthetic frequently leans towards

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producing and transmitting affect that expressly connects to communicating individual female experience and the creator’s or subject’s feelings about that experience. There are many examples that illustrate that women documentarians are focused on feeling or affect. Palestinian filmmaker May Masri emphasised this point when she said that ‘women are more open about their feelings, emotions and weaknesses which gives them credibility and emphasises their humanity’ (Zaatari and Sfeir 1999, 19). A concrete example of this idea can be seen in Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić’s short documentary Images from the Corner (2003). It begins with the filmmaker’s voiceover recalling a fearful dream of the war in Sarajevo starting again. She tells the audience in the voiceover that ‘the war ended 8 years ago but in some way I am still living in it, or with it. Although I would like to free myself of it, every day a scene, a face, a sound reminds me of shelling, snipers, wounded, dead’. This is intercut with an ordinary image of a mother with her child, Žbanić with her baby daughter on her lap. It is contemporary times and they are sitting in a circus ring. Then Žbanić reflects on how a particular spot makes her feel when she goes there, how its history troubles her; the effect is a feeling that the everyday can slip into a past that haunts and continues to hurt her. The corner in the film was the site of an attack that badly wounded one of the neighbourhood girls of Žbanić’s generation, the beautiful twenty-year-old Bilja. Her disfigurement is a metaphor for the siege of Sarajevo, and the mark it left on its people, including the filmmaker. Žbanić narrates the story of the French photographer who photographed her, shooting off three rolls as she lay bleeding in the street.5 She does not show the image for which the photographer won a World Press Photograph Award, only the empty footpath where the mortar shell hit her. She is unimpressed and disinterested in his fame, which disgusts her. He is lauded and awarded, but Žbanić wonders, where is Bilja now? She is swamped by a sea of feeling: for the people, for this woman she once knew. Like many female documentarians, she has an intense interest in women’s stories, and in this film she puts the forgotten Bilja back into history but refuses to objectify her again by showing the famous image of her suffering. ‘The corner’ is a site where Žbanić and Bilja were traumatised. Žbanić evokes her own memory and this creates a tension that conjures innocence lost (her own and that of others). The shot is of the corner; its details: sheets blowing in the wind above the traffic that do not offer any hint of what happened there. It conjures a sense of aftermath. She tells the

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audience that she still lives with the war, and the film itself shows us how a face, a sound or a smell can recall ‘shelling, snipers, wounded, dead’. Finding a photograph of Bilja on the internet, the audience hears via the voiceover that ‘the image provoked the same feelings in me that I had when I first saw it: rage, humiliation and insult’. Locating it with the filmmaker’s personal response extends the emotion to feeling, evoking passion, sentiment, mood, and also emphasising Bilja’s and the filmmaker’s lack of power.

Detail An element common in the work of women is the focus on particular detail where the attention of the filmmaker is drawn by particular elements that are gendered female. Expatriate Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman described her work in a way that also illustrates a ‘feminine aesthetic’: I give space to things which were never—almost never—shown in that way, like the daily gestures of a woman. They are the lowest in the hierarchy of film images … But more than content, it’s because of the style. If you show a woman’s gestures so precisely, it’s because you love them. In some way you recognize those gestures that have always been denied and ignored. (de Lauretis 1987, 132)

French filmmaker Agnès Varda once observed an interest in detail and offered her view that a ‘woman’s vocabulary exists, linked to the feminine universe. I feel this occasionally in that I am inspired by a certain number of attractions, subjects which always draw me rather more than they would if I were a man’ (Smith 1998, 92). This is an identifiable part of the ‘female aesthetic’ described here. Since early in feminist scholarship on film, this type of commentary is visible: Julia Lesage described how space was being redefined by women filmmakers, saying that this has been achieved by what she described as ‘woman-identified’ productions that brought into representation a ‘new iconography of women’s bodies and women’s space’ (Lesage 1978, 521). This has continued as a trajectory into the present in the work of women documentarians. Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain has observed similar qualities to Akerman in her 2007 documentary, Lakshmi and Me, which is about an upper-­ middle class woman in her house (the filmmaker) with a domestic worker (employed by the filmmaker). She says that film is ‘about feudalism, it’s

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about negotiating gender and class’ (Jain 2014). According to Jain, the larger films do not deal with these kinds of subjects, which she says come to women ‘more easily’ and ‘more naturally than to men’: she says women make films that are generally ‘more intimate, much more personal’, they are ‘about the domestic’ because ‘women do house chores, and they do raise children and it’s the world they inhabit and that’s what they want to talk about’ (Jain 2014). ‘They want to bring out the nuances of that world, they want to question that world’, and so their films are, according to Jain, ‘quite different’ (Jain 2014). Jain also sees women’s films as having a specific aesthetic, as ‘much more tactile’, ‘about little things, about gestures and about feelings and emotions, it’s not … big concepts, it’s about lived experience and felt things’ (Jain 2014). Akerman’s last film before her suicide was No Home Movie (2015). In the documentary the audience gain deep insight into a mother and daughter’s relationship; it is an intimate cinematic portrait to farewell to her mother (Natalia) who had inspired the maternal imagery that pervades her films, work which also established ‘a symmetry between Jewish women’s experience’ and ‘the negotiation of gender constraints through artistic expression’ (McFadden 2014, 98). In one sequence of No Home Movie, they are in the kitchen conversing over a meal, often recalling memories. Her mother is often in her domestic space, captured in long takes. Writer Lori Jo Marso says that film echoes the style and subject matter of her earlier film Jeanne Dielman (1975) in which Akerman stated she wanted to portray domestic rituals that were ‘not only mandated and determined by oppression (her structural position as woman in the home) but also as providing pleasure (they are ritualistic, aesthetic, bodily, and even sensual) … [capturing] the satisfying dimensions of “women’s work”’ (Marso 2016, 6–7). The kitchen is a frequent location for mothers and daughters: Heddy Honigmann’s Food for Love – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There (2004) is a pertinent example. Honigmann’s mother Sonia describes her life just before the Second World War, when she immigrated with Heddy and her sister from Poland to Peru. Following this, all of the family members who remained were killed by Nazis. The film recaptures, remembers and reminisces on the family using both old photographs and the conversation that takes place during the prepared vrennekes (Yiddish potato and onion balls). The film is in the domestic space but also in the space women occupy in

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the world. At the International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, in a Q&A (25/11/14), Honigmann spoke of how she can tell that a woman made a film. She noted that some men have what she would call a ‘feminine gaze’ but that she could tell because of the length of shots, a tendency to be more patient in looking, waiting and showing time passing. She noted that women are well used to waiting—for marriage proposals and waiting while your mother is cooking. She captured the details of both her contingent situation (and that of her mother), and of the female space the two women occupy. Arguably it is what film critic Dana Linssen noted when she observed that women filmmakers share stylistic and formal qualities: ‘I observed that to some extent, they all shared some traits that are traditionally called “feminine” … observational, patient, empathetic, curious, sensitive, poetic and lyrical’ (IDFA 2014).

Conclusion In promoting female subjectivity within a female aesthetic, women achieve feminist social visions and a political aesthetic (whether intended or not). This works towards equalising the representational landscape, expressing and validating female experience and perspectives. From this point of view, they are cultural interventions. The resulting films provide particular identification for female audiences through the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of documentaries by women. This mobilises the expression of female experience, in particular the commonalities that women undergo across cultures, and how they encounter gender difference. The key hallmark of films with a ‘female aesthetic’ is that they build an insight into female subjectivities, experiences and perspectives. Common traits include that they offer identification for female audiences, structurally have a circular form, privilege subjective feeling and focus on detail (making visible the spaces of women’s culture). A female aesthetic might also be feminist and/or feminine, although it is not necessary for them to be so. The discussion of a ‘female aesthetic’ foregrounds female subjectivity and enables significant insights into how women and men live together in the world and experience that world, and how women are engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences. It offers another social vision that particularly addresses the female spectator.

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Notes 1. Films is used here as a descriptor, but it is taken to mean audio-visual productions in any form. This book is, however, largely concerned with film. 2. A ‘herstory’ is a revision of history from a feminist politic. See Glossary. 3. Scholar Annette Kuhn defined a counter-cinema as ‘cinema which operates against, questions, and subverts the dominant cinema’ (Kuhn 1982, 157). 4. This is quite difficult to do given the filmmaker will always look from her perspective and construct the ultimate film from that. An ongoing tension within feminism itself has always existed around the question of speaking for others and the problems of doing so. 5. Of course, both journalists and documentary filmmakers are trained to run the camera rather than go to assist someone.

References Armstrong, Gillian. 2015. Interview conducted by Lisa French, Sydney, Australia, January 28. Blonski, Annette, Barbara Creed, and Freda Freiberg, eds. 1987. Don’t Shoot Darling, Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia. Richmond, Australia: Greenhouse Publications Pty Ltd. Bovenschen, Silvia. 1977. Is There a Feminine Aesthetic? Trans by Beth Weckmueller. New German Critique 10: 111–137. Bunbury, Stephanie. 2019, January 29. Melbourne Women in Film Festival Spotlights Hidden Faces of Australian Cinema. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/women-in-film-festival-spotlightsthe-hidden-­faces-of-australian-cinema-20190128-h1akxd.html. Accessed 15 May 2021. Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds. 2010. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Haskell, Mollie. 1977. Are Women Directors Different? In Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, ed. Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary. New York: Dutton. Hoaas, Solrun. 1994. Interview with Solrun Hoaas, recorded by Lisa French in Melbourne. September 6. Humm, Maggie. 1995. The Dictionary of Feminist Theory. 2nd ed. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf. IDFA. 2014. The Female Gaze. Industry Talk, November 22. Jain, Nishtha. 2014. Interview with Nishtha Jain, conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 20. Knight, Julia. 1992. Women and the New German Cinema. London: Verso.

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Koch, Gertrud. 1985. Ex-changing the Gaze: Re-visioning Feminist Film Theory. New German Critique 34: 154–175. KosherAudio. 2008. Jennifer Fox – Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (Audio interview with Jennifer Fox). https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dJNGg2SjJb4/. Accessed 5 March 2020. Kuhn, Annette. 1982. Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lauretis, Teresa de. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lesage, Julia. 1978. The Political Aesthetics of Documentary Film. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3–4: 507–523. MacDonald, Scott. 1990. Daddy Dearest: Su Friedrich Talks about Filmmaking, Family, and Feminism. The Independent, 29. http://www.sufriedrich.com/ PDFs/PDFs%20of%20books%20for%20INDIV%20films/TB+DD_ MacDonald_AFTERIMAGE_1988.pdf/. Accessed 5 March 2020. Mandy, Marie. 2014. Interview with Marie Mandy, recorded by Lisa French in Amsterdam. November 24. Marso, Lori Jo. 2016. Fifty-one Key Feminist Thinkers. Abingdon: Routledge. McFadden, Cybell H. 2014. Gendered Frames, Embodied Camera: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Maïwenn. Lanham: Farleigh Dickinson UP. Naficy, Hamid. 2011. A Social History of Iranian Cinema. Vol. 4, The Globalizing Era, (1984–2010). Durnham, NC: Duke University Press. Richard, Nelly. 2004. Masculine/Feminine: Practices of Difference(s). Durham: Duke University Press. Seger, Linda. 1996. When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film. Lincoln: iUniverse. Smith, Alison. 1998. Agnes Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tarr, Carrie. 1999. Diane Kurys. Oxford: Manchester University Press. Weedon, Chris. 1997. Feminist Practice and poststructuralist Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Zaatari, Akram, and Myriam Sfeir. 1999. Questionnaire for Women Film and Video Makers. AL-Radida, 86–87. Zryd, Michael. 2000. Sink or Swim. Senses of Cinema, 8. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2000/cteq/sink/. Accessed 5 March 2020.

Filmography Abtahi, Sepideh, Shirin Barghnavard, Mina Keshavarz, Firouzeh Khosrovani, Nahid Rezaei, Mina Keshavarz, Sahar Salahshoor, and Farahnaz Sharifi. 2013. Profession: Documentarist. Iran: DaFilms. Akerman, Chantal. 2015. No Home Movie. New York: Icarus Films. Dörrie, Doris. 1998. ¿Bin ich schön? Germany: Constantin Film & Fanes Film.

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Field, Connie. 1980. The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter. USA: Clarity Films. Fox, Jennifer. 2006–2008. Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. New York: Zohe Film Production and Easy Film. Friedrich, Sue. 1990. Sink or Swim. USA: Downstream Productions. Honigmann, Heddy. 2004. Food for Love  – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There. Netherlands: Appel & Honigmann. Mandy, Maree. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film. New York: Women Make Movies. Sheikholeslami, Mahvash. 2004. Murderer or Murdered. Iran: Independent. Žbanić, Jasmila. 2003. Images from the Corner. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zoran Solomun for Ohne Gepack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq7WYtGYebc/. Accessed 5 March 2020.

CHAPTER 5

Feminisms, Feminist Theory and Documentary Practice

The practice of feminist documentary filmmaking, and the scholarship it evokes in response, chart out the major fault lines of feminist theorizing and political activism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (Ali 2018)

Introduction Feminists share with documentary film practitioners a predilection to engage in a reflexive self-critique. Feminist theoretical positions have always been iterative and evolving in response to feminist rethinking that has been motivated by the aims of inclusivity and a desire to remain relevant to the diversity of women’s experience or material conditions. For example, the work of theorist bell hooks (1992) revealed that critics ‘who apply Western feminist theories to African film fail to allow for a different kind of feminism that takes race into account’ (Wheatley 2006, 390). Feminists recognised that the circumstances, concerns and requirements of women vary according to the individual context and power relations she is subjected to (not just gender, but other axes such as race, class, sexuality and socioeconomic circumstance), and in response, new feminisms such as intersectional feminism have emerged. However, the common goal that connects all feminisms is one of ‘human rights for women’ and ‘the commitment to social change’ (Waldman and Walker 1999, 1). From © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_5

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this perspective, feminist filmmaking practice is political. What different feminisms share is an agenda to oppose patriarchal culture, sexism and the oppression of women, promote equal opportunity or access, advocate for women’s rights and promote female points of view. Feminist films have a politic based in achieving equity (fairness) and equality (equal conditions or opportunities) between men and women. This chapter describes the relationship between feminisms and documentary, and in particular, the relationship of feminist theory to documentary and how it has influenced practice.

Feminist Documentary ‘Feminist documentary’ has been traced by some scholars as emerging in the US in the late 1960s and 1970s and arising from both second wave feminism and direct cinema (Lesage 1978; Smaill 2012).1 This coincides with the rise of feminist film theory in America. As such, the evolution of feminist documentary can be understood as linked to the women’s movement/political activism and access enabled through new lightweight camera gear. In his 1979 book The Documentary Tradition, Lewis Jacobs commented that the ‘single most conspicuous development in the seventies’ was the ‘arrival of scores of women filmmakers’ (Waldman and Walker 1999, 5). When Western women started to make feminist documentaries in the 1970s, the challenge to the previously dominant masculinist perspectives manifested through this access, enabling films that expressed a new connection with female subjects and cultures that was motivated by consciousness-raising and a movement for change. Scholar Patricia White has described feminist documentary as representing women’s agency through its politics of production, address and reception (White 2015, 217). In many countries around the world between the 1970s and 1980s, there were visible feminist filmmaking and film collectives producing documentaries that were clearly discernible as feminist. For example, with the emergence of the women’s movement of the 1970s in the US, ‘African American women began to assert their creativity by chronicling their history and cultural contributions’ (White et al. 2014, 156). In the late 1970s and 1980s in Australia there was a proliferation of women’s production groups that were also involved in exhibition and distribution.2 Individual countries each have their own histories. However, over the past thirty years, an overt or clearly identifiable feminist documentary became less

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and less visible or explicitly consolidated as ‘feminist film practice’. This is not to say that feminism is not a feature of the way women filmmakers work today. Films are still being made that are underpinned by feminist politics, but it is now more subtly expressed by filmmakers whose perspectives are feminist and manifest in the values, advocacy and choices of subject matter. Among the reasons for this is that the currency of feminism declined following an antifeminist backlash (see Faludi 1991). This situation has shifted slightly in the new millennium due to movements such as the globally visible #MeToo and the subsequent highlighting of the oppression and inequality for women.3 This gave rise to documentaries on this subject, such as Ursula Macfarlane’s Untouchable (2019), and there has been feminist activism—indeed, there is now a category described as ‘#MeToo Documentaries’.4 As change agents women have created global opportunities for female voices and experiences to be witnessed and heard, and therefore documentary production can be understood as a site of empowerment for women. Women documentarians have played a significant role in supporting gender equality globally through examining power relations, rights, values and representation from female perspectives. This contribution is of importance to understanding women’s contingent circumstances, where the oppression exists in the individual lives of their subjects, including critique of the discourses and ideological constructions that describe and contain women in individual cultures (French 2019, 17). Women filmmakers are acutely aware of the contingent, individually and culturally variable circumstances of their subjects in the world. This is evident in the interviews in this book: Nishtha Jain said ‘living in a woman’s body in India in itself comes with, with a lot of conflict’ (Jain 2014) and Kim Longinotto observed that: ‘in Africa and Iran there is a war going on, women get shot in the head for going to school or they get locked in the house’ (Longinotto 2014). Scholar Hamid Naficy has identified a tendency that emerged in women’s documentaries in Iran to uncover social problems and explore familial issues. He concludes that this was a direct result of specific, local oppression of women due to Islamicate values and laws, policies and institutions that promoted gender-based discrimination. He has identified recurring thematic concerns in the work of female documentarians in Iran, whose attention turned to themes of marriage, divorce, runaway children, spousal and children’s abuse, murder, violence against women, gender-based discriminatory laws, policies and institutions (Naficy 2011, 148). In Iran,

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women’s practice is further complicated by the restrictions that impact all moving image practitioners in regard to whether they can make, exhibit and distribute their work. Iranian filmmakers have reportedly received jail for exhibiting their films internationally and there are restrictions on showing films (e.g. Mohammad Rasoulof and Tahmineh Milani). In the film Profession Documentarist (Abtahi et  al. 2013) a group of women filmmakers across several generations collaborated to express the danger they regularly face in choosing to be filmmakers (a profession that could cost them their liberty and therefore causes them to live in fear).5 The politic is one that expresses the limitations on the personal and artistic freedom. In Profession Documentarist they speak of their lives as women in the repressive state of Iran. The film expresses their identities and the texture of their lives as females who want to emancipate Muslim women. It is inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 film Professione: Reporter (The Passenger), a film that Theodore Price writes is a ‘political fable, a brief for one of Lenin’s key pronouncements that anyone who is for the Revolution must act and not just talk’ (Price 2015). One of the filmmakers described making the documentary Profession Documentarist as ‘a way to resistance’ (Abtahi et al. 2014).6 That ‘resistance’ might be read in three ways: (1) filmmaking as an opportunity for female creative expression and voice; (2) enabling opposition to the gender-based discrimination in her country; and (3) pointing to the fear their profession comes with in the Iranian context. The interests identified by Naficy are widely of consequence to women filmmakers who are frequently focused on social problems and women’s issues. The feminism of contemporary female documentary filmmakers is evident in the ways they shine a light on women’s contingent circumstances, and in so doing, act as agents of change.

Feminist Documentary Practices Feminist documentary practices have advanced in response to the feminist milieus, intellectual ideas and cultural contexts of the period in which the filmmaking occurred. Women with a feminist documentary practice are those whose work has social and political objectives. They make films that are politically interested in social transformation, addressing inequality, opposing patriarchy, advocating change for women and offering female perspectives. The aesthetic will be feminist.7 Such an aesthetic foregrounds women’s social subjectivity and is politically against patriarchy. There isn’t any homogeneity for a ‘feminist aesthetic’; different aesthetic strategies

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that express feminist positions have evolved over time and each individual filmmaker has her own creative, expressive, stylistic and formal approach to her work. A feminist film is likely to be interested in the female condition, in offering a view of life from a female perspective and therefore potentially offers female audiences the opportunities for identification. Scholar Patricia White has described the feminist documentary as representing: women’s agency in its politics of production, address, and reception as well as in its images and issues. Rejecting the status of woman as object enforced by dominant audiovisual codes and discourses … feminist documentaries portray female and feminist subjectivity—insisting on voice, choice, and self-representation. (White in Juhasz and Lebow 2015, 217)

The crucial notions here are women’s agency and female or feminist subjectivity. Both agency and subjectivity are key hallmarks of feminist documentary practice and of the female gaze. Agency importantly highlights the necessity for women to have access to creativity and a right to communicate, and it is the activation of this agency that has mobilised feminist thinking into the public sphere, something documentary film is well placed to achieve. A feminist perspective can be understood as informed by feminism (or feminisms). This perspective shapes the way the filmmaker tells the story, what they point the camera at, where they find the points of interest, and a feminist ideology imbues the worldview represented. As feminist scholar Annette Khun has observed: ‘films by women may or may not be feminist, and it is possible to argue, though some feminists will disagree, that feminist work may be produced by men’ (Kuhn 1982, 20). Being female does not equate with being feminist; indeed, some women are not or do not identify with feminism and both men and women might support patriarchal ideology. However, several filmmakers interviewed for this book have testified that they cannot separate out their gender and/or their feminism, and that these form a core of what they express in their own documentaries. A film might centre around male subjects but that does not preclude it from having a feminist or female perspective. Academic Belinda Smaill has written that the ‘themes and subjectivities’ that feminist documentaries bring to the fore ‘seek out an alternative recognition in the viewer’, one that reveals the field and history of feminist

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filmmaking (Smaill 2012). This ‘alternative recognition’ is one where feminist and female perspectives are highly visible and foregrounded. They create a rupture, given such perspectives have long been in the minority, but as women increase their participation as documentary makers, they insert female perspectives. They may be understood as ‘alternate views’ in the sense that they create space for gendered understandings and potentially disrupt patriarchal views of the world that have to date dominated representation.

Women Documentary Filmmakers as Change Agents As I have observed elsewhere, female documentarians have played a significant role in globally advocating and mobilising social, political, cultural, economic and environmental change (French 2019). They have used their practice to lobby for women’s access to social, political, cultural, creative and economic spheres whilst advocating for positive change in women’s social and economic conditions. Their particular and important contribution has been in promoting understandings of women’s contingent circumstances and revealing the situations, discourses and ideological constructions that describe and contain or oppress women in individual cultures. This project has meaningfully been undertaken by women directors from inside their own cultures and in response to an urgent need for change. For example, Canadian Indigenous director Audrey Huntley embarked on a project for CBC Television in 2004 to create visibility for the hundreds of Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or have been found murdered in Canada. She produced a series called Traces of Missing Women where she interviewed communities, activists and forty-­ five family members of missing women. Subsequently, she made the documentary Go Home Baby Girl (2006), the story of Norma George, one of hundreds of missing or murdered native women. These disappearances have been characterised by Amnesty International as human rights tragedies (Huntley 2015). She was influential in the establishment of a ‘National Inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ in Canada and spoke at the Nobel women’s conference on the ‘Defence of Women Human Rights Defenders’ at The Hague. Her productions led to public awareness and shifts in policy as well as visibility of the ‘colonialist patterns that infuse all Canadian social relations’ (D’Arcangelis and Huntley 2012, 41).

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There are many documentaries by female practitioners that demonstrate the success women have had in forming movements, using collective action at the local level to effect change and challenge social systems and structures, and promoting new ways of thinking about entrenched social practices. These include Gini Reticker’s Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008), a documentary set in the West African Republic of Liberia, which chronicles a group of ordinary Liberian women who formed ‘Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace’ and were instrumental in the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman president of an African nation (French 2019, 25). A further example is Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad’s We Are Half of Iran’s Population (2009), which was made (we are told in the film), so that ‘women’s voices might be heard by presidential candidates, that their concerns would be addressed’. This is just one of her documentaries that have typically focused on the politics of her country, creating visibility for the devastating effects of war on women, and familial and gender issues in Iran (French 2019, 20). Women make all kinds of documentary but are very interested in the social and familial impact of situations such as war and/or violence against women. Whilst there is no limit to the subjects they are interested in, there are strong themes or visible concerns in what might be described as women’s issues. Their take on them is often directly from female perspectives. This is evident in the Women and Hollywood’s list of the best documentaries by and about women in 2019 (Women and Hollywood 2019). This selection of ten films directed or co-directed by women can be taken as a contemporary dataset of representative Western documentary films that give insight into the preoccupations of contemporary female documentarians. Among them is the film For Sama (2019) from directors Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts. Waad Al-Kateab filmed five years of her life during the war in Aleppo, Syria, including the birth of her daughter Salma who endures the regular shelling of their apartment. It foregrounds resistance (particularly through actions to keep the camera rolling in the face of the carnage) and love (her intimate portrait of her relationship and her motherhood). The film was produced from hard drives smuggled out of the country and was described by The Hollywood Reporter as ‘a rare first-­ hand account of war from a strictly female perspective, focusing on how conflict affects families, and, especially, the hundreds of innocent victims that are children’ (Mintzer 2019). Other films reflect a strong interest in human rights and an advocacy for social change. Nancy Schwartzman’s Roll Red Roll (2018) examines how

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rape culture developed with impunity in the football town of Steubenville, Ohio, and how a movement of women to share their own stories of assault created an intervention to highlight everyone’s collective responsibility. Schwartzman’s body of work is committed to creating safer communities for women and girls and opposing gender-based violence (Berger 21 April 2018). One Child Nation (2019), directed by Nanfu Wang and Zhang Lynn, explores the aftermath and social impact of China’s one child policy (1979–2015). Nanfu Wang grew up in China and didn’t question the policy until she had a child herself, and from that experience, she ‘felt empathy towards mothers and children whose lives were affected by the policy’ and greatly moved by what it did and their emotional stories (Stewart 2019). Ursula Macfarlane’s Untouchable (2019) takes up sexual harassment and assault through the Harvey Weinstein story and At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal (2019), directed by Erin Lee Carr, takes up those topics via the lens of a gymnastics doctor who preyed on young women.

Feminist Documentary and Film Studies Feminist film criticism and scholarship has paid relatively little attention to documentary in comparison to fiction filmmaking. This has been widely noted by film scholars. Waldman and Walker have observed what they describe as an ‘unfortunate’ neglect of the documentary in feminist film theory and criticism which they have written that has tended to avoid documentary forms altogether, or only to focus on feminist documentary: ‘as if feminist thinking were inapplicable to documentary films in general’ (Waldman and Walker 1999, 10 & 3). Academic Belinda Smaill has similarly noted that ‘[t]he relationship between feminist approaches and documentary film has never been adequately addressed in film studies’ and this has resulted in a situation in relation to documentary, where feminist analytical paradigms have not been significantly applied to this genre (Smaill 2018, xiii). The shifts of feminist theorising over time have influenced the ways in which films have been discussed and received. Scholarship about feminist documentary practice from the middle of the twenty-first century has been described by academic Isra Ali as being communicated in two ways. The first is as anticolonial with a rewriting and reclaiming of histories and images by women in the Third World and its diasporas.8 The second is the feminist First World cinema movement that examines ‘the economic and

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social frameworks of the daily lives of women, and their identities’ in films made by and for women (Ali 2018). Ali offers both as emerging radical political movements in the history of feminist documentary globally. Scholar Julia Lesage has observed the 1970s focus on realism; the 1980s as framed by analysis of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and semiotics; and the 1990s centred on queer, postcolonial and critical race theory (Lesage 2013). From the 1990s into the 2000s, the focus for discussions on women’s documentary has acknowledged the conditions women experience are complex, and intersectional feminists have focused on the ways different forms of discrimination intersect (e.g. race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture, gender, education and age). In the 2000s, contemporary feminism and the cinema have been described by Sophie Mayer as a ‘negotiation of a transgenerational feminist film history of four decades within a reflexive awareness of the interruption and re-vision of feminisms, and interconnectedly of film cultures, in the new millennium’ (Mayer 2016, 6). Political and cultural intersections have produced new feminisms that responded to women’s specific contexts; for example one such evolution is Islamic feminism, which places the discourse of Islam and the Quran at the centre.9 The second part of this book includes case studies of specific filmmakers that use a range of theoretical paradigms to contextualise their work. These align with contemporary approaches to theorising feminist films. They include the influence of sex and gender on aesthetics, representing the body, subjectivity and also a range of feminisms, including transnational and postcolonial feminism. The relationship between theory and feminism is wide open and there is a myriad of junctures and uses that can be applied to achieve feminist understandings and critiques.

Theory and Practice: The Debate About Realism Theory and practice are interrelated in the sense that they have influenced each other in various ways at different times, but as Kuhn has noted, they don’t immediately and unproblematically map onto each other (Kuhn 1982, 160). An example of the way in which theorising has influenced practice can be seen in the feminist debates about realism. The issue raised in relation to realism was that it relied on and reiterated the dominant patriarchal ideology, suturing the audience into a story and perspective that offered solutions according to that ideology rather than in opposition to it. A key feminist complaint about realism and its illusion of reality was that signifying systems ‘reflect not lived experience (actuality,

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the referent) but the dominant codes through which a culture “apprehends reality”’ (Kaplan 1982–83, 49). As scholar E.  Ann Kaplan has observed, this objection was raised as early as 1973 by feminist Claire Johnston (Johnston 1973, 28) who critiqued realism as dangerous because it is based on, and part of, existing capitalist representations. Johnston suggested it must be broken by countercinema (Kaplan 1982–83, 45), which has been described as ‘a film practice which works against and challenges dominant cinema, usually at the levels of both signifiers and signified’ (Kuhn 1982, 152). The argument against realist documentaries gave rise to a shift in the kinds of films that were made around the early 1990s. It was a move from the examination of social institutions (as seen in realist documentaries) to a ‘preoccupation with the signifying practices’ (Kaplan 1982–83, 50). Kaplan has traced these shifts as part of the history of feminist theorising in the cinema, but she regards the realist debate as inadequate because contrary to that argument, she says realism is a possible mode, and that despite the importance of semiotic understanding, ‘it is equally important not to lose sight of the material world in which we live, and which our oppression takes concrete, often painful, forms’ (Kaplan 1982–83, 60). In a similar vein, Alexandra Juhasz has offered that: ‘Realism’ can function in any number of ways, including, but not limited to, the confirmation, perpetuation, and reflection of bourgeois, patriarchal reality but it can also ‘testify to alternative, marginal, subversive, or illegal realities, it can critique the notion of reality’. To portray the world with a realistic film style is not necessarily to imply that one believes that the ‘reality’ portrayed is fixed, stable, complete or unbiased, although it probably means that one has an opinion about what this reality means, what it feels like, how it functions, or how it might change. (Juhasz 1994, 175)

Feminist debates about realism influenced feminist filmmaking practice and occurred as part of an examination of the most effective strategies to bring about feminist change. That change of direction was a move from making films that might be described as having more propagandistic strategies (e.g. herstories that put women back into history), towards meaning making with a focus on representation, female subjectivity and the way the cinematic apparatus (the technologies and practice of the cinema) ideologically shape the film and construct spectators.

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The realist debate is an example of the way feminist documentary practice has evolved over time, and therefore the films themselves are products of the period in which they were produced and the feminist theorising and strategies of that era. For example, films such as The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Connie Field 1980) and Thanks Girls and Goodbye (Maslin and Hardisty 1988) are ‘herstories’ that revisit history to tell the stories of women as war workers in the Second World War, re-evaluating their contributions, the realities of the lives they lived, and revealing their suffering under patriarchy. Both are realist films that were linked to the 1970–1980s feminist agenda of consciousness-raising and to put women back into history and reveal how they had been left out of it. They are also deeply interesting histories of women and work. They are about the WWII war effort: The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter is about the women who held down ‘men’s jobs’ during the war and Thanks Girls and Goodbye is the story of the Australian Women’s Land Army, which kept Australian farms producing food. Curator Adrienne Parr has described films such as these as being part of what was at the time: a new genre of historical documentaries, where young filmmakers took command of the archive and used its images (both those that had helped determine national histories and those that had been denied a contribution to these histories) to attempt to reformulate—or at least refocus—collective memories. (Parr n.d.)

In contrast, these realist films adopted a different strategy to later films such as A Song of Air (Merilee Bennett 1988) and Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich 1990) that represent a different historic moment for feminist film practice. Sink or Swim is an anti-realist ‘feminist countercinema’, which is film practice that communicates the ideological workings of signification. It aims to subvert or deconstruct discourse through anti-realist or anti-illusionist strategies for a feminist purpose. Both films are deconstructive in seeking to show audiences how films are ideological; for example, that females are oppressed through language and storytelling. It rejects realism and instead it is a response to Lacanian Oedipal theory that posits that woman, on leaving the Imaginary, enters the Symbolic world dominated by the ‘Law of the Father’—where woman is constructed by patriarchy as ‘Other’ and outside of male language.10 Friedrich’s film seeks an alternative language that is not dominated by the previous history

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where the signifying system constructs the subject in discourse, a discourse that is ideologically patriarchal. Friedrich uses the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to tell twenty-six short stories, and through this emphasises how the girl (herself) learns social and psychological rules from ‘the father’, and from culture (e.g. perfect family 1950s sitcoms line Father Knows Best), and from language. For example, we hear in the film the rhyme: ‘when she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid’. Bennett took the imagery her father constructed of her ‘happy family’ and what her father described as its ‘good clean fun’ to retell how these constructions oppressed her. The project for both filmmakers is to make visible that language is ideological, for viewers not to be sutured into a story space but to be constantly disconnected from it. The ruptures draw the viewers’ attention to the fact they are watching a film that has been ‘constructed’ and is not a neutral rendering of reality (and by implication, all films are this). Academic Meredith Seaman observed of A Song of Air, that Bennett ‘takes control of her own physical image, indeed performing her power to manipulate her father’s images; the film presents a more complex account of her struggle to create an emotional self, free of her father’s authority’; and Seaman offers that Bennett reflects a self possibly ‘unable to entirely escape defining itself through these early patriarchal constructs’ (2003, 160).

Female Authorship Film theory has addressed the subjects of cinematic authors and authorship in voluminous writings and debates within film theory since the earliest days of cinema (Naremore 2004). Directors have been studied as film authors through a consideration of their distinctive stylistic qualities, thematic themes or approaches, and visible autobiographical elements. These have been considered alongside broader cultural, political, social and economic contexts. It is not the intention here to outline this history or to take up a discussion of auteurism, which was largely focused on male film virtuosos and had little to say about women filmmakers until recent times. Martin made an observation in 2003 that is still relevant today, that auteurism ‘has developed into extremely important work on language, signification, and enunciation. But the work of women filmmakers remains of marginal interest to it’ (Martin 2003, 33). Kaja Silverman suggested that locating a female authorial voice might not be possible using the same strategies that have been used in  locating the male authorial voice

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(Silverman 1988, 208). Evidence of this discomfort with auteurism can be observed in filmmaker Agnès Varda’s approach. She coined the concept cinécriture as an alternative way to understand authorship through the filmmaker’s cinematic practice, offering: A well-written film is also well filmed, the actors are well chosen, so are the locations. The cutting, the movement, the points-of-view, the rhythm of filming and editing have been felt and considered in the way a writer chooses the depth and meaning of sentences, the type of words, the number of adverbs, paragraphs … which advance the story or break its flow etc. In writing it is called style. In the cinema, style is cinécriture. (Varda in Martin 2003, 35)

The focus in this book in relation to the female author is to consider how such directorial decisions, including the direction of the camera, represent expressions that are located in, or emerge from, the subjectivity of women; it is also an exploration to find new ways of thinking about the subject of female authorship. This endeavour is visible elsewhere in contemporary scholarship, where there has been increased scrutiny in recent times of female authors and describing their authorship, although this has been largely about fiction film rather than documentary, where the work is more often described within anthologies.11 Given filmmaking is a collective undertaking, describing it as having a single, distinguishable author is contentious. However, the practice is widely adopted by the industrial systems of production, distribution and exhibition, where descriptions of film have been structured around the director as the key or central voice. This text has also approached the exploration of the female gaze from the perspective of the director (although the female gaze could equally be fruitfully studied in other creative fields). In documentary production, the director is often also the writer and frequently holds other key creative roles (particularly for small-­ scale productions where women are making their own opportunities by producing, writing, directing and taking other roles on the one film). This means that considering the work of women as authors is a relevant undertaking for scholarship on documentary, but as Canadian filmmaker Léa Pool has stated, although ‘[w]omen have a different perspective to men. It doesn’t mean you can generalize women’s cinema any more than you can men’s’ (Mandy 2000). However, these differences in perspective, whilst not homogenous, are of central interest in this text in relation to the

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female gaze. Whilst being cautious not to generalise, it is possible to collect typologies of the concerns of female directors (authors) to understand the contribution they make to knowledge about female experience and subjectivity, and therefore to the concept of the female gaze—which is not singular but is gendered. The female gaze is the product of the female author. Angela Martin has observed that ‘female or feminist authorship tends to be sought in what can be identifiably linked to a filmmaker (as a woman)’ through the autobiographical reference, the filmmaker’s presence in the film or the female voice within the narrative. But, she argues, none of these guarantee authorship, and ‘if a woman filmmaker’s film does not produce evidence of a female voice, this does not preclude her from being the film’s author’ (2003, 34–35), nor does whether or not it has a feminist voice (given not all women are feminist). An example of the identification of female authorship is evident in Susan Rice’s review of Kate Millett’s documentary Three Lives (Irvine and Kleckner 1971), a film about the experiences and struggles of three women in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Rice’s review in Women and Film observes all of these elements: It is the only feature film I know that not only takes women as its subject matter, but was produced, directed, shot, recorded, lit and edited by women. What makes this more than a stunt is the intimacy that this female crew seems to have elicited from its subjects. The element I find most compelling about the film is that it captures the tone and quality of relationships and significant conversations between women. (Mulvey 1979, 184)

Rice is revealing that she recognises what is described here as female experience. It is something women have observed for decades in films made by women. For example, Lesage wrote of the documentary Self Health (San Francisco Women’s Health Collective 1974) that ‘Close ups … show individuals talking and listening; long shots convey a sense of communal experience … No woman is filmed as an object; everyone is a subject who combines and presents physical, emotional, intellectual, and political selves’ (Lesage 1978, 513–514). Juhasz has noted the politics at work is that the feminist video will ‘see women as complex, worthy selves—they produce subjects’ (Juhasz 2003, 71). This question of the object, and how women might resist that kind of construction in relation to representations of females, is significant. If women filmmakers understand what it is to be objectified, to be reduced to one’s physical body, to

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be subject to essentialist stereotypes and in response construct representations against this grain, it is a site of opposition and resistance. Lesage has written that with Self Health women filmmakers decolonise female sexuality, having ‘found a way to show and define women’s sexuality on their terms—not with the thrill of possession and not with objectification, but with the excitement of coming to knowledge’ (Lesage 1978, 513). What is of interest to this text is not to discover female auteurs but rather to explore what women communicate through their female subjectivity about female experience and perspectives. That is, what female authors bring forth. This might be on any subject whatsoever and is not limited to films about women. Female practitioners make films of every kind and follow their interests. So, the question is whether and how women bring their insights from their sex and gender into the way they tell stories and focus their interests, as well as whether there are signs of female authorship in individual films of women documentarians. If images of women in the cinema have been largely created by white, heterosexual, Western men, what are the new perspectives in the images created by women? The chapter in this book on the female gaze further takes up the idea of female authorship, as do other parts of this book, including the case studies.

Conclusion This chapter has delineated the characteristics and objectives of the practice of the feminist documentarian through (1) illustrating the influence of feminist theorising on the practice of filmmakers; (2) offering an overview of the status of documentary within feminist film criticism and scholarship; (3) surveying some of the history of feminist documentary and (4) describing feminist activism for change as a feature of feminist documentary. Feminist politics and advocacy have been a part of women’s documentary practice, and feminist theorising has influenced documentary filmmaking over time. Feminist film studies scholars have not engaged with documentary as broadly as they have with fiction film, and therefore it remains a rich and largely unexploited landscape of work from which to do so. The contribution of female documentary filmmakers has been enormously productive in understanding women’s contingent circumstances globally and in promoting social change. As a form, feminist documentary practice has enabled expressions of female or feminist subjectivity and women’s agency (through its politics of production, address and reception)—both

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key to the female gaze. The documentary form has given rise to alternate, female perspectives and concerns, creating space for gendered understandings that potentially disrupt the patriarchal norms that have dominated representation thus far. This chapter has clearly shown that documentary production is a site of empowerment for women and of feminist activism and practice that is worthy of further scrutiny and discussion by film scholars, filmmakers and audiences.

Notes 1. Direct Cinema arose in US in the early 1960s with the advent of lightweight cameras that allowed an unobtrusive method (dispensing with the need for heavy, obvious equipment). It developed alongside cinéma-vérité in France and was underpinned by an aspiration to achieve objective truthfulness through invisibility of the filmmakers and a faith in an observational approach whereby the filmmaker does not intervene. 2. These included the Sydney Women’s Film Group in 1972; The Feminist Film Workers (1970s–1980s); The Melbourne Women’s Film Group established in 1973; Reel Women 1979–1983; and the Women’s Film Unit 1984/85. 3. #MeToo was established in 2006 by Tarana Burke as advocacy to support Black women and girls who were experiencing sexual violence. It became a global movement. See https://metoomvmt.org/about/. 4. The idea of a category of #MeToo documentaries was discussed by Point of View Magazine (Phillips-Carr 2018). 5. Despite this situation, Iran has produced fine female filmmakers, including Rakhshan Banietemad, the late Forough Farrokhzad, Tahmineh Milani, Samira Makhmalbaf, Marzieh Meshkini, Marjane Satrapi and expatriate Shirin Neshat (Denholm 2017). 6. I have identified which filmmaker of the group said this in order not to risk her safety. 7. See the discussion of a ‘feminist aesthetic’ in the chapter in this book: ‘Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender’. 8. In East Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. 9. According to Margot Badran, Islamic feminism is a project for Qur’anially mandated gender equality and social justice through women-centred readings, as well as a term of identity (Badran 2002). It has a contested relationship with Western feminisms and some Muslims. 10. Interpreting Freud’s work symbolically, Lacan posited that language structures the social subject. Woman being outside male language and its signification is achieved through a feminine jouissance—which departs from

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linguistic norms to the realm of the poetic, outside the normal societal meanings. 11. There have been a number of excellent books on women fiction filmmakers: Jane Campion (Gillett 2004), Marguerite Duras (Günther 2002), Diane Kurys (Tarr 1998), but very few on women documentary filmmakers, unless the filmmakers work across both documentary and fiction, for example, Claire Denis (Beugnet 2004), Gillian Armstrong (Collins 1999), and Agnès Varda (Smith 1998). On women directors in documentary, the texts tend to only be the very famous, for example, Leni Riefenstahl, and to be biographical.

References Abtahi, Sepideh, Mina Keshavarz, Nahid Rezaei, and Sahar Salahsoor. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 27 November 2014. Ali, Isra. 2018. Documentary. Feminist Media Histories 4 (2): 67–71. https://doi. org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.67. https://online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/4/2/67/37107/Documentary. Badran, Margot. 17–23 January 2002. Islamic feminism: what’s in a name? Al-Ahram Weekly Online, no. 569. Accessed 16 July 2018 (but not currently available online). Beugnet, Martine. 2004. Claire Denis. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Collins, Felicity. 1999. The Films of Gillian Armstrong. Melbourne: ATOM. D’Arcangelis, Carol Lynne, and Audrey Huntley. 2012. No More Silence: Toward a Pedagogy of Feminist Decolonizing Solidarity. In Feminist Popular Education in Transnational Debates: Building Pedagogies of Possibility, ed. Linzi Manicom and Shirley Walters, 41–58. New York: Palgrave. Denholm, Tabitha. 2 May 2017. Six of the Finest Female Directors from Iran. The Fifth Sense. https://thefifthsense.i-­d.co/en_us/article/six-­of-­the-­finest-­ female-­directors-­from-­iran/. Accessed 17 July 2020. Faludi, Susan. 1991. BACKLASH: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown Publishing. French, Lisa. 2019. Women Documentary Filmmakers as Transnational ‘Advocate Change Agents’. Interdisciplina Journal 7: 15–29. https://doi.org/10.22201/ ceiich.24485705e.2019.17.67536. http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index. php/inter/article/view/67536/. Gillett, Sue. 2004. Views from Beyond the Mirror: The Films of Jane Campion. Melbourne: ATOM. Günther, Renate. 2002. Marguerite Duras. Manchester: Manchester University Press. hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press. Huntley, Audrey. 26 April 2015. Breaking one of Canada’s best kept secrets: MMIW (opinion), CBCNews/Indigenous. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indige-

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nous/breaking-­o ne-­o f-­c anada-­s -­b est-­k ept-­s ecrets-­m miw-­1 .3048352/. Accessed 5 June 2020. Jain, Nishtha. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 20 November 2014. Johnston, Clare. 1973. Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema. From Johnston, C. 1973, ed. Notes on Women’s Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television. In Feminist Film Theory a Reader, ed. Sue Thornam, 24–31. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Juhasz, Alexandra. 1994. They Said We Were Trying to Show Reality—All I Want to Show Is My Video: The Politics of the Realist Feminist Documentary. Screen 35 (2): 171–183. DOI: unavailable. ———. 2003. No Woman is an Object: Realizing the Feminist Collaborative Video. Camera Obscura 54 (18:3): 71–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 02705346-­18-­3_54-­71. Kaplan, E. Ann. Fall 1982–83. Theories and Strategies of the Feminist. Millennium Film Journal, 12. DOI: unavailable. Kuhn, Annette. 1982. Women’s Pictures Feminism and Cinema. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lesage, Julia. 2013. Feminist Documentaries: Finding, Seeing and Using Them. In The Documentary Film Book, ed. Brian Winston. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan for BFI. ———. 1978. The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3 (4): 507–523. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10509207809391421. Longinotto, Kim. 2014. Interview Conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 21 November 2014. Mandy, Marie. 2000—see filmography. Martin, Angela. 2003. Refocusing Authorship in Women’s Filmmaking. In Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, eds. Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Mayer, Sophie. 2016. Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema. London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd. Mulvey, Laura. 1979. Feminism, Film and the ‘Avant-garde’. In Women Writing and Writing about Women, ed. Mary Jacobus, 177–197. USA: Harper and Row Publishers. Naficy, Hamid. 2011. A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol 4: The Globalizing Era (1984–2010). Durnham, NC: Duke University Press. Naremore, James. 2004. Authorship. In A Companion to Film Theory, ed. Toby Miller and Robert Stam, 9–24. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Parr, Adrienne. n.d. Curator’s Notes: For Love or Money (1983). National Film and Sound Archive. https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/love-­or-­ money/notes/. Accessed 14 June 2020.

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Phillips-Carr, Chelsea. 28 June 2018. #MeToo and Documentaries: Developing a new language. Point of View Magazine. http://povmagazine.com/articles/ view/metoo-­and-­documentaries/. Accessed 14 June 2020. Price, Theodore Price. March 2015. Michelangelo Antonioni: The Truth about The Passenger. Senses of Cinema. 74. http://sensesofcinema.com/2015/ feature-­a rticles/michelangelo-­a ntonioni-­t he-­t ruth-­a bout-­t he-­p assenger/. Accessed 5 June 2020. Seaman, Meredith. 2003. Performing the Feminine Self: Women and Independent Documentary Film-Making. In Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, ed. Lisa French, 157–166. Melbourne: Damned Publishing. Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Smaill, Belinda. 2018. Foreword. In Female Authorship & Documentary Film, ed. Boel Ulfsdotter and Anna Backman Rogers, xiii–xvi. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 2012. Cinema Against the Age: Feminism and Contemporary Documentary. Screening the Past. 34: 1–12. http://www.screeningthepast. com/2012/08/cinema-­a gainst-­t he-­a ge-­f eminism-­a nd-­c ontemporar y-­ documentary/. Accessed 21 May 2020. Smith, Alison. 1998. Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tarr, Carrie. 1998. Diane Kurys. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Waldman, Diane, and Janet Walker, eds. 1999. Feminism and Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wheatley, Helen. 2006. In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. Ian Aitken, 389–391. New York: Routledge. White, Patricia. 2015. Documentary Practice and Transnational Feminist Theory: The Visibility of FGC. In A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film, ed. Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, 217–232. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. White, Theresa Renee, Sarah Tekle and Melanie Shaw. 2014. A Glance at Herstory. In Documenting the Black Experience: Essays on African American History, ed. Lawrence, Novontny. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers: 153–169.

Filmography Abtahi, Sepideh, Shirin Barghnavard, Mina Keshavarz, Firouzeh Khosrovani, Nahid Rezaei, Sahar Salahshoor, and Farahnaz Sharifi. 2013. Profession Documentarist. Iran: MinDoc Film Production. Antonioni, Michelangelo. 1975. Professione: Reporter (The Passenger). United Kingdom: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Banietemad, Rakhshan. 2009. We Are Half of Iran’s Population (Ma nimi az jameiat-­e Iranim). Iran: Noori Pictures.

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Bennett, Merilee. 1988. A Song of Air. Australia: Australian Film Commission. Carr, Erin Lee. 2019. At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal. United States: S.J. Gibson Films. Field, Connie. 1980. The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter. Australia: Clarity Films. Friedrich, Su. 1990. Sink or Swim. United Kingdom: Downstream Productions. Huntley, Audrey. 2004. Traces of Missing Women. Canada: CBC News. ———. 2006. Go Home Baby Girl. Canada: CBC News. Irvine, Louva, and Susan Kleckner. 1971. Three Lives. United States: Women’s Liberation Cinema Company. Kaplan, E.  Ann. Fall 1982–83. Theories and Strategies of the Feminist Documentary. Millennium Film Journal 12:44–67. No DOI available. Macfarlane, Ursula. 2019. Untouchable. United Kingdom: Lightbox. Mandy, Marie. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. France: Saga Film. Maslin, Sue, and Sue Hardisty. 1988. Thanks Girls and Goodbye. Australia: Newground Productions. Reticker, Gini. 2008. Pray the Devil Back to Hell. United States: Fork Films. Schwartzman, Nancy. 2018. Roll Red Roll. United States: Multitude Films. Waad, Al-Kateab, and Edward Watts. 2019. For Sama, United Kingdom: Channel 4. Wang, Nanfu, and Zhang Lynn. 2019. One Child Nation. United States: Chicago Media Project.

PART II

Case Studies: Female Documentary Directors in Focus

CHAPTER 6

Documentary as Artform: Pirjo Honkasalo’s Cinematic Poetics

Pirjo Honkasalo

Introduction: Pirjo Honkasalo I believe that documentary is a document of your relationship to the subjects … It is a strange and daring art to express yourself through other people. … the camera is my pencil in a way. This makes filmmaking as intimate as writing. (Honkasalo in Olsen 2002, 8)

Pirjo Honkasalo is Finland’s first female cinematographer and first to shoot a feature film. She is also a writer, producer, editor and actor. She studied at the Helsinki School of Art and Design and shot her first full length feature at age twenty-one. Her fame is evidenced by more than © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_6

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thirty retrospectives of her work that have been held all over the world. Her practice extends across both documentary and fiction and her first major directing role was on the 1980 fiction film Flame Top, which was an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980. She has shot all of her documentaries and has a strong preference for film (and shooting on 35 mm). She has said that she doesn’t think that you can make films for both cinema and television because of their different expressive possibilities and since film is more about the art of the image (Olsen 2002). She has sometimes worked with her life partner, writer and actor Pirkko Saisio, including on the fiction films Fire Eater (1998) and Concrete Night (2013), the latter being Finland’s official submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards in 2014. She has also often collaborated as co-writer on her documentaries (e.g. Seitti – kilvoittelijan päiväkirja 2009 and Mysterion 1991), as well as working as sole writer director (e.g. Melancholian 3 Huonetta 2004 and Tanjuska and the 7 Devils 1993). The many accolades she has won include career awards, such as the 2004 Amnesty International Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and the Human Rights Film Network Award at the Venice Film Festival (2004). Both of those recognise the humanism of her oeuvre, and her contribution to human rights. This chapter considers Honkasalo’s oeuvre through the central lens of this book, the female gaze. It offers insight into her style and approach, with a particular emphasis on poetics and her artist’s vision, thematic preoccupations and creative approach. This is set within her national Finnish context with consideration of her transnational practice and the place of documentary in the country. The interview with Honkasalo responds to questions such as whether one can discern from the film itself if it were directed by a man or a woman; whether living in a female body has influenced her films or whether men can make ‘feminine’ films. She offers her perspective on female approaches, gender differences or what female cinematographers contribute because of their sex and gender. The importance of role models is discussed, along with the divisions between documentary and fiction (as a filmmaker working across both). The slow progress of women in the industry, particularly in cinematography, is discussed from a vantage point of her location in Finland and her personal experience. Issues such as the impact of ‘masculine’ traditions and the increasing interest in films made by women are canvassed.

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Style, Approach and Poetics1 Honkasalo has said that the poetic and the political drew her to documentary (Icarus Films 2019). For her, film is ‘a visual art; it’s painting in time with image and sound’ (Olsen 2002, 8). Her predilection is for documentaries, which she has described as her ‘secret love’, even though sustaining a career has required making both documentary and fiction. She approaches both documentary and narrative in the same way, as ‘always being about the inner life of people’ (Olsen 2002, 8). Film scholar David Bordwell has set out a poetics that is heuristic and based on inquiry (Bordwell 2012, 20), and that can be applied to understand Honkasalo’s approach. Her method in the process is not so much to start with a story but to start with a question. She has said, that if ‘you know what you are asking, you can start shooting a documentary’ (Olsen 2002, 9). She allows people to learn things themselves through her cinematic questioning. The poetics of her films can be understood using the work of Scheglov and Zholkovsky (1987), who described a ‘poetics of expressiveness’ that ‘treated themes as “deep structures” undergoing various transformations before being concretized as surface patterns of the text’ (Bordwell 2012, 18). These achieve effects on the audience. The iconography, motifs and compositional principles that are the form and style of her films have a capacity as cinematic expression to convey thematic preoccupations or patterns. Honkasalo tries to express something she refers to as ‘human silence’, that a ‘picture can reach the unspoken part of a human. The part indescribable with language’ (Lehtonen 2013). In the Ateneum (Finnish National Gallery) catalogue for the exhibition 8 Exposures – Introducing the Artists, her work is described as trusting in the power of the image, allowing ‘room for silence’, and succeeding in ‘touching an aspect of humanity beyond verbal definition’ (Ateneum 2015). An example is Mysterion (1991), the first film of ‘The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic’ (the other two are Tanjuska and the 7 Devils and Atman, 1997). The images in Mysterion have been described as ‘pregnant with the lack of speech, revealing opposing realms of extreme experience’ (International Film Festival Berlin 2019) through use of camerawork creating a close proximity to her protagonists with a focus on exploring what motivates the women in the story who live devoutly, and under difficult conditions, in a convent community in north-eastern Estonia. Honkasalo’s process is not a linear approach to the story. Instead, she often starts with a metaphor around which she constructs scenes to make

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it concrete and to avoid being driven by a storyline, or sometimes she follows a theme of personal significance (Olsen 2002, 9). For example, with her 2004 film Melancholia 3 Huonetta (3 Rooms of Melancholia), her theme is about what we transfer politically to the next generation (a repeated exploration in her work2), and the question of how to break destructive cycles (Olsen 2002, 9). In that film, as she has done with others, she highlights social themes or social injustice. In the IDFA catalogue, Melancholia 3 Huonetta is described as having a ‘keen eye for detail (especially human faces), precise timing, and a soundtrack that combines vocals from the Orthodox Church with folk and classical music’ to create ‘a multilayered, poetic film’ (IDFA 2004). The film itself examines the atrocities of the Chechen wars (1994–1996 and 1999+) with a focus on the experience of children. Some are as young as eight and had to endure atrocities such as being raped by soldiers or watching their loved ones being killed in front of them. Elia describes Honkasalo’s film as revealing what ‘it is like to be inside their heads, to sink deep into their crushed, orphaned hearts’ (Elia 2004). Honkasalo avoids narration in her films and prefers for the film itself to communicate and reveal. This is not to say she never uses narration, but when she does, it is sparse. For example, Tanjuska and the 7 Devils,3 a film about a ten-year-old Byelorussian girl who, having stopped eating, talking and growing. She was left at a monastery by her parents in order for the priest, Father Vassily, to exorcise seven devils (she had schizophrenia but her parents did not know this).4 The film begins with a long shot of the snow, a church and the water, telling the audience ‘this is where I decided to make a film … When I saw Tanjuska or rather she saw me!’ (Müller 2004, 51). Her films might be communicating a ‘purely aesthetic experience’ as much as a tale of human misery or the connection between faith and fear (Müller 2004, 51). In other films, for example, Melancholia 3 Huonetta, there are few words. The film relies instead on the patterns and associations within her cinematography to communicate the emotional and mental states (longing, breathing and remembering). Arguably a cinema that is grounded in poetics creates a problem in a commercial realm; for instance, she has said it was hard to gain funding for Melancholia 3 Huonetta because ‘I want to make a film that has no story, which is in three parts, and nothing happens’ (Elia 2004). One of Honkasalo’s themes is to question normality and the boundaries of normality. An example is Tanjuska and the 7 Devils, which author IIona Hongisto describes locating Tanjuska’s aberrant vocalisations and

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those of people around her ‘in a manner that questions the norms whereby she is deemed deviant’ and creates a resistance whilst observing control, ‘undoing dominant categories that determine and define her being’ (Hongisto 2015, 83–84, 90). This is a feminist preoccupation in that the filmmaker is concerned that Tanjuska does not have a voice. Her parents speak about the causes of the condition (which is schizophrenia) that has caused them to leave her at a monastery (believing her possessed). The explanatory voices intersect with the orders she is constantly given to modify her behaviour and bring her in line with the norms of the family and the church and to embody cultural expectations. Towards the end of the film, she does speak but does so in the third person, repeating orders ‘get dressed’, ‘hurry up’, ‘smile’. Hongisto writes that audience see her acts of resistance, in: capturing and expressing the relationships between the different voices and bodies, the documentary offers a vision of Tanyusha (sic) beyond her failure to ‘speak normally’. In this way, the documentary questions the primacy of a subject fully present to itself and the idea of the voice as a vehicle of subjectivity. Thus, it initiates resistance to the normative powers that control Tanyusha. (Hongisto 2015, 88)

Arguably the filmmaker reveals the perspective of the child; she understands the othered person and seeks to make visible the ways in which she encounters and lives in the world.

Women in Finnish and Transnational Filmmaking Contexts Honkasalo was made the first honorary member of Women in Film & Television, Finland, and the organisation has acknowledged her as someone who has ‘spoken out about the gender inequality in film industry’ (DaFilms).5 In the interview that follows in this chapter, she has observed that it is odd that in Finland, which boasts first giving women the vote in Europe, there are so few women directors that have followed her or directed more than two films. In Finland, female participation in the film and television industry is largely the same as it is throughout the West— women are a minority in most roles, a situation most likely due to systemic issues (e.g. unconscious bias, institutional protocols), particularly in relation to funding. A report on public funding and gender equality in Finland

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found that across genres, women had significantly less access than men to financial resources (Savolainen 2017, Summary). That same report observed that women were about half of the population educated in the field, but they did not achieve equal participation in getting films financed. Women received the same number of grants for screenwriting (the data did not indicate whether this was for fiction or documentary), but it did show women received slightly smaller grants overall. In all Film Foundation grants for production, women put in roughly equal numbers of applications, but male directors received seventy-nine per cent of the funding. In grants from the Nordic Fund to Finnish films, eighty-two per cent went to films and television series directed by men. At the Finnish Broadcasting Company, a gendered structure was found, given that production was ‘exclusively male led’ (Savolainen 2017, Summary). One area where women did better was that of the Sámi indigenous filmmakers; women constitute a majority in films made (however, the overall funding for both Sámi men and women is small).6 The findings of this report evidence that gender equality was not realised in public funding in Finland and this is an indicator of gender inequality in the Finnish industry (Savolainen 2017). It also indicates that Honkasalo’s prolific career is an exception, and that she is not just a maverick, but an important role model.

Interview with Pirjo Honkasalo This is an edited transcript of an interview that was conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam on 23 November 2014. Honkasalo and French were guests of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA). French: You said that were you on a jury of a film festival where you were able to hundred per cent accurately pick whether a male or female directed the film. What jury that was and what happened? Honkasalo: In Finland we have a small festival which was started by two boys who were fifteen and sixteen, and now they have been running it for ten years as a no-budget festival. It’s fantastic. They managed to get all kinds of sponsors and they already have their own beer and everything. It’s rather special. I was in the jury and when I was there, I got an invitation from IDFA to take part in this female area [The Female Gaze panel]. Then I asked the others to tell me when the credits are over so that I look at all the films without knowing either directed by a girl or a boy. The directors were rather young from twenty-five to thirty-five and none of the ones taking part in the

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competition were really well-known. So, I think it’s even more revealing because then you’re still so young that you don’t copy any styles. There was well over thirty films in the competition. And I didn’t make one mistake—not one—it was obvious—even from the animation it was obvious it was directed by a man or a woman. It was a surprise to myself. French: And what do you think it was that told you the director was male or female? Honkasalo: Of course, this is a question which I asked after seeing all of these films. It was quite unclear to me—where did I read it? Of course, there are some obvious signs. There is some more female aesthetics, with some curtains moving, and more interest in the body than men have. Violence in women’s films I think almost always has a social cause, and for men I think violence is a challenge between two men. And they’re heroic— in men’s films they’re heroic losers. French: So, it’s aesthetics and it’s the worldview that are really giving you all that information? Honkasalo: Some things need a deep study really, but the things that came like first to my mind are those kind of things. Women have losers in their films, but they are almost always because of social injustice, and of course these are generalisations. I deeply think that all serious male filmmakers and cameramen, if they are any good, they have to have the courage to use the female part of their mind. Not all have the courage. Not adventure, horror or science fiction, but if we talk about anything else that has anything to do with art, it’s rather a female job. You have to give up part of your masculinity to express yourself, I think. I’m a cinematographer; it’s a very female job, and so it’s not simple to point out what type of things we think would reveal that this is a woman and this a man who made a film. French: When you say this female part of their mind, what are you thinking about that a male cinematographer could learn—what do you mean? Honkasalo: I’m actually the first one [woman] who shot a feature fiction in Finland and I thought that the ice was broken and then there would be a flow of female cinematographers. It took twenty years for the next one to come up, but I have had over twenty years’ worth of a female assistant—I have shot all my documentaries myself. I still do, and she [the assistant] has become a good cinematographer herself. It’s not unusual that the male directors want her because they think that it helps to get

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contact with people—that as men they are less capable of going close to the people and that’s why they choose a female cinematographer. French: I was going to ask you about being the first woman cinematographer in Finland. How did that come about? Honkasalo: I was very young when I went to the film school. I had turned eighteen and all the others were four to five years older, which at that age is a lot. I come from an engineering family—my father is an engineer, and my brother is an engineer, and my cousin—everybody is an engineer. I was put to study all the extensive mathematics and physics and everybody was expecting [that] because I was good at that, it’s no question that I become an engineer or study mathematics. But then I found the film school which was very new. I found an ad in the newspaper that there was a film school in Finland, and without telling anybody, I applied to the school. I was taken in I guess because I was a technical freak. [For] all the girls at that time, all the technical was just horrid to them and they didn’t dare to touch the camera. So, I was shooting all the films of the girls and I was so much younger than the others, I felt that they had so much more to say. Some of them have children and they were grown-up people and I was a kid and so it suited me very well to be behind the camera and that way. In the early time in the school I shot a lot of films. For a long time, I thought that I would just be a cinematographer. I think it’s a fantastic job but then I started to work for the men directors at that time in feature fiction. For some reason, which I don’t know, one of the leading directors at the time [Rauni Molleberg] wanted me to be assistant director in a film [Earth is a sinful song/Maa on syntinen laulu 1973]. That was kind of a high school for directing and for anything else because at that time, the crews were very small and so you had to do not just one job. The assistant director did everything—you didn’t have anybody for makeup, etcetera. French: So, I guess it’s sort of a happenstance, isn’t it? It was where you ended up and you were really good at it. I know when I spoke to filmmaker Chris Hegedus, she said that when she saw the first film directed by a woman in the 1950s (she was talking about the 1967 Shirley Clarke film Portrait of Jason), that it was really important to her because she suddenly thought, I can be a director. In the same way, young Finnish women must have thought, I can be a cinematographer. Those role models and mentors are really important. Honkasalo: I was just escaping mathematics and physics, and so I didn’t have any idea of what filmmaking is. At that time, we didn’t have

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any tools to practise. There was no videos, in my family we had an eight millimetre camera, but it was too expensive to buy more than a few minutes of film. So, it was just an escape and I don’t think that I have ever been in any way career oriented. I never wanted to be anything. I was just curious. French: Well, that sounds like it’s very important for a documentary filmmaker. Yesterday you said something about the advantage that you had as a director, because you are a cinematographer, as a woman, you couldn’t be put down. Can you explain that? Honkasalo: My last film is fiction and I have directed many fictions, so I am not pure—I have sinned, I know the topics well, and I don’t think there is such a big difference for directors. It’s very artificial this barrier that they have totally separate festivals and they should not be mixed. We are the same human beings. I do not switch my head off when I start to direct fiction. Same thoughts, same eyes, same thinking philosophy. If you have some reputation already as a cinematographer, you have some respect of the crew. The digital has helped a little bit, that women don’t fear the camera anymore, but then of course there is post-production work, which is totally men, or almost totally men. So, we are again in the thing that women are out of one part of the profession. But, of course, particularly in a small country, if you have some reputation already as a cinematographer, you have some respect of the crew. Of course it’s not so important in documentaries, in particular because I am a cinematographer myself, but in fiction you can have fifty to sixty people around you and two trucks, lights, endless amount of cables and heavy things which women are not supposed to be able to carry. The men have mystified the technique, I think. There is nothing mystical and difficult about it. Of course, I could plan the shooting in a different way, and I could save the gaffer … I was the director and the cameraman [didn’t understand]—he was putting all the maps in the wrong place. I took them out and put them in another place and so of course it helps, and … I don’t have any problems with the crew. French: So, the advantage of also being a cinematographer and director is that it gives you more credibility and more power? Honkasalo: Of course, … in fiction it’s so easy to say that things are difficult because the director doesn’t understand anything about our profession [cinematography] and what we are doing. When you can on the same level discuss lenses and lamps, of course that is a totally different

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attitude. In my last film, Concrete Night, I had a deal with the cinematographer that if I feel I want to jump into the loop, it’s okay. That it’s not an insult to him, but we had such good cooperation. I did it once, but he was ready for it. French: In Australia we have fiction films and documentaries all together in the same big festivals. The industry largely know each other. What is it like in Finland? Honkasalo: We’ve got a whole world of fiction and documentaries, not only the festivals. It’s the world that I’m involved in. I know everybody in the documentary, and I know everybody in fiction, but they don’t know each other even though it’s a small country. We started DocPoint Festival in Helsinki. It was started by documentary filmmakers themselves because we felt that we needed a documentary film festival in Helsinki. The head of the festival said let’s go and buy two litres of vodka for the first feature film director who comes to this festival and we’ll go and hand it and congratulate her or him and give the vodka bottle. It took five years. French: That’s a long time! Honkasalo: It took five years before the first fiction director appeared. He was quite amazed when we came with the vodka bottle to congratulate him. But they are so separate. Now as I have been fifteen years making documentaries and now I am back in fiction, nobody knows me in the international market. When they introduce my fiction in the festivals, they were writing in the papers in Toronto like I had not in fifteen years been making films, which is not true. In the paper, or at the festival, I made a comment: what is this that they write—have I been washing potatoes for fifteen years? I think the good thing about that is because they so much look down on documentaries, we are then not poisoned by all of this drama which nobody needs, which is useless and boring. I think when two documentary film directors meet, they always talk about the world—what’s happening in the world. When two fiction film directors meet, they talk about the missing million—because everybody is always missing a million. I don’t know why it’s a million but however the money change is—when you say it’s from marks to euros … a million again, but they are always talking about the missing million. French: I wondered what you thought about whether you think this female gaze is a valuable focus, and what it might reveal. What might be the outcome of this kind of curation?

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Honkasalo: For a very long time I think about [whether] there are any problems with being a woman, but then of course, when I noticed it took twenty-three years for the next cinematographer to come, I think that was a bit odd in a country who first gave vote to women in Europe. I noticed within the one hundred years there have been five female directors that made a fiction film. And out of those five I was one—I’m the only one who has directed more than two. So, then I started to feel that this is not quite normal being in the country which is famous for having equal relationships between the society for men and women. French: So it hasn’t changed over time? Honkasalo: So then I became a bit more conscious and willing to take part in this kind of thing which deals with female perspective. You need an exception. It was 2009 when the Finnish cinematographer’s society called me and asked me to become a member. In 2009, they didn’t have one female member. I said: Keep your boys’ club! French: It’s the same in Australia; it is improving very slightly, but there are very few female cinematographers. Honkasalo: It’s unbelievable. My guess is that they have been in some kind of international happening, and suddenly they realise that they have been laughed at, that they don’t have one female member. Well, this ‘female gaze’ [IDFA Festival theme], when I got the invitation and then I made this little test in this little festival, I thought it was quite interesting. I was really interested in the theme: Is there a female gaze and what is it? And here yesterday when we had the big discussion, of course they couldn’t know in advance how it’s going to run, but I think they should have separated it in two parts—to discuss the female gaze, which was actually the topic, and second part is test the concrete actions like what Sweden is doing. Now the discussion was a little bit mixed with both. It’s so much easier to discuss should we have fifty per cent of women and all these practical things. I think we lost the actual theme of what is the female gaze. How should we really act and what should we do to improve women’s possibilities in filmmaking? It’s discussed in so many places, but I never have been in a discussion about what is a female gaze. French: What is it to you? What have you been thinking about? Honkasalo: Well, I suppose if you carry it in yourself, you don’t have to be conscious of it and mainly I’m not conscious of it. But it’s the same as a big argument we had. Suddenly they decided that they only support Finnish documentaries which happen in Finland and take place in Finland. I had a big argument that this is absolutely absurd, that what is it being a

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Finnish documentar[rian]—that if I go to India? Finland is in me. My perspective is that I’ve grown up in Finland and that it’s such a narrow-­ minded view. In that same way I think that you carry this female gaze in you, and you don’t have to analyse it. But now it’s come up, I think it’s a very interesting thing to analyse, and as I already said, I think that it’s so complicated. None of us is only female or man that the certain things which also the male directors that they have to have the courage to control their female instincts. How much of it is biological and how much is it created by how we were brought up, is of course very hard to say. But it is obvious that men, for example, have more temptation to hide behind facts and they are often scared to use their instincts. French: Do you think being female or living your life in a female body has influenced the films you’ve made? Honkasalo: Yes but being a filmmaker, you can leave it to the researchers and the critics. I don’t have to be aware of it, but I think it’s obvious. I think but then you can also say that maybe women also have to have some male gaze in them to survive in the film world. French: What do you mean by that? Honkasalo: You have to be rather determined and you have to lead. The film world has so many layers of masculine tradition. The first is that your brush is heavy [your camera]—physically heavy—you are supposed to be physically strong, which is bullshit. And then, you have so-called complicated technique, you paint with that. Then you deal with a lot of money, and as we know, I don’t know if even ten per cent of the money in the world is in the hands of women. So, to take economical risks is not the favourite game of women and then leading a big crew—there is so many layers of traditionally male roles. We do encourage women to take these roles and to hit their head on the wall and little by little change this in the society. I think in Finland at least there are more and more women all the time in leading positions, but at this moment, if you don’t have any of these capacities, I think you’re dead. For example, I have a feeling that there are more and more women in politics. The reason why it’s given to women is because real power is somewhere else—it’s not in the parliament anymore. It’s in the global industry, and in the global business. Very few leaders of big companies have their face in the paper, they don’t need it, they have real power. So even where we’re going to celebrate that women are in a better position, it’s not always true. French: Do you think some women feel pressure to behave in masculine ways, even if that is not their natural behavioural preference?

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Specifically, do you think that some women behave in a more masculine way on a film set? Honkasalo: A lot of women take a more masculine role, or some actually are more masculine. French: Can men be feminine? Are there barriers to men who actually are more what we describe as the gender construct feminine? Are men and women limited, or oppressed, by gender norms? Honkasalo: Masculine behaviour is connected with power. It’s like even to the level that if you have a lower voice you are more credible. So, it’s how we read the world—we have been taught to read the world so that masculine behaviour represents power. You have more authority when you speak slow. So, we can teach women. There is this American female thing which now, I think even small girls in Finland start to copy, that you talk with a very high voice and you lift up all the ending. That actually takes away their credibility. French: Has being female impacted on you in the industry? For example, have you felt any discrimination, or have you had issues related to your being female? Honkasalo: I can’t say so. I think that there is an advantage when you are from a small country—that once people know you, then if they accept you as being a film director and cinematographer, and once you have won that place, you don’t face these cases. I remember only one clear case when I was being a cinematographer when I was twenty-one. I took the camera to the guy who repairs the cameras and he refused to take it from a woman. French: Why? Honkasalo: He was looking down [at me, he’d] never seen this, that the woman came with the camera. I had a male assistant—I had to give it to the assistant to be repaired. So that’s the only clear case I remember, but I don’t say that female directors would not face [issues]. I was a little bit amazed yesterday how they gave the impression that in the Nordic countries, women have such a good position in film. I don’t think it’s true because we don’t make so many films a year. I think it’s thirteen to seventeen, which is very little. I think Sweden has been about the same. I don’t think we see big changes in private money too soon, but we can see something good being done by the institutes. But I’m not for the 50/50 films, but I don’t think we need bad films made by women. French: But I guess you need to ask when you form a jury are there any women?

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Honkasalo: It’s important you have women in the positions where you decide, but not like the money would be divided in two pieces. I don’t believe in that but what the Swedes have, which I think is very good, is to invest more money in mentoring projects by women. So, when they come to the consulate they are competent, they are so well prepared and so good, that because of their quality you have to give them money. At least fifty per cent of the kids going to the film school are girls, but they disappear along the line. French: Why? Honkasalo: When they come to the end, they have a film project and it’s in the hands of the commissioning editors and the film consulates which of course both represent state money usually—public money, but they are not worse than the boys. There I think we should invest more money than developing the project right now because that is where discrimination has put women in the lower position. Of course, they make children but that is not enough of an explanation. French: We need research to find out where they’re all going and why. In Australia there is a real lack of women of childrearing age—it’s just too hard especially to be a director, and they’re just not participating, and then, it is very difficult to get back in. Honkasalo: What I’m saying is there are so many levels which are traditionally male. I think women also have to look in the mirror—why we are so scared to take economical risks? We are much more scared that we would rather turn to directing television where it’s public money and nobody is responsible for it in a way. I think we should encourage girls. We have some very good female producers coming up and that’s I think important because if we bring up female producers that means that we also bring up women who also know and have the will to deal with money. For example, I have produced quite a lot but it’s not part of me—I hate it. I come from a generation that it’s shameful to talk about money. French: One thing I’ve noticed is there is the area where more women work in film that is documentary—that’s the case in lots of countries—it’s up around forty per cent. Why do you think that is? Honkasalo: Of course the first thing that comes to mind is that you don’t deal with such big money; you don’t deal with such big crew; you don’t deal with trucks or techniques; so all the things women have been put down for (or they’re weak), are not represented in the same level. So it’s easier, and of course in the financing system, it’s easier also to give money to women because the money is not so big. There is a kind of a

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myth that the female topics don’t interest the audience, but at least within the last years we have had several mainstream successes directed by women. French: Do you mean fiction? Honkasalo: In fiction, yeah—they proved it to be just a myth. Nobody has been offering fiction directed by women—the audience is not accustomed to go and see these types of films, which women are interested in, but all together the mainstream is mainly directed to the mental level of an American twelve-year-old boy. Being an over sixty-year-old female director, it doesn’t interest me to direct those films. French: Is that why you prefer documentary? Honkasalo: In documentaries, it’s much more grown-up formal film. In fiction, I think it’s more and more difficult to make films for adult people. It’s donated [targeted] to the American twelve-year-old boy. I think what we also don’t quite realise because now there is such an enormous amount of film festivals and the newspapers often write that only mainstream is needed, and the rest nobody wants to have them. But the truth is that I think this enormous festival network is a new distribution system and it’s the same in every country that there is a hunger for other kinds of film. We started this DocPoint Festival in Helsinki, where six hundred thousand people live. It was created in three months from nothing, and we had immediately eleven thousand people seeing documentaries in the cinema. Where did they come from? I think that in festivals you have the dream audience. It’s mostly young intelligent people who are in the future going to lead their countries. Finns respected it as a cultural act. Finland is quite strong in documentary film and the only thing is that it doesn’t bring money to the producer, but the cultural network is fantastic. It’s really the young best minds that sit there and also they discuss the films. French: I wanted to ask you a question about the film you have in this festival [IDFA 2014]. In my research, I came across a quote from you which was ‘The film is a world where you can ask yourself questions. If you know what you’re asking, you can start shooting a documentary.’ And I wondered what the question was you were asking when you made Tanjuska and the 7 Devils [1993]? Honkasalo: Usually I keep them as my own secret but maybe it was that I was questioning the concept of normality, and the boundaries of normality, as one question. But it’s really usually so that I don’t start from a story. I start from what’s at the moment in my life which bothers me because I know that every feature documentary I have started, I have had a plan that it takes one and a half years, and it always takes three. You have

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to have a pretty good reason to stay inspired for three years, and if it’s nothing that comes from inside, and it’s just a storyline which is fascinating, it won’t last. French: I found it quite circular. It kept coming back to the father dressing the daughter, and the father dressing the daughter. Honkasalo: Actually quite a few of my films have some kind of story but it’s an after product. It’s kind of created by making of the film. It’s not where I start from to tell the story. I am very well aware of all these American books of everybody is a screenwriter, where you have to have part 1, and part 2, and then it’s developed in a certain way. Many times while shooting the film I thought I understood what it is all about, and then, something happened. I realised that I don’t understand what really is going on. And then I made a next question, and a next question. So I decided that I ought to edit it in exactly the order in which I shot it so my questioning stays from the time of shooting and I know that the film, from a surgical sense, for example, the main climax is in totally the wrong place. It’s absolutely in the wrong place but I didn’t want to change it because I had decided that if the audience starts to ask like I was asking, then something goes totally against what you thought it was—[they] must be as hooked in the same way. I was very conscious that it was against all the rules but still it ends up also being a certain kind of story. French: It has quite a scary atmosphere—I felt like I was holding my breath. There was something about the mood. That is not really a question, it’s just something I felt. Honkasalo: Some people are very furious when they come out because at the end I’m not sobbing [reflecting a heightened emotion]. I’m not sobbing and it’s interesting. For one example, when it was shown in cinema in Stockholm in Sweden, they demanded that they had to have a psychiatrist at the place. Now because I don’t solve it, it’s going to bother people. French: Do you know what happened to her? [Tanjuska] Honkasalo: Not exactly. I followed several years, but now I have lost contact with her. In Bombay nobody was really angry at me that I don’t sob in the corner, and they understood that we live in such a different world, that in Europe most people—we’re wealthy—we live in a world that we have if we have a problem—something doesn’t work, and then we solve it. Then we have another problem and we solve it. But in India they are used to it. Life is a street where things come and go and most things you just have to live with. You don’t have a solution to everything and that weight is a completely different reaction from the audience in India than in Sweden.

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French: Can I ask one more question? Honkasalo: Okay, yes. French: What are you working on now and what is driving you? Honkasalo: I felt that Ito Diary of an Urban Priest [2009], which I shot in Tokyo, was the last documentary. But now I’m not so sure anymore. French: You’re missing it? Honkasalo: I have in my mind a film. I have had this Concrete Night, and we have been travelling so much about the world. So, it has disturbed my starting to work with the next film, which I have finance for the script. But I have decided that when it turns 2015, unless it’s some really strange place of this planet, I am not going anywhere anymore. No more Q&As, thank you. French: Well, thank you so much. You’ve been so generous with your time.

Conclusion Over a career spanning six decades, Honkasalo has produced a substantial body of work. Being female, Finnish, and a creative artist, are just part of her identity. She carries her female gaze within her, just as she does her national identity and her poetic approach to the cinema. Gender (masculine and feminine) is for Honkasalo embodied by both sexes; identifying the gaze by sex is something she can read in the cinema, but to be successful in her view, creative people should access the masculine and feminine parts of themselves. Her female gaze is profoundly cinematic, often prone to meditative films that are slow-paced and not at all driven to provide closure but instead non-linear, if not circular. As Elia has observed, Honkasalo claimed ‘a “story” is an evil invention of men. The interesting things are elsewhere’ (Elia 2004). This ‘elsewhere’ is the inner life of people, their emotional and mental states. She is clearly feminist, with a keen interest in feminine ways of seeing, female perspectives and female subjectivity. From this interest she ponders what motivates women (e.g. in Mysterion) or seeks to give silenced women a voice (e.g. Tanjuska). Through this her audience gain an understanding of the contingent circumstances of individual subjects—what they find unbearable right where they are. Her interest is also humanist and thematically her gaze is directed at social themes or social injustice.

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Notes 1. Poetics are defined here as described in this section, as the expressiveness of  the  text whereby the  themes appear as  the  surface patterns in  the  film (iconography, motifs, compositional principles) that constitute the  form and style, and which achieve effects on audiences. 2. For example, another is her fiction film Concrete Night (2013), which examines how the actions of one generation impact on the next. 3. This trilogy examines one of her thematic interests in spirituality and the nature of evil. 4. Tanjuska had been in a hospital where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia but her parents were not told the diagnosis. When she did not improve, they moved her to the monastery (Hongisto 2015, 83). 5. DAFilms is a Doc Alliance partnership between seven European documentary film festivals. It aims to support and promote diverse and quality documentaries. https://dafilms.com/. 6. The Sámi inhabit Sápmi, which include the northern parts of Norway and Sweden, northern parts of Finland and the Murmansk Oblast of Russia.

References Ateneum Finnish National Gallery. 2015. 8 Exposures – Introducing the Artists. https://ateneum.fi/nayttelyarkisto/8-­e xposures-­i ntroducing-­t he-­ artists/?lang=en/. Accessed 12 December 2019. Bordwell, David. 2012. Poetics of Cinema. New York: Routledge. DAFilms. Undated. Pirjo Honkasalo (Finland). https://dafilms.com/ director/8983-­pirjo-­honkasalo/. Accessed 12 December 2019. Elia, Noelle. 1 November 2004. Pirjo Honkasalo: Thou Shall Bear Witness. Point of View Magazine (POV) 56. http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/thou-­ shall-­bear-­witness/. Accessed 20 January 2020. Hongisto, Ilona. 2015. Soul of the Documentary: Framing, Expression, Ethics. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Honkasalo, Pirjo. 2014. Interview Conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 23 November 2014 (Published in this Chapter). Icarus Films. 2019. Director’s Statement: Pirjo Honkasalo, The Personal Point of Departure. http://icarusfilms.com/other/filmmaker/pirjo.html/. Accessed 1 December 2019. IDFA. 2004. The Three Rooms of Melancholia. IDFA Online Program. https:// www.idfa.nl/en/film/22e19f80-­1261-­45ab-­8bbb-­c847921d8520/the-­3-­ rooms-­of-­melancholia/. Accessed 10 December 2019. International Film Festival Berlin. 2019. Mysterion (Program Archive). https:// www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/2019/02_programm_2019/02_

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Filmdatenblatt_2019_201912143.html#tab=video/. Accessed 10 December 2019. Lehtonen, Veli-Pekka. 2 November 2013. Pirjo Honkasalo Depicts the Non-­ Verbal Part of a Person in Her Films. Helsingin Sanomat Newspaper. https:// www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-­2000002685588.html/. Accessed 9 December 2019. Müller, Tue Steen. 2004. Tanjuska ja 7 perkelettä / Tanjuska and the 7 Devils. Dox Documentary Film Magazine 50: 51. Olsen, Anette. 2002. One Woman, One Camera (Interview). Dox Documentary Film Magazine 39: 8–9. https://www.moderntimes.review/pirjo-­honkasalo-­ one-­woman-­one-­camera/. Accessed 9 February 2020. Savolainen, Tarja. 2017. Gender Equality in Finnish Film Production. The Division of Public Financing. Cultural Policy Research Center (Report). https://www. cupore.fi/en/publications/cupore-­s-­publications/gender-­equality-­in-­finnish-­ film-­production-­the-­division-­of-­public-­financing/. Accessed 12 December 2019. Scheglov, Yuri, and Alexander Zholkovsky. 1987. Poetics of Expressiveness: A Theory and Applications. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Filmography Clarke, Shirley. 1967. Portrait of Jason. USA: Shirley Clarke Productions & Graeme Ferguson Productions. Honkasalo, Pirjo. 1980. Flame Top. Finland: Pi_Kino. ———. 1991. Mysterion. Finland: Epidem. ———. 1993. Tanjuska and the 7 Devils. Finland, Sweden: Baabeli. ———. 1998. Fire Eater. Finland: Marko Röhr Productions. ———. 2004. Melancholian 3 Huonetta. Finland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden: Millennium Film Oy. ———. 2009. Seitti  – kilvoittelijan päiväkirja (Ito Diary of an Urban Priest). Finland: AVEK, Baabeli, Cosmo Film. ———. 2013. Concrete Night. Finland: Plattform Produktion. Molleberg, Rauni. 1973. Maa on syntinen laulu (The Earth is a Sinful Song). Finland: RM-Tuotanto.

CHAPTER 7

Transnational Feminism in the Cinema of Kim Longinotto

Kim Longinotto

Introduction: Kim Longinotto I want to make films which create a situation where the audience gets close to another individual, often from a completely different background, and feel a shock of understanding. I want the whole experience to be a strong emotional one. (Longinotto in Macdonald and Cousins 1996, 379)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_7

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Kim Longinotto is one of the UK’s foremost independent documentarians. A graduate of the National Film and Television School in Britain, she has had a prolific and consistent career, having made over twenty full length feature documentaries that give a voice to women’s stories or those marginalised in their society and culture. Her career spans more than four decades and she is known for her films centring on female subjects and examining the oppression and discrimination they face. She has more than thirty international awards.1 A political filmmaker, she has a strong interest in human rights, particularly for women, and deals with subjects such as female circumcision (The Day I Will Never Forget 2002), rape (Dreamcatcher 2015) and child marriage and domestic violence or femicide (Pink Saris 2010). Her films are resoundingly interested in stories of female resilience and the theme of women’s resistance to patriarchy and oppressive traditions. This chapter introduces Longinotto and the British and international contexts in which she works, offering a discussion of her contribution as a transnational feminist filmmaker and featuring an interview with her on the subject of the female gaze. Longinotto’s style can be described as observational. There is a realist tendency to portray a sense of unmediated access to the world through a sense of lived rather than constructed story time which is unstaged and not scripted. She approaches her subjects without an agenda to influence actions. She rarely uses commentary, non-diegetic music, intertitles, address to camera, re-enactments or voiceover. This approach creates an intimacy with the subject of her films. Longinotto herself has said of her style that she aims to bring the audience in to feel that they are where she is, so that they can experience it in the same way that she did when making the film (Quinn 2013, 146). White notes: Sisters in Law is a strictly observational documentary, using no voiceover or explanatory text, experts, graphics, or talking heads. (A sole interview … comes late in the film, none of Longinotto’s questions are heard.) Whether observing institutional routines such as those of the Takarazuka school in Dream Girls or documenting women who help other women to empower themselves such as the health educators in The Day I Will Never Forget, Longinotto’s films are characterized by empathy and nonintervention. Documenting court proceedings in Sisters in Law, Longinotto passes as a silent witness. (White 2006, 123)

Longinotto has also described her style as participatory (Austin and de Jong 2008, 101), but she means collaborative rather than as the mode described by Bill Nichols.2

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Her collaborative practice has involved working with communities. For example, she was approached to work in South Africa, making the film Rough Aunties (2008) with a group of women who wanted ‘somebody who will make a film with us as a team and we can actually work together’ (Thynee, Al-Ali and Longinotto 2011, 27). She has frequently collaborated with editor/writer Ollie Huddleston, who worked with Longinotto on many films, including Shooting the Mafia (2019), Dreamcatcher (2015), and Love is All, A Hundred Years of Love and Courtship (2014). In addition, she has partnered as co-director to enable cross-cultural collaborations (discussed later in this chapter).

British and Transnational Contexts Academic literature on contemporary British documentary filmmaking or independent feature documentary production is sparse. The majority of Longinotto’s films made in the UK were commissioned by television and this is the key funding path for documentaries in the country.3 Alongside Longinotto, there are a number of established female directors in Britain. These include: Molly Dineen (The Lie of the Land 2007), Pratibha Parmar (Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth 2013), Tina Gharavi (Mother/Country 2003), Penny Woolcock (Tina Goes Shopping 1999), and Carol Morley. Morley’s film, based on her own teenage past (The Alcohol Years 2000), was nominated for a BAFTA and her Dreams of a Life (2011) garnered broad recognition (although she has now moved to fiction). There are numerous women working in UK television, including Sue Bourne (9/11: The Falling Man 2006), who has been prolific in documentary films and television series. Other notable small screen directors include Jane Treays (The Queen’s Green Planet 2018), Vanessa Engle (Inside Harley Street 2015) and Daisy Asquith (Velorama 2014). Prominent ‘indie’ feature filmmakers working in the UK include Louise Osmond (Dark Horse 2015), Sophie Fiennes (Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bambi 2017) and Jeanie Finlay (Seahorse 2019). Some filmmakers are well-known internationally; for example, Lucy Walker (Waste Land 2010), who has been Oscar-nominated but mainly works in the US. Directors such as Franny Armstrong (McLibel 2005) and Emily James (Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web 2017) are known for their activist films. As is common in many industries internationally, the largest percentage of female directors in the UK are working in documentary. A study of the industry found that ‘25% of all documentary films in the UK between

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2005 and 2014 were directed by women’ (Kay 2016). According to Alina Kay, in the industry publication The Knowledge, ‘While prominent women within the film industry such as Sarah Gavron, Emma Watson and Patricia Arquette have raised the profile of the issue of sexism generally within the film industry, little attention has been dedicated to female documentary makers’ (Kay 2016). Directors UK ran a campaign which called for fifty per cent of publicly funded British films to be directed by women. This was a response to the statistics illustrating a decline in women’s share of publicly funded films which dropped from 32.9% in 2008 down to just 17% women directors in 2014 (Kay 2016). This indicates that the documentary sector has greater participation for women in the UK (twenty-five per cent) compared to other sectors of the industry, something that has also been noted by scholars (Hockenhull 2017, 59). Despite this, scholarship on British women documentarians is small compared to other industry sectors (Ostrowska 2019, 50). At the time of writing there weren’t any funding or mentoring schemes specifically for female filmmakers in the UK (as there are in other countries e.g. Gender Matters in Australia). There is occasionally funding advertised for women only (e.g. via private organisations like The Wapping Project), or festivals that showcase the work of women in all roles (e.g. Underwire Film Festival). Women in documentary are also commissioned (including for television) by a range of organisations interacting with and supporting documentary film. These include the BFI (that distributes National Lottery funds and has some assistance for professional development); Doc Society (formerly BRITDOC), which supports independent documentarians in the UK and elsewhere with business development and a range of funds; Dochouse, which supports screenings and online distribution; and Sheffield Doc Festival that has a reputation as a premier documentary festival that does flag how many films directed by women are in their programmes.4 Longinotto has a transnational practice and has worked both in Britain and all over the world. Whilst her films might not fit the standard idea of a television documentary (e.g. commercial productions), as stated, they have been largely commissioned and broadcasted by British TV channels (Ostrowska 2019, 71). However, they are also widely seen at international film festivals because of her status as a ‘documentary auteur’ (White 2006, 124) and ‘feminist auteur’ (Ostrowska 2019, 74). Her film projects have been in Egypt, Japan, Iran, sub-Saharan Africa, India and the US. According to academic Belinda Smaill, she ‘persistently explores the experience of

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“outsiders”, those negotiating the prevailing social order in which they find themselves’ (Smaill 2007, 177). In Smaill’s view the films are centrally interested in hopeful narratives and an ideal of ‘female cultural agency’ (Smaill 2007, 177). Longinotto has asserted that ‘[t]he most hopeful change seems to be happening from women, and people that need change the most are definitely women (Smaill 2007, 178).5

Feminisms, Transnational Feminism and Longinotto’s Films I like making films about strong women, and particularly women who are brave outsiders; we seem to see them too rarely on our screens, and yet, wherever I go, I meet them. (Longinotto in Gertitz 2006)

Longinotto’s films are feminist in the way most would understand feminism—as advocating for equality and against patriarchy. They offer what has been described in this book as a ‘feminist perspective’ and ‘feminist aesthetic’ through the ambition to counter patriarchal culture and achieve a speaking position for women in the context of their individual circumstances. Longinotto’s films could be described via a range of feminist positions; for example, her films can be claimed as sites of feminist activism because she offers ‘her subjects an opportunity to represent themselves and, in so doing, gives them a renewed sense of their own capacity to change lives, both their own and those of others around them’ (Milojkovic 2014, 1). She is assisting her female subjects by what she films, and progresses the situation through filmmaking as a catalyst, or a witness (Thynne, Al-Ali and Longinotto 2011, 34). As Quinn has observed, feminism is expressed in her films through: ‘addressing issues, celebrating women. But … not only that … There’s a larger message’, and in response Longinotto replied, ‘When you said “feminist”, I was pleased … but they’re not … strictly or always that’ (Quinn 2013, 151). As outlined in what follows, Longinotto has been described as a transnational feminist filmmaker (White 2006, 121). Her projects work to give women, many from non-Western countries, the opportunity to show the complexity of the lives they live and the oppression they encounter (from their individual points of view). Transnational feminism is a contemporary intersectional feminist paradigm that draws on postcolonial feminism and interrogates globalisation and capitalism. The global environment in which transnational feminist movements now operate has been described

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as ‘characterized by neoliberal capitalism, militarism, and patriarchy’ (Baksh-Soodeen and Harcourt 2015, 8–9). Theoretically it critiques Western mainstream feminism for: universalising, speaking for others, based on in its own narrow self-interest, white and as a hegemonic Western discourse. Transnational feminists take as a given that there are inequalities between nations and are attentive to the histories and contingent circumstances of non-Western women. Filmmakers who would be described as ‘transnational feminists’ are involved in image making that works against constructions of First/Third World power and the hegemonic notion of the West as superior. Transnational feminists reject those liberal feminist ideas of ‘global sisterhood’ that overlook Third World women or women of colour’s points of view. It is a commitment to practice, which is cognizant of profound historical, political, economic and social contextual differences across cultures and nations, but at the same time seeks to establish a politic of solidarity that transcends that difference; for example, via transnational feminist activism that has enabled ‘unprecedented opportunities for organizing and mobilizing across borders’ (Baksh-Soodeen and Harcourt 2015, 9). Scholar Patricia White described Longinotto as embodying a ‘feminist solidarity model’ (White 2006, 123). For example, Pink Saris (2010) offers an insight into tradition, and issues of child brides, violence against women, problems of class (it is stated by one subject in the film that the belief in untouchables has created untold problems for India). Importantly, women such as the film’s activist, Sampat Pal, are change agents, and this creates a sense of feminist solidarity without collapsing the significant differences in the experience of these women. Longinotto can be understood as having what White has identified as ‘transnational feminist practices’ as involving ‘forms of alliance, subversion, and complicity within which asymmetries and inequalities can be critiqued’ (White 2006, 121). The hallmarks of Longinotto’s transnational feminism can be seen in her frequent engagement with Third World subjects in a manner that differs, and is in opposition to, the tendency of dominant Western filmmakers, including some feminist filmmakers who presume to speak for but fail to account for histories and contexts of non-Western women. For example, the title of Longinotto’s 1998 documentary Divorce Iranian Style (co-directed with Ziba Mir-Hosseini) ‘implies national and cultural differences in women’s access to basic rights’ (White 2006, 121). From this standpoint, it could be read as rejecting the idea that women are bound together sociologically by the ‘sameness’ of their oppression. On that

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matter, White says Longinotto’s work scrupulously avoids a ‘sameness’ structure: ‘her subjects, methods, and emphases are transnational rather than global(izing)’ (White 2006, 121). Longinotto’s stylistic approach is transnational in offering privilege to the voice of her (mostly female) subjects and in empowering them by avoiding speaking for them—as much as a white, Western documentary filmmaker is able. Each of her subjects is framed by the specific situation or context, subject to the history of that context and its patriarchal formations, and she is attentive to the intersections of nationhood, race, gender, sexuality and economic exploitation globally, making films in many parts of the world. She avoids homogenising their individual experience as disempowered within a monolithic Third World. Divorce Iranian Style, for example, offers a picture of women’s success in winning their court cases to secure divorce and prosecution on domestic violence as contextualised within their specific circumstances, what Mohanty describes as the micropolitics of context, subjectivity and struggle which simultaneously underline the ways the particular can often be universally significant (Mohanty 2003, 501). As Longinotto has observed, ‘seeing that something is wrong is more powerful and effective than being told that something is wrong’ (Quinn 2013, 159). Hess and Zimmermann have observed that: As transnational media corporations spread their tentacles around the world to homogenize cultures and consume differences, a new configuration of documentary arises to resist this process by focusing on the complexities of cultural, national and regional collisions. A plethora of exciting documentary work from all over the world has erupted in response. (Hess and Zimmermann 2006, 102)

Female filmmakers are arguably making a contribution to this, and Longinotto is one of them. Across a number of Longinotto’s films is what has been described as ‘documentary as a form of witnessing’ (Thynne et al. 2011, abstract). For example, in two of her films (Rough Aunties 2008 and Dreamcatcher 2015) the subjects offer their own experience of having been raped. Longinotto says that moment when Mildred speaks of her own rape in Rough Aunties ‘was because she wanted to tell me, but she also wanted a witness to it’ (Thynne et al. 2011, 28). Longinotto is demonstrating that making a film itself has an impact. The subjects are supported to not feel alone because others, including Longinotto herself, had similar traumatic

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experiences and share those (see the discussion of Dreamcatcher in the interview section of this chapter). Whilst every human has a unique experience, this opens a female space and arguably could have only been achieved by a female filmmaker. An observation made by many of the filmmakers interviewed for this book is that they have been able to access gendered spaces, often spaces male filmmakers would find difficult to gain entry to, or they might be more obtrusive in them from the film subject’s perspective. Longinotto made this observation of her own practice, and White has also noted it, saying that with films like Dream Girls (1994) and Gaea’s Girls (2000), ‘[i]t is the filmmaker’s access to gender-segregated spaces and institutions in both cultures that allows her to tell these stories’ (White 2006, 121), as does her collaborations with women grounded in the countries in which she makes her films. On several of her films, Longinotto’s co-direction has facilitated transnationalism. These collaborations have all been with women; for example, Florence Ayisi in Kumba in Cameroon West Africa (Sisters in Law 2005) and Ziba Mir-Hosseini in Iran (Divorce Iranian Style 1998 and Runaway 2001). She also worked in Japan with Jano Williams (Gaea Girls 2000; Shinjuku Boys 1995; Dream Girls 1994; Eat the Kimono 1989).6 Longinotto’s methods of working, often with only one other person (given she has shot many of her films), also gives her an ability to be comparatively unobtrusive (in contrast to films shot with a larger crew), something probably assisted by her small physical stature and openness to giving space to the voices of her subjects. In addition, Longinotto is conscious of the spaces that women cannot occupy whilst enabling a picture of the worlds her subjects live in and are frequently restricted to.

A Female Gaze and Aesthetic Longinotto’s films embody a female aesthetic, directly conveying female subjectivity. The stylistic and formal qualities of her documentaries are constructed from female subjective positions (as diverse as they might be in the many different worlds of her subjects). This is the likely reason she was awarded the 2015 Voice of a Woman Award for Documentary and given a profile at that event through a retrospective of her films. Her documentaries display a strong humanism in their interest in human relationships and establishing the worth and agency of her subjects (including men, who also receive compassionate treatment). They examine the human condition, with a substantial focus on the lives women

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actually live, and as such, she can be understood as a visual anthropologist, especially in regard to their raising of ethical and moral dilemmas and leaning towards revealing ‘positive social transformation’ (Austin and de Jong 2008, 102). Her female characters achieve constructive solutions in the face of adversity; for example, Salma (in her 2013 film of the same name) has been described by Longinotto as ‘the voice of a battle-scarred survivor with all the torment and fear and rage that goes with being human’, and her husband, Malik, who has threatened to throw acid in his wife’s face ‘comes across as a complicated man rather than a monster’ (Ramnath 2013).

Interview with Kim Longinotto This interview was conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam on 21 November 2014. Both Longinotto and French were guests of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA). The specific focus of the interview was the ‘female gaze’, women directors of documentary films and Longinotto’s own practice. French: Do you think it is valuable to focus on the female gaze? What do you think it might reveal? Longinotto: I think everything’s full of contradiction really. I remember seeing a Swedish film by Lukas Moodysson [Fucking Åmål or Show Me Love 1998], quite a long time ago. [Watching it] I’m thinking this is definitely a woman’s film, this is fabulous, it’s a beautiful, beautiful film about two girls in a school. And then [I discovered that] it was made by a man— so I think, in a way, it’s difficult to generalise. I think we have to say in Western Europe, America and Australia these boundaries between men and women are really breaking down. I don’t use the word masculine and feminine anymore, or male or female. [When] you’re growing up you’re told that’s masculine or that’s feminine [but] we’re all questioning and we’re all adjusting and adapting, and nobody really does it anymore. For example, masculine’s adventurous, confident, competent and practical, and women are becoming that, or definitely wanting to be that, and women are meant to be intuitive, sensitive, emotional, gentle and a lot of men are that. And they’re saying well, I want to be, I’m that. But then in other countries now men are being forced into roles that they don’t like, and they’re not allowed to be gentle, sensitive or all of those things. The big change has culminated in England with the legalisation of same-sex marriage and I think that is a huge thing and … that’s why it’s

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had so much hostility to it from the far right in America because it does change things. I don’t know many women that have got married but those that I do haven’t changed their surnames and then there’s a couple that have. But no man is going to change his surname; you’re not going to have Elton John and David John, it’s just not going to happen, it’s very rare unless one of them has got a horrible name and wants to get rid of it. So, by same-sex marriage becoming legal, and being in the church, then I think it has changed everything, and it’s changed the sort of face of marriage. A lot of my gay friends who fought and wanted to be able to get married [are now] saying: I’m actually not going to bother—but they wanted the right to do it. But having said all that, as soon as you go out into different places, if you go to a lot of places in Africa, Iran, Yemen or Pakistan, being a woman there’s a kind of war going on and we can’t deny it. There is actually a war going on that people [women] get shot in the head for going to school, or they get locked in the house. The film that I made in India [Salma 2013], where, as soon as you got your period that was it, that was the end of your life—and it’s so strange. The woman I made it with said that she’d just had this feeling her whole childhood: this is completely mad! And I loved that she never accepted it like everybody else did, she kept thinking this is completely crazy. And she used to sit by a window that was designed in such a way you couldn’t actually see out of it. She took me there and she sat by the window and she said: ‘This is absolutely crazy. What’s the point of this window? I can’t see anything.’ So, they built houses in that village where the houses were constructed so that you couldn’t see out even when you went on the roof—cruel. French: Do you mean to keep the women so that they were caged? Longinotto: They couldn’t be seen inside, and they couldn’t see out. I said: ‘Oh, come on, let’s go on the roof, I’m feeling really claustrophobic’. And then we went on the roof and the cruelty of it was, it was just taller than the women. There was a wall all the way around and I just thought this is completely crazy, and somebody’s thought this all up. But I’ve changed in the last couple of years really; I got quite fond of her husband who had behaved very, very badly. He had put a can of acid on a little shelf by the bed, threatening her that if she continued writing poetry, he was going to pour acid on her face when she slept. As I got to know him, I realised he was confused and trapped and really unhappy; not as unhappy as her obviously, because he was allowed out. But [he] had been angry

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with his life and didn’t really know why he was so angry. So, I think what would be good is, if more men made films that were challenging gender roles and [other] things, and not many of them seem to be doing it. I suppose that is to me, if there is a female gaze, which men can also have (like Lukas Moodysson), if you see Fucking Åmål it’s a beautiful film with a woman with two girls at the centre and everything is gorgeous. French: There are films about men, made by women, such as Startup. com [Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim 2001]. That film is about men. But the filmmakers are interested in the relationship between the men, in deconstructing masculinity, and in telling a story about their perspective on that relationship. Longinotto: [None] of my films are going to be about men. I asked Selma’s husband [in my film Selma]: Why are you so angry? It was like a punch from the side; he was like: ‘Why am I so angry?’ Nobody had asked him that, because you can’t if you’re all trapped in it; his wife wasn’t going to ask him that. French: Did he answer? Longinotto: He said: ‘I’ve always been angry. From a child I was angry because I was jealous. Then when I got older, I was scared, I was confused, and then when I got married, I was angry with the kids.’ And he just described the anger, but he couldn’t explain it. French: Going back to where we started, are you saying you don’t think you can tell if a film’s made by a woman or not? Longinotto: This is probably very inconvenient and annoying but I’m just being honest. There is an Iranian filmmaker that I completely love called Jafar Panahi. He made Offside [2006], which is about all these girls going to a football match, and he made The Circle [2000], which is about women in Iran [who are oppressed by sexism]. I think [they are] beautiful, beautiful films. They were all the films that were coming out at just around that time as we were watching these angry films about fanatics. And then you’ve got [men] making these wonderful, gentle, contemplative, metaphoric films which were about all of these things [including] telling stories about children, which is very unusual. I mean, in a funny way, we’re talking about Hollywood men really, that a lot of Hollywood men wouldn’t want to make those sorts of films. The man doesn’t change and he’s the hero and he goes on being a hero. The first TV series I fell in love with was Buffy [Buffy: The Vampire Slayer 1992–1997]. What I adored was all the little scenes in it where Buffy would be on the street with her boyfriend, and they’d see some

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shady-­looking person, a man, he’s usually some football jock or something. He’d go: ‘Don’t worry Buffy, I’m here’. And then he’d be knocked out for a second and Buffy would deal with it. Then, in series four, Buffy’s best friend Willow fell in love with a woman. I think that is so brilliant that they’ve done it like that because they’ve already got their fans, we’re already signed in. All those people may be on campuses in rural America, [they] love Willow by then, and go along with it. It’s not a self-consciously gay show, which is for gay people, it’s a woman who is in love with a gay woman. So, in answering your question, it is complicated. For me, it’s more interesting than it is complicated, but at the moment, what really gets me is making films where I imagine that nobody else would do it, that there’s a need for it. Mind you, I’ve made a film in America where there’s so many good American filmmakers, but I was really happy to make this film [Dreamcatcher 2015] because I think it needed to be women because it’s about very vulnerable girls and women and I think they liked it being filmed by women. A lot of them had been on the streets and had been sexually abused. One of the very first things we filmed was Brenda telling them: ‘Look, you girls have got to be really careful’. They were fourteen, fifteen and sixteen these girls. [Brenda said] ‘I’m going to tell you about how to avoid being abused by boys. I’m going to tell you tips about what to do and don’t let them sweet talk you, be very clear and just say I’m not ready’. And then one by one the girls in this class said: ‘I’ve been raped’; ‘I was raped when I was eight’, ‘I was raped when I was eleven’. Each and every single girl in that class said it. Obviously, we couldn’t put them all in [but] we’ve got a little chunk of four of them, one immediately after another, and then at the end Brenda goes: ‘Wow, I had no idea this was going to happen’. She’d obviously got no idea they’d all been raped, and she was completely shell-shocked, she didn’t really know what to say. And then, as we were all getting ready to leave, a girl came up and hugged me and said: ‘I did it for you’. And she didn’t mean she did it for me, she did it because we were witnesses, and there was a point to it. A lot of them had never told anybody. There was one girl that had told her parents that a family friend was raping her every night and they didn’t believe her. It was a really brilliant thing for them to be filmed and to give witness. I could be wrong, maybe if it was a very sweet, gentle, lovely, special guy they would’ve done it. I think they probably would have done it with my housemates, but at the same time, the fact that she would come and hug me, and the fact that we were all there together, it did feel good and no

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men were allowed in this special class. They were all trying to get in all these boys. The scene starts with Brenda saying: ‘All these young boys they’re trying to get in, they’re sniffing around the door’. It’s really nice the way it starts. So, it was like a safe place and I think it would’ve been compromised a bit by having men. I’m sorry, Lisa, in answer to your question, that is my long answer. French: It’s a hard question. Longinotto: I can never give little, quick answers. I’ve just been working in America with an American producer [Lisa Stevens] and I drove her totally mad. She says: ‘I can’t stand you, Kim’. She really hated me because I would see both sides and then she’d say: ‘Okay, this is what we’re filming today’. And I’d say, ‘but Lisa, we can’t’. I didn’t want anything set up. She was coming from a completely different background, so it was really hard, it was really painful making that film; I wasn’t working the way she wanted to work, and also, I would contradict myself. I love being sort of adamant, so I’d say: ‘I hate families’. And in a way it’s true, I do; I hated my family, I hate the whole idea of families and couples but at the same time, I’ve got friends that have gorgeous families. They’ve got kids and they’re so sweet with them. I love their kids and I’ve got relationships with their kids. Sometimes I just feel like saying it. It was after some scene we’d filmed, which was about the abuse going over generations in one family, and the girls at the end of it, feeling they couldn’t do anything about it, they were stuck. And in that context in the car on the way home, I said: ‘I hate families’ and it’s true. I hate those sorts of closed families where you’re trapped. You think it’s the only way to live. French: Do you think there is something that particularly might attract women to making documentaries? Longinotto: I think there are loads of reasons. For me, the reason I like doing it is because I don’t like telling [or] asking people what to do, which is why me and Lisa had such a difficult time. I don’t like setting things up; I love filming things as they happen, and I like being very gentle in the way that I’m working. I think maybe historically that was more how women were, but I think that’s changing. All the men I seem to hang out with are very gentle and would be absolutely lovely to film. But that’s why I have chosen documentary. I wouldn’t want to have a big crew, a big set, and actually when I say that to you, Lisa, the truth of it also is, I couldn’t imagine scripts that are as interesting as the things that happen in the films. The film I’ve just made in America [Dreamcatcher 2015] was far more interesting than I even dreamed it would be. It was far more layered,

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nuanced, peculiar, confusing and shocking, and things I wouldn’t have even imagined! I’ve read about Jewish people in the Holocaust and they’re always saying the ones that survived were the ones that were not necessarily the nicest people, that they were the ones that were able to survive. The dreamers and the sweet people were often the people that died. You compromise, you know, which is how they survived and that’s how a lot of these girls are surviving on the streets. It is by not behaving particularly well, and that comes across at the end of the film, which is great, so it’s not clear. I think a lot of fiction tends to be unequivocal and as you’ve probably guessed [I think it is more ambiguous than that]. French: Is it a lack of certainty or closure that interests you? Longinotto: Every film does it to me, everything in film confuses me and makes me think about things differently. So that when people are saying okay, ‘Can we use your film about prostitutes to campaign for the male clients to be prosecuted? We want it to be made against the law’, I’m not actually sure that’s the right idea. I don’t want things to be straight jacketed into a law. Of course, we have to have some laws, but I’d be much happier by saying I want prostitution to be decriminalised. They shouldn’t be locked up for being prostitutes, they should be helped. A lot of them are victims and a lot of them have never had a chance. A lot of people in prison are victims, can’t even read and write. See what I mean? So, it spirals into madness that way and nobody goes: Why? Okay, you’re not agreeing to anything now. French: Lots of people say they can tell when women are filmed by a woman. Longinotto: That’s rubbish—l don’t believe them for a minute; it’s rubbish. French: Well, I’ve been surprised and been wrong, but sometimes I’ve seen something that’s been invisible before. It’s sort of a gesture that was invisible and I have this kind of ‘shock of recognition’. Longinotto: What do you mean? French: Well, it’s something to do with my experience of life as a woman, and I recognise that, but the shock is in finally seeing it. Longinotto: And you think that’s a woman’s thing? French: For example, in Jane Campion’s films. Longinotto: Oh, I love Sweetie [Jane Campion 1989]. That’s my favourite. French: For example, in An Angel at My Table [Jane Campion], there is a scene after all the girls go swimming together. There are sisters and

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girlfriends and they go into the forest and there’s this huge long log. They walk up and down on the log like models. They’re performing femininity really, they’re performing how society thinks that they should look, and they’re saying: ‘I’ll give her ten for the turn’, commenting on each other’s bodies and deportment. Longinotto: Sweet, I think you’ve suddenly gone very Australian. French: Laughing. Longinotto: ‘Give her ten for the turn!’ French: When I look at it, there’s something about it that I recognise. It’s about how girls behave together, how girls like looking at girls and what it is that they are looking at. Campion’s obsessed with that in that film. I don’t think a man would make it like that. Longinotto: I don’t know. I think a lot of the men I know would make that sort of thing because they’re always doing it. I mean, flamboyant men are always posing. French: Oh, yes, but this is something to do with a kind of female pubescent playing with femininity. Longinotto: Do me a favour, go and watch Fucking Åmål and see what you think. It’s Lukas Moodysson’s first film. See what you think, see if you would ever guess that that was made by a man because you would’ve gone: This is definitely a woman’s film. French: Well, there are some films like Sarah Gavron’s Brick Lane [2007], the minute I saw it I just thought that women made it. Longinotto: I love that film. It’s a beautiful film. I’ve got the end of that film in … the archive film [Love is All: 100 Years of Love & Courtship 2014].7 French: Yes, that’s right. Can you tell me why you selected Sound it Out [2011] by Jeanie Finlay as a film for the ‘Female Gaze’ section of the IDFA programme? I gather it’s one that inspired you. Longinotto: It did inspire me. It was late on Saturday night and I was at home with my friends and it came on and we said: ‘Give it a go’. Why I loved it was, a lot of people, they don’t value popular music. I mean, people I’m friends with, but there’s this sense that, somehow, it’s peripheral and classic is best, or they go on about how it used to be better. And here was a film where the filmmaker obviously really treasured music, and all the people that go to this record store really treasure music. There’s also a great affection for the people in the film coming from the person who’s making it. And I know it sounds odd but that is unusual, it really is.

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Whether it’s men or females making them, it’s an unusual thing. I thought, and then I wrote to her a little fan letter saying I absolutely loved the film and she sent me the long version. I thought that was so brilliant, so we watched it again and we loved it even more. And it’s just a lovely film, it’s just a charming film—because one of the things I really feel strongly is that documentaries should be hard work, not tell you what to think, and it’s just a fabulous experience. It’s not just sharing things with you, that’s what I like about it. I don’t like many; often I’m watching documentaries and I don’t really like them because there’s this commentary and they’ll be telling things and facts and figures and interviews, but this was just gentle and lovely and loving. We just all adored it. French: I think there are quite a lot of films in the ‘Female Gaze’ programme that don’t tell you things, that observe and move around in circles. Because I’ve been looking at them all in a short space of time and thinking about them together. I’m not sure if it’s a taste thing at the festival [International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam], or whether it’s saying something about women filmmakers. Longinotto: I think it’s the festival actually. French: Tell me about Love is All, 100 Years of Love & Courtship. Longinotto: … Did you see it? French: I’ve seen it, and I love it. I loved the energy. Longinotto: It was a battle. I thought it was going to be a really easy film to make and it was in some ways, it was lovely. It was all done in the editing room.8 I didn’t have to go and run around and be out in the middle of the night, or it wasn’t like the last film I’ve made, but the battle was with all the producers and the backers. I was very honest and clear about what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to have three strands, and the idea I had naively at the first strand was watching women change over the century, so you’d start off with women like on the train. And then we kept being absolutely amazed because we came across these footballers doing their exercises, covered in mud in 1925, and you think wow! [Then I’d think] these look like girls down my street that I could meet in the corner shop. And, also, what we discovered, which I find really exciting [was] that when you put contemporary music over these archives, something weird happened. I was used to watching an archive with kind of silly jazz and a lot of it had silly music on it. I’m not

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saying jazz is silly … [I mean] plonky, plonky stuff, like when we watched a film when I was a kid. French: I know exactly what you mean. Longinotto: You know what I mean, people being bashed around like cartoons really and walking very fast, and it’s very bad quality, and that’s what I was imagining. But when we put the contemporary music on it, people just became like you and me; so, you recognise people, and they don’t seem strange anymore—that was shocking. I wasn’t sure what that was going to be like, but it’s kind of folky music. The reason it quite worked [was that] I wanted to have much tougher music, but I think it worked because it didn’t draw attention to itself. You listened to the words and it’s a very gentle music and it suits the images and some of the images are quite funny—like they’re two women doing their Jujitsu! It’s called Jujitsu for Beginners when that woman gets robbed and then she shows how she can do martial arts. I love the gentle humour to it, but that’s a very gentle 1920s strand I wanted to get through. Then the other strand, I wanted to show England becoming more multiracial … because in some of the old films particularly, there’s very, very few black and Asian people. … [This is] even though a friend of mine who lives in Birmingham, his dad [was] in a heavy engineering factory and seventy per cent of the people were from Bangladesh and India like him. So, it’s a real omission. And, of course, we had to look for these black and Asian images because in the past, the people that were filming, whether it’s conscious or not, usually filmed people like them unfortunately. That’s what we’re all changing now. So, then we found a little sequence, which was probably my favourite sequence—which shocked me, because the idea I had was [that there were] not many black people and Asian people. Things are getting better. Then you celebrate it; with Brick Lane she says: ‘This is my home now, I’m not going anywhere’. And there’s a film with an Asian woman in the middle, an Indian woman in the middle, so her voice is the voice of the film. Then I came across the film about the little black girl being made into the May Queen, and [she was] celebrated and kissed on the lips by her teacher and loved by all the other girls. … I thought somehow a little film like that, I never knew anything like that would exist and somebody filmed it. How it got filmed I have got no idea and the woman’s still alive, she’s living in America, and says it was the proudest moment of her life and she still remembers it. But that sequence, some of the producers wanted to take it out, I had to fight for it. I had to—and I’m not

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somebody who enjoys fighting, I’m somebody that likes to just do what people want and [be] one of the guys… I said: ‘But why do you want it out, it’s beautiful, it’s love, they love her?’ He said: ‘Oh, but this is meant to be a film about love.’ And then the other producer said: ‘We want seduction, engagement, marriage and then children’. And I went: ‘Oh’. And she said: ‘Oh, I know you’re not into marriage Kim. …’. So, then I thought, well why ask me [to make the film]? But anyway, the last thing that the woman says was so important to me, the wonderful woman in Brick Lane: ‘Nobody told me there were different kinds of love’. French: I remember the scene; they’re lying in bed. Longinotto: Yes, and she looks at her husband. That’s the terrible secret that is kept from people in these countries where men are forced into masculinity. And that’s why I’ve gone at length with this because it’s really important, and that is the lie that is happening all over the world. At about eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, you get married and that’s love, and that’s all the love you can expect. My friend Selma had to give her child, she had to give her away when she was born because her husband didn’t want another girl baby. All the kinds of love that we might think, even something as obvious as child and mother, they’re all broken because the only love that women are meant to respect is marital love. …In Iran you go into a court from a different entrance men and women, making us different, constantly underlining the differentness of men and women when actually, we’re so close and a lot of us overlap. My partner Tony is scared of moths and if there’s a big moth in the house, I always get the moth out for him. You wouldn’t last five minutes if you were Taliban and you were scared of moths. There’s this myth that men are fearless … we can break that down and encourage nice men to make films. I saw a terrible film made by a woman. We’ve had Margaret Thatcher, that put an end to us being so excited about women politicians. But at the same time, I go somewhere else, south of India, and make this film with Selma, and we’re both in a rage the whole time. How could this be happening to women in 2014, they’re still being locked up? The lie is that men and women are so different and they’re socialised to be different, we know that and that’s why I’m confused because if we really take the lie on at face value, then we have to be careful. But, at the same time, I’ll tell you one thing that makes me really clear as a female gaze, there’s a film which you’ve probably seen called The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan [Phil Grabsky 2004]. It’s filmed in Afghanistan

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and it’s quite a good film; there’s this little boy who lives in a cave and it’s all about this little boy. And I remember there’s a whole sequence in the film about the father of this little boy bartering with another man. He’s already got a wife (the father of this little boy), but I’d like to marry your sister and in exchange you can have my daughter. I can’t remember the details of it because I was so upset by the whole thing. And then, every time the daughter tries to come out of the cave her mother says: ‘Get back in the cave’. So, you never see the daughter. At the end of the film you find that the little boy goes to school, they’ve been raising money for him. The father, the mother and the daughter aren’t given names. And this is Phil Grabsky, he lives in England. It’s a good film, it’s good it was made; I said [to Phil] ‘What happened to the little girl?’ And he looked at me kind of, oh, and I said: ‘Hasn’t anyone else asked you?’ And he said: ‘No’. You see, I think a lot of these things, we’re not aware of them. I think most women would’ve made the film about the girl, and to be fair to Phil, he probably couldn’t have gone into the cave because it was a woman-only area. But I think he could’ve; I bet he would’ve got in. You’d say something like, oh, I just want to film in the cave to get him in, and then he would’ve just been in the background, he could’ve done something outside the cave. You know you get round these things. French: Do you mean he wasn’t interested in the female story or perspective? Longinotto: I think he was. I think he just gave in too easily. I’ve been to two screenings of The Boy and nobody brought it up and nobody seemed to mind. It won loads of things, and it’s a good film. Do you see what I mean? French: Yes. Can I finish by asking, do you think that living your life in the body of a woman influences your films? Longinotto: I think it’s just that I’m interested in women because, Lisa, I think they’ve got the better stories. I’m interested in making really good stories. I think that women do have the best stories because if you go to Iran, the men, they’ve never had to fight. This is a generalisation but it’s largely true, the new generation is different, they’ve been on the streets for the Green Revolution [the political movement after 2009 caused by protesters who rallied against an election they perceived as fraudulent]. But the other generation, all the laws, everything’s on their side so [they’re] quite passive. The women, for example, in the courts they’re the ones fighting for their rights and to change their lives. All the films I’m

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interested in making are about change and they’re certainly not about victims. I hate victims’ films. I like survivor films, I like rebel films, films of women fighting back. French: Is gender all social and learned? Longinotto: I’m not saying we’re the same, Lisa, I’m saying that we’re getting closer. If you say that’s a masculine woman, they’re using it negatively. ‘That’s a feminine man’ ~ what I’m saying is I never use the word ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ to describe anything. That’s not to say some boys grow up and they are different from girls. A lot of the guys I hang out with say I knew from a very young age I wasn’t like the other boys and, that’s probably why I love them so much. Or they are quite boyish boys, but they somehow manage to be very sweet and gentle as well. I’m not saying we all have to be the same, that’s bad as well. I’m saying maybe we have to qualify the ‘female gaze’ and think about it in a more imaginative way. For me what the ‘female gaze’ means, just for me, is that I’m drawn to stories about change. When you travel anywhere you see that tradition was always put in place by men. As Brenda [in Dreamcatcher] said, when some woman at some UN thing said: ‘We always go to the head man in the village to ask for his permission to film, … we make sure we’re not doing anything against culture’. She says: ‘culture and tradition are what I’m fighting’. He’s there for a reason, because he’s wealthy, and got influence, and that’s why he’s head man. So, when you look at traditions, from the most extreme ones like FGM [female genital mutilation], you think: Who dreamed that up? I mean that is seriously crazy that somebody dreamed that up, and foot binding and all these terrible things that have been done in the name of culture. In England, we’re only just starting to think about what to do about FGM because it’s being called a cultural thing. We can’t go there, it’s an African thing, or it’s an Islamic thing, which it’s so not, it’s thousands of years old. What’s good about tradition? I think it’s really good to challenge it and the brave people I love, and that I film, they’re all in one way or another challenging tradition. They’re challenging roles whether it’s the Japanese boys who are saying: ‘I’m not comfortable with the role that I’m given in Japan, I’m going to be a man’, and actually we were saying to them just before we leave, in England you’d be able to. You wouldn’t have to be a man; you’d just be a woman that’s forceful and powerful and isn’t being silly and laughing behind her hand [e.g. Shinjuku Boys is Longinotto’s 1995 film about women who have chosen to live as men]. All these things trap us, and they’re being reinforced in ways we’re not even conscious of.

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Conclusion: Longinotto and the Female Gaze Longinotto regards sex (biology) and gender (social gender norms) as fluid and complex, and the identification of a gaze by sex (male or female) not to be meaningful for her. She does not view the male/female binary as useful because there is so much overlap or slippage between the gaze of men and women (a fluidity that means vision is not bound by biology or social construction). In relation to gender, she feels that masculine and feminine are not located in one sex or other, and also that gender norms are in flux and there are men who might have a feminine approach and women with a masculine sensibility. She suggests we qualify the ‘female gaze’ and think about it in a more imaginative way. She has discovered that some men are oppressed by gender norms and expectations. She acknowledges that women generally do experience patriarchy, and oppression (particularly those in places like Iran or India). She sees some subjects as appropriately made by women filmmakers, because a film like Dreamcatcher may not have been achieved by a male director given that it was created as an outcome of building trust within a group of females. She also notes that she has an intense interest in female stories, which she finds the most interesting as a documentarian, and also as a viewer herself (e.g. her interest in the little girl in the film The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan). She is drawn to making films about change and to avoid victims in favour of survivors, rebels and women fighting back. In the end, Longinotto hopes her films are inclusive and non-judgmental. They tell stories that powerfully show the situations in which her subjects live and offer their experience through their eyes. Despite the dire human rights situation for many, she consistently reinforces a hopeful universal message that change is possible and that women, and other marginalised individuals, can institute that change.

Notes 1. At the time of writing this book, she had more than thirty international awards, including a BAFTA in 2000 for Pink Saris (1998), a 2006 Women Film Critics Circle Award for Sisters in Law (2005) and two Sundance Film Festival awards: one for directing (Dreamcatcher 2015) and the Grand Jury Prize (Rough Aunties 2008). In recognition of her contribution to ethnographic documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology, she was also awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Lifetime Achievement

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Award in 2019 and is the recipient of other awards such as the Grierson Trustee Award and Best Single Documentary at the Royal Television Society Awards. 2. Bill Nichols (1991) coined terms for documentary modes: observational, expository, reflexive, performative and participatory (renamed in 2001 from an earlier descriptor: interactive). Nichols’s conception of participatory documentary does not suit what Longinotto does because participatory filmmaking has a strong filmmaker presence and voice in the film; it presents the arguments as interaction between filmmaker and subject and draws attention to the device of the filmmaker participation through voiceover. One similarity is the film is constructed for the viewer to show the world presented from the perspective of someone who inhabits it. 3. I am indebted to UK scholar Ania Ostrowska for her assistance in navigating the British documentary sector and the people in it (personal communication, 6 September 2019). 4. Other schemes can be found on the British Council film page. 5. On this topic, see French, Lisa. 2019. Women Documentary Filmmakers as Transnational ‘Advocate Change Agents’. Interdisciplina Journal 7: 15–29. https://doi.org/10.22201/ceiich.24485705e.2019.17.67536. 6. Williams is English, not Japanese, but lived in Japan for fourteen years prior to their first collaboration. 7. This film is also known as Love is all: Boy, Girl, Love. 8. This is a departure from Longinotto’s usual practice where the film, or its story, is constructed in the shoot but not in the edit.

References Austin, Thomas, and Wilma de Jong, eds. 2008. Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Baksh-Soodeen, Rawwida, and Wendy Harcourt, eds. 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. New York: Oxford University Press. French, Lisa. 2019. Women Documentary Filmmakers as Transnational ‘Advocate Change Agents’. Interdisciplina Journal 7: 15–29. https://doi.org/10.22201/ ceiich.24485705e.2019.17.67536. Gertitz, Kathy. 2006. Brave Outsiders: The Films of Kim Longinotto. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. https://bampfa.org/program/brave-­ outsiders-­films-­kim-­longinotto/. Accessed 13 September 2019.

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Hess, John, and Patricia R. Zimmermann. 2006. Transnational Documentaries: A Manifesto. In Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, ed. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden. New York: Routledge. Hockenhull, Stella. 2017. British Women Film Directors in the New Millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kay, Alina. 2016. Women in Documentary Filmmaking. The Knowledge, June 7. https://www.theknowledgeonline.com/the-­k nowledge-­b ulletin/ post/2016/06/07/women-­in-­documentary-­filmmaking/. Accessed 16 January 2020. Longinotto, Kim. 2014. Interview Conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 21 November. Macdonald, Kevin, and Mark Cousins. 1996. Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber and Faber. Milojkovic, Shannon Rae. 2014. Observational Narratives and Feminist Practice: An Analysis of Kim Longinotto’s Documentary Filmmaking Using Rough Aunties (2008) as a Case Study. MA thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal. https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/12243/ Milojkovic_Shannon_Rae_2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Accessed 14 September 2019. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. ‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs 28: 499–535. https://doi. org/10.1086/342914. Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ostrowska, Anna. 2019. Not Quite an Auteur, more than a Creative Labourer: Authorial Agency of British Women Documentarians. PhD thesis, University of Southampton. Quinn, James. 2013. This Much is True: 14 Directors on Documentary Filmmaking. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Ramnath, Nandini. 2013. Documentary Endurance Test. Live Mint, February 23. https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/HI3GjsFP8Zq7MRdhoZdNCO/ Documentary%2D%2DEndurance-­test.html/. Accessed 13 January 2020. Smaill, Belinda. 2007. Interview with Kim Longinotto. Studies in Documentary Film 1 (2): 177–187. https://doi.org/10.1386/sdf.1.2.177_7. Thynne, Lizzie, Nadje Al-Ali, and Kim Longinotto. 2011. An Interview with Kim Longinotto. Feminist Review 99: 25–38. White, Patricia. 2006. Cinema Solidarity: The Documentary Practice of Kim Longinotto. Cinema Journal 46: 120–128.

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Filmography Armstrong, Franny. 2005. McLibel. United Kingdom: Spanner Films. Asquith, Daisy. 2014. Velorama. United Kingdom: British Film Institute. Bourne, Sue. 2006. 9/11: The Falling Man. United Kingdom: Darlow Smithson Productions. Campion, Jane. 1989. Sweetie. Arena Film and NSW Film & TV Office. ———. 1990.  An Angel at My Table. New Zealand: Australian Broadcasting Commission. Dineen, Molly. 2007. The Lie of the Land. United Kingdom: RTO Pictures. Engle, Vanessa. 2015. Inside Harley Street. United Kingdom: BBC. Fiennes, Sophie. 2017. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. Ireland: Blinder Films. Finlay, Jeanie. 2011. Sound it Out. United Kingdom: Glimmer Films. ———. 2019. Seahorse. United Kingdom: Grain Media. Gavron, Sarah. 2007. Brick Lane. United Kingdom: Film4. Gharavi, Tina. 2003. Mother/Country. United Kingdom: Bridge + Tunnel Productions. Grabsky, Phil. 2004. The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan. United Kingdom: Seventh Art Productions. Hegedus, Chris, and Jehane Noujaim. 2001. Startup.com. United States: Pennebaker Hegedus Films. James, Emily. 2017. Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web. United Kingdom: Randy Murray Productions. Longinotto, Kim. 1989. Eat the Kimono. United Kingdom: Twentieth Century Vixen. ———. 1994. Dream Girls. United Kingdom: Twentieth Century Vixen. ———. 1995. Shinjuku Boys. United Kingdom: Twentieth Century Vixen. ———. 1998. Divorce Iranian Style. Iran: Twentieth Century Vixen. ———. 2000. Gaea’s Girls. United Kingdom: Vixen Films. ———. 2002. The Day I Will Never Forget. United Kingdom: Channel 4. ———. 2005. Sisters in Law. United Kingdom: Vixen Films. ———. 2008. Rough Aunties. United Kingdom: Rise Films. ———. 2010. Pink Saris. United Kingdom: Channel 4. ———. 2013. Salma. United Kingdom: Women Make Movies. ———. 2014b. Love is All, A Hundred Years of Love and Courtship. United Kingdom: Lone Star Productions. ———. 2015. Dreamcatcher. United States: Green Acres Films. ———. 2019. Shooting the Mafia. United States: Lunar Pictures. Moodysson, Lukas. 1998. Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love). Sweden: Memfis Film. Morley, Carol. 2000. The Alcohol Years. United Kingdom: Cannon and Morley Productions.

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Osmond, Louise. 2015. Dark Horse. United Kingdom: Darlow Smithson Productions. Panahi, Jafar. 2006. Offside. Iran: Jafar Panahi Film Productions. Parmar, Pratibha. 2013. Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth. United States: Kali Films. Treays, Jane. 2018. The Queen’s Green Planet. United Kingdom: ITN Productions. Unknown Filmmaker. BFI National Archive Jujitsu for Beginners 1926. Various Directors. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, 1992–1997. Walker, Lucy. 2010. Waste Land. Brazil: O2 Filmes. Woolcock, Penny. 1999. Tina Goes Shopping. United Kingdom: Blast! Films.

CHAPTER 8

Nishtha Jain: An Auto-ethnographic and a Postcolonial Feminist Gaze

Nishtha Jain

Nishtha Jain has been described as engaging in filmmaking ‘as part of a diverse career in cultural production and programming as well as feminist and queer activism in the city’ (Matzner 2012, 36–37). Jain’s postcolonial feminist film practice has two visible approaches: firstly, she speaks as a woman living in Mumbai who also enables other women and men from India or the Third World through providing access to participate in their own representation. Secondly, she engages in a self-reflexive, auto-­ ethnographic examination, turning the critical gaze on herself. Running through her oeuvre is a consciousness of the power between the filmmaker and the subject and her own privilege and the social and economic © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_8

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partitions in a country where there are profound class divisions. Her approach acknowledges individual circumstances and diversity, and intersectional factors such as class, race and gender that are specific to her lens as a relatively affluent and privileged English-educated cultural producer in a postcolonial society that is deeply inequitable (Matzner 2012, 38). Her cinema marks her experience, struggles and resistance as different to that of her subjects, who are sometimes collaborators. Jain’s practice is deeply interested in the speaking subject and her location, and so she is prone to ask questions such as: ‘How are we looking, how are the women being portrayed? How do men look at women? How do women look at women?’ As she observes in the interview in this chapter, ‘it’s not just how women look at women, it’s also where you’re located, the filmmaker, you know, what class, what culture you’re coming from and whom you’re looking at’. Her interests also include representing women’s stories and issues (e.g. her 2019 short Saboot examines women’s lot in society in an Indian women’s hospital ward). She has a thematic interest in marginalised groups (e.g. her 2006b film Call It Slut is about a transgender woman fearlessly opposing patriarchal attitudes and her 2020 film The Golden Thread questions the suffering of workers in the jute textile industry). Indian culture and history are also a focus (e.g. as told through the family albums of common folk in the 2011 Family Album or the history of neighbourhood photographic studios in Indian cities in the 2004 City of Photos). The viewer can take from her films an understanding of racial injustices, the ways in which race and class divides are still present today, and also colonialism’s residual effects and enduring systemic inequalities. Jain’s filmmaking has been shaped by social realist, political and left-­ wing influences. These come from a mixture of sources, including formal study, mentor experiences and collaborators. Her background includes studying political theatre while a university student at Jamia Millia Islamia Central University in Delhi. She went on to attend the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. After her graduation, she assisted well-­ known Indian filmmaker Kumar Shahani whose films include Maya Darpan (1972) and Kasba (1990). Shahani, a compatriot of Satyajit Ray, was ‘a key figure in the “Indian New Wave”’ (Matzner 2012, 36). He was also a student at FTII of Ritwik Ghatak, who was notable for his social realism, poetics and interest in the Bengal partition and feminism (Rakshit and Bhat 2015). Ghatak was known for his involvement in Parallel Cinema (1940–1965), a movement prior to the French New Wave influenced by Italian Neorealism.

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Since the early 2000s, Jain has collaborated with curator, critic, researcher, writer, producer and occasional co-director Smriti Nevatia to produce independent documentary films as the Mumbai-based company Raintree Films. They have collaborated on several documentaries directed by Jain, including City of Photos, At My Doorstep (2009b), Lakshmi and Me (2009a), Gulabi Gang (2012) and also, they co-directed 6 Yards to Democracy (2006a). Amongst her qualifications, Nevatia trained at the Sophia Polytechnic in the Social Communication, Media program; a course that ‘encourages students who predominantly hail from the urban elites, to create socially engaged media’ (Matzner 2012, 36). From 2007, Jain has won or been nominated for awards at major international film festivals all over the world. Her films have been broadcast on local and international networks and are shown in educational contexts in India and elsewhere.

Auto-ethnography Several of Jain’s films reflexively display an auto-ethnographic critique.1 These include the Lakshmi and Me and At My Doorstep. In these films the critical gaze is turned on herself and other people of privileged class, to expose multiple registers of oppression and explore the inequities of her own relationship with the disadvantaged, lower-class and often caste people that she or other India ‘elites’ employ (Matzner 2012, 37). Film scholar Catherine Russell has said an auto-ethnographic film represents and understands ‘his or her personal history to be implicated in the larger social formations and historical processes’ (Matzner 2012, 40). For example, Lakshmi and Me explores Jain’s relationship with her young maid within the context of her culture and its caste system. Jain has observed her ethical dilemmas, that in making that film ‘she remained dogged by the very uneasy question of whether Lakshmi allowing her to become the subject of Jain’s film was forced or was voluntary because Nishtha after all was Lakshmi’s employer’ (Chatterji 2015, 227). The 2009 film At My Doorstep observes garage or other service workers who make Bombay’s middle class more comfortable, those who are literally at her doorstep every day. In these auto-ethnographic films, Jain exposes the multiple axes of oppression faced by domestic servants disadvantaged by class, caste and gender, expressed from a feminist position. She illustrates that she is ideologically aware of herself, something that reflexively promotes viewers to also become aware of their own position and connect with Jain’s social critique. This is a complex undertaking which directs the viewer to

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understanding how we talk about the world through questioning and positions her documentaries as investigations of the real world rather than representations of it. This occurs not so much through what happens, but how it is talked about, or how it is mediated or constructed, and how this draws our attention to issues of power or politics.

Activism Jain regards women’s filmmaking as coming from an impulse to change and engage, and not just to show. Not all of her films focus on women, but they are all made through her female and feminist view, and from that point of view they can be seen as expressing her unique female gaze, perspective and politics. As I have noted elsewhere, women documentarians have played important roles as ‘change agents’ providing significant advocacy for social, cultural, political and legal change and their films can be seen as exposing struggle and are sites of activism (French 2019). The activist spirit present in her work is visible in the 2020 film The Golden Thread, which is described in the synopsis as going ‘beyond socio-political issues in order to unearth the hopes, aspirations and dreams buried under the mechanized and alienated bodies and minds’ (Docs Port Inchon website). This clearly also expresses a Marxist view of the condition of the workers because of the cultural context of a highly stratified class system, and due to their alienation from the products of their labour that are owned and used by others in a capitalist system. S/he/they are not fairly remunerated in relation to what s/he/they produce, they have no control over the process of production, are constructed within a social stratum that limits contact with those outside that group, and cannot consciously or with autonomy shape the world around them. Women documentarians have a particular role as ‘advocate change agents’, which is a term Byerly and Ross coined to describe those who enable channels for women’s voices to be heard to effect policy or other change (Byerly and Ross 2008, 185–186). A good example of this advocate change agent role is the film for which Jain is probably most well-­ known, Gulabi Gang. That film follows influential change agent Sampat Pal who founded the Gulabi Gang movement which now has thousands of members. Dressed in pink saris, they go to rural villages across northern India with the objectives of advocating for women’s rights, countering violence against women, opposing child marriage or labour and countering injustices women face at the hands of men. The film reveals how the

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actions have been precipitated by the patriarchal classist culture, and a context of corruption where women are not supported by the law. They are feminist activists and they have had an impact on the conditions and treatment of women whilst demonstrating the power of collective action. There are a number of documentary filmmakers in India who, like Jain, make films with social causes or activism at the heart. For example, among the most well-known is Deepa Dhanraj, whose 1991 documentary Something Like a War is an emotional view of a family planning programme in India. It is seen through female eyes, examining the reproductive rights of women, population control and the differences between social classes. According to Dhanraj, that film was made because they wanted to stop the government of India’s ‘coercive targeting’ of economically disadvantaged women to achieve state sterilisation targets, address the belief that the poor were responsible for their poverty because of excessive breeding and examine the social reasons poor women made the reproductive choices that they did (Kishore 2014). Another example is Shohini Ghosh’s 2002 Tales of the Night Fairies, which offers insights into contemporary issues for mostly female sex workers in India’s West Bengal, and how collective organising/unionising can provide powerful support and also a resistance to trafficking.

Women Documentarians in India Documentary filmmaking in India has evolved with solid realist traditions ‘due in part to the strong Griersonian legacy in the country’ and it has been influenced by folk forms and avant-garde aesthetics committed to socialist-informed critique (Matzner 2012, 36). Women’s documentary practice in India is as expansive as it is throughout the world and the contemporary Indian documentary movement has as many women filmmakers as men (Chatterji 2015, 186). Over decades, many of them have been interested in women’s issues, subjectivity and feminism within the Indian context. Feminist documentary has emerged strongly through to contemporary times. Examples include Pushpa Rawat’s 2017 film Mod, which has been described as ‘a rare attempt at reversing the male gaze. A woman filmmaker tries to lay bare the complicated minds of young men who are themselves weighed down by patriarchy’ (Joshi 2016). This film is an interesting example of a production about men by a woman that gives a female view of how men are also indoctrinated by patriarchy and how

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complicated the workings of ideology are. It reveals ‘the repressed minds of men who are weighted down by the very patriarchy they are a part of and perpetuate. They are as much victims of role playing as women’ (Joshi 2016). There are numerous well-known transnational filmmakers who live outside of India but frequently make films about Indian subjects, including Deepa Mehta (Let’s Talk About it 2006 and Water 2005), who works in fiction as well as documentary and whose subjects include domestic violence and arts topics. Another is Nisha Pahuja whose acclaimed 2012 film The World Before Her examined two girls: the first one, Ruhi, is from a lower class and is pursuing a ‘Miss India’ title, and the other, Prachi ‘learns to use a sword and a rifle because for her, equality for women would mean them walking in the paths of masculinity—precisely, the paths of violence’ (Biswa 2018). Pahuja’s film is made from Canada but the social context is specific to India. Jain’s work is well thought of in India and is also internationally highly regarded as part of the global documentary movement. As Turin noted: [D]ocumentaries such as 12th & Delaware (H. Ewing and R. Grady) and Gulabi Gang (Nishtha Jain), where female directors explore the effects of violence and trauma that are deeply embedded in the oppressive systems of religion and patriarchy, engender some of the most truthful and authentic representations of women’s experiences in documentary today. (Turin 2015)

Despite the recognition she has received, sustaining a career as a documentary filmmaker is difficult in India and elsewhere. Jain has described the current industry in India as lacking in funding and distribution support, saying that there is very little funding for documentaries and the ‘Films Division, which has produced many award-winning creative documentaries, is no longer commissioning films. Indian documentary filmmakers rely heavily on international film grants and TV acquisitions’ (Afroz Khan 2020). Whilst the popularity of documentaries promoted via successful platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have resulted in an increased interest by Indian film production companies in the documentary form, ultimately Jain sees government support as essential: artistic films, be it documentary or fiction, are helped greatly by state support all over the world. In this respect, India lags way behind despite the immense talent and availability of great stories …There’s an acute shortage

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of funds for documentary films… despite the immense talent and availability of great stories. (Afroz Khan 2020)

Postcolonial Feminism and What It Means to Be a Feminist Postcolonial feminism frames Jain’s entire body of work. She does not make films about Western cultures and all of her subjects are from her continent. They are squarely focused on exposing the complex layers of sexism, racism and colonialism’s political, cultural and economic legacy. This imbues the work with an intersectional outlook. As Jain observes in the interview in this chapter: ‘living in a woman’s body in India in itself comes with, with a lot of conflict’. Issues related to sex and gender are only part of the picture for women’s oppression in India and there are significant differences and cultural norms amongst women of different castes, locations and socioeconomic groups. In the interview that follows here, Jain emphasises the importance of filmmakers understanding and questioning their own gaze, and she expresses the view that coming from inside the culture produces a different view to those making a film from outside of it. Western norms are not directly applicable to understanding Third World circumstances. For instance, political, social or economic needs of people suffering extreme poverty are relevant to situations such as child marriage or labour. Various situations of enslavement are culturally, historically and ideologically founded, and not easily disrupted. Nevertheless, in Gulabi Gang Jain does show women’s collective power and that these women are not voiceless or passive, but potent actors against female oppression (particularly in rural locales). Indeed, it is an expression of an indigenous feminism. To some degree, her films also touch on the ways in which imperialism and global capitalism have caused the exploitation of women. In India today there are many injustices being inflicted upon women and these have resulted in movements like the Gulabi Gang and others (see Kurian 2018). Jain has observed that her takeaway from making her film about the Gulabi Gang and its leader was the answer to the question: ‘What does it mean to be a feminist?’ She says Sampat Pal provided the answer: I didn’t ask her this question but just from observing her. Whether it’s for good or for the bad, she makes her own decisions. She’s not afraid of taking

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risks, exploring new worlds, of failure or of not living up to people’s expectations. This quality is inspirational because in our society the majority of women lack the courage to mould their own lives. First they get ruled by their parents and brothers, then by their boyfriends and husbands and then their children. Even the feminists amongst us face these tyrannies of dependence and we spend our lives constantly seeking approval from our families and peers. (Belliappa 2014)

Interview with Nishtha Jain This is an edited transcript of an interview that was conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam on 20 November 2014. Jain and French were guests of The International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA). French: I thought I’d start with the idea of the ‘female gaze’. Do you think it is of value to think about the female gaze, and if so, what might it reveal? Jain: My first reaction when I was asked to be part of the female gaze (IDFA 2014 Special Program) was that the term female gaze is itself problematic in today’s context. Laura Mulvey talked about the male gaze so it’s in response to what was described as a male gaze, but we are talking about a female gaze.2 But the concept of a male gaze itself has been questioned and it doesn’t exist anymore because it’s too much of a simplification to just look at gender in terms of binary male and female. And, it assumes that because you may be of a female gender or a male gender that that could be the only way of looking at it. So, for me how I’m looking at it, is like it’s not a female gaze but a feminist gaze. And I think that makes much more sense to me because you know even though male gaze as a concept has been questioned, it did a very important thing to make people see how dominantly the men were part of the production process, [how they] were portraying women in films, the way the body of the woman was shown and the general portrayal. So, in that sense it was important, but it was also questioned because it’s not just the director who’s making the film, there is the camera and then there are a whole lot of people who are working in a production. So, can there be a male gaze? So in a similar way, can there be a female gaze? Because there are so many other people who are looking at it. … But largely the spirit of it was that how are we looking, how are the women being portrayed? How do men look at women? How do women look at women? And I think in that sense the concept is relevant and is really important because most often we don’t even realise, but

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we fall into the stereotypes of how we look at ourselves (even women), and how men look at women, so it’s important to discuss these things, even if it’s to refute it. It’s important to talk about it. French: You mention a feminist gaze. In a concrete way, would you say your films have a feminist gaze and how is that visible? Jain: Definitely, because it defines my being. I would never want to be an object of male voyeurism or I wouldn’t want myself to be objectified, as women are objectified in cinema, or in life. I think my filmmaking begins from there so it’s the way I look at things. And even the subjects that I would pick up. For example, a subject like Lakshmi and Me (2007). You know it’s a ‘low concept’—there is a term that you use for scripts, there’s a high concept and there’s a low concept. And a film like Lakshmi and Me, many channels wouldn’t even take. What is it about? It’s about a woman who comes into her house with a domestic worker, it’s about little things, it’s about gestures, it’s about feudalism, it’s about negotiating gender and class. And this has never been part of the big budget films. Even documentaries, you don’t show the everyday banal [actions]. A lot of these big films are not dealing with it. So even how the money comes from the funders, it all gets decided by the kind of subject that you do. And most often you’ll find that the women, their gaze about the things is very different. I don’t know how many women are into war and crime, or how many women are doing films like that, but a lot of women are [focused on] things that are much more intimate, much more personal—things that are about the domestic, and maybe it is a world that they deal with. Women do house chores, raise children, and it’s the world that they inhabit, and that’s what they want to talk about. They want to bring out the nuances of that world, they want to question that world, so the kind of films that women do becomes quite different, I feel. French: Yes, that’s fantastic because what you describe, it’s about something indescribable, the gestures of women, the world they live in. Jain: Absolutely. And I feel that women’s films are much more tactile, you know, they are about little things, about gestures and about feelings and emotions. It’s not big concepts, it’s about lived experience. It’s about felt things, you know. In that sense, if you divide yin and yang,3 and masculine and feminine, you would immediately see how women are able to naturally go into this kind of filmmaking. [They] deal with this, it moulds their subjects and the material in a way that women can [and], which men have to cultivate. And of course, men can do it as well, but it comes much easier to women, men have to cultivate that sort of quality.

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French: You talk about ‘lived experience’ as a thing that you’re interested in but do you think there’s anything about the fact that you are a woman and you live your life in the body of a woman that it colours the films that you make in any way? Jain: Of course, I don’t think we can deny that. [But] whatever my lived experience is, for example, what it is to be living in a woman’s body in India in itself comes with, with a lot of conflict. And how and why would that not somehow get transmitted in a film? It would, sometime or the other. What it is to live in a woman’s body. But I may have a woman’s body, but I may have a man’s head. So, you know in my mind I might be very manly, and I may still have a woman’s body. So we have to make allowances for differences and really not think in the binary. So whatever it is, whatever your body is, and whatever your lived experience is, it is bound to come in and that shows in the films. There’s no way of escaping it. French: I guess I was getting at a camaraderie or identifying with women’s stories, I was thinking about it in relation to that. Jain: Whether women would have more camaraderie for women’s stories? Yes, definitely, because it’s closer to their own experience, problems and issues that they’re facing, so they would maybe be able to see it. I’ve often also found, when I’m trying to do fiction, that I find that I’m able to script a woman character much more, I’m able to get inside the head of a woman much more than I can inside the head of a man. French: Oh, that’s interesting. Jain: So, I mean, it’s just easier for me. It’s not as if women cannot script male characters. Personally, I find it easy to understand a woman character. So, I feel that I do tend to have more empathy. I’d rather not say it, but [laughs] that I do have more empathy for women than for men. I understand women better. French: Men don’t have to deny they’re men. So why should women deny they’re women? That’s not saying they’re all the same. It’s just that they do have female bodies and people react to them because of that fact. When you were asked to select a film of your own for the female gaze programme at IDFA 2014, can you tell me why you picked the film Gulabi Gang, because you could easily have picked any of the others? Jain: I have a short film which is a little bit more directly connected to the subject. It is Call it Slut (2006b) and it’s made on Lakshmi Tripathi who’s a leading transgender woman in India. I was asked to make a film about the celebration of womanhood and I’d just met Lakshmi Tripathi. And the experience with her was that I’d seen her in a court flaunting her

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body. She’d just grown her breasts [hormonal treatment], so she had her breasts and she was going through the trans process of getting a woman’s body. She’s born a man but thinks she’s a woman. There’s a way she would flaunt her body and I felt I’d spent all my time covering my body, and being ashamed about it, and when I saw her, I wanted to liberate myself. So we did a short film together. It’s a funny film where she’s teaching me how to be a woman. And so that could have been included, but there were reasons why I couldn’t. So I decided to go with Gulabi Gang. And I feel with Gulabi Gang I’ve come to a point which much more complicates these issues of gaze because I think there’re several questions here. It’s not just how women look at women, it’s also where you’re located, the filmmaker, you know, what class, what culture you’re coming from and whom you’re looking at. And how, you know, and that is very important. We need to complicate the gaze. It is not just about a woman looking at another woman, or a man looking at a woman. But all the other factors are equally important, and they have to be recognised today because it’s a major issue for documentary filmmaking. When mostly we land up making films about people who are poor, who are suffering, or who are living in poor countries, or they’re having some kind of conflict. And we go there, and we go into these societies and we make their films. So it’s very important to question our own gaze. And to look at really what that does constitute. French: And by that do you mean that gender is only one aspect of the things that influence your view? And for that to be more widely accepted? Jain: Yes, for example, you know people come from different cultures and they very easily move into countries like India or Africa, and so you know there is a kind of re-colonisation that happens. And the kind of stories that we appropriate from these countries, and how we show them. There’s a kind of re-victimisation of the victims, a victimology. So what do you do when you tell stories of people who are in conflict? And how much, how holistically you tell that story. Or you just tell the bad parts? Or are you able to give back? You know the other things that belong to the culture, and I think that those are very important questions for me at this time. French: One of the things I’ve noticed about a lot of the films selected for the female gaze programme, and in documentaries by women filmmakers, is there’s an interest in outsiders. Do you think women are more likely to be interested in stories of outsiders because they are women, and not the dominant class—which is white, male, middle class?

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Jain: Yes, I think the question of the ‘Other’ has become a very important question because a big majority of the society is the ‘Other’.4 I mean, first the women were the others and today, to a large extent, they are and they are not. Am I, being middle-class, educated, Indian privileged filmmaker? I may not be the ‘Other’, I may be the ‘Other’ in another context. Maybe I am the ‘Other’ when I come to this country. When I come to Western countries, I may become the ‘Other’, but in my own country I am not. So, this is also a shifting position. I can talk about India very clearly. Many communities are now becoming the ‘Other’ and slowly, you know, the majority of the people are excluded, and you are left with the Hindu male. And so, women are being excluded, especially if they have very different ideas or radical ideas about what it means to be a woman. And Muslims are fighting for their land. So we’re creating so many ‘Others’ all the time. That’s also a reflection of global capitalism in a way. So what I was trying to say earlier was that we need to complicate all these ideas, and problematise them, and make them more inclusive to include other problems that belong to class. There’s a class gaze when I’m looking at Lakshmi, I’m very aware of my class gaze. It’s not just a woman looking at another woman. But it’s a woman who’s wielding a camera, who’s an employer of the domestic worker. So I’m engaging with that, I’m talking about the class gaze. That’s what I’m talking about. And then there is a caste, especially in India. So you know, it’s not just gender. And then, within that is a colonial gaze which keeps on coming back. India was a colony. The elites in India,5 who benefitted from the Empire, continue and mimic that gaze as well, and all those things have to be questioned. French: I wondered about your experience as a female filmmaker in the documentary industry. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that, in Australia and other places, the highest participation in the film industry is in documentary filmmaking. I noticed, for example, that Sundance said that there are more women in documentary than in fiction film. I’d be interested in your ideas on why that is, and also, whether you’ve had any experiences yourself where, being a woman, you might have been aware of barriers because of that? Jain: When I went to the mass communications school there were more women in my post-graduation course [Jamia Mass Communication Centre, New Delhi]. Then at the film school [Film and Television Institute of India, Pune], in the film direction class, we were eight women and only two men. In the documentary world, it’s full of women. Predominately it’s women, there are women technicians, camera persons, editors. But the

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moment you look Bollywood, at the mainstream industry, there are hardly any women directors there. And the women who do work in the industry are in the traditional roles of being editors, or being assistants, art directs, makeup, etcetera. But very few women cinematographers are accepted unless they are really male like or they behave like males to be accepted. So, personally for me, it was very interesting because I didn’t want to be part of the mainstream industry. I felt it was very gendered not only in terms of what it portrays in the films, but how it would be to work in that industry as well. So clearly, it’s the independent cinema where I can be myself, I can explore, I can experiment, and there is total acceptance for women in documentaries, animation, and in experimental cinema in India. And I think it might be the case the world over that this is where women find themselves much more accepted. You can portray, you can show different stories, you make films about things that you may not be able to do in a mainstream industry because capital works in a certain way in the mainstream. But in independent cinema it works differently. And I think women do want to tell other stories which are not the mainstream stories. French: Do you think that women might be gravitating to more female cultures, or particular ways of working? Jain: Given a choice, why would I want to do a mainstream film where I cannot even show a woman the way I want to show a woman? Right? Why would I even want to enter that space and be treated like a second-­ rate citizen when I can be completely my own, in control, and have authority in an alternative media. Simply, it’s a matter of control as well. I lose control if I move into mainstream media. Of course, I could enter mainstream media and say ‘okay, I want to carve out space for myself’, which some women are trying to do. But maybe they like that kind of cinema. I personally don’t even like that kind of cinema. Why would I even waste any moment or time with it when I can actually work and do other things? French: So, in the documentary sector, you haven’t really felt gender as an issue? Jain: Not at all, in fact I find it an advantage to be a woman, especially in India. French: Could you elaborate on that? Jain: I mean, if you’re doing films about women, there is just immediate acceptance because you are a woman. French: Do you mean access to the subject? Jain: Access to the subject, to intimate spaces with women, and the men are still open to you, they’re not like, ‘Oh, we’ll only talk to a man.’

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So, you have both the advantages. But having said that, when I was doing Lakshmi and Me, earlier it was being shot by a woman cinematographer [Deepti Gupta] and she had to leave the project halfway and then, a male cinematographer [Rakesh Haridas] joined and now, he shot three films of mine. And it made no difference. Because it’s the kind of man where his gender didn’t matter in that sense. His way of looking is a very tender way of looking at the world, and so, it didn’t really matter that he was a man. A certain kind of male coming in and trying to dominate the situation would have mattered, so it really depends on what sort of individuals that we’re working with irrespective of the gender. French: One thing I’ve noticed when I’ve been looking at the films about the women filmmakers in the female gaze programme is that there does seem to be a really strong humanist interest, and an interest in human behaviour. Do you think that’s linked to sex and gender, or is that a documentary thing? Jain: It’s definitely a documentary thing, whether it’s a woman thing, again, it’s, it’s a little difficult to say. But there’s one thing I feel that women do not even attempt, and that’s a good thing: making an observational film. I find that women are much more participating in their own films. Men tend to make films which is more observing from outside. But a lot of women tend to be very involved and participative in their filmmaking, their work tends to be more self-reflexive than men’s work is. And if men’s work is self-reflexive then it’s an exception to the rule. And that’s one thing I’d forgotten to say earlier. So, to answer your question, humanist filmmaking comes from that impulse: to want change and wanting to engage, and not just to show. French: And that’s really strong in your filmmaking, especially in Gulabi Gang, the desire for social change. What has been the impact of that activist group? Jain: They’re a huge group now. Right now, it’s too early to talk in terms of statistics, but they are losing the fear to engage with the system, which is not working in their favour, and demanding the system to change. To be able to petition to understand how to work with the powers of bureaucracy, I think that’s huge, that’s where empowerment comes to consciousness. First is the consciousness that I have some rights. And then how do I get those rights which have been taken away from me? And then finally getting those rights will take time. But there are these steps and I think they are pretty much on their way to be able to get those rights. But right now, they have to express that yes, we want our rights, we exist. That didn’t happen earlier. If five women dressed in pink saris enter a police

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station, the police will take them more seriously than if just a woman went alone. But even if it was a woman alone, and she was in a pink sari, she would be taken in that context. It’s going to take time to really see the impact. But I can see it. French: Thank you for your time, Nishtha.

Conclusion: Jain and the Female Gaze Jain’s gaze is a reflexive one, intently focused on where she is located as a filmmaker and through this expressing her unique perspective, politics and her female gaze. The act of filmmaking is how she understands and questions her own gaze, which she regards as a feminist gaze. As Simone de Beauvoir observed, the relationship between one’s body and one’s subjectivity is neither necessary nor arbitrary, but contingent (Moi 1999, 82). Jain’s contingent circumstances are strongly influenced by living in a woman’s body in India, which she observes comes with a lot of conflict, and that is interwoven with her individual history, her age, class, race, nationality and political encounters. This manifests in a gaze that is aware of class, caste, colonialism and gender. Jain observed that thinking about a notion of a female gaze is complex and that consigning a gaze to binaries of male and female oversimplify it. However she does regard the gaze of women filmmakers as very different to that of the gaze of men and this is, in her view, characterised by a recognition of the difference in nuance, the ‘little things’, the gestures, emotions and feelings: ‘It’s not big concepts, it’s about lived experience. It’s about felt things.’ This lived experience is what she reads in the complex networks of signification presented by women filmmakers. Films connect with audiences emotionally and empathetically, and Jain’s view is that this enables a camaraderie to identify with women’s stories, experience, problems and the issues of women subjects.

Notes 1. Jain said in the interview in this chapter that women’s work tends to be more reflexive than men’s films. 2. Using a development of Freudian concepts, Mulvey conceptualised and articulated the relationship between individuals and the representation of Classic Hollywood cinema. She theorised the pleasures of looking (scopophilia), distinguished between the active/male and passive/female gaze and distinguished three kinds of look, concluding the men were bearers of the look, women were spectacle, and found the look of the spectator to be

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aligned with the non-eroticised male character. It relates to modes of ­looking (fetishistic and voyeuristic) and the controlling gaze. See Mulvey 1975, 1981. 3. Yin and Yang is a Chinese concept where nature is understood to have two contradictory but complementing, harmonious and interdependent opposites. Yin is the feminine and Yang the masculine. 4. Theorist Stuart Hall observed that ‘“Otherness” is accomplished by a binary form of representation and that there are very few neutral binary oppositions’ (Hall 1997, 235). The ‘Other’ is the marginal, the minority, the group or representation which is not the dominant one. 5. This is a reference to those who have significant economic advantage in terms of wealth or resources.

References Afroz Khan, Humra. 17 January 2020. 5 Indian Female Filmmakers Spotlighting the Stark Realities Around Women. Cosmopolitan. https://www.cosmopolitan. in/life/features/g19410/5-­i ndian-­f emale-­f ilmmakers-­s potlighting-­s tark-­ realities-­around-­women#slide-­8/. Accessed 10 January 2020. Belliappa, Nirupama. 19 February 2014. Gulabi Gang: In Conversation with Nishtha Jain. Indiearth. http://blog.indiearth.com/gulabi-­gang-­in-­ conversation-­with-­nishtha-­jain/. Accessed 12 December 2019. Biswa, Bijaya. 15 October 2018. Women and the Challenging Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/10/15/ women-­directors-­documentary-­film/. Accessed 20 January 2020. Byerly, Carolyn, and Karen Ross. 2008. Women and Media: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Chatterji, Shoma A. 2015. Filming Reality: The Independent Documentary Movement in India. New Delhi: Sage. French, Lisa. 2019. Women Documentary Filmmakers as Transnational “Advocate Change Agents”. Interdisciplina Journal 7 (17): 15–29. http://www.revistas. unam.mx/index.php/inter/issue/view/5093. Hall, Stuart, ed. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage. Jain, Nishtha. 2014. Interview Conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 20 November 2014 (Published in this Chapter). Joshi, Namrata. 26 March 2016. The Difficulty in Understanding Men. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-­ed/the-­difficulty-­in-­ understanding-­men/article8397036.ece/. Accessed 20 January 2020. Kishore, Shweta. 2014. Transcending Testimony: An Interview with Filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/ transcending-­testimony-­an-­interview-­with-­filmmaker-­deepa-­dhanraj-­29763/.

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Kurian, Alka. 1 February 2018. #MeToo is riding a new wave of feminism in India. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/metoo-­is-­riding-­a-­new-­ wave-­of-­feminism-­in-­india-­89842/. Matzner, Deborah. 2012. Domestic Concerns, Transnational Fields: Two Recent Documentary Films from Mumbai and an “Interstitial Mode of Production”. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 3 (1): 35–51. https://journals.sagepub. com/doi/pdf/10.1177/097492761100300104. Moi, Toril. 1999. What is a Woman? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16 (3): 6–18. ———. 1981. Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946). Framework 15 (17): 2–15. Rakshit, Kusumita, and Bhat, Ramray. 8 March 2015. At the Intersection of Partition and Patriarchy: Fluidity of Womens’ Identities Observed through the Filmic Lens of Ritwik Ghatak. Dark Matter, 10. http://www.darkmatter101. org/site/2015/03/08/at-the-intersection-of-partition-and-patriarchy-fluidity-of-womens’-identities-obser ved-through-the-filmic-lens-of-ritwikghatak/. Accessed 20 January 2020. Turin, Svetla. 2 November 2015). Beyond the Female Gaze and Towards a Documentary Gender Equality A Female Gaze of Unequal Proportions. POV Point of View Magazine. http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/ beyond-­the-­female-­gaze-­and-­towards-­a-­documentary-­gender-­equality/.

Filmography Dhanraj, Deepa. 1991. Something like a War. India: D & N Productions. Ghosh, Shohini. 2002. Tales of the Night Fairies. India: The Centre for Feminist Legal Research and Mama Cash. Jain, Nishtha. 2004. City of Photos. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2006a. 6 Yards to Democracy. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2006b. Call It Slut. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2009a. Lakshmi and Me. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2009b. At My Doorstep. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2011. Family Album. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2012. Gulabi Gang. India: Raintree Films. ———. 2019. Saboot. India: Abbasi Bros. Mehta, Deepa. 2005. Water. Canada: Deepa Mehta Films. ———. 2006. Let’s Talk About it. Canada: Filmblanc Inc. Pahuja, Nisha. 2012. The World Before Her. Canada: Storyline Entertainment. Rawat, Pushpa. 2017. Mod. India: School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Shahani, Kumar. 1972. Maya Darpan. India: Film Finance Corporation. ———. 1990. Kasba. India: Doordarshan.

CHAPTER 9

Marie Mandy: Female Subjectivity and Aesthetics

Marie Mandy

Marie Mandy was born in Louvain Belgium but lives and works in both Brussels (Belgium) and Marseilles (France). Her output has been across a number of genres, and as well as being a director, she has produced and written several of her films. The first part of the chapter offers a feminist textual analysis of Mandy’s film made in 2000: Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film (hereafter called Filming Desire) and the second part includes an interview with her.1 The key explorations in both the contextualising text and the interview are an examination of female

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subjectivity through the idea of the possibility of a cinematic language that is derived from female experience; an exploration of how the treatment of the body might offer an understanding of women’s filmmaking and a consideration of the notion of the gaze as formed (or colonised) by male-­ dominated histories of gazing. Mandy is centrally interested in the question: What is filmmaking from a woman’s point of view? According to the press kit for her documentary Filming Desire, this question motivated and framed the film in which she interviewed some of the most wellknown female filmmakers globally, including Sally Potter (UK), Agnès Varda (France), Catherine Breillat (France), Deepa Mehta (India), Safi Faye (Senegal) and Jane Campion (Australasia).2 All of these filmmakers made films that Mandy felt she identified with because they offered female points of view and she identified with their films as a woman, recognising ‘the satisfaction and pleasure that we feel when we can truly relate to situations or characters’ (Press Kit, p.  7). Filmmaker Francesca Comencini describes this identification in another way, as capturing ‘the reality of being a woman’.

National and Production Contexts Mandy’s background is international, having grown up in Africa and America. At the University of Louvain, she studied Roman Philology3, and graduated in 1988 from the London International Film School. She trained in directing with Jiri Menzel and Krzysztof Kieslowski and also with Delia Salvi’s Actors Studio. In 1989, she established Amazone Films—her own Brussels-based production company. She produced and directed from that base, first making the short Judith (1989), then a fiction feature Pardon Cupidon (1992). Following that she substantially moved her career to non-feature film4, a transition that began with her second documentary Madeleine in Heaven (1999). She has also worked with the Belgian television channel RTBF. From 1993 to 1995, she was president of the ARPF (Belgian Association of Film Directors-Producers), and according to her biography on the Women Make Movies site (n.d.), she has served as vice-president of the Belgian committee of the Authors Guild SACD. Making films in Belgium has never been easy due to the fact that the country has two linguistically defined regions: the Dutch (Flemish) speakers in Flanders and the French speakers in Wallonia, plus some German speakers in the east, making the country officially trilingual

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(Mosley 2001, 1). This has resulted in a documentary sector where the films are largely identifiable with Brussels or Wallonia (Mosley 2001, 166). As stated, Mandy also works in France and has been employed by the French Television ARTE that also runs an international factual distribution arm. The French have a long history of women filmmakers; indeed, the world’s first female film director and producer was the French woman Alice Guy.5 In 1896, at age twenty-three, Guy directed her first film (La Fée aux Choux/The Fairy of the Cabbages), and in 1906, she directed The Life of Christ, a blockbuster with three hundred extras (Poirier 2011). Despite this history, as Mandy testifies in the interview in this chapter, there is a resistance in the country to being described as feminist because feminism has a bad image in France (although not with Mandy personally). Tarr has noted that France has the biggest film industry of all countries bordering the Mediterranean, and while it has the most women filmmakers, there is no explicit feminist practice; instead, women ‘have elected to develop and consolidate their relatively strong position … [mainstreaming] representations of female subjectivity and issues affecting women’s lives’ (2010, 62)—which is an approach common in other Western countries as a backlash was felt against feminism from the 1990s (see Faludi 1991). A 2012 article reported that female documentary filmmakers in France were approximately seventeen per cent of the overall number of films directed or co-directed between 2000–2010 (Tarr 2012, 194). According to Tarr, the documentaries by French female filmmakers that achieved the highest box office and most visibility in the first decade of the millennium were by filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Coline Serreau, Claire Simon and Ariane Doublet6 (Tarr 2012, 194). Tarr identified three key themes that emerged in films by women in that period. These provide an insight into the preoccupations of contemporary French female documentarians in recent times: 1) global issues, such as the destruction of the planet or the plight of those in exile; 2) women’s issues; and 3) films about filmmaking or cinema, for example, documentaries like The Beaches of Agnès, where Varda reviews her own life, career and auteur status (Tarr 2012, 194–195). Mandy’s Filming Desire could be seen as category two: women’s issues, given it is about the human right to creative expression. However, it has strongest alignment with the third category of films about cinema, because its key focus is interviews with women directors globally, examining female points of view in film in order to explore the possibility of women’s cinematic language.

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Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film The first two minutes of Filming Desire convey the film’s essence, both in content and aesthetic approach. It begins with images of desiring women, the sound of breathing, almost monochrome aesthetic intercutting with a woman tossing and turning on a white bed. This female body, wearing a white satin nightgown, heaves herself onto the mattress, landing heavily, flinging herself back and forth as if experiencing a nightmare. As the film progresses, the screen divides to become half male and half female. The bodies continue tossing uncomfortably. Fleeting, evocative and some exploitative images from various films are intercut, and the audience hear a voiceover: ‘What woman hasn’t dreamed of seeing the world in her own image? Who hasn’t wanted to see the world through her own eyes?’ Whilst the audience have no way of knowing this, the figure on the bed is the filmmaker Marie Mandy. From this extra-textual information, and the voiceover, one might draw a conclusion that her dreams are disrupted and that what disturbs her is the absence of a world that represents her own image and desire. Following the above, what is seen is the title of the film written on the torso of a woman, signifying the focus of the film on the body, evoking the notion of the body as a landscape and underpinning the idea that the filmmaker poses, that the body is central to women’s filmmaking. The words on the body are in French but the voiceover is in English, which links to the filmmaker’s bilingual and bicultural status. The name of the filmmaker appears on the muscular back of a man, where white writing on black skin offers: ‘Un film de Marie Mandy’. Then, a map of the world on a female torso visually supports the voiceover, which offers that ‘In a world where 20,000 women make films, there are only 600 of us women directors. That’s barely 3%’. The picture and text further underline the film’s focus on the body, as well as its feminist politics. This strategy of cutting to the shots of feet running, hands clenching or the woman tossing is an anti-­ realist technique.7 This disrupts the ability of the audience to be neatly sutured into the world of the interviews, and instead, figuratively and symbolically provokes the audience into understanding they are watching a film, a construction, and this works to induce an active, analytical or critical approach from the audience. It stresses the slipperiness of reality and truth, as well as the subjective and ideological base of those concepts. Mandy then introduces the idea that women filmmakers are ‘trying to invent their own language’ and there is a cut to legs running (but more

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like swimming in the air), the audio track has the sound of puffing, then a film frame that is not unlike a super-8 frame with a black mask and filmic flicker moves to the first interview. In the shot, the audience see the French street ‘Rue Daguerre’ and meet Agnès Varda. Her contribution as the founder of the New Wave is described as ‘a fact rarely acknowledged’, signifying the way women are frequently left out of history and further enunciating the film’s feminism. In this sense it is a ‘herstory’, because at this particular moment in the film, it works to foreground Varda’s female life and achievements.8 Varda is introduced with the voiceover: ‘two children and 35 films in all genres’, which brings together identity and creativity (something Mandy does in interviews throughout the film, noting where the filmmakers have children, and how many). The audience are led to be reflexively aware that representation is a site of struggle or of oppositions. This is further extended by the interview with Agnès Varda, who offers that: men tend to cut women’s bodies into bits a lot more. They show more of what we call technically the erogenous zones. They show women’s bums, their breasts, their arses, their arseholes in porn movies and so on. Women directors seem to film women more as whole. The bits are bigger … Women’s whole bodies are shown.

But the images Mandy intercuts are dissected bodies that are not these erogenous zones but hands and feet, as if she is challenging the code.9 This is also implied by her dissection of muscular male torsos with the film title, and later, another male torso with the words ‘sex_love_desire’. She intercuts those images with clips from the films of her interviewees which depict women’s whole bodies, creating a juxtaposition that reinforces Varda’s statement. The film cuts to little painted portraits of Varda and one of the female forms (the body again emphasised).

The Body in Representation and Image To be a woman is to be born in a woman’s body … Simone de Beauvoir’s view [that] we are nurtured into womanhood has to do with thoughts of the mind, [but] the fact remains we’re born into a female body. How can that not be an essential fact whether you’re a film director, cleaner, mother, whether you have children or not? We women inhabit a female body … The first feminist act is to say ‘Okay, they look at me, but I can look too’, it’s to decide to look, not see the world and oneself through another’s eyes. Varda in Filming Desire

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Mandy has said that images in women’s films are generally focused on body language and that she wanted ‘to prove that the body is the most direct way to understand women’s filmmaking’ (Press Kit, p. 8). Her aspiration for the film was ‘to find out the distinctive aspects of women’s filmmaking and their cinematographic language through the way the concept of desire is filmed’ (Press Kit, p. 8). Academic Anne Ciecko asserts that Mandy’s project is provocative (Ciecko 2017, 258). The excerpts that Mandy shows in her film illustrate women directors expressing erotic aesthetics with a tendency to treat the female body more holistically than male filmmakers, and also to an approach that is in opposition to the fact that most films are made by men and therefore reflect male sexuality. She makes two key feminist observations: 1) that women’s bodies have been portrayed through a dominant masculine lens with the gaze of most cinema being historically colonised through men’s eyes; and 2) that sex has been portrayed as the fulfilment of men’s desires rather than of women’s. The film concludes that women have a different perspective, for example, they are interested in interiority and detail when they represent sex and desire. The interviews together provide compelling substantiation that films by these women treat the body and desire differently to dominant modes by male filmmakers. For example, as filmmaker Sally Potter observes in the documentary, women express the private, inner world of the characters and it is not about the visual [as in men’s films] but the experiential, something Potter characterised as the world of the ‘heart and the body’. This idea is described in Filming Desire by filmmaker Léa Pool as showing the world of imagination, or what lies behind the scene. Academic Chantal Nadeau has characterised this as ‘the exquisite pleasure of seeing “how beautiful it is to make [female] bodies speak.”’ (Women Make Movies Catalogue n.d.). Nadeau pinpoints the pleasure as female subjectivity, something likely to connect with women audiences in expressing female identities, voices and perspectives. Mandy’s process is effectively practice-led research. Mandy uses her practice to understand something about women’s filmmaking, examining gendered desire, and also, the interviews communicate how each female filmmaker has agency to express their embodied knowledge and desire—their female subjectivity. Mandy’s film poses an interesting question: Is the body the subject or the object of fantasy? If this idea is taken further, one might ask: Is there a difference in this regard in how male and female filmmakers treat the body? In her article on the subject, Mary Anne Doane observed that film

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has been aligned ‘with the fantasies of the voyeur’ and has ‘historically articulated its stories through the conflation of its central axis of seeing/ being seen with the opposition male/female’ (Doane 1981, 22). If contemporary women’s filmmaking can be understood as having shifted from this past in order to explore the body as subject, then the cinema can be understood as a rich site to gain knowledge of female sexuality and identity. In Filming Desire this is repeatedly expressed; for example, French filmmaker Catherine Breillat says it is about ‘understanding what it is to exist in that [female] sexuality’. English filmmaker Sally Potter outlines her view in the documentary, that it is the subtext that is the most interesting thing, expressing a very private inner world and internal experience of the characters. Potter regards this as conveying the experiential and she does this through the eyes and the feeling of movement in order to capture the sensuality of the world of the heart and the body. This is a challenge because it is subtle; it is showing the invisible through images and evoking imagination to capture what is going on. In her film Orlando (1992), Potter did this through showing the body as a landscape in order to emphasise that the inner experience changes the scale of things; the cinematography doubles for a caress. This is what author Laura Marks has described as ‘haptic visuality’ where the ‘eyes themselves function as organs of the touch’ (Marks 2000, 162). She refers to the way we experience touch ‘both on the surface of and inside our bodies’ (Marks 2000, 162). Marks promotes the view that subjectivity is involved in perception—that female subjectivity creates not just a viewpoint, that a reader might bring a gender lens to perceive and perhaps identify with a representation.

A Colonised Gaze A female-centric gaze is also informed, moved, and provoked by the overwhelmingly male histories of gazing that have long taken up more than their fair share of space. With this world saturated in male-imagined imagery, it takes some of us years to understand that it is possible to see differently. Kristen Johnson (Tefler 2018)

In the press kit for Filming Desire, Mandy observed that it is a terrible thing that women have not been taught how to develop their vision as women in the history of arts or in film schools (2000, p.  6). When

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filming her first love scene for her debut feature film Sorry Cupid [Pardon Cupidon 1991], a history of representation flooded into her head and she visualised love scenes she has seen in movies, the usual positions of the bodies and the cameras, and the male director’s concepts of this subject. And she asked herself: ‘How can I shoot this scene from my own point of view without thinking of what I have previously seen? How can I shoot a love scene from the point of view of the woman that I am?’ (2000, p. 8). Filming Desire asks the question: Where is the woman who is just like us? And this is answered by Varda who says that society has defined or described women’s bodies according to codes that have always been set by men. So, the challenge for women directors is that they are confronted with the portrayal of women that was already formulated. According to Varda, the choices in response were firstly to assert another code, secondly to get angry, or thirdly to ‘express women’s sensations more subtly’, which she observed eventually proved more successful (Filming Desire). The film does, however, reveal that women filmmakers have also pursued another code through what they are concerned with, and through aesthetics (the creative, expressive and stylistic qualities of the work). In addition, the film offers various points of difference between cinema made by women and that made by men. For example, Hankin says of Filming Desire that ‘the documentary subjects make both explicit and implicit claims that their work attempts to counter depictions of sexual desire in male directed cinema’ (Hankin 2007, 70). Hankin offers examples of this, including Varda’s viewpoint that there is a difference in the way nudity is used by men: it is ‘the end of a process of undressing or of voyeurism or discovery that leads to the woman being naked generally for a love scene with the immediate use of [her] body [by a man]’ (Filming Desire 2002). Mandy identified and included films in her documentary that push back against the mainstream and the tendency for women to always be at the call of men or under the sway of their sexual power. An example of this shift from representational norms is captured by the inclusion of a scene from the 1998 film Si je t’aime, prends garde à toi (Beware of My Love), written and directed by Jeanne Labrune. The clip presented shows the central character, Muriel (Nathalie Baye), as self-possessed and asserting her own terms:

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You bore me shitless … You’re a good screw. You’re smart. Great! You want a blow job, I’ll give you one but that’s as far as it goes. For the rest you’re a bore. … I won’t take any more shit from you. So here goes. … Your dick is fine. But your brain needs a workout. … Women aren’t what you think. … They’re not whores. And they’re not your mum.

Another example of Mandy’s commentary on how the gaze has been colonised is achieved through the experience of African filmmaker Safi Faye whom she introduces as an ‘ethnologist and the first African woman to make a feature film’. At the same time, Mandy shows that it is not just about the history of representation, but also about the films that women are able to make. As Ciecko has observed, Mandy’s film: suggests that she [Faye] met and overcame some resistance in the shooting of the scene [in her 1996 film Mossane] with the woman on top of the man; the woman controls her own pleasure and stops when she chooses … The filmmaker insists that these sorts of images and expressions are part of the “African” experience: “All of this belongs to my continent, Africa.” (Ciecko 2017, 259)

Whilst this implies it is a reality for women in Africa, such scenes are not the norm and that is likely to be why Faye met resistance. Mandy’s approach to the interview with Faye was to speak to her whilst she is sewing, creating an intimate, domestic, if not feminine space for Faye’s narrative of women’s culture and her experience of it (which she represents in her films). Faye tells the audience how women share their sexual experiences amongst each other and that she gets ideas when she cooks. All the while she threads her needle, continuing her story as she sews.

Interview with Marie Mandy This is an edited transcript of an interview that was conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam on 24 November 2014. Mandy and French were guests of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA). French: To start, why did you make Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film (2000)? Mandy: The starting point for Filming Desire was a question that was addressed to me by a journalist. I had made a feature film in which I shot some love scenes and then this journalist said, ‘Well, I can see this is made

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by a woman’. I was really puzzled by his remark because I never thought of that. I was living myself as a filmmaker. I didn’t identify myself as a woman filmmaker, but I tried to do things in my own way and suddenly he was identifying those things as being specific, but I didn’t know which way they were specific. So, I decided I had to think about it and maybe the best way to find out what it is to be a woman filmmaker, and which way we are different from maybe men filmmakers, was to go and see my peers to interview other filmmakers, and so I went around to investigate that question. French: And now that you have done all of that, if I ask you the question: Do men and women make different films? Or is there a different lens? What would be your response? Mandy: From my experience as a spectator, I can feel differences in films made by a woman and films made by a man most of the time, and I would say that the main difference regards identification. I can identify. So the biggest difference would be towards identification. I think I can identify much deeper when the story is told by a woman because I will identify in detail, and for me there is a pleasure about identification and so I just have more pleasure because I can recognise things that really talk to me. French: Do you think there’s a different way of approaching making a film as a woman? For example, in the Q&A you mentioned a circular idea. Can you tell me what you were thinking when you said that and when you think there are other things? Mandy: One of the things I could find out and notice in investigating that question is the narrative. I think that in general women will tell the story in a more circular way. So that means something more meandrous— you know, they wouldn’t associate ideas—interweave things; build a story with different layers but not always going from A to B. I think a lot of male films are driven by a strong narration, A to B narration, which is not the case of most of the films made by women. French: In the female gaze programme that you’re in at IDFA, what do you think—is there a value in curating a programme like this and having these conversations? What do you think the outcomes might be or are from that? Mandy: I think it’s very important to gather—to discuss those questions and to see films that we don’t get the opportunity to see in other places. For me, it’s about building the viewpoint.

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For me, it’s about how to build a personal gaze, a personal viewpoint and you need—we have built it out of the blue, and so to see films that we can identify, that really talk to us—films that really move us—films that are different. I am talking about female films and it just helps me as an artist to sharpen my point of view, so I think in those opportunities and festivals it’s a kind of rhetoric somehow where I’m confronted with ideas that I usually don’t find in my professional environment, and so it’s kind of a think tank—it helps me to think further and to discuss with my colleagues. French: Can you give me an example of something that you think— that you talk about your practice being informed by the experience of an event like this. Is there something specific? Is there an example you could give me about that—what you’re thinking of? Mandy: Yes, for example, I’ve seen three films lately in the festival and I realise that in many moments they were very obsessive and so I observed the way that those women directors dealt with obsession because very often I would like to translate or express obsession, for example, and I don’t know how to do it and then I can learn from that way of doing it and then find my own way. Same thing with mental images—I think women have a tendency to create more mental images in their films. French: Do you mean that they are more psychological? Mandy: Evocative, just more evocative pictures. French: I find that too, watching the films that I have been watching in the programme. I wanted to ask you about an idea that I actually got from your film. I have spent a long time thinking about it and it has really helped me a lot to kind of frame my thinking around sex and gender in film, and that’s this idea that if you live your life in a female body, that is expressed in the work. Do you think that the fact that you live your life in a female body influences the films that you make in any way? Mandy: Yes. To be in the woman’s body, of course it’s a fact, and because it is a way of experiencing of life then it becomes—the place from where you will express what you feel or reflect. It’s difficult to give maybe examples but I have to think about it. French: Well, I was thinking that because you encounter the world as a woman, that shapes your perspective and the things that you’re interested in. It shapes the stories that you make. Do you think women are interested in different stories to men? If we didn’t have enough women

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filmmakers—if women were excluded, would there be a lack of certain kinds of stories or interests or aesthetics? Mandy: Yes. I think that’s where we get to the question of the point of view—every story in life can be told from a man’s point of view or a woman’s point of view, I guess, and it’s not the same—it’s like telling a war from the point of view of the winner or the loser. It’s never the same point of view. And it’s interesting to have both, and regarding subjects, what’s very difficult nowadays I think is that when I go to a broadcaster and I come up with a subject—the project of a film but dealing with a specific subject—very often they say, ‘But we have already done that because last year we made a film about men in prison’, and I say, ‘I am talking about women in prison’, and they say, ‘We’ve dealt with it’. So, you see, I find that difficult nowadays. French: I don’t know if that is a particularly gendered thing. Have you experienced any discrimination? Has being a woman been a good thing rather than a bad thing in the sense that it could help you rather than hinder you? Has the fact of being female had any impact on your opportunities or the things you could do or have there been barriers? Mandy: Well, ten years ago I would have said no, but nowadays I think yes, because in the last years the subject that I’ve been wanting to deal with, to make films about, was very oriented in feminine stories, and so, I think it’s a problem. French: Are you saying that gatekeepers are men, or both men and women at the top, who make these programming or funding decisions that are blocking feminine or female-centred stories? Mandy: It’s both men and women, but I think it’s very specific to France where women are so afraid that they would be considered as feminist—they’d rather not give something to a woman. French: And why is being feminist so bad? Mandy: I think because of the French story of feminism. A lot of people have a vision that feminism is something against men. I would say that Anglo-­Saxon feminism is more for women. And now feminism has a very bad image in France. It is considered as an insult. French: We need another word so we can take the activism and maintaining equality and the conversations forward, but yes, I think that goes on around the world. There’s a kind of feminist backlash everywhere. I noticed when I was thinking about documentary and I had a look at the statistics in Australia, and it’s about the highest participation, and there are

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more women working in the film industry in documentary, and so when I looked in other places in the world, I discovered that was also the case. I wondered what you thought—why women might be attracted to documentary particularly or even why you are? Mandy: So, I think in general documentary is a little part of the film industry where there is still some freedom and liberty. It’s still kind of a laboratory where you can invent, for example, new narrative modes where you can propose new things. So I think women like to investigate that rather than do something very conventional and so that’s maybe one reason I like to do documentary because they are attracted to that kind of narrative and the relationship with reality that I think women can handle very well. Now, in a more negative way, I would say that documentary film is not an industry. And so there is not much money. There are a lot of women there because they don’t make expensive films, you see, but at the moment there is a very big budget question. Usually the money is more given to men. I mean, if you make statistics about that you would see that it’s very obvious that the money goes to men. I know in France the biggest budget that’s given to women for narrative fiction would be equivalent to the lowest budget given to men directors. French: Well, why do you make them? What drives you in the field? Mandy: Well, I make documentaries because I can’t write. I have no imagination, and so if I have to write a feature film it’s a problem, whereas if I make documentaries, I write with the reality. And I’m interested in that. French: Having just seen your film again, I’d say you have imagination. Mandy: But I don’t have the imagination to create characters, so I find it difficult to write fiction, although I do it with core writers. With documentary, I like to actually take the reality and struggle with that reality to make it fit in a film and tell a story. I think it’s very interesting to do that and, also, it’s always very nice to work with real people and share experiences. I think a documentary also offers more opportunity to invent new ways of storytelling really. You can probably weave things together in a different way and there is not that much pressure on making the story credible because it comes from the real and it’s there already with its own strength. French: In your film, someone says that they make films because they want to render reality as a woman, which I think is really kind of an

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interesting idea and maybe lots of women documentary filmmakers are really driven by that same thing. MANDY: Just coming back to that, I believe that many women have a great capacity for observation and just stand there and try to depict what they see, what they feel, with a lot of respect for the subject. I feel a little bit like that, making documentaries, that I can be behind a camera and really try to show that’s visible in the first-hand. Go to the most invisible of the humanity. French: Things that are silenced or smaller things? Mandy: Yeah, little details; sudden things; what’s behind things. French: That’s interesting. You mentioned another film that you wanted to make that links to this one. Can you tell me a bit about what’s driving you in that and what that’s about? Mandy: When I decided to do Filming Desire, I had the project to do a second film called The Desire to Film, because I realised when I was interviewing all these women directors that they had a very strong drive to make films and they had things to say and I thought that would be really interesting to actually open that door. So, we would have a kind of film working in reflection—like how they filmed desire and what’s their desire to film. And it would be linked to the kind of stories that I tell—I have written so many stories. I remember British director Karen Adler told me that she had this brilliant story about a relationship between a father and a daughter and she wanted to finance the film. She talked to a man who had money and they said your story is pretty full, but we would like so much that you would address the question of the father/son relationship because we are so much interested in that. And she said, ‘Well, that’s not what I want to say’. And you see, that’s always the problem. I will give you another example: I am writing a comedy at the moment, a fiction comedy. So far, almost all my characters are women because I just wanted to make it like that, and I like it. I have a big pressure from my producer to add men in the film. The contrary would never happen if you had an all-bloke/men film. Nobody would say, please can you add some women? French: I’m Australian and our industry was revived in the 1970s on films about men going to war and men doing this and that. Do you think women are more naturally interested in stories about women and that’s maybe an argument to make sure we have a more even number?

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Mandy: I don’t think it’s the fact that they are more interested in stories about women, it’s that it’s easier to talk about things you know. I would know immediately how to direct an actress and details about her body and attitude, and maybe find it more difficult with men. I would expect for men to help me because I wouldn’t know exactly. French: I think you are telling me that you are communicating gender? Aren’t you really? Mandy: Yeah. French: What it is to be a woman is the thing that you’re communicating—they’re the gestures, the things that you’re laying out for your audience in your story. I think that you’re communicating female things. Mandy: Men can have a lot of female aspects as well. I’m not talking about those aspects. I’m talking about something maybe that’s more intimate, subtle. I find it difficult to explain. French: I know what you mean. A question that came up at the end of the panel was that someone asked you about the way you introduce women in your film [Filming Desire] as mothers and board members. That’s something I love in the film, that you frame them as creative people who are whole and who have all kinds of dimensions to them. So, I’m surprised that is a question that comes up. Why do you keep getting asked that question? Mandy: It’s disturbing for feminists. I don’t know, I’m always surprised when people come to me and say but why do you have to present a woman director by saying she’s a mother or not a mother. To me it’s part of life. If you have children, then of course they do occupy a great amount of your life and that part of life you can’t dedicate to your creation. So, it is part of who we are. French: Do you care about being called a woman filmmaker? Some women really do object to that. They don’t want to be put in a box or have a label put on them. Men don’t get asked what it is like to be a male filmmaker. How do you feel about that? Mandy: I like it, I don’t mind. It’s a reality. It’s my reality and I won’t deny what’s a fact, and I’m so sure that it’s an important aspect of my own creation. French: What if someone calls you a feminist filmmaker. Does that worry you? Mandy: No, it doesn’t worry me because I think I am a feminist as well, although I make a lot of films that have nothing to do with female subjects or feminist subjects.

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French: Does being a feminist come through in a film whether or not it is about women or about feminism? Given that’s integral to who you are, would that not affect the vision of anything that you made? Mandy: The fact that I’m a woman and a feminist will always affect my work and my vision. I don’t like the word ‘affect’—maybe nourish my vision, but sometimes it’s very visible and sometimes it’s much more invisible because it’s not so relevant to the subject. For example, I made a scientific film a few years ago. When you make a scientific film what you do is you go in and interview a scientist. I was very aware that I wanted to have women in that film as well and so I did the research to look for women who could deal with that subject, because if I just took it from an easy way, just men came out of the research. So, I had to make an effort to actually find women to have a kind of balance in the film. I would always do that. French: Were you successful in that? Mandy: Yes, of course. I will always find a way to balance men and women in my films or I don’t think I can sign a film in which it’s all men because why would that be like that? French: Well, that’s a really good example of what I was asking you about your feminism coming out regardless of whatever the film is about. Mandy: I was discussing with others how you can identify or specify difference—if you are looking for differences between male and female friends, for example. If you look in the autobiographical sphere—when male directors make films about themselves or their families, you will see that they occupy the screen a lot. They tell their story but they are on screen and we could do an exercise and count the number of shots and so on where you have a woman dealing with an intimate story—family or autobiographical story—she would be more present with the voice, hands, and reflection, but she won’t just go and be there like that. I think that so far, we have not studied enough all those questions because they need some kind of investigation. You have to compare, or you take a bunch of films and see, and not many people do that. It’s the reason why probably Filming Desire achieved to say something. It’s because I really took it from there—took really specific things and started to compare. And then you come up with some differences that show a different way of telling stories. French: At the festival workshop [IDFA 2014], a kind of list was developed that had a certain number of things that were deemed to be

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characteristic of women’s films. For example, being poetic, or being emotional. When I was watching all of the films in the festival’s Gaze Program, I thought there were some things like humanism, for example, which they didn’t mention, an interest in behaviour, and the psyche of why people do things. What did you think of that discussion? Mandy: I feel that there are a certain number of characteristics that you can recognise to be part of a very feminine film—but then a feminine film can be made by women or by men, because some men also make some very feminine films. What’s interesting again is if you look at the film industry, if you look at men directors who made very beautiful films with actresses in leading roles—like Ingrid Bergman and John Cassavetes, for example. If you think about it, they were all married to actresses and that means that they had this close relationship and maybe they decided together the kind of thing they would be talking about. Maybe the filmmaker couldn’t take his inspiration directly from his wife, but it’s very interesting. You can make a list and find ten others, I’m sure, men making very feminine films, like [Luchino] Visconti and [Pedro] Almodóvar. French: Do you think it’s the same kind of feminine though? Mandy: No, it’s not the same kind of feminine qualities but still what it says is that anyone will actually accept to let the feminine qualities come up be it a man or a woman. It just changes the quality of the film because I think a lot of women actually don’t give themselves the permission to do that. French: Yes, I think so too. Mandy: You see, it’s kind of normal because we have not learned to do that. When I think of it, I know that all my education in film was done through films made by men. I don’t think at film school I ever saw a film directed by a woman when I studied thirty years ago. So, I believe that it’s a kind of education—how you educate artists to dig into themselves so that we can bring up what’s so specific to each of us. French: Thank you so much for your time, Marie.

Conclusion Female Agency and the Possibility of a Women’s Cinematic Language If we understand the female gaze in the terms outlined by Larissa Sexton-­ Finck, as setting out ‘to actualise and empower reel woman by allowing her subjectivity and desire to govern the point of view and plotline of a

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film’ (Sexton-Finck 2011, 11), then the central project of Filming Desire can be understood as to reveal the gaze of women filmmakers and illustrate how it enables women filmmakers to explore their own specific subjectivity, ways of knowing and self-definition. Which, in essence, is to promote the female gaze and a female aesthetic.10 It is this subjectivity that women identify with and which speaks to women, it is what is behind Patricia Rozema’s statement four and a half minutes into Filming Desire: ‘I can often tell a film made by a woman’. It is a recognition of both speaking from female experience and doing so through what Mandy has characterised as ‘women’s cinematic language’. This is a question of perspective (e.g. an interest in inner worlds or what is behind something) as well as aesthetics (e.g. detail, circular forms, observation). Both of these communicate female sex and gender, which is specific for each woman but also identifiable, shared or recognised as female and drawn from an understanding of gender formed through living life in a female body.

Notes 1. A textual analysis describes or interprets a film through examining the language of the film text itself (e.g. film form, aesthetics, semiotics, linguistic codes and narrative analysis of subject/character positioning, viewpoint or agency), and might also take any theoretical/ideological paradigm (e.g. feminist, postcolonial, postmodern, Marxist, capitalist, Islamic feminist, etc.). It necessarily uncovers the messages of the text and how they are conveyed through the way the film is constructed (which will vary and be created according to varying cultural norms, not just cinematic ones). Whilst I note that there are many feminisms, and that feminism is not a single or unified movement, what all feminisms share is an opposition to patriarchy and the oppression of women, and advocacy for equality and equity for women. In the case in this chapter, the textual analysis is feminist in responding to those commonalities, and also is interested in subjectivity, the cinematic articulation of female experience and the question of histories of the gaze as being male dominated. 2. Others interviewed were Carine Adler (UK), Jeanne Labrune (France), Liliana Cavani (Italy), Francesca Comencini (Italy), Doris Dorrie (Germany), Patricia Rozema (Canada), Paule Baillargeon (Quebec), Léa Pool (Quebec) and Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia). 3. The study of language in literary sources drawing on literary studies, linguistics and history.

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4. All her work has been in documentary since then except for directing eight episodes of the French youth TV series KD2A (2001–2009), also known as Karrément déconseillé aux adultes. 5. See the documentary by Pamela B Green: Be Natural (2018), which is a ‘herstory’ of the achievements and career of Alice Guy-Blaché (nee Alice Guy). 6. The list given is: Agnès Varda (Les Plages d’Agnès/The Beaches of Agnès 2008 and Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse/The Gleaners and I, 2000); Coline Serreau (Solutions locales pour un désordre global/Think Global, Act Rural, 2010); Claire Simon (Les Bureaux de Dieu/God’s Offices, 2008); Ariane Doublet (Les Terriens/Earthlings, 2000); Mariana Otero (Entre nos mains/Into Our Own Hands, 2010); Ruxandra Medrea (L’Enfer de HenriGeorges Clouzot/Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno with Serge Bromberg, 2009); Sandrine Bonnaire (Elle s’appelle Sabine/Her Name is Sabine, 2008); Mariana Otero (Histoire d’un secret/History of a Secret, 2003) and Claudine Bories, Patrice Chagnard (Les Arrivants/Arrivals, 2010)(Tarr 2012, 194). 7. Anti-realist strategies were adopted by feminist filmmakers from the 1990s. Prior to that, realist documentaries were more common. See Hankin (2007, pp. 64–66) for a discussion about the two approaches and the theoretical issues for feminism. Many feminist filmmakers abandoned realist modes because they felt realism was unable to change consciousness and because it seamlessly embodies the world view that the filmmakers wanted to change. In contrast, non-realist styles were seen as developing a reflexive quality towards culture. 8. Those qualities are the hallmarks of a ‘herstory’ (or what defines one). 9. In the interview later in this chapter, Mandy speaks of the difference between how men and women approach autobiographical stories where she identifies men as more on the screen but women using voice, hands and reflection instead. 10. A ‘female aesthetic’ is defined in the text as one whereby the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of a documentary are constructed to represent female subjectivity or female subject positions (as diverse as they might be). It is understood in this book as taking a variety of forms to represent female subjectivity, and as such, it is not a singular or homogenous idea. See the book’s glossary for the definition of a ‘female gaze’; a key marker is the communication or expression of female subjectivity—a gaze shaped by a female ‘look’, voice, emotional response and perspective—the filmic depiction of the subjective experience or perspective of someone who lives in a female body.

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References Ciecko, Anne. 2017. African “First Films”: Gendered Authorship, Identity, and Discursive Resistance. In The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender, ed. Lené Hole, Dijana Jelač Kristin, E. Ann Kaplan, and Patrice Petro, 254–264. Abingdon Oxon UK: Routledge. Doane, Mary Ann. 1981. Women’s Stake: Filming the Female Body. October 17:23–36. Accessed 12 April 2020. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/778247. Faludi, Susan. 1991. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown. Hankin, Kelly. 2007. And Introducing … The Female Director: Documentaries about Women Filmmakers as Feminist Activism. NWSA Journal 19 (1): 59–88. https://doi.org/10.2979/NWS.2007.19.1.59. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses Creator. Durham: Duke University Press. Mandy, Marie. 2014. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 24 November 2014 (Published in this chapter). Mosley, Philip. 2001. Split Screen: Belgian Cinema and Cultural Identity. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. Poirier, Agnès. 2011. France’s female new wave. The Guardian, 25 March. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/24/france-­w omen-­ directors/. Accessed 20 Mar 2020. Sexton-Finck, Larissa. 2011. Be(com)ing Reel Woman: Female Subjectivity and Agency in Contemporary Cinema. Diegetic Life Forms II Conference Proceedings. ISSN 1833-0533. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q= Sexton-­Finck,+Larissa.+2011.+Be(com)ing+Reel+Woman.++Diegetic+Life+F orms+II+Conference+Proceedings.+ISSN+1833-­0 533.&ie=UTF-­8 &oe= UTF-­8/. Accessed 11 Feb 2020. Tarr, Carrie. 2012. Introduction: Women’s film-making in France 2000–2010. Studies in French Cinema. 12 (3): 189–200. ———. 2010. Mutilating and Mutilated Bodies: Women’s Takes on “Extreme” French Cinema. In Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean, ed. F.  Laviosa, 62–80. New  York: Comparative Feminist Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan. Tefler, Tori. 2018. How Do We Define the Female Gaze in 2018? Vulture. 2 August. https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/how-­do-­we-­define-­the-­female-­ gaze-­in-­2018.html/. Accessed 11 Feb 2020. Women Make Movies (Bio). n.d. Marie Mandy. https://www.wmm.com/filmmaker/Marie+Mandy/. Women Make Movies (Catalogue). n.d. Marie Mandy. https://www.wmm.com/ catalog/film/filming-­desire/.

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Filmography Faye, Safi. 1996. Mossane. Senegal: Les Ateliers de l’Arche. Guy, Alice. 1896. La Fée aux Choux/The Fairy of the Cabbage. France: Gaumont. ———. 1906. The Life of Christ. France: Gaumont. Labrune, Jeanne. 1998. Si je t'aime, prends garde à toi/Beware of My Love. France: Art-Light Productions. Mandy, Marie. 1989. Judith. Belgium: Amazone Films. ———. 1992. Pardon Cupidon/Sorry Cupid. Belgium: Amazone Films. ———. 1999. Madeleine in Heaven. Belgium: Amazone Films. ———. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. Belgium: Saga Film. Potter, Sally. 1992. Orlando. United Kingdom: Adventure Pictures. Varda, Agnès. 2008. Les plages d'Agnès/Beaches of Agnes. France: Ciné Tamaris.

CHAPTER 10

A View from the Margins: The Films of Nancy D Kates

Nancy D Kates

Nancy Kates is a multi-award winning, independent American documentary filmmaker.1 She works mainly as a director but also has credits as a writer and producer. Her documentaries clearly explore what she holds dear, in particular, an aspiration to tell stories about minorities or outsiders whose lives have been absent from the screen. Her output can be read as about identity politics in that elements of her own identity have led her to prioritise concerns of her own social, cultural or political identity and to examine her interest in history. Often these interests, such as the lives of gay people or stories of women come together in her films, which have © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_10

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been frequently about critical moments in the past, including shining a light on public thought leaders such as Susan Sontag and Bayard Rustin. She resists labels or categories and is more interested in questions. Interviews with her in the media reveal passions that are evident in her films, including her love of books, ideas and research (Fox 2014). In 1984, Kates completed an Honours degree at Harvard University, where she worked in the area of public policy after graduating. Following that she enrolled in the film programme at Stanford University where she completed the documentary Their Own Vietnam (1995) as part of her master’s degree. That film won the 1995 Student Academy Award: the gold medal for documentary, and that placed her amongst past student winners such as Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Saget. The research for Their Own Vietnam involved interviewing nearly sixty female veterans about their experiences in the Vietnam War. The documentary finally focused on five of them, including a lesbian couple whom she met whilst serving. She has made several short documentaries, the most well-known of which is Castro Cowboy (1998), about model Christian Haren, an early ‘Marlboro Man’, who became an internationally known AIDS educator before his death from the disease in 1996. Following that, in 2003, she co-directed (with Bennett Singer) the film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003) (hereafter called Brother Outsider). That film was described in The Advocate as a powerful documentary that ‘examines the gay man who was the linchpin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for civil rights’ (Ehrenstein 2002, 64). It was picked up by P.O.V. (Point of View), the US Public Broadcasting Service’s longest running showcase for independent non-fiction film. Then, after eight years of planning and raising the funds, she completed the documentary Regarding Susan Sontag (2014), a film about the life of the esteemed American intellectual most well-known for her work as philosopher, activist and writer (and, until Kates’s film, lesser known as Jewish or bisexual).

Marginalised by Sexual Identity Kates has said that her goal in filmmaking has been to tell untold stories and that she has been most interested in making them about people on the margins (Haddix 2014). Her films illustrate that she values the place of Susan Sontag and Bayard Rustin as outsiders in the sense that they resist being categorised and offered their legacy in what they challenged. For example, Sontag’s reconfiguring of what might be regarded or examined

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seriously intellectually (e.g. popular culture), or Rustin on freedom and social equity. Her film Brother Outsider was titled that because although he was ‘tremendously important’, Rustin really was marginalised because he was an openly gay man and that precluded him from public life in the 1940s (Kates in Haddix n.d.). Instead, he had to be in the background rather than in a visible leadership position. In contrast, Sontag was not so much marginalised in the life she lived, but gay Jewish people are a minority, and Kates therefore represents that minority (despite Sontag’s avoidance of overtly doing so) and makes a claim to her on behalf of that marginalised group. Regarding Susan Sontag (2014b) reveals that Sontag was not known as bisexual or lesbian, and rarely alluded to her relationships with women, despite a fifteen-year partnership with the photographer Annie Leibovitz and numerous other female partners. Kates’s thesis about this is that it was Sontag’s strategy to maintain her status as one of the intellectual elite. Kates sees documentary film as a medium that is compelling for offering ‘significant cultural and historical figures marginalized by their sexual identities’ (Rider University News 2017). One of her preoccupations is an interest in championing public intellectuals by returning them to a place where they are esteemed. What is at stake for her in doing that, or the motivation, is evident in a comment she has made about what she learnt in making her film Regarding Susan Sontag; she has been quoted as saying that unfortunately lesbians are not taken seriously as intellectuals and that is still the case today (Bendix 2014, Rice 2019). This key concern that homosexuals, or women, might not be ‘taken seriously’ in intellectual life is also an evident preoccupation in her film Brother. Rustin was known for his role in relation to social movements, particularly gay rights and racial discrimination, but Kates makes the case in her film that his impact as a public intellectual and in influencing American institutions has not been fully recognised. This was substantiated when, on 20 November 2013 (ten years after Kates’s film), President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Bayard Rustin the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Queer Voices2 [Q]ueers, like all minorities, traffic in codes, forced to negotiate between the larger culture and their own subjective realities. Nancy Kates 2012

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Identity is complex and contradictory, and the sense of who or what each person perceives themselves to be is formed through the specific combination of racial, religious, national, sexual and gender contexts, in combination with their life experiences. A part of Kates’s identity is that she is a member of the LGBTQ3 community and one of her agendas is clearly to bring marginalised queer social identities to the forefront. From the inside out her films illustrate that the personal is political (personal experience is deeply connected to where a person is located in terms of social and political power relationships). In the interview later in this chapter, Kates says that being a lesbian is fundamentally atypical to the majority and it gives her a different point of view. She asks the question of whether that might make her a different kind of feminist, something she is not sure about. What it indicates is that the notion of difference is live, and the intersection of the personal and political are in play. Kates has recognised the importance, but the absence, of queer stories. It is evidently a tension for her that she believes more stories of the marginalised need to be made, and she asks herself the question of whether she should keep producing in that vein as a ‘moral obligation’ (Kates 2014). But just because one is a lesbian, feminist, female or Jewish, or whatever one’s identity aligns with, does not mean that those are the only topics one can explore. Significantly, those identifications provide a vantage point or subjective position that can inflect on any subject a filmmaker might approach.

A Female World View I don’t think I can divorce gender from the way I look at the world. Nancy Kates (Haddix 2014)

Women filmmakers frequently have an interest in making sense of being female. This is about what it means to exist in a female body and a drive to understand or explore female reality or experience—as diverse as that might be—and acknowledging sex and gender are amongst many other contexts that inform any person’s identity. In the interview with Kates in this chapter, she offers the view that women make films about different things than men do, implying ‘female’ viewpoints, and she has also said that women tell stories in ‘a different way’ to men (Haddix 2014). However, she is not sure women are fully empowered to make work that is of interest to them given her own experience that films centring on

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women are harder to finance. She says it was hard to raise the money to make Regarding Susan Sontag, and whilst she acknowledges it is difficult to raise money to make any kind of film, she thinks it is tougher to make a film about a woman: I was completely shocked when my distributor told me that I wasn’t going to sell as many copies of this film as I did with the film about Bayard Rustin, simply because Bayard Rustin was a man. I thought that was ridiculous, but they know the market better than I do. (Haddix 2014)

This idea of being female in the world manifests in several different ways in Kates’s work. If one considers closely the way in which she represents Sontag, it is warts and all. This is visually represented in the key image from the film jacket, which shows Sontag’s face marked by flaws, as if to emphasise this point. Kates herself has said of this that she thinks it is ‘really important that we see public figures as something besides heroic—that we see them as real people’ (Moss 2014). This might be just a documentarian’s perspective, but it could also be read as informed by the fact that she is female, and that women are less interested in the quest for heroes or showing a hero’s journey. Kates depicts Sontag’s life, showing that she received a fellowship to study philosophy at Oxford, moved to Paris to live with Harriet Sohmers Zwerling (her lover from Berkeley), and divorced her husband, leaving their child with him. Kates has said that this ‘speaks to women’, that some find it abhorrent that she left her child for over a year but others see her as a figure of freedom because ‘she managed to do things that men could do but women just couldn’t do in that time’ (Artsy 2014). Reviewer Leisa Meyer wrote of Kates’s documentary Their Own Vietnam that one of the most intriguing elements is ‘Kates’s attention, throughout the film, to the question of what it meant to be “a woman” in Vietnam’ (Meyer 1998, 1197). Kates’s introduction of two lesbian narrators causes a shift in the canon of the Vietnam War documentary, one that Meyer observes as attention to marginalised voices. Writing it is ‘a welcome change from the relentless heterosexuality of most conventional Vietnam documentaries … [and while the] narrators do not explicitly address race, her film demands we address its absence’ (Meyer 1998, 1197). That film can be understood as a feminist ‘herstory’—a story with a feminist politic that puts women back into history, and through this, rediscovers them.

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Writing and Books As stated, Kates has a love of books and this drew her to make a film about Susan Sontag. She first discovered her in her second year of college, just after the publication of A Susan Sontag Reader. Kates has said Sontag ‘was one of those people that you just had to know about if you were smart and curious … I really didn’t know anything about her then, but I was probably looking for some sort of intellectual role model, as a young woman’ (Artsy 2014). Making a film about writers has its own particular challenges, as Kates has outlined, if ‘you profile a writer, you have a problem … We wanted to find a visual metaphor for being a writer, which is solitary and [involves] being inside your head, and not someone sitting at a typewriter. But how do you get in someone’s head?’ (Fox 2014) Documentary scholar Bill Nichols has written about how Kates solved this problem of getting inside someone’s head. He observed that she does this through the body of the film, using classic devices of music, sound effects and mise-en-scene. He has written that in Regarding Susan Sontag, special effects let us experience the world in the way Sontag did. He gives the example of ‘an image of typed words that decompose into an animated sea of floating letters that slowly cluster back to a Chuck Close-like portrait of Susan Sontag, which then dissolves into a photographic image of her’ (Nichols 2016, 80). For Nichols, the value of this is that these effects speak empathetically about Sontag’s love of and profound engagement with words. Further to this, Nichols claims that this approach typifies the voice of documentary today which he sees as having an affinity with both the avant-garde and narrative storytelling that ‘explores the depth and complexity of human interaction’ (Nichols 2016, 80).

Documentary and Women in the United States There have long been women filmmakers in the documentary in America and Kates follows a solid tradition of independent filmmakers working in the non-feature sector. Early trailblazers started in America with women like Osa Johnson, who made her first film in 1912 (Cannibals of the South Seas, with Martin Johnson). Best documentary has been a category in the Academy Awards since 1942, and women directors have won eleven Oscars since 1942, which means that they have had significantly more success in documentary than in fiction.

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In more recent times, documentaries by women ‘broke new ground in the fight for a more equitable future’ (Women in Hollywood 2019). The films identified for doing this demonstrated a keen eye to social issues that affect society as a whole, but which women are most connected to. For example, the issue of violence against women and girls is in three films released in 2019: Nancy Schwartzman’s 2018 film Roll Red Roll, which investigated ‘how peer pressure, misogyny, and sports machismo factored into the rape of a young woman and its aftermath’ (Women in Hollywood 2019); Ursula Macfarlane’s 2019 Untouchable, which tracks the story of a woman trying to make people believe she was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein; and Erin Lee Carr’s 2019 At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal, a disturbing documentary about the sexual abuse of women by a man in a position of power and trust. The sector is vibrant and there are many women, as illustrated by statistics from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, which show that by genre in 2019 ‘the largest percentage of women, relative to men, worked on documentaries (27%)’ in the US (Women in Hollywood 2019). As someone working in the independent sector and identifying as part of the LGBTI community, Kates works across the wider documentary sector, whilst her films also belong to a long tradition of consciousness-­ raising. Gay and lesbian individuals have been able to live openly in the US since the 1970s when the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements, and the second wave women’s movement, empowered their storytelling and advocacy (Nelson 2009, 146). Kates has found her niche through her interest in history and in putting gay and lesbian characters front and centre. She is doing this in a context that she describes in the interview in the second half of this chapter as one where it is hard to raise money for films about women, and where the taste of contemporary film financiers is towards issue and impact-oriented films that conclude with a call to action.

Interview with Nancy D Kates This is an edited transcript of an interview that was conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam on 23 November 2014. Kates and French were guests of the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA).

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French: This year IDFA has had a female gaze spotlight. Do you think this is a valuable focus and what might it, or has it, revealed? Kates: It’s an interesting question: Is there a female gaze? I certainly think that women make films about different things than men do, and I’ve been talking about this whole issue with other women who are here, including curators and programmers and other filmmakers. We were talking about whether we have to make films about women because there aren’t enough. My own experience as a filmmaker is that it’s harder to raise money for films about women; I don’t know if it’s by women but certainly about women. And there are arenas in which women’s issues are not considered important and there was a lot of discussion about that in the part of that panel that I got to. I certainly feel it is very odd because so many people who were involved, in the United States at least, and in the important institutions, are women—Ally [Derks] is the Head of IDFA.4 The Head of the Sundance Documentary programme has been a woman, Cara Mertes, and now it’s Tabitha Jackson; a lot of people who work under them are women. So, in the United States, there are a lot of women in positions of power in terms of making decisions about funding and there are a lot of women who work at PBS. However, in competition at Sundance last year, the documentary features directed solely by women were few.5 I was appalled by that, so I certainly think there’s a lot to talk about. I’m not so interested in the theoretical ideas about the gaze; it’s not that those aren’t important issues, they’re just not important to me. French: This idea that it’s harder to make films about women, and that’s your experience, and maybe it goes right back to your film Their Own Vietnam? I gather it was hard to make a film about Susan Sontag. Kates: Well, I’m impressed that you know I made a film about women in Vietnam but that was a student film. Regarding Susan Sontag took over five years to raise the money. I don’t know if it would’ve taken quite as long if we had been making a social issue film about anyone that was contemporary. The funding in the US is very much focused on issue and impact-oriented films. So, if there is a call to action at the end, it’s more likely to get funding. I’m considered like a rock star because I raised so much money, but it took a really long time. I don’t know that it was necessarily because Sontag was a woman, but I certainly have been told: ‘You won’t sell as many DVDs or downloads or whatever you’re selling’. It’s a perception that I have. I certainly see a huge disparity, not necessarily at IDFA but at other festivals, about what is being shown on the screen. I

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don’t have all the numbers that some of the people who are studying this have, I just have perceptions, but I think it’s true. I don’t know about all the countries of the world but in the United States our default idea of what a human being is, is a man. And that is a fundamentally ridiculous thing and it’s certainly something I feel like I’ve been struggling with my entire life. French: Do you think that the fact that you live your life in the body of a woman influences the way you make your films? Kates: Well, one of the things I was having a little internal dialogue about is that I’m a lesbian. And so I have sex with women, and I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but that is also fundamentally different than the majority of the people in that room, for example, and does it make me a different kind of feminist? I don’t know. I think it gives me a different point of view because it’s just not the mainstream, although women are the mainstream—at least numerically. French: Except women do seem to me to be really interested in outsiders, arguably more than men are. Is that a perspective? Kates: I think the problem with these conversations is we start just bathing ourselves in these generalities. I would say that individual people, the women of colour in the room yesterday, made a lot of really important points. And we think it’s tough in the United States, but I can’t imagine trying to make films as a female filmmaker in most parts of the Middle East or in Africa. French: Nishtha Jain made that comment. In her case, she’s upper class and there are caste issues in her country, and these things complicate how she makes her work compared to what they would be in the West. But I have this feeling that despite all the complete differences in the output and the experiences in the lives and the bodies of different women, just being in the body of a woman is not the same as being in the world as a man. Kates: I remember when I made my film about American women that served in Vietnam [Their Own Vietnam], they opened the Women’s Memorial which is next to the wall in Washington, and there were men saying: ‘Why don’t they have a memorial to the K9 core?’ There were these incredible disparaging, horribly sexist things that were being said at that time, and fifty-three American women died at Vietnam. There are fifty-eight thousand that are on the wall and the women are on that wall as well. French: Are there any other films about those women?

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Kates: There’s another film and there was a TV series, it was fiction. I wouldn’t talk about bodies. I would talk myself more about the socialisation that women are brought up in in America—it’s still to defer to men. I have rebelled against that to a larger degree than most people and I get a lot of heat from it. Certain men don’t like it if you don’t defer to them. So, is it the body or is it the mindset? I would say it’s more the mindset; maybe there’s no way of differentiating those things, but if you were taught from the moment you’re born that you’re a second-class citizen, you behave in different ways. Some of those ways are maybe more insightful, more compassionate; I love that Heddy Honigmann was talking about tenderness in her masterclass. That probably is not something you would hear from many male directors, particularly in features, but even in documentaries. I thought that was so beautiful. French: Are there barriers to women working in documentary? Kates: Being a documentarian, you’re often in your own little world. It’s like being an entrepreneur, no one’s going to say to me: ‘You cannot make this film’. There was a point where I couldn’t raise the money for the Sontag film and a lot of people said: ‘Why are you trying to do this? It’s not going to work’. I was just too stubborn to give up on it, but I don’t know if that’s an exact barrier or it’s just the climate that we’re in, it’s a hard thing to say. But when I pitched Regarding Susan Sontag at IDFA, I got a $20,000 grant from Sundance and one presale from SBS, so it was $28,000 and it cost about $2,000 to get there. So that was not huge amounts of money, there were no massive presales, and there were people who didn’t want to take a chance on it for whatever reason. I don’t know that’s a barrier. French: I imagine everyone knows who Susan Sontag was but maybe that’s not necessarily the case. Kates: Not younger folks, in fact a lot of people, people at the BBC had no idea who she was. There are people of all ages in this industry. One of the things I wished I could have said yesterday is that when people make funding and programming decisions based on the usual suspects, and the people that they feel safe with, it doesn’t give a lot of room for younger filmmakers, for people of colour and for women. And I might be in the lucky category now where people do recognise my name, but it’s taken twenty years to get there. A lot of other people maybe don’t even have their DVD looked at by a festival programmer

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because the person hasn’t heard of them before. And that’s part of the problem that we’re talking about, it’s very covert, it’s not, ‘Oh, I’m not going to programme films about and by women, it’s just like who the hell are you?’ French: I noticed in Australia, and in lots of other places globally, that the greatest participation in any part of the film industry is in documentary. So, in Australia it’s about forty per cent as opposed to, I don’t know, I think it’s seventeen per cent directing fiction and it’s lower everywhere else, although television seems to be on the rise. What do you think it is about documentary that might attract women to do it? Why are there so many more women in documentary than other areas? Kates: I want to ask you the same question. I don’t know … it’s, it’s not sexy. I don’t know why directing feature films is considered macho, but I guess we have this very narrow marketplace at the moment for feature films. We don’t have that many films that aren’t testosterone driven in some way: shooting something or with aliens attacking. I think it’s really terrible—in fact, I might like to make a feature film someday partly because I don’t see very much I want to watch out there. But I can imagine if I made a feature film that it would have a very, very, very small box office because of the marketing and all these other things. But I don’t know why, a camera is a phallic symbol. I don’t know why women have not gone into cinematography and have not cracked through to direct feature films in great numbers. But I was a journalist before I became a filmmaker and I think I had very idealistic notions of looking for true stories and telling untold stories. I can’t generalise why women want to do that, but I know that I went to a very small graduate programme and there was one year that they were all women, there were eight of them. I think some of it’s about economics. French: Well, maybe it’s perceived as not sexy, but I notice there’s a lot of passion from the women that do it. Kates: Well, people who don’t make documentaries think that documentary, or any filmmaking, is sexy. But then the people who actually know about it don’t think it’s so sexy. French: It’s really hard. You said you want to make a fiction feature because there’s not much that you want to see. There are polarised views about this but: when you watch something, do you feel like you can tell whether it’s made by a man or a woman?

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Kates: I can’t tell, but every once in a while, I try to guess if there’s no head credit or something, it’s just, it’s like this game I play with myself. So, I think sometimes you can tell and sometimes you can’t tell. In features, unlike in documentaries, there are lots of male directors that actually tell very compelling stories about women. And that’s an interesting thing to me that there are very few men making documentaries about women today; there are more now than there used to be, but there didn’t use to be any. French: That’s an interesting thing to think about and maybe even to do some stats on how many of the films that have women as key subjects are made by men. I think that is potentially part of the gaze, that you make films about people that you’re interested in and that’s more naturally women for women. That’s just a natural inclination. If we look at your work, you’ve more naturally gravitated to stories about women or gay and lesbian people. Kates: Well, I just want to say something about that. I just had this conversation with a colleague, and at one point during the making of Brother Outsider, my film about Bayard Rustin, that I made with a codirector who’s a man, I had a conversation with one of my really-outthere separatist feminist friends and I said, ‘Do you think I shouldn’t be doing this because I’m making a film about a man?’ And she said, ‘No, I think you should’. And it was really an interesting dynamic because a few people said, ‘Why aren’t you making a film about a woman in the Civil Rights movement, why are you making this film about this man?’ And being queer also means I have some sense of obligation to tell queer stories as well. One of the things I’m wrestling with about future projects is, do I have to make a film about a woman or a gay person? There aren’t enough people telling these stories, but I’ve done it. Am I morally obligated to keep going and not think about other kinds of subject matter? So, I don’t have an answer for myself but when we made the film about Bayard Rustin, I felt like that story needed to be told. Also, the people that we were going to ask to tell his story were going to die. They were all old, and most of them have now gone. I didn’t stop and say, I can’t make a film about a gay man because I need to make feminist work, because I’m a feminist and there’s not enough work about and by women. I just didn’t. I just thought, I want to go make this movie. French: But it’s important to be able to explore whatever stories you are interested in.

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Kates: Well, can I add a little to this. Every once in a while, I would go to a gay and lesbian film festival and people would be asking me questions about Bayard Rustin, including about his sex life. And I would often stop and say, I want some credit. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this gay man’s sex life, which is not something I could possibly experience right, or necessarily understand, in a visceral way. And this was not something that anyone besides me would ever think about, but I cannot imagine that there are any films made by men about lesbian protagonists. I just can’t imagine that would ever happen (maybe in the feature world, but not in the documentary world). It just doesn’t happen; so maybe women have this ability to be empathic and that leads us to tell stories in particular ways. I don’t know, it’s so theoretical. But I always thought it was funny because people didn’t really understand what we’re saying: that I had gone way into this arena that is foreign to me and would be foreign to any woman. French: And I guess that’s part of the journey of your research. You made Brother Outsider with a gay man, and that would have brought not just a gay perspective but a male one, but if you hadn’t, it would potentially have been a different kind of film—but it doesn’t mean that that film shouldn’t be made. We need all perspectives. Tell me about co-directing. Kates: I think it’s hard to make documentary, and so if you have a comrade who can do it with you, it’s really good. I’d never had someone who is as fully invested in it as me to be a sounding board. We had a lot of very, very talented people [on Regarding Susan Sontag] but they were doing particular roles and not co-directing the film. French: So, you liked the process; it’s a good one? Kates: And I think that there’s no reason that it can’t be shared. I made Brother Outsider with another white producer/director. It’s about an African American gay man and there were a few people who were like: ‘You can’t do this; this is not right’. And we spent a lot of time talking about whether it was okay for us to do this. And did we do this with sensitivity? We had a very diverse group of people that we worked with, but the two of us who were in charge of the project are both white. And at one point we had an assistant editor who’s African American and there’s a picture of Golda Meir, the former head of Israel in the film, and he said, ‘The problem isn’t you guys making this film, it is whether I would be allowed to make a film about Golda Meir as a black man, to make a film about this white head of state who was a

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woman’. And I just always think about that because what he was saying was that you have more power in society, so you have more freedom of choice in the work that you’re doing. And I think that this whole conversation about the female gaze, maybe is partly about power, right, so if men have more power in society then maybe male filmmakers have more agency to make things only in a certain sphere that they’re interested in, which does not seem to generally include women. Are women fully empowered to make work that is of interest to them? There is some force that is saying: don’t make films about women because you might not be able to get them shown or you might not be able to get them funded. And sometimes when we’re doing Q&A about the Sontag film I say, ‘I’ve come to the realisation that at least in America, that lesbians aren’t taken seriously in intellectual life, and that I’m messing people up because they have to take me seriously because I made a film about one of the greatest intellectuals in America’. And it’s a very interesting thing that I can’t be dismissed as because of Susan Sontag. If I’d made a film about somebody else, that might have had a different response. French: And I guess she hasn’t really been constructed in that way, so you’re reclaiming her in a certain way by putting that out there. Kates: People have said: ‘There are too many girlfriends in the movie’, and then I say, ‘How do you tell someone’s life story honestly without saying who they were lovers with?’ Can you have too many girlfriends? The more the merrier right? But one of my friends who loves me and he’s a gay man, he said he had ‘girlfriend exhaustion watching the rough cut’. (Both laughing) Kates: So, I guess you can have too many girlfriends! But I think you’re really asking questions about power and probably there are similarities between people who are disempowered in society. And, therefore, in some ways it must be a privilege and an honour to be a woman making documentaries because maybe that does give you this outsider perspective. I’ve made two films about people who are very important in America but who are still outsiders. Sontag was famous and beautiful; she was a Jew and a woman. In that regard she was more of an outsider than Bayard Rustin was because he was a man, even though he was African American. French: I thought I’d just finish by just asking what you were working on and what was the driving force for your next project?

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Kates: Well, I haven’t had a chance to breathe, so I don’t have another film, but I’ve been wrestling with this issue of whether there is some moral obligation to make another gay film or another film about a woman? Because I find myself thinking about other things and yet there aren’t enough people doing this work. So, there’s this little voice in my head that says, ‘Well, maybe you do need to stick to this arena’. But I want to be able to make films that are just of interest period. I’m interested in lots of things and occasionally do write book reviews. In most of my book reviews I seem to be much more interested in women and gay subjects. I do have a sweet spot, so thinking about that, that the ones that are not about those things, I don’t do as good a job on. French: That’s, that’s probably telling in terms of what might happen with your film because you’ll be noticing or looking for those things probably all the way? Kates: Well, I’m also really interested in history and it’s getting harder and harder to make films with a lot of archival footage because it’s so expensive. So, I think that what I’d be drawn to would be making another historical film. So who knows … I’m flirting with ideas at the moment; it’s interesting. French: Thank you for sharing your perspectives with me, Nancy!

Conclusion: Kates, Power and the Female Gaze If you’re black, or if you’re gay, or if you’re from non-English speaking background or whatever distances you from the dominant ideology, it offers you a perspective and I think that’s where instantly I feel yes women are interested in different things, can offer different stories, and then by being feminist that’s another distance again, that gives you another perspective of looking at your film ideas. Sue Maslin, producer (Maslin 1994)

For Kates, the conversation about the female gaze is partly about power. For her, there are similarities between people who are disempowered in society. They share a sense of what might be described as being ‘Othered’—that is, made to feel different, excluded or inferior because they are not the dominant group.6 This has led Kates to make films about outsiders and people on the margins of mainstream representation—this is where her gaze lies. Whilst she states that she cannot

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divorce gender from how she looks at the world, her gaze is contingent on the interplay of a range of contexts that inform her subjectivity (including being American). There is an evident politics of difference so that women and other marginalised groups who have been alienated by not being given an opportunity to speak are repositioned in her films to take up a place in history that they did not previously hold. She is aware of her own positioning against the mainstream (or ‘male-stream’7) culture and her alternate female view, that women make films about different things than men do, they have ‘female’ viewpoints, and tell stories in ‘a different way’. Examples she gives of this in the interview are that women are less driven by heroes’ journeys and have an empathy that directs the way they approach a story and what they are interested in. Her films have a curiosity about the marginalised, those who have been either invisible or not fully visible. Kates’s gaze is female, feminist and non-heterosexual—it is a view from ‘the margins’.8

Notes 1. An independent filmmaker is used here to describe someone who works largely independent of the major commercial production systems, such as Hollywood. The films that are produced by that filmmaker would be described as independent films. ‘Independent’ describes finance, an approach free of the dictates of commercial arenas (although necessarily aware of them), offering the director greater creative control and possibly offering more alternative, grassroots or even activist opportunities. They are more likely directed at festivals first and then specialist documentary television slots rather than large cinema releases. Kates’s films are notable for having received funding outside the mainstream; for example, beginning in academia and then from sources such as for regarding Susan Sontag: National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Sundance Documentary Film Program. 2. A queer film (or other cultural product) is understood here as one made by ‘out’ queer people. It might not be  overtly queer in  theme, but  it might be  described as  queer because it engages with, or is interested in, events and ideas that are of concern to the queer community. 3. LGBTQ denotes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer. 4. Derks was the founder and the director until 2017, which marked thirty years of the festival.

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5. Since this interview, Sundance were under pressure to act on the lack of women directors. The festival began research in partnership with WIFT LA in 2012, and in 2017 established ‘Women at Sundance’ fellowships to support gender equity in American media and assist women as storytellers. The festival has focused on promoting the participation and success of women at Sundance in more recent times (Sundance Institute 2020). 6. Meaning is made out of ‘difference’, what Stuart Hall described as a dialogue with the ‘Other’ (Hall 1997, 235). Hall wrote that the construction of ‘Otherness’ is accomplished by a binary form of representation and he described the ‘Other’ as the marginal, the minority, the group or representation which is not the dominant one. He asserted that representation is produced through relations of power, ideologically the powerful attempt to fix meaning to uphold their dominance, but this is a site of struggle. 7. Male-stream is a feminist sociological concept referring to the sexist assumptions whereby the masculine perspective dominates mainstream culture (or there is a bias towards male points of view), and that there is no account of sex or gender. Delamout has written about the problem for feminist sociologists that women are invisible in male-stream culture (Delamout 2002, 115). 8. The chapter takes its name from an unpublished talk Kates gave at Rider University on 15 March 2017: “A View from the Margins: Susan Sontag, Bayard Rustin and the Art of Documentary Filmmaking” (Rider University News).

References Artsy, Avishay. 2014. A Life of Ideas: Remembering Susan Sontag. Jewish Journal, November 24. https://jewishjournal.com/current_edition/146589/. Accessed 16 April 2020. Bendix, Trish. 2014. Director Nancy Kates talks “Regarding Susan Sontag”. Afterellen, December 8. https://www.afterellen.com/tv/403009-­director-­ nancy-­kates-­talks-­regarding-­susan-­sontag/. Accessed 17 April 2020. Ehrenstein, David. 24 December 2002. Deputy to the King. The Advocate. Fox, Michael. 2014. New Susan Sontag Documentary Filmmaker Nancy Kates evokes the late essayist’s forceful intellect and complicated character. Oakland Magazine, July 2. http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/Oakland-­Magazine/ July-­2014/New-­Susan-­Sontag-­Documentary/. Accessed 16 April 2020. Haddix, Chris. 2014. Sontag’s Gaze: An Interview with Nancy Kates. The Mantle, December 11. https://www.themantle.com/arts-­and-­culture/sontags-­gaze-­ interview-­filmmaker-­nancy-­kates/. Accessed 15 April 2020.

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Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage. Kates, Nancy D. 2012. Susan Sontag’s Journals & Notebooks 1964–1980. San Francisco Chronicle, April 29. https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Susan-­ Sontag-­s-­Journals-­Notebooks-­1964-­1980-­3516813.php/. Accessed 14 April 2020. ———. 2014a. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Amsterdam. 23 November 2014. ———. n.d. Nancy Kates Independent Filmmaker. Blog. https://nancykates. wordpress.com/about/. Accessed 14 April 2020. Maslin, Sue. 15 December 1994. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Melbourne, Australia. Meyer, Leisa D. 1998. Their Own Vietnam. Prod. by Nancy D. Kates, 1995. 23 mins. (Women Make Movies, Inc., 462 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10013). Journal of American History 85, no. 3: 1197. doi:https://doi. org/10.2307/2567395/. Moss, Rebecca. 2014. Susan Sontag Is Still Our Intellectual Pinup Girl. Elle, December 8. https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-­tv/news/a20081/ regarding-­susan-­sontag-­nancy-­kates/. Accessed 17 April 2020. Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. 2009. Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Nichols, Bill. 2016. Speaking Truths with Film: Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rice, Mallory. 2019. The Rich, Complicated, Sometimes-Campy Life of Susan Sontag, Met Gala Muse. Man Repeller, June 5. https://www.manrepeller. com/2019/05/susan-­sontag-­met-­gala.html/. Accessed 16 April 2020. Rider University News. 2017. Filmmaker keynotes Rider’s 35th Gender and Sexuality Studies Colloquium. News at Rider University, March 15. https:// www.rider.edu/news/2017/12/30/filmmaker-­keynotes-­riders-­35th-­gender-­ and-­sexuality-­studies-­colloquium/. Accessed 24 April 2020/. Sundance Institute. 8 January 2020. “Your Guide to All the Women-Helmed Projects at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival”. https://www.sundance.org/ blogs/2020-­women-­festival-­projects/. Accessed 18 May 2020. Women in Hollywood. 2019. “2019’s Best Documentaries By and About Women. Women And Hollywood,” 17 December. https://womenandhollywood. com/2019s-­best-­documentaries-­by-­and-­about-­women/. Accessed 15 May 2020.

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Filmography Carr, Erin Lee. 2019. At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal. United States: S. J. Gibson Films. Johnson, Osa & Martin Elmer Johnson. 1912. Cannibals of the South Seas, United States. Kates, Nancy. 1995. Their Own Vietnam. MA Thesis, Stanford University. ———. 1998. Castro Cowboy, United States. ———. 2003. Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. United States: The American Documentary. ———. 2014b. Regarding Susan Sontag. United States: HBO. Macfarlane, Ursula. 2019. Untouchable. United Kingdom: Lightbox. Schwartzman, Nancy. 2018. Roll Red Roll. United States: Sunset Park Pictures.

CHAPTER 11

Gillian Armstrong: The Line Between Fact and Fiction

Gillian Armstrong

Introduction Gillian Armstrong is one of Australia’s most successful filmmakers. She is most well-known for her ten narrative feature films, but between 1976 and 2015, she made twelve documentaries, both feature length and short form.1 Throughout her career she has worked across both non-fiction and fiction, moving back and forth. The significance of her substantial body of work is that within the Australian industry there are many directors who have only made one feature film, and she has worked continuously in

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Australia and overseas since the revival of the industry in the 1970s.2 Whilst Armstrong sits somewhat outside, or alongside, the vibrant Australian documentary sector, she has been selected for this chapter because she has been a trailblazer for female filmmakers.3 She is well-­ known in the country for her advocacy for women in the industry, particularly in recent times through the Australian Directors’ Guild. In addition, not only has she produced an extensive body of work, but it is largely centred on the depiction of women on screen. And, finally, her inclusion in this book brings with it a discussion of dramatised documentary. After making a few shorts and two documentaries, in 1979 Armstrong began making features in Australia and her debut full length narrative film My Brilliant Career (1979b) was the second to be directed by a woman in forty-six years.4 This is significant because she was at the vanguard and a catalyst for women in the screen sector, who could now see a woman director and imagine being one—especially as it picked up ‘Best Film’ (producer Margaret Fink), ‘Best Direction’ for Armstrong and five other Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, the premier screen sector recognition in the country. Six of these AFI Awards were won by women creatives for their work on the film.5 Her path was followed by others like Jane Campion and Nadia Tass. Armstrong’s success was of further significance when she began making features in the US, including Mrs Soffel (1984) and Little Women (1994), where she became ‘one of the few women at the time to helm an American studio film grossing more than $50  million’ (Erhart 2020, 37). The ability to see other women in the industry is important for both inspiring other women to follow and providing concrete role models. Armstrong’s success was not just her own but showed that women were up to the job and could magnificently acquit it. As she has stated in the interview later in this chapter, not only was her own career at stake, but so was the perception of whether women could make films—because there weren’t any doing so in the feature sector, and very few in Australian documentary until the 1970s. As discussed later in this chapter, when she left film school in the mid-1970s, employment in the screen industry was mainly at the national broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) or Crawford Productions (drama), and neither were employing women to be directors. The woman director did not exist in the industry at that time. The importance of role models cannot be underestimated. Throughout her career, in between her work on narrative features, Armstrong has made dramatised theatrical feature documentaries. This has been characterised as a dexterous, multi-sited industrial competence

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(Erhart 2020, 31). As academic Julia Erhart has observed, there is a common perception that: a director opts for smaller-budget documentary at the start of their career, but once they land work in drama, they do not move back. The conventional understanding fails to capture the significance of documentary within Armstrong’s oeuvre and her own self-positioning as a maker of both; it also potentially eclipses the recent attention documentary has received, as an expressive space, especially for women directors. (Erhart 2020, 25 and 31)

Although Armstrong was offered a three-picture deal in Hollywood, she went back to Australia after Mrs Soffel, a film which critic Mark Mordue regards as unmistakeably made by a woman. Mordue remarked of her career: ‘[h]ow many directors leave a Hollywood which still wants her, returns home to make a low-budget move, then follows it with a documentary on working class women? Not many’ (Mordue 1989, 272). These choices were informed in part by the commitment to documentary that Erhart observed but can also be attributed to being female and needing to make space around the births of her children (Mordue 1989, 272). This is something that impacts women’s work more than it does the work of men. This chapter describes four key things: (1) what might be understood to be a ‘Gillian Armstrong film’; (2) how she feels about being labelled a woman director; (3) how her feminism manifests in her films and (4) how she aestheticises female experience. There is a focus on the fine line between drama and documentary. It concludes with an interview with Armstrong on the subject of the female gaze.

‘A Gillian Armstrong Film’ All her films begin with the designation: ‘A Gillian Armstrong film’. This is the way in which she would prefer her work was regarded, and in the interview in this chapter, she stated that she has always hated the label of ‘woman director’. This is motivated by the idea that she has a unique vision that she expresses, and it is this that she wants to be foregrounded in any consideration of her filmmaking. Her documentaries and narrative features share the imprint of her style, which has been characterised as displaying the ‘revelatory eye for everyday objects in interior spaces’, ‘keenly observed’ social milieus, a focus on the fluctuations of time and the ‘daily experiences of the physical and cultural environment’ (Collins 1999, 91–92). Erhart has identified distinct and recurring concerns in

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Armstrong’s films, including a focus on biography or life narratives, particularly from a feminist perspective; issues of social class and exclusion; and charismatic, often eccentric but always strong female characters (Erhart 2020, publisher’s book description). Armstrong herself has said she is a humanist, that her ‘biggest interest’ is ‘with people and human behaviour’ and she is ‘fascinated’ with ‘what happens to people over time’ (McKay 1988). Critic Emanuel Levy has said that to describe Armstrong as a ‘feminist filmmaker is to limit her achievements within ideological constraints, for her remarkable talent is largely based on her clear-eyed observation of human relationships’ (Levy 1977). This does not mean that she is not a feminist filmmaker; she clearly is, but that there are other ways in which her work can be understood outside of conversations about gender and feminism. Her input to both has been significant and a major contribution made by her films is to articulate visions of female experience; and her feminism is expressed in stories that highlight women’s issues, lives, perspectives and battles for equality. Even Women He’s Undressed, a documentary about a male subject, segues off to the difficulties his female actors had in their careers. Her work displays a feminist aesthetic that insists on giving women (actually all her subjects) a first-person voice, a speaking position. At the core is a belief in metaphysical feminism, as Armstrong has said: ‘every artist should be different … But then again, there are things that are different about female perceptions’ (Mordue 1989, 271).6

Being Typecast Armstrong was branded a ‘feminist director’ because My Brilliant Career was a feminist story (Douglas 2016). This typecasting creates an inequity, if not an unconscious bias, which is something else women filmmakers have to contend with in order to be able to tell whatever stories they want to. This could be responsible in part for the discomfort women have expressed in being labelled ‘female directors’.7 The films Armstrong has been able to make, in both fiction and documentary, have been more often than not with women as the central female character, and therefore this categorisation of her as a feminist, or a director of woman’s films, has continued throughout her career. As numerous authors have noted, ‘media production is not gender neutral’ (O’Brien 2020, 119). There are gendered dynamics that can result in women being excluded in various ways from commissioning right through the filmmaking process.

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Gendering practices contribute to ‘the social institutionalisation of gender’ (O’Brien 2020, 121–122). The opportunities women get in documentary are often constructed by their own efforts and networks and there are less often problems of being typecast than occurs in other genres. For instance, the non-fiction sector is less reliant on people in the industry offering women directing jobs, including in the broadcast sector which tends to buy rather than make their own content, and so the issue of giving women jobs directing films with topics regarded as gendered female is not so much an issue. Within fiction, the problem is much more pronounced, as Armstrong has noted. She wanted to direct something contemporary after My Brilliant Career because she had the experience of being showered with scripts that showed her how easy it was to be categorised. She received: endless scripts of the first woman to fly a plane, the first woman to ride a camel, the first woman to climb a mountain. I was suddenly the director who does women achievers in the past. … But I always thought that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing films that were only about young women battling to achieve. There are a lot of other parts of me and there are a lot of other types of cinema that I like. (Armstrong 1998)

The influence of her gender on Armstrong’s career is difficult to extract given she has clearly gravitated more often to stories about women. It has, however, been observed that the ‘gap between confining socially imposed gender identities and the wish to define ourselves as women is a consistent theme through Armstrong’s films’ (Foster 1995, 14).

A Girl’s Eye View Whether it was a deliberate career intent or not, Armstrong’s interest in what it is like to ‘be’ a girl or woman, how being female is experienced, is one of her key contributions and preoccupations. This largely began with her most well-known non-fiction films, five linked documentaries which follow the lives of three working-class girls over a thirty-four-year period.8 Smokes and Lollies (1976), the first of the five longitudinal films, has been described as made in the Griersonian tradition of social documentary (Collins 1999, 66). It was an examination of the attitudes and expectations of three fourteen-year-olds from South Australia (Josie, Kerry and Diana).9 Whilst it is ostensibly in the tradition of Seven Up (Paul Almond 1963), Armstrong has stated in the interview in this chapter that she did not intend to make a longitudinal study; the first film, which was a

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commission, was always planned as a one-off portrait of what it was like to be female, adolescent and working class.10 However, she developed trusted relationships with her subjects and that led her back to them. The documentaries that followed in the series, which were sequels but also remakes, ‘were very much her own work as a writer, co-producer and director’, moving away from the research-based social hypothesis model of Seven Up to one where the material is transformed with each new film (Collins 1999, 66).11 Armstrong was only twenty-five when she made Smokes and Lollies, and therefore, she was not so far away from the teenagers that she could forget what adolescence was like. The film’s title evokes the liminal space the girls are in, transitioning from children (lollies and dollies in the film’s mise-en-­ scene) to women (signified by smokes). She has said that she remembers ‘being an awkward teenager who wished she was thinner and had straight hair’ (Foster 1995, 14). In the five films, she tried to capture ‘the everyday paths of average young females’, in which ‘the sorting out process begins— sexual attraction—stereotypes—you start working out what you are considered to be in society. I’m the pretty one; I’m ugly; If only I had this’ (Foster 1995, 14). The self-criticism of the girls, who regard themselves as having too many pimples, or being too fat, is something girls, and women, often do. As Armstrong notes in the interview later in this chapter, one reason she felt she should direct My Brilliant Career was it required her female awareness, that a woman needed to direct it because every woman she knows ‘stands in front of the mirror and pulls their looks apart’ (Armstrong 2015a). From this perspective, it is an insight into how many women live in the world and how fundamental conforming to normative tropes of beauty is for female self-esteem or sense of value. Telling stories from female perspectives underpins the worldview offered in Armstrong’s films. Academic Felicity Collins has observed that nothing actually happens in the five films beginning with Smokes and Lollies. There are no historical or socially significant events in these five documentaries. The recurring theme of the women’s boredom goes from one film to another with time passing but no events. For example, Josie, a single mother, is alone in her flat with time marked by the baby crying or the clock ticking (Collins 1999, 69–70). This representation recalls the monotony of motherhood rather than the cultural norm usually represented of how a woman might be fulfilled by it. For many women, this precisely describes the space and time of being a primary carer, of living a life trapped by the domestic. The reframing in each new film gives this additional definition. As Collins concludes, Not Fourteen Again (1996)

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says something about: ‘the cinematically neglected terrain of female life after marriage and childbirth … Everyday gestures are keenly observed and immortalised on film [and they become] centrepieces of the series; they are repeated and remade’ (Collins 1999, 71).

Critical Reception A systemic issue creating a barrier for female filmmakers interested in making films about female experience is that the gatekeepers in many areas are largely men. This is the case not just in the commissioning of films in some sectors, but at the other end, with their reception. Film critics in Australia are generally white men over forty-five (French 2015). Arguably their interests and focus may not be in the same place as many female filmmakers. For example, film critic Dougal Macdonald’s review of Armstrong’s Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces (1988) concludes that the ninety-minute film ‘feels too long’. He wrote: Where Armstrong might have reduced it is hard to decide, since its only fat is the flashbacks to Diana when she was 14 (she is now an incredibly slim mother of three). … Diana has three daughters. The puppy fat has gone, the orthodontist and the oral surgeon have changed an ordinary face into one of unexpected calm beauty. She has a good husband and a happy life in suburbia. She is content but aware life can offer her more. (Macdonald 1988)

What is evident in this review are that the spaces Armstrong attends to are not those that interest Macdonald. What he observes in the documentary is what the women look like from a perspective of their beauty or lack of it (what Laura Mulvey described in 1975 as ‘to be-looked-at-ness’, i.e. that women are an image to be voyeuristically looked at whilst men are bearers of the look). Whilst Armstrong sets up how her three subjects feel about how they look over the seven years between each new film, she is not interested in objectifying them to the masculine gaze or male viewers’ pleasure. Instead, Armstrong is making commentary about the way in which her three characters have internalised their ‘to be-looked-at-ness’, and how every woman rejects herself as too fat, thin, spotty or whatever. She is capturing female experience and subjectivity, and this is the place from which her gaze emanates. This is an example of how Armstrong aestheticises female experience: the everyday gestures of women and signifiers of female space, all of which feel too long to at least one male reviewer, who appears not to connect with or notice them.

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Docudrama Many of the world’s most well-known female directors work across documentary and fiction, moving from narrative features to documentaries, and vice versa. Filmmakers who have done this include Iranian Rakhshan Banietemad, French Claire Denis and Agnès Varda, Senegalese Safi Faye, Finnish Pirjo Honkasalo, Indo-Canadian Deepa Mehta and Australian Gillian Armstrong. Some, like Armstrong, bring the two together as docudrama (also variously referred to or known as drama documentary, dramatised documentary or factual drama). The form has a long history dating back to early cinema; for example, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1926). Docudrama offers the opportunity to either ‘dramatise research, thereby stimulating interest in issues through empathy with characters and narrative, or to apply documentary style to fictional content, thereby enhancing its immediacy’ (Rolinson 2013–2014). Although there have been ongoing debates about docudrama, this text concurs with the conclusion that because documentary is ‘itself subject to editorial decision-­ making and narrative organisation’ (Rolinson 2013–2014), drama therefore does not necessarily corrupt documentary content or dislocate it from the real world it references; they are both subjectively constructed by a filmmaker and her filmmaking team, and both have a basis in the real. As Australian producer and director Tom Zubrycki has written, documentary is about ‘telling stories that matter’; it is: a form of storytelling that doesn’t have any rules as such. Stories can be told in different ways, using various styles and techniques. They are portraits of real people, using real life as their raw material constructed by the filmmaker who makes myriad decisions about what stories to tell and to whom, and for what purpose. Documentaries can be poetic, they can be an observed slice of life, or they can be distinctly issue-based. (Zubrycki 2019, 1)

From this point of view, all films, whether documentary or drama, are creative endeavours that produce stories of our culture, people, and our world. As Mary Lea Bandy, chief curator of Film and Media Art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, has observed, the ‘most perceptive films about the world often mix and match their approach, style and format—blending the historical and narrative with real or re-created interviews’ (Svetvilas 2004).

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The fine line between fiction and reality has often been observed. In the interview in this chapter, Armstrong stated that she sees the similarities in a dramatic, structural sense (noting that her documentaries are always about people). Martin Scorsese, who is most well-known as a feature director, has also directed twenty-two documentaries and has observed the commonalities. He said at the American Film Institute’s Silverdocs Festival in 2006 that: [t]o record it is documentary, to interpret it is dramatic, fiction. And, for me, the emotional and psychological effect it has on an audience, I don’t see the difference, the line is blurred for me between the two. I’m constantly going between that impulse to record something, so that we can share with others, or to interpret it. And sometimes you do both. (Cockrell 2012)

In a similar vein, Armstrong has said that ‘no matter what, you’re telling a story’ and that she believes that the best documentaries, and many of those that had a theatrical release’, like Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald 2003) and Capturing the Friedmans (2003), ‘had a really clever dramatic structure that takes you on a journey’ (SBS 2006). For Armstrong, the use of drama not only helps her tell a story and take audiences with her but solves some problems to do with making films about deceased subjects where there are limited materials available. Both of her dramatised documentaries discussed here extensively employ re-enactments of actual events and characters, so they reference the real with some creative licence in relation to the detail, along with the use of archival materials, photographs and recordings. Neither film attempts to hide its construction and are quite stylised, for example, animated stop motion and motion graphics in the form of cut out figures with a revoiced character (e.g. Broadhurst).

Armstrong’s Dramatised Documentaries Armstrong has made several dramatised documentaries, her first being a short one at film school called Satdee Night (1973). That film had a social realist style, with the look and feel of following someone getting ready for a night out. It was a re-enactment of an event that reportedly happened to one of her (then) real-life housemates, Stuart Campbell, who plays himself in the film. Armstrong has said it was ‘a seminal film, one of the first films where they saw an Australian gay young man, his pain and problems’ (Malone 2012). She has also made two feature length dramatised

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documentaries, the first being Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (2006), the story of the life of design pioneer Florence Broadhurst. The film earned her a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and for Best Direction in a documentary at the AFI Awards. The second was Women He’s Undressed (2015b), which featured the life of three-time Australian Oscar winning costume designer Orry-Kelly, who dressed the likes of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman and Marilyn Monroe in 285 films, including: 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon 1933), The Maltese Falcon (John Huston 1941), Casablanca (Michael Curtiz 1942), An American in Paris (Vincent Minnelli 1951) and Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder 1959). Both films were written by prominent Australian screenwriter Katherine Thompson.12 Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst depicts an extraordinary, unconventional, larger-than-life type of character who had reinvented herself with new identities—she had ‘many lives’, as the film’s title emphasises. Her magnetic personality and entrepreneurialism enabled her to adopt different names and job roles in Europe and South-East Asia. However, her life ended in 1977, when she was brutally murdered. Until this film was made, her murder was the dominant if not defining remembrance of her life. Armstrong has stated in an interview that she aimed to celebrate her life and not her untimely and sensationalised death. The film attempts to redress the event that diminished Broadhurst and avoids any depiction of victimhood. It characterises her as a very significant figure within the history of design in Australia and a driven, determined and creative woman who did not want to become a farmer’s wife. Structurally, the film ends not on the murder but on what she would have thought about the renewed interest in her designs, and the adoption of them by contemporary international designers. The documentary places her today as being regarded as one of world’s leading fashion, interior and homeware designers who continues to be famous for her distinctive prints (SBS 2006). In this sense, the film is a feminist ‘herstory’ that puts her into history and foregrounds her achievements. As the viewer, one is left with the impression that the film examined Broadhurst’s life on her own terms. Whilst the film conveys the idea that Broadhurst was an enigmatic figure by juxtaposing oppositional views from interview subjects, it also allows her to speak for herself by creating a fictional Broadhurst in voiceover monologue. This inserts a dramatised character responding to commentary on what people say, or what the documentary discovers in news broadcasts, newspaper clips and historical photographs. Near the

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beginning of the film, a voiceover from the character of Broadhurst occurs where she is heard to say: ‘I’d always been told that I was born before my time … the times can just catch up’. The scene depicts the pinnacle event for society in that era: the glamorous black and white ball, which Broadhurst reportedly attended in a red dress. In the film, one of the guests remembers that she ‘was just shocked, but of course who else would do it but Florence. She was such a strong personality and I suppose she decided that she wouldn’t conform’. Armstrong, and writer Katherine Thompson, show Broadhurst as a woman with a tough side and offer insight into a complex, uncompromising person. It may be coincidence, but a red dress also features in her dramatised documentary Women He’s Undressed. The character of Orry-Kelly is carried in a small red boat by eight women in red gowns at the beginning of the film. There are also references to William Wyler’s film Jezebel (1938), starring Bette Davis, who was dressed by Orry-Kelly. Davis’s character affronts cultural norms by wearing a red dress to a black and white ball ‘when only pure white gowns are acceptable for virginal southern belles’, and through this the film makes a point about ‘social convention and the price of defiance’ (Girgus 2007, 220).13 Together there is an interesting subtext about women and clothes as a site of rebellion and expression.14 Across her oeuvre, Armstrong has been focused on women who are trying to find a place in the world and to express their creativity or worth. In the case of Unfolding Florence, Armstrong wanted people to get an understanding of ‘the rich, complicated life that the extraordinary Florence Broadhurst led, and to admire her talents and achievements’ and she has said that ‘this is no puff piece. She was a fighter, a perfectionist and didn’t suffer fools’ (Informit/SBS film synopsis). This illustrates the way in which the subject of her documentary is shown against her historical and cultural background, and whilst she was exceptional, she was also a woman of her era, and Armstrong gives an insight into that. The film is focused on who this woman was, and giving her definition, rather than dwelling on the murder mystery. Women He’s Undressed is billed as the life story of Orry-Kelly and whilst it is that, halfway into the film it becomes distracted, or mesmerised, by the female film stars—those women he undressed. The title of the film thus flags these dual interests, and the documentary spends some time elaborating on the stories of how these female stars developed their careers and the struggles they had. For example, although she was a consummate actor, Bette Davis had to fight for her roles. Within the film, there is

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substantial content about the body of Bette Davis, and how Orry-Kelly presented it given that she was a woman with large, somewhat sagging breasts. In the documentary, costume designer Colleen Atwood speaks of Davis and Orry-Kelly as having a collaboration, that he had knowledge ‘about how to transform a body and character through their costumes’, and that was likely to have been one of the things central to his relationship with Bette Davis. This section in the film offers insight into Armstrong’s interest in the representation of the female body, picking up on the theme of to ‘be-looked-at-ness’. This is played out in what she has selected in the documentary. Atwood further adds her insight as a costume designer, that the thing that ‘makes many of the actors today exceptional is all the things that they think are wrong with them because those things are what makes them unique and the combination of those things are what make them beautiful’.

Women and Documentary in Australia Australian cinema was revived through government subsidy from the 1970s and documentaries made by women emerged in the country from that time. The renewal of the industry through government funding meant that it was influenced by equal opportunity policies, and the growth of an industry that is internationally regarded as favourable towards women was related to this timing and to the establishment of funds for women filmmakers and women’s filmmaking collectives (French 2003, 13). As Gabby Wood has observed, it is ‘one of the happy peculiarities of recent Australian history that film and feminism grew up as sisters’ (Wood 1998, 44). In the documentary Brazen Hussies (Catherine Dwyer 2020), a film that tells the history of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia, it is striking that many of the women at the centre of the movement were directors of non-fiction (e.g. Margot Nash, Gillian Leahy and Martha Ansara). As illustrated in Brazen Hussies, it was also a period of activism for gay rights and for those of Aboriginal women. In that period, Aboriginal (Muruwari) woman Essie Coffey was able to make the film My Survival as an Aboriginal (1978), a film of significance because it was one of the first where ‘an Indigenous Australian was directly involved in deciding how she and her community would be represented’ (Zubrycki 2019, 15). Armstrong began her career whilst all this activism was going on, in an era where the climate culturally and industrially was ‘an uneven mix of

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entrenched sexism, new opportunities, and feminist activisms’ (Erhart 2020, 42). However, Armstrong has recalled although she felt pressure to join activists’ groups, she largely resisted it (Erhart 2020, 42). She remained, as described earlier, outside or alongside the documentary sector, who sometimes judged her films ‘negatively because of their commercial ambitions’ (Erhart 2020, 43). It appears that the dichotomy between the commercial filmmaker whose practice has a mainstream entertainment agenda, and the diehard documentary practitioners, has been keenly felt by Armstrong herself who has said in the interview in this chapter that documentary filmmakers ‘are so tough, so ruthless, so obsessive. I’m not one of them’. This is an assessment of the kind of attributes required to be a documentary filmmaker and to some degree is based in the commerce and art binary for which there is a tendency to assume one excludes the other. Armstrong’s credentials as an artist, film author and documentarian are established, but there is a belonging to the Australian documentary community that Armstrong does not appear to have sought, and which has not been explicitly extended to her. This may be because of her extensive profile as a narrative filmmaker and her periods making features outside of the country. Despite this, in recent times Australian documentary filmmakers producing theatrical or broadcast documentaries that are docudramas have been on the rise and have achieved great acclaim for women filmmakers situated within the documentary filmmaking milieu. These have included Anna Broinowski’s Forbidden Lies (2007), Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet (2017) and Rosie Jones’s The Family (2016). The documentary sector in Australia is small but vibrant. Many of the women who started out in the 1970s are still making documentaries today alongside new generations of women who are pushing the form and achieving great success. The sector, and the industry generally, has been highly reliant on support from state and federal screen agencies and broadcasters, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). Specific initiatives support women documentarians, such as Screen Australia’s Gender Matters production and career development funding; or state screen agency support, such as Create NSW’s ‘SheDoc’, a 2016 joint initiative with the Documentary Australia Foundation to support travel, research, mentoring and career development. Slowly, these types of supports have helped to increase female participation in documentary in Australia. As in other countries in the world, it is the sector where women are working successfully in significant numbers.15 The most current figures at the time of writing indicate

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that in documentary production in Australia, women represent forty-nine per cent of producers, thirty-eight per cent of directors and forty-one per cent of writers (French 2020, 278).16

Interview with Gillian Armstrong This is an edited transcript of an interview that was conducted by Lisa French in Sydney on 28 January 2015. French: Armstrong French: I want to focus this interview on sex and gender, which I appreciate is only one part of anybody’s subjectivity, but I do think that women often feel that they have to deny their female subjectivity and I’m interested in that inquiry. I want to start with the question of whether you think that the fact that you have lived your life in the body of a woman has influenced the films that you’ve made? Armstrong: First of all, I have to say that I have said over and over again, that I really hate the label of ‘woman director’ put before my name. I’ve always felt that as an artist that I want people to think of it as a Gillian Armstrong film. And my belief is every woman is different, has a different personality and a different style just like every man does. But of course, all we very, very different women, who have different tastes and styles and beliefs, [each] grew up as a woman. So, of course, the stories that I read and the stories that I react to, so often have a female character. And it hasn’t been for my part a political decision that I want to make a story about a woman, it’s because I can see the world through her eyes. But then on the other hand, I will say, that we do need more films about women. And we do want our daughters to see stories about women told by women. Because even though I don’t like being labelled, I do believe that women do see a lot of things differently. That’s because that’s our nature and our experiences are the sum total of our personality. But as I said, at the same time, I would never want to be put into some group that ‘oh women filmmakers they have some similarity’, because I think that’s actually quite sexist as well. Kathryn Bigelow loves making action films. I admire her filmmaking. I don’t want to make those sorts of films. But that’s because I am a different person. French: When you say ‘seeing the world through her eyes’, what are you thinking of? What are the examples of this in your films, especially

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your documentaries, and can you articulate what you might be thinking when you’re focusing on seeing the world through ‘her’ eyes? Armstrong: I think when you are making a documentary, the key thing is this: to relate to the subject whoever they are, to have a curiosity about who they are, to be open, not judgmental, and as a craft person, as a director, you want them to be as relaxed as possible with you because you want them to be able to think deeply and feel safe and secure and speak openly. You don’t have to be a female filmmaker, that’s the skill of the documentary filmmaker who goes out making films about people. It’s really about having that sense of curiosity and you have to like people so that you get the best from them on camera. The first couple of documentaries I made were about actually craft artists. I made some very short films for the arts council of Australia. I did [a documentary about] Australia’s first stoneware potter, Harold Hughan [A Busy sort of bloke: Harold Hughan, 1979a] who was quite elderly and based in Melbourne and it was all about the art and craft of his work. And then I did two wood’s craftsmen who worked in Huon wood in Tasmania [Touch wood: Five Tasmanian Woodworkers, 1980]. It was me starting out as a director and I was just lucky I got a job, and I got a break. Probably the fact that I was a very young-looking woman might have made them a bit nervous about: was I actually competent in making the documentary. When the very first female unit, part of the South Australian Film Corporation was set up, it was called the 1:1 Films, with John Morris, and Penny Chapman was the supervising producer. They consciously set up to try to encourage more women filmmakers and more women on crews. And they approached me and asked me would I do a film about what it was like to be a fourteen-year-old girl today. And I think I was chosen because I did have such a baby face and I think they thought that I would fit in well with the girls, that they would feel relaxed with me, and I think that those producers were quite smart choosing me for that film. The first documentary I made, Smokes and Lollies [1976], I think the very fact that I was so young and not very far apart from the girls that I was interviewing definitely made them feel relaxed and open up to me about a lot of intimate things that they would never have talked to a male director about. Probably if you were doing a male prison film, if you were a heavy-duty dude covered in tats, you’d probably be the right person to go into a prison environment. But in the end, it’s finally the personality and whether you win the trust of people in a documentary. But you know, definitely I related to [them], I was the one who selected the three girls in the end.

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And the thing that was personal was I related to their sense of humour. So, it was nothing to do with gender it was just that they had the same stupid sense of humour as me. French: Weren’t they friends? Armstrong: They were best friends, yes. We made that decision. I ran it by Penny Chapman and said I’d met these three. The premise of that documentary was originally the new generation of fourteen-year-olds, this liberated generation. I had a researcher who’d been working for a few weeks before I went down to Adelaide. I went through all the files and she just said: ‘I’m going to this drop in center that’s near the inner city area. I’ve heard there are a number of kids that age, do you want to come?’ And I said, ‘Oh sure.’ So, we went up to this drop-in centre and there were these three girls. There were forty Greek and Italian boys, they were the only girls—they were having a very good time. I was perfectly cast. They thought that I was joining the drop-in centre and that the researcher was my mother. So, this whole discussion came up about my age, and I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m too old.’ They said, ‘How old are you?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I’m over 21’; I think I was 24. And then there were a number of things in the conversation that really shocked me. These were three girls who weren’t the new progressive girls that we were originally going out to make the film about. The first thing they said to me when I said that I was over twenty-one was: ‘Are you married?’ And I was like, ‘No, am I over the hill?’ And they were like, ‘Yes!’ So, I later related all this to Penny: I don’t think they’ve ever met anyone in their lives who was over twenty-one that wasn’t married. And I said to them, ‘Well, what age do you want to be married by?’ and they were like, ‘eighteen’. So, as I said, it definitely worked that I was a young woman like those young women. I was very different, I was a middle-class educated young woman, and they were three working-class girls who happened to be best friends. And Penny said, ‘Well, they sound great, do them?’ So, we dropped all the weeks of research and all the other people I was meant to meet, and we started making the film about Kerry, Josie and Diana.17 Which then continued on for thirty-five years. French: Which I guess is a testament to the bonding that you did have with them. Armstrong: Well, I’d like to say if I may, it turned into a longitudinal study. It was never set up to be one. Lots of people think, ‘Oh, you were copying Seven Up’, but it was always meant to be a one-off. But the thing that I didn’t realise, that was quite revolutionary about the film was that

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they started to forget about the camera, they felt in such a trusted environment with me. It was so trusted at times I had to say, ‘If you smoke on camera, your parents will see that’, because they’d forgotten this was one day going to be seen. I did have some ideas about how I wanted to shoot it in a relaxed style, and it had a really lovely warm, and I suppose, fifty per cent female crew. But the thing that was wonderful about that documentary, at that time, was most documentaries were made by men from broadcasters who’d be in a suit and a tie, and who would be speaking very formally and straight up and down. So, it was such a breakthrough. I later found out that apart from winning awards, that it was used as an educational tool for social workers. I’m proud of this so I am boasting about it, because they got an insight. They were three quite troubled young girls, two of them particularly, and they got an insight into how they thought and how they felt, which was the wonderful thing. That seventy per cent female [crew] and very gentle, lovely cinematographer, Tom Cowan, we managed to get on film. Because if you called them into an office and some social worker said: ‘Tell me what’s going on’, they wouldn’t say anything. But I managed to get this relaxed stuff, and I got a trust from them and their parents. And then because they talked so much about their ideal age being eighteen, I thought, ‘Gee it’d be great to go back’, and I managed to raise the money because Brilliant Career [My Brilliant Career 1979b] was a huge hit. And I think we talked the television station into it by saying: ‘Back us because it’s about teenage sex’. But the thing is that over the years, each of them, they’ve all been incredibly brave and honest on camera, so yes there was a bond. But I’d like to say they also felt that I dealt with their lives in a trustworthy way. But I don’t think that’s got anything to do with gender. I never went after a sensational thing. Documentaries are very, very tough. I think that the last thing you should ever think about a documentary filmmaker, when we all see these wonderful social stories, is that there’s this soft person with this lovely gentle heart that went out and did this soul-searching piece. Documentary filmmakers are so tough, so ruthless, so obsessive. I’m not one of them. I like to play in art. But this story became something that was, their lives. I became very involved in, and I’ve realised that I’d caught people growing up. It had great social worth, which is why I’ve continued with it, but it’s not my normal forte. And all those lovely documentary filmmakers that you meet, underneath it, they’re tough.

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French: That’s right, they’re all passionately driven and it’s really not so much about the next film. They wouldn’t make one unless they had that engagement, that’s my observation. Armstrong: But to make those films, you get doors shut in your face. People don’t want to talk. I’m just like a big pussy, they start saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’, and in those early days, I was like, ‘Oh alright, I don’t want to upset you’. But the best documentary filmmakers have this wonderful ability to make everyone comfortable and trusted but they keep going after the main chance to get it on film. And that person that says they don’t want to talk, they find ways to get to them. I have such admiration for all our great documentary filmmakers, male or female. They’re tough. French: Smokes and Lollies begins with the girls just talking, it foregrounds female subjectivity straightaway … Armstrong: You’re analysing my work like an academic. I’m an artist filmmaker. So, I made creative decisions like I want to film them in their bedrooms because the thing that we felt about fourteen was it’s a coming of age, [they were each] still a child. So, at the beginning we got the one that goes and buys some lollies and a packet of smokes. And they’re in their bedroom, they’ve got little girl things around, as well as all the nail polish and so on. So, I’ve made visual creative decisions about the way I interviewed them and also definitely shooting them very, very close. There’s a sequence where they’re putting on their makeup and they’re still babies, and they’ve got spotty skin. But there, I’m not thinking about this ‘female engagement’. That’s just me trying to tell the story. I always believe that the best stories you’re telling visually as well and I’ve always fought against a narration that’s telling people what to think. I wanted them to tell their own story. I cut out all my questions and I asked them to try telling their stories, do their answers in a statement and so on. So, you know, I had a point of view and certain things that I decided I wanted to do in that documentary that was, at that time, quite brave. French: Yes. Unfolding Florence [2006] is a re-enactment, but it’s the voice of the female character and that locates the audience in female perspective. Armstrong: Well we didn’t think it was a female perspective, what Katherine Thomson and I decided, there were a million ways to tell this story. The thing that we found out about Florence was how she was a con artist and we had interviews with her in the paper and magazines where she was telling huge porkies about her life. She was an English socialite

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and friends said they didn’t know until the funeral that she was born in Australia. So, we had a creative dilemma about how do we tell this story? How can we communicate that there’s two sides? And my writer, Katherine Thompson, who’s an ex-actress, was pouncing around while we were trying to work out acting out Florence. It was just one of those things, I went, ‘you can do her voice—why don’t we get her to tell the story and then we’ll counterpoint it?’ So, it’s not something that was anything to do with me being a woman or thinking a woman should tell her own story. I love Florence Broadhurst cos she was bad. She was naughty, she was a con artist. I’d never come across a character like that. There were six people who could have possibly murdered her. I remember when One Hundred A Day (1973) was running in a programme at the Co-op of Sydney women’s films,18 and I had a rabid young feminist say to me: ‘Well, that’s not a very good film for women because they’re not all nice to each other’. And I’m like: ‘I’m not here to make ads for the feminist movement. I’m here as a storyteller and a dramatist’. And they’re three girlfriends and people aren’t always nice to each other. So, I’ve never ever chosen stories thinking [that], because my first feature film was about a woman achiever, I forever had the label that I only want to make films about women that succeed. But as a storyteller, for me, what I’m interested in is flawed people. Sometimes when I read some reviews of some of my films, I thought I wish I’d just put ‘G. Armstrong’ at the end. And I don’t want people to look at them thinking a woman made this story. Especially if they’re a defensive male viewer that feels in some way they’re going to be under attack. Things have progressed, but this was in the early days when there weren’t too many women making films, so they thought somehow or other I would be attacking men. And then there was also this thing: ‘You make films about women’. And I said, you know, even in Starstruck, Angus’s character is as important to me as Jackie’s. … So, I don’t want to sound defensive, but over the thirty years of my career, this woman thing has often really clouded people’s views of my real interest which is telling stories about character and about people and my interest in who are we and what makes us do the things we do. Even with Kerry and Josie and Diana and that longitudinal study, you know, their decisions they made, and the last part of the film, their partners are an equal part of the story as well as the women. French: Do you think there’s a big difference in making a documentary compared to, narrative fiction?

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Armstrong: You still need to take an audience in, to involve them, take them on a journey up and down, to gradually reveal things. You still have a narrative in a documentary. My documentaries have all been about character. There’s many, many styles of documentaries. But the ones that I’ve taken on have actually been about people. But in a dramatic structural sense—there are a lot of similarities. And then at the same time, they’re completely different in that in some ways in a fiction film, you go out and you’ve spent years perfecting your script and you’re bringing every part of it alive, and then you put the pieces together. In a documentary, you may have thought you’ve got a rough structure, but the key thing of the documentary is ‘keep open’ because everything can change. You could learn something completely new and you might need to turn it upside down. And documentaries, instead of going into the cutting room with a script, you go into the cutting room often saying well that was a script we were about, roughly about to shoot, but now we’re going to find a new way because we found these other things. And you actually structure a documentary in the cutting room. The documentary editor is so much more involved, much more like a writer. French: There was something that you said earlier, about being expected to tell positive stories about women. Armstrong: I am slightly defensive because all these years after I did Brilliant Career, all I was offered was every film about a woman achiever. The first woman to fly a plane, to climb a mountain, ride a camel across a desert—you know. And actually, I thought Brilliant Career was about sexual frustration, but they missed that bit. When I was offered My Brilliant Career, I was just a beginning filmmaker, and I thought this is a huge project and I’ll do something smaller first. And there was a point where I could have gone off and done a smaller film and let it go. But the reason that I stayed with it, even though I thought it would be almost impossible, it was such a huge film for a young, just learning director to do, I heard a comment from a dear, dear male friend. He said, ‘Oh who are you going to cast as Sybylla? She obviously has gotta be really ugly, or plain. And I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because in the book she goes on and on about how ugly she is’. And I said, ‘Every woman I know stands in front of the mirror and pulls their looks apart’. And I thought, I have to make this film. I’m the only woman in Australia who can make a film at this point, and I cannot let a man take Miles Franklin’s story and destroy it. Because they don’t get it. They don’t understand what it is to be a woman. I’m also frustrated to see endless stories about young men

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growing up, where are the stories about young women growing up? No one’s telling our stories, I mean, of course, they’re the stories that only a woman knows. And so only a woman knows that every woman has issues about how they look and that was why it was important that I made My Brilliant Career at that point when there were no other female feature directors in Australia. French: What do you think about the role of mentor? When you made that film, another woman hadn’t directed a feature film since 1932. Armstrong: Oh no there was incredible sexism about women having any major responsible creative role in the film industry. And you know the McDonagh sisters had their own money so they could be the producer, writer, director. All the boys from Swinburne all got interviews at the ABC in every department, I was even told that they never took women as assistant editors because you couldn’t be working in the dark with a male editor. To be told that they didn’t want to see my short films, and [asked] what was my typing speed—I never went back to the ABC. The Sydney Women’s Film Group had a fantastic role training woman. I was very lucky; I grew up in a family where I had incredible support from both of my parents. My father was an amateur photographer, so I learnt about the technical side early on. And that’s the thing I think that made a lot of women frightened. Because there’s this thing, the camera, and people will start talking about technical things and they won’t understand. And in some way that hasn’t changed. Now it’s all digital; the boys that want to make a film at school, they find the digital nerd who can then edit it. And I think that the Sydney Women’s Film Group pushed to have women learn all of the technical side away from the boys was such a fantastic thing for Australia. I was in the first year of the film school, in the pilot training year, and there were only two of us, and Robyn Murphy was a product of the Sydney Women’s Film Group, and then when the proper school got going two years later, I think it was nearly fifty-fifty, and a lot of those women had come out of the Sydney Women’s Film Group and the co-op and so on. For many of them, their agenda was to be political filmmakers. Many of them were the first documentary filmmakers in Australia. We were all so lucky that My Brilliant Career was a hit. I used to say to Phil Noyce, because we were both at the film school together, were both doing first features in the same year, he did Newsfront [1978] and I did Brilliant Career, and I said well, you know, ‘It’s alright for you, you’ve just gotta worry about will Phil Noyce’s first film work, I’ve gotta worry about will Gillian Armstrong and will all women be able to make a film.’

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French: Do you have any view of why women might gravitate to documentary more than, you know, other forms? Armstrong: Documentary filmmakers, apart from my terrible words about how ruthless they are, are like the nuns and priests of our society. There’s no money in documentary, so they’re people who have such commitment to trying to reach out, tell stories that touch people and tell us about our world and things that are wrong with our world, and our religions and our environment and so on. And women are more likely to take that risk and say I’ll make those sacrifices. And know that I’m going to be living on the bread line to make those documentaries. Because quite often the best ones take years. Armstrong: I didn’t answer your question about mentors. French: Your success meant that other women felt that they could be directors. Armstrong: When I went to America and My Brilliant Career was a success and I was asked to speak to Women in Film [WIFT] in America, they said, we thank you from the bottom of our heart for making that film. You don’t realise what you’ve done, there’s a perception that women can only make small, gritty films. You’ve made a film that looks huge, it’s beautiful, a real film, and that’s such a breakthrough for women. French: Do you worry at all about it if you don’t have any women in the key creative team or is it going for the best? Armstrong: No. I go for the best. To tell you the truth, the hardest time I had in Brilliant Career was with a couple of the women, who weren’t used to having a woman boss. The men were fine. French: I’ve heard that before too—a ‘queen bee’ problem. Do you think that women, and I’m thinking documentary directors, might have some kind of access by dint of, you know there might be some advantage with being women sometimes? Armstrong: Oh sure. And as I said, to be a documentary filmmaker you’ve got to use every single thing under the sun. Some men are happy to chat to you and not realise you’ve got a whole hidden agenda and you’re going to turn all those questions around. Then there can be others just feeling the same thing, ‘it’s just some little, young woman’s film, it’s no big deal’, and of course it ends up this huge powerful film. French: Yeah that’s right. I want to ask you: do you think you can tell that a film has been made by a woman director? Armstrong: No. French: Okay (laughs).

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Armstrong: I don’t think you can tell in a craft sense. You would hope that a film made by a woman director, a drama I’m talking about, that their female characters would be a lot more complicated. You would expect or hope that there wouldn’t be shots that were just absolutely sexist, just lingering on someone’s body, or treating her female characters in a sexist way. But if you’re talking about the style of shooting and so on, that’s when I’d say no. Because we’re all artists and have different crafts and different ways of shooting and seeing things. It was interesting that those women in film in America telling me they had been put in a box that women did low budget, kitchen sink dramas. But I think that was because those women had very, very little money to make their first films and so they probably naturally, you know, shot something that was based around a house, or didn’t, you know they weren’t doing tracking shots and so on. It was partly an economic thing, but it became branded as a woman’s style. Someone in these early seventies feminist groups said to me about one of my films they said that my films ‘look slick like a man’s.’ I don’t think there’s a woman’s style, they haven’t got enough money and they’re holding the camera themselves. So that’s something that’s ‘feminine’, that’s like, that’s complete bullshit. French: To finish, I would like to know about your new film. Armstrong: Women He’s Undressed (2015b) is the story of Orry-Kelly. Damien Parer, who’s my producer, his father won the very first Academy Award in Australia, and Damien was researching other Australians that had won an Academy Award and came across this name, Orry-Kelly, who’d won three Academy Awards for costume and realised that none of us had ever heard of him. And he came to me on the strength of my Florence Broadhurst documentary and said would I be interested. I’d never heard of him either and he did Some Like it Hot [Billy Wilder 1959] and American in Paris [Vincente Minnelli 1951] and I just thought, well that’s a story that should be told. He came from Kiama, New South Wales, a coastal town, left Australia aged twenty-four, across the sea to America to try to make it in Broadway and ended up the head of Warner’s costume department and Betty Davis’s mentor. And, basically, he was a costume designer from 1932 to the early 1960s when he died. It’s a fantastic story of a young gay man’s journey. French: Thank you for your perspective on working as a female director. Armstrong: All of my films only Gillian Armstrong could have made. And only the female Gillian Armstrong could have made. When I respond to material it’s a complete gut thing and of course I go on a journey. I identify more with the female character.

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Conclusion The credit ‘A Gillian Armstrong film’ marks the unique work of the artist. She is a major director of Australian and international cinema, ‘an innovator in film language across multiple industrial and aesthetic spaces’ (Erhart 2020, 3). Whilst she would not want her work to be located as most strongly, or only, emerging from her gender, which as she has stated, would be sexist, this does not mean she does not have something to say about female experience, subjectivity and living in the body of a woman (or girl). As she said, ‘women do see a lot of things differently’, and her cinema is full of examples which illustrate that point. Her feminist vision manifests in numerous ways, and whilst she denies that wanting women to tell their own stories is an overt aspiration for her (e.g. it is a question of style and she hates narration and telling the audience what to think), the fact that she has given her subjects a voice and speaking position is a marker of a feminist aesthetic (whether intended or intuitive). She does this for her male subjects too and this underpins a quest to hear or be attentive to the voice of her subject or character. Her stories highlight women’s lives and struggles to express or achieve their aspirations, be it a working-class girl in Adelaide or a movie star like Bette Davis in Hollywood. The focus on her status as a ‘woman director’, which has framed her career, has from Armstrong’s point of view detracted from her real humanist interests in telling stories about characters, people and what motivates them. As this book has illustrated, this issue has been identified by female filmmakers who have been frustrated by wanting their art recognised on the terms it establishes. It is, however, not necessary to choose between being an artist (or the concerns of that artist) and being a woman artist. They are not mutually exclusive, and it is important that female subjectivity is not denied (that would be a victory for patriarchy). Armstrong’s subjects and characters do not deny it as she shows how they find a place in the world to express their creativity and worth. In the end, there is a fine line between her non-feature and fiction films, in each she is attentive to how women live in and experience the world they are part of. As has been illustrated in this chapter, this has occurred through her female aesthetic and the stylistic and formal qualities in her films that establish her gaze as one that represents female subject positions and female lives.

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Notes 1. Armstrong’s features in Australia are: My Brilliant Career (1979); Starstruck (1982); High Tide (1987); The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992); and Oscar and Lucinda (1997). Her Hollywood/international features were: Mrs Soffel (1984); Fires Within (1991); Little Women (1994); Charlotte Gray (2001); Death Defying Acts (2007). Her documentaries are: Smokes and Lollies (1976); A Busy Kind of Bloke (1978); Touch wood: Five Tasmanian Woodworkers (1980); Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better (1981); Not Just a Pretty Face (1983); Having a Go (1983); Hard to Handle: Bob Dylan in Concert (1986); Bingo, Bridesmaids & Braces (1988); Not Fourteen Again (1996); Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (2006); Love, Lust & Lies (2010); Women He’s Undressed (2015). She also made twelve short films between 1968 and 1985 (see Collins 1999, 93–94 and IMBD). 2. Australian cinema experienced a period where there was very little production between the 1930s and 1970s, and in some years no features were made, although there was documentary production, particularly through the Commonwealth Film Unit and the Shell Film Unit (it was known as ‘the interval’). However, from the 1970s there was a ‘revival’, also referred to as ‘the renaissance’. In December 1969, the then Prime Minister John Gorton announced funding to the industry that would continue with subsequent governments. These initial funds set up the Australian Film Development Corporation, which funded the Experimental Film Fund and a national film school. The film school was the Film and Television School, now called the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (French Poole 2013, 20, 32, 58). Armstrong was to go to that school in its first intake in 1973 (then known as the Film and Television School). 3. Armstrong makes a distinction in the interview in this chapter between her work and that of documentary filmmakers, whom she admires and describes as tough, ruthless and obsessive. She does not see herself as one of them despite her twelve documentaries. This is further elaborated in the section on women in documentary film in Australia. 4. Between 1933 when Paulette McDonagh made Two Minutes Silence and 1979 when Gillian Armstrong made My Brilliant Career, there weren’t any feature films directed by women in Australia except one 71-minute film The Golden Cage (Ayten Kuyululu, 1975) which was not very widely distributed or seen. 5. Best Actress (Judy Davis), Best Adapted Screenplay (Eleanor Witcombe), Best Achievement in Production Design (Luciana Arrighi), Costume Design (Anna Senior) and Cinematography (Don McAlpine). 6. Metaphysical feminism acknowledges that women share the fact of being female in the world and the experience of living lives inflected through the

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experience of their female sex and gender, and from that perspective, one woman’s experience is linked to all women’s experience. It is a feminist ontology—the nature of existence for women is one that has shared elements because women everywhere are subject to patriarchy, to being othered, a shared history of oppression and consciousness of marginalisation and to the experience of dominant male versions of creative expression. 7. Arguably the ‘woman director’ label signifies that women are a minority, or a rarity in a male-dominated industry. There are never headlines like ‘Not Just a “Woman Director”: An Interview with Gillian Armstrong’ for men (Melbourne International Film Festival Blog 2017); for example, ‘Not Just a “Man Director”…’. 8. Smokes and Lollies (1976), Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better (1981), Bingo, Bridesmaids & Braces (1988), Not Fourteen Again (1996) Love, Lust & Lies (2010). 9. In 1988, it was reported by Jonathan Holmes in Filmnews that Armstrong made a submission to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (Holmes 1988, 6). In the interview she said that the Grierson social documentary tradition, dealing with social and political issues, was not going to attract mass audiences but would be supported on the ABC. 10. Paul Almond directed the first film Seven Up! and after that there were eight subsequent films from 1970 to 2019 that were directed by Michael Apted. The first one in this series, by Almond, was intended as a oneoff also. 11. There have been five films in the series to date: Smokes and Lollies (1976), Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better (1981), Bingo, Bridesmaids & Braces (1988), Not Fourteen Again (1996), Love, Lust & Lies (2010). 12. Thompson has a substantial body of work as a writer in television and has infrequently written documentaries. Her only other work in documentary was Australian: The Story of Us (2015), about people and events that have shaped the country. From this it would appear that Thompson, like Armstrong, has an interest in nationalistic stories. 13. Jezebel is a black and white film that manages to convince the audience that Bette Davis’s character is in a red dress. 14. Arguably linking Orry-Kelly to the red dress places him as a rebel who had to struggle to express himself also (which is something the film deals with in relation to his being a gay man in an era when that was problematic). 15. For further on the international reception of female filmmakers in Australia, including in documentary, see French (2014). 16. The most recent data was 2017. 17. Kerry Carlson, Diana Doman and Josie Petersen. 18. This would have been a Sydney Women’s Film Group (SWFG) screening. They were part of the Sydney Filmmakers’ Cooperative (SFMC).

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References Armstrong, Gillian. 1998. Interview Conducted by Peter Malone. September 4. http://petermalone.misacor.org.au/tiki-­index.php?page=Gillian+Armstrong &bl/. Accessed 29 September 2020. ———. 2015a. Interview conducted by Lisa French in Sydney. 28 January 2015. Cockrell, Eddie. 2012. More Than a Hobby: Ten Feature Filmmakers Who Have Dabbled in the Doco Form. SBS Hosted Film Critic Blog, April 2. https:// www.sbs.com.au/blog/125887/t/. Accessed 3 October 2020. Collins, Felicity. 1999. The Films of Gillian Armstrong. Melbourne: ATOM. Douglas, James Robert. 2016. Gillian Armstrong: I Used to Think, ‘I Did It, Why Can’t All the Other Women?’ The Guardian, August 30. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/30/gillian-­armstrong-­i-­used-­to-­think-­i-­did-­ it-­why-­cant-­all-­the-­other-­women. Accessed 29 September 2020. Erhart, Julia. 2020. Gillian Armstrong: Popular, Sensual and Ethical Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. 1995. Women Film Directors: An International Bio-­ Critical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press. French, Lisa, ed. 2003. Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia. Melbourne: Damned Publishing. ———. 2014. The International Reception of Australian Women Filmmakers. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 28 (5): 654–665. ———. 2015. The League of Men: Why Are There so Few Female Critics? The Conversation, October 8. https://theconversation.com/the-­league-­of-­men-­ why-­are-­there-­so-­few-­female-­film-­critics-­47470/. Accessed 21 September 2020. ———. 2020. Gender Still Matters: Towards Sustainable Progress for Women in Australian Film and Television Industries. In Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power, ed. Susan Liddy, 271–291. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. French, Lisa, and Mark Poole. 2013. Shining a Light: 50 Years of the AFI. Melbourne: ATOM and AFI. Girgus, Sam B. 2007 [1938]. Movies and Whistling in the Dark. In American Cinema of the 1930s: Themes and Variations, ed. Ina Rae Hark, 206–226. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Holmes, Jonathan. 1 June 1988. Holming In: Jonathan Holmes – on doco and the ABC. Filmnews: 6. Levy, Emanuel. 1977. Oscar and Lucinda. Variety, December 6. https://variety. com/1997/film/reviews/oscar-­and-­lucinda-­111738170/. Accessed 8 October 2020. Macdonald, Dougal. 1988. Ordinary Lives Filmed with Extra Perception. Canberra Times, October 21.

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Malone, Peter. 2012. Gillian Armstrong (Interview). Peter Malone Website, May 25. http://petermalone.misacor.org.au/tiki-­index.php/. Accessed 9 October 2020. McKay, Rob. 1988. Director Follows Adelaide Lives. Canberra Times, October 13. Mordue, Mark. 1989. Homeward Bound. Sight and Sound 58 (4): 270–272. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16 (3): 6–18. O’Brien, Anne. 2020. Documenting Documentary: Liberated enclave or pink ghetto? In Women in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Storytellers. Susan Liddy, ed. 117–134. Cork: Cork University Press. Rolinson, Dave. 2013–2014. Drama Documentary: Controversial Blend of Fact and Fiction. BFI Screenonline. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/ id/1103146/index.html. Accessed 3 October 2020. SBS. 2006. Gillian Armstrong Interview: Unfolding Florence. December 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTzYhSXytY%2F. Accessed 4 October 2020. Svetvilas, Chuleenan. 2004. Hybrid Reality: When Documentary and Fiction Breed to Create a Better Truth. International Documentary Association, June 30. https://www.documentary.org/feature/hybrid-­reality-­when-­documentary­and-­fiction-­breed-­create-­better-­truth. Accessed 3 October 2020. Wood, Gaby. 1998. My Brilliant Career Down Under in Film and Feminism. New Statesman 11 (497): 44–45. Zubrycki, Tom. 2019. The Changing Landscape of Australian Documentary: Platform Papers, Quarterly Essays on The Performing Arts. No. 58. 2 February 2019. Sydney: Currency House.

Filmography Almond, Paul. 1963. Seven Up. Granada Television. Apted, Michael. 1970. 7 Plus Seven. Granada Television. ———. 1977. 21 Up. Granada Television. ———. 1984. 28 Up. Granada Television. ———. 1991. 35 Up. Granada Television. ———. 1998. 42 Up. BBC & Granada Television. ———. 2005. 49 Up. Granada Television. ———. 2012. 56 Up. ITV Studios. ———. 2019. 63 Up. ITV Studios, Albert+Sustainable Production, Shiver. Armstrong, Gillian. 1971 The Roof Needs Mowing. Australian Film & Television School. ———. 1973. One Hundred A Day. Australian Film & Television School. ———. 1976. Smokes and Lollies. 1:1 Films. ———. 1979a. A Busy Sort of Bloke: Harold Hughan. Australia Council.

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———. 1979b. My Brilliant Career. Margaret Fink Productions, New South Wales Film. Corporation and Greater Union Organisation. ———. 1980. Touch wood: Five Tasmanian Woodworkers. Australia Council. ———. 1981. Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better. Film Australia. ———. 1982. Star Struck. Palm Beach Pictures and Australian Film Commission. ———. 1984. Mrs Soffel. Edgar J.  Scherick Associates & Metro-Goldwyn-­ Mayer (MGM). ———. 1988. Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces. Film Australia. ———. 1994. Little Women. ———. 1996. Not Fourteen Again. ———. 2006. Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst. Becker Entertainment, Film Australia and Northern Pictures. ———. 2010. Love, Lust & Lies. ———. 2015b. Women He’s Undressed. Damien Parer Productions. Bacon, Bacon. 1933. 42nd Street. Warner Bros. Broinowski, Anna. 2007. Forbidden Lies. Adelaide Film Festival and Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC). Coffey, Essie. 1978. My Survival as an Aboriginal. Goodgaban Productions. Curtiz, Michael. 1942. Casablanca. Warner Bros. Dwyer, Catherine. 2020. Brazen Hussies. Film Camp. Flaherty, Robert. 1926. Nanook of the North. Les Frères Revillon, Pathé Exchange. Green, Kitty. 2017. Casting JonBenet. Forensic Films, Symbolic Exchange and Meridian Entertainment. Huston, John. 1941. The Maltese Falcon. Warner Bros. Jarecki, Andrew. 2003. Capturing the Friedmans. HBO Documentary & Notorious Pictures. Jones, Rosie. 2016. The Family Big Stories, Small Towns. Kuyululu, Ayten. 1975. The Golden Cage. Independent Artists. Macdonald, Kevin. 2003. Touching the Void. FilmFour, Darlow Smithson Productions, UK Film Council. Minnelli, Vincente. 1951. American in Paris. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Noyce, Phillip. 1978. Newsfront. Palm Beach Pictures, NSW Film Corporation & The Australian Film Commission (AFC). Pearlman, Karen. 2019. I Want to Make a Film About Women. The Physical TV Company. Wilder, Billy. 1959. Some Like It Hot. Ashton Productions and The Mirisch Corporation. Wyler, William. 1938. Jezebel. Warner Bros.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion: Rendering Female Reality

The concept of the female gaze presented in this book is conceived as plural: each woman director has her own female gaze. It is not homogenous to women as a group, but it is a gendered gaze. It is informed by her unique contextual circumstances. Gender is just one element amongst many diverse situations or influences that inform individual identity and creative output. It is not possible or desirable to generalise women’s cinema given they have participated in every possible kind of subject, aesthetic and approach in documentary filmmaking. Whilst gender may not be the most formative aspect of any given director’s practice, that does not make redundant the question of how it informs creative work. Such an enquiry offers insights into the aestheticisation of female experience in documentaries. What this text has centrally aspired to understand is the way women’s perspectives, subjectivity and participation inform documentary filmmaking and offer understandings of the realities of being female in the world today. Throughout this book documentarians have repeatedly offered a view that women ‘have a different perspective to men’ (Léa Pool in Mandy 2000). It is a felt sense of gender difference that has emerged despite the variances between women, their contexts and lives. As Judith Butler has written ‘we refer not only to women as a social category but also as a felt sense of self, a culturally conditioned or subjective identity’ (Butler 1990, 324). Gillian Armstrong described her own feeling that she had to make certain films because in her view only a woman knows what it is to be a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7_12

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woman. There are enormous differences in female experience across cultures, but all women experience what it means to be female in a patriarchal society, given this is the context globally. Nancy Kates stated that the conversation about the female gaze is partly about power and that there are similarities between people who are ‘Othered’, or disempowered, by not being the dominant group in society (men everywhere hold the power and dominate—although the extent of this varies between cultures). To some degree this is what has been described in this book as a feminist ontology, the nature of existence as women experience it, the concrete realities of their lives, including the social construction of gender roles. The research brought together here contributes case studies that offer examples of how women documentarians communicate female experience and subjectivity—the female gaze. How women live in and experience the world is a central interest and it is not essentialist to examine this. Avoiding gendered enquiries for fear of essentialism potentially stifles gender research and arguably obstructs feminisms, blocking rich fields of enquiry. Each filmmaker renders reality as a woman from her specific perspective and situation. Women documentarians have frequently been drawn to tell women’s stories, capturing the circumstances, position and condition of females, developing an iconography of women’s space, bodies and lives. The female documentarians considered here offer a respectful communication of gender that is undertaken with attention to what women see and feel, or the behaviour and psychology of subjects. In some situations, being a female filmmaker opens a space that enables stories that arguably would never have been told in the way they have been (e.g. Longinotto’s work with women who have been raped in Rough Aunties and Dreamcatcher, or Armstrong’s ability to get teenage girls to open up to her in Smokes and Lollies). The female look is frequently one that observes the nuances of the world of individual women, and a focus on small things like gestures, feelings and emotions—the lived experience and being in the moment, rather than the big concepts and action. Time is often given to insights into the personal and interior spaces and psychology. This is prevalent in the work of the women described here. Part of the female gaze is about agency and women’s subjectivity in constructing the gaze and in returning it. It is also about decolonising a gaze that has historically constructed relations of looking that have locked in certain ways of seeing that prescribe and exclude, that create worlds where the female perspective and desire are absent. For example, Marie

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Mandy’s documentary explicitly examines how desire itself is recorded by women on film. Through her documentary, which is essentially practice-­ led research (in that it is interested in the nature of practice and she uses it to discover new knowledge about the practice), she discovers how female filmmakers have aestheticised sexuality and how that draws on gendered experience.1 Mandy concludes that on-screen sex has been portrayed as the fulfilment of men’s desires rather than of women’s; that women filmmakers treat the body and desire differently to dominant modes by male filmmakers; and that women offer insights into ways women exist in their (female) sexuality. This is a counterpoint to the dominance of a screen landscape that has historically been saturated with male-imagined imagery, oftentimes a gaze that objectified women and reduced them to a secondary role. As Nistha Jain observed, we need to complicate the gaze in order to understand that there are many relations of looking. In her case, she is reflexively aware of her own position: where she is looking from and her place (and power) due to her class, something more pronounced in her native India than in other cultures. She notes that documentary filmmakers often make films about people who might be poor or suffering, and probing one’s own gaze is fundamental for the documentary filmmaker. The question of the gaze is further complicated by perspectives such as that observed by Kim Longinotto, who said that sex (biology) and gender (social gender norms), are fluid and complex, and the identification of a gaze by sex (male or female) is not necessarily meaningful and gender binaries are too simplistic. This is especially so if one considers that some people do not gender identify and others have a gender identity that is not aligned with their sex at birth. Whilst the overlap or slippage is noted, and I agree that masculine or feminine ways of being are not necessarily located in one sex or other, however, biology or social construction do have an impact on experience and subjectivity. A central hallmark of a female gaze identified here is a ‘female aesthetic’—a gaze where the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities are constructed to represent female subjectivity or female subject positions. Throughout this book, one way in which this has been identified has been a tendency in films by women to favour a circular rather than linear form or progression, a slowness in pacing, a pondering of detail that captures a feeling of being there, an interiority, an interest in human relationships and a predominance of female protagonists. This is not absolute, but is a

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tendency that frequently arose with female documentarians whose work was considered in this book. Whilst women make documentaries about every subject, there are commonalities between the women whose practice is discussed here. These included a particular interest in issues that especially affect women; an inclination to show women’s lives or points of view (including women’s social struggles or struggles for agency); a focus on feeling and psychological perspectives, inner lives or humanism; attention to personal stories; and a strong interest in familial spheres. All of these frame female agency and subjectivity, which are key hallmarks of the female gaze. As Teresa de Lauretis has written, the project of women’s cinema is not so much about identifying what has been left out or repressed in cinema, but to effect another vision for an alternate social subject that constructs different objects and subjects of vision and addresses the spectator as female ‘rather than portray women positively or negatively’ (de Lauretis 1987, 135). Claiming this here is problematic because in attempting to find some definition to what de Lauretis has called a ‘vision for another social subject’, one must become involved in ‘the highly risky business of redefining aesthetic and formal knowledge’ (de Lauretis 1987, 134). This has, however, motivated this research which finds this social subject through the female gaze, one produced by a female author. It communicates and expresses female subjectivity. It is a gaze shaped by a female ‘look’, voice, emotional response and perspective—the filmic depiction of the subjective experience or perspective of someone who lives in a female body. Women filmmakers claim a place for female subjectivity: the female gaze.

Note 1. Practice-based research is where new knowledge is gained through practice and its outcomes (e.g. research might be undertaken by a creative practice such as filmmaking, but it is interested in the topic but not in contributing knowledge about filmmaking). Practice-led research is interested in the practice itself and leads to new knowledge about that practice (e.g. Marie Mandy wanted to know how women filmmakers aestheticise desire in their films and her research therefore led to new understandings about filmmaking).

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References Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic Discourse. In Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda J.  Nicholson, 324–340. New York: Routledge. de Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mandy, Marie. 2000. Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema. France: Saga Film.

Filmography Longinotto, Kim. 2008. Rough Aunties. United Kingdom: Rise Films. ———. 2015. Dreamcatcher. United States: Green Acres Films.



Glossary

This glossary offers lay definitions of terms as they are adopted in this text. It is not intended that they be comprehensive or outline the key theory, but that they assist the reader in navigating this book. Aesthetic  The creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of the work. Auto-ethnography  Auto-ethnographic films are constructed through the filmmakers’ own experience and are social research that uses the personal to understand cultural experience. They develop a self-narrative that ‘critiques the situatedness of self with others in social, political, economic and cultural context’ (Spry 2001, 710). Counter-cinema  On the level of form and language, a counter-cinema reveals the codes and conventions of mainstream cinema so as to ‘counter’ messages or language, revealing the ideological messages coded (signified) in the cinema in order to make them visible and to generate alternative meanings (which has often occurred in experimental, avantgarde or anti-illusionist film practices). A feminist counter-cinema does this with feminist aims as a form of political resistance. Direct Cinema  Direct Cinema arose in the US in the early 1960s with the advent of lightweight cameras that allowed an unobtrusive method (dispensing with the need for heavy, obvious equipment). It developed alongside cinéma-­vérité in France and was underpinned by an aspiration to achieve objective truthfulness through invisibility of the film© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. French, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68094-7

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makers and a faith in an observational approach whereby the filmmaker does not intervene. Essentialism  Essentialism in relation to sex and gender is the principle that women and men have essences that are prescribed by, or essential to, male or female biology. Female Aesthetic  A ‘female aesthetic’ is one whereby the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities of a documentary are constructed to represent female subjectivity or female subject positions (as diverse as they might be). It is understood in this book as taking a variety of forms to represent female subjectivity, and as such, it is not a singular or homogenous idea. Female Gaze  The ‘female gaze’ refers to representation that is produced by a female filmmaker. As such, it might focus on any subject and takes on multiple forms. Each woman will have her own female gaze which reveals how she is engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences, inflecting her life, body and thinking onto her aesthetic approach (her ‘female aesthetic’). The key marker of the ‘female gaze’ is the communication or expression of female subjectivity—a gaze shaped by a female ‘look’, voice, emotional response and perspective—the filmic depiction of the subjective experience or perspective of someone who lives in a female body. The female gaze reveals an awareness of Otherness or difference between the sexes, which in this text is not an axis of value (e.g. that one is better), but one of difference. A woman does not need to be a feminist in order to create a female gaze. Female Perspective  Something constructed from a female worldview and female subjectivity. A key marker is the way in which a film might aim to speak through the body and psyche of a woman. Female Subjectivity  Female subjectivity is the subjective experience of someone who lives in a female body. It is constructed semiotically and historically and is contingent on that person’s cultural and historic specific circumstances and of her ways of comprehending her relation to everything around her. This text is interested in how sex and gender, as lived experiences, have informed the individual subjectivity of female directors and created female worldviews. The female gaze and a female aesthetic enable knowledge of the subjective experience of someone who lives in a female body. Feminine Aesthetic  A ‘feminine aesthetic’ is understood and described in this book as a style. The work of any filmmaker, regardless of their

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biological sex identification (or non-identification), could display a feminine aesthetic given femininity is ideologically socially and culturally constructed according to cultural assumptions, values and beliefs. Films by women frequently adopt characteristics of a ‘feminine aesthetic’, which has a particular ‘way of looking’, but it is a style that might be adopted by anyone. The characteristics of this style are established in Chap. 5 and expanded in other places within this text. Feminist Aesthetic  A documentary with a feminist aesthetic is one where the creative, expressive, stylistic and formal qualities are constructed to achieve a feminist politic (noting that there are many feminisms and therefore numerous feminist positions). A feminist aesthetic will be aiming to achieve a speaking position for women, reveal how women are oppressed by patriarchy and take a pro-gender equality position. As feminisms change or evolve, or as new positions have emerged, feminist aesthetics have also found new forms. Male or female filmmakers might make work that has a feminist aesthetic. Feminist Film/Documentary  A feminist film is one with a politic aimed at achieving equality (equal conditions or opportunities) and equity (fairness) between men and women. Whilst there are many kinds of feminisms that might be adopted, they all share an interest in social transformation, addressing inequality and opposing patriarchy and sexism. Feminist films frequently highlight women’s issues, lives, and perspectives, aiming for equality, inclusivity and respect for women. Feminist Ontology  See: Metaphysical feminism. Gender  Gender has generally denoted socially constructed (masculine/ feminine) roles based on sex but it is also used in this text to refer to social gender. Gender Identity  How a person identifies individually as being a woman or a man (or girl/boy). It is related to how a person experiences their own gender. Some people do not identify with the sex they had at birth and others do not gender identify at all. It is common to offer one’s gender identity (e.g. she/her). The term ‘cisgender’ refers to someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned when born. Gender Mainstreaming  What this means is that before you act, you interrogate the gender perspective. It is a methodology whereby you can overlay over a gender lens all activities of an organisation, including curriculum development, policy and recruitment, with the main aim being to achieve gender equality.

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Herstory  A ‘herstory’ puts a woman or women back into the history. It outlines their lives, achievements and how male dominated histories of achievement have ignored, suppressed or minimised women’s contribution, and in the process, herstories reveal the sexist ideology or bias that had been at work. A herstory is a story of a woman, usually constructed by feminist women, from their feminist point of view or life experience (negating the masculine dominance of stories and histories). Intersectional Feminism  Forms of inequality often act together, intensifying that inequality. Intersectional feminists are interested in the ways in which other forms of discrimination (such as racism, classism and ageism) interact to further exacerbate gender inequality and marginalise people. Male Gaze  Laura Mulvey’s exploration of the fetishistic, voyeuristic and controlling ‘male gaze’ shone a light on power relations and the gaze in classic Hollywood cinema. She distinguished pleasures of looking (scopophilia) in three kinds of look that split ‘active/male’ and ‘passive/ female’ relations: from camera to event; from spectator to screen action; and between characters in the film. She theorised that men were bearers of the look, women were spectacle, and the look of the spectator was aligned with the non-eroticised male character (Mulvey 1975). David Thomson describes the male gaze as ‘a codification of human desire that guided our narrative habits’ (2019, 219). Ganes has observed that gaze theory was limited to the idea that the power of the gaze is vested in (white) men and its object is (white) women and as such it failed to include people of colour (see Ganes 1990). Metaphysical Feminism  Metaphysical feminism acknowledges that women share the fact of being female in the world and the experience of living lives inflected through the experience of their female sex and gender, and from that perspective, one woman’s experience is linked to all women’s experience. It is a feminist ontology—the nature of existence for women is one that has shared elements because women everywhere are subject to patriarchy, to being othered, to a shared history of oppression and consciousness of marginalisation, and to the experience of dominant male versions of creative expression. The use of this idea is not intended to deny that there are significant transnational differences for women across different nations and in relation to individual contingent circumstances (as transnational feminists have identified). Poetics  Poetics is understood here as the ways in which a film might employ image and metaphor within its form and stylistic system.

 GLOSSARY 

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Iconography, motifs and compositional principles constitute the form and style of a film and have a capacity as cinematic expression to convey thematic preoccupations or patterns. An exploration of poetics directs a consideration of the function or effect of these qualities. I am particularly interested in the ways in which it is used to express the female filmmaker’s subjectivity (which is understood as historically and ideologically contingent). I am also interested in an examination of a poetics of gender, and in feminist poetics, which confront the problematics of power in speaking about the struggles of women. This includes struggles as female filmmakers in a patriarchal filmmaking system and in finding ways (e.g. symbolic or gestural) to express female subjectivities. Postcolonial Feminism  Postcolonial examinations in relation to colonialism, imperialism, race and power have been informative to postcolonial feminism, a critical discourse that interrogates the effects of colonial rule on women and examines the experiences of women as gendered postcolonial subjects (e.g. as suffering postcolonial gendered violence or as represented by colonialist gender stereotypes). It is generally in opposition to universalist assumptions about women as a group where white Western Feminists did not account for non-white women (see Postcolonial Feminist Film Practice). Postcolonial Feminist Film Practice  A postcolonial feminist practice is one where a filmmaker examines the issues and ongoing effects of colonialism, postcolonial themes, and is interested in representing marginalised groups. Specifically, it involves self-­ representation for Third World women, which reveals diverse, ethnic-­specific struggles and/or resistance. Profilmic  The profilmic is the real referent that exists prior to and independent of the camera’s activity and what the camera records is the profilmic event. It can be argued that the way in which the filmmaker puts together the film about the profilmic event is coded by ideology and cultural assumptions and therefore reinforces the social and ideological status quo of the society in which it was made (e.g. patriarchal belief systems). Queer Film  A queer film (or other cultural product) is understood in this book as one made by ‘out’ queer people. It might not be overtly queer in theme but it might be described as queer because it engages with, or is interested in, events and ideas that are of concern to the queer community.

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GLOSSARY

Reflexivity  A reflexive film reveals its own constructed nature. Sex  Sex generally refers to biological or physiological characteristics of being classified as male or female although intersex people have variations of sex characteristics and transgender people live their lives in a sex that is different to the one assigned at their birth. Transnational Feminism  As a contemporary feminist paradigm, transnational feminism theoretically and politically focuses on the effect of globalisation and capitalism across national, racial, gender-based, social stratification and sexual identities. Theoretically, transnational feminists critique Western mainstream feminism for universalising; speaking for others, based in its own narrow self-interest; white; and as a hegemonic Western discourse. It recognises the profound historical, political, economic and social contextual differences across cultures and nations. It is understood in this text as creating a feminist solidarity without collapsing the significant inequalities and differences women experience. For example, human rights are not the same for all, but all women are (variously) subjected to patriarchy. A transnational feminist film practice is one that adopts this critical position, does not speak for others, and which draws on the histories and contexts of individual women (and is cognisant of intersectional influences). Transnational Feminist Film Practice  See Transnational Feminism.

References Ganes, Jane. 1988. White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory. Screen 29 (4): 12–27. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16 (3): 6–18. Spry, Tami. 2001. Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis. Qualitative Inquiry 7: 706–732. Thomson, David. 2019. Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Film Index1

A Age of Stupid, The (Fanny Armstrong 2009), 24 Alcohol Years, The (Carol Morley 2000), 135 Am I Beautiful (Doris Dörrie 1998), 81 Angel at My Table, An (Jane Campion 1990), 146 Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got (Brigitte Berman 1986), 50 Art of Living in Danger, The (Mina Keshavarz 2020), 63 At My Doorstep (Nishtha Jain 2009), 161 At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal (Erin Lee Carr 2019), 98, 205 Awavena (Lynette Wallworth 2018), 25

1

B Beaches of Agnes (Agnès Varda 2008), 179, 195n6 Beauty in Truth (Alice Walker 2013), 135 Below Her Mouth (April Mullen 2006), 42n18 Beware of My Love (Jeanne Labrune 1998), 184 Born Into Brothels (Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman 2004), 50 Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan, The (Phil Grabsky 2004), 150, 153 Brazen Hussies (Catherine Dwyer 2020), 230 Brick Lane (Sarah Gavron 2007), 147, 149, 150 Bridge, The (Ileana Stanculescu 2004), 33

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FILM INDEX

Broken Rainbow (Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd 1985), 50 Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, 9, 200, 201 Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Buffy (Fran Rubel Kuzui 1992–1997), 143 Bukhara (Elizaveta Svilova 1927), 17

E Eat the Kimono (Kim Longinotto and Jano Wiliams 1989), 140 Enthusiasm (Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova 1930), 18 Eskimo Arts and Crafts (Laura Bouton 1943), 18

C Call It Slut (Nishtha Jain 2006), 160, 168 Cannibals of the South Seas (Osa Johnson and Martin Johnson 1912), 17, 204 Circle, The (Jafar Panahi 2000), 143 Citizenfour ( Laura Poitras 2014), 50 City of Photos (Nishtha Jain 2011), 161 Collisions (Lynette Wallworth 2018), 25

F Fairy of the Cabbage, The (Alice Guy 1906), 179 Falling Man, The (Sue Bourne 2006), 135 Fall of the Romanov Dynasty,The (Esfir Shub 1927), 17 Family Album (Nishtha Jain 2011), 160 Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema (Marie Mandy 2000), 9, 30, 54, 80, 177–185, 190–192, 194 Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (Jennifer Fox 2006–2008), 76 Food for Love – A Shtetl That’s No Longer There (Heddy Honigmann 2004), 58, 66, 86 For One More Hour with You (Alina Marazzi 2002), 31 For Sama (Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts 2019), 97 Four New Apple Dishes (Judith Crawley 1940), 18 Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin 2018), 27, 29 From Mother to Daughter (Fabiana Sargentini 2005), 31 Fucking Åmål (Lukas Moodysson 1998), 141, 143, 147

D Dark Horse (Louise Osmond 2015), 135 Day I Will Never Forget, The (Kim Longinotto 2002), 66, 134 Dead Before Dawn (April Mullen 2012), 42n18 Disappearance of My Mother, The (Barrese, Beniamino 2019), 62 Dis-Moi (Chantal Akerman 1980), 30 Divorce Iranian Style (Kim Longinotto 1998), 8, 138–140 Dogs of Democracy (Mary Zournazii 2012), 26 Dreamcatcher (Kim Longinotto 2015), 134, 135, 139, 140, 144, 145, 152, 153, 153n1, 250 Dream Girls (Kim Longinotto 1994), 134, 140

  FILM INDEX 

G Gaea’s Girls (Kim Longinotto 2000), 140 Go Home Baby Girl (Audrey Huntley 2006), 96 Golden Gate Girls (Louisa. S. Wei 2013), 41n12 Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes 2017), 135 Growing up Female (Julia Reichert and Jim Klein 1971), 22 Gulabi Gang (Nishtha Jain 2012), 8, 64, 161, 162, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172 H Harlan County USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976), 20, 28, 35 Helen Keller in Her Story (Nancy Hamilton 1955), 50 Horse of Mud (Ateyyat El Abnoudy 1971), 21 Hour of Liberation Has Arrived, The (Heiny Srour 1974), 21 How Mum Decolonised the Screen (Heperia Mita 2018), 62 Hurt Locker, The (Kathryn Bigelow 2008), 58 I I am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School (Susan Raymond and Alan Raymond 1993), 50 Images from the Corner (Jasmila Zbanic 2003), 66, 84 Inside Harley Street (Vanessa Engle 2015), 135 Inside Job (Audrey Marrs and Charles Ferguson 2010), 50

263

In the Shadow of the Stars (Allie Light and Irving Saraf 1991), 50 Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (Deborah Oppenheimer 2000), 50 J Judith (Marie Mandy 1989), 178 Jujitsu for Beginners (Unknown filmmaker 1926), 149 K Kasba (Kumar Shahani 1990), 160 L Lakshmi and Me (Nishtha Jain 2009), 8, 85, 161, 172 Let’s Talk About it (Deepa Mehta 2006), 164 Lie of the Land, The (Molly Dineen 2007), 135 Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, The (Connie Field 1980), 22, 75, 101 Life of Christ, The (Alice Guy 2011), 179 London Wakes Up (Ruby Grierson 1936), 18 Love is All, A Hundred Years of Love and Courtship (Kim Longinotto 2014), 135 M Madeleine in Heaven (Marie Mandy 1999), 178 Man with the Movie Camera, The (Dziga Vertov 1929), 17, 40n5 Marjoe (Sarah Kernochan and Howard Smith 1972), 50 Maya Darpan (Kumar Shahani 1972), 160

264 

FILM INDEX

Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (Freida Lee Mock 1994), 50 McLibel (Fanny Armstrong 2005), 135 Mod (Pushpa Rawat’s 2017), 163 Mossane (Safi Faye 1996), 185 Mother/Country (Tina Gharavi 2003), 135 N No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman 2015), 86 O Offside (Jafar Panahi 2006), 143 O.J.: Made in America (Caroline Waterlow and Ezra Edelman 2016), 51 Once my Mother (Sophia Turkiewicz 2013), 62 One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang and Zhang Lynn 2019), 98 Orlando (Sally Potter 1992), 183 Out of Phoenix Bridge (Li Hong 1997), 23 P Panama Deception, The (BarbaraTrent and David Kasper 1992), 51 Pink Saris (Kim Longinotto 2010), 35, 66, 134, 138 Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke 1967), 20, 120 Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker 2008), 97 Profession Documentarist (Abtahi et al. 2014), 57, 66, 82, 94 Profession Documentarist (Abtahi, Sepideh et al 2013), 94 Professione: Reporter (Michelangelo Antonioni 1975), 94

Q Queen’s Green Planet, The (Jane Treays 2018), 135 R Real Detective (April Mullen 2016), 38 Regarding Susan Sontag (Nancy D Kates 2014), 9, 200, 201, 203, 204, 206, 208, 211 Reunited (Mira Jargil 2020), 25 Roger and Me (Michael Moore 1989), 22 Roll Red Roll (Nancy Schwartzman 2018), 97, 205 Rough Aunties (Kim Longinotto 2008), 135, 139, 153n1, 250 S Saboot (Nishtha Jain 2019), 160 Salma (Kim Longinotto 2013), 66, 142 Seahorse (Jeanie Finlay 2019), 135 Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjellou 2012), 25 Self Health (San Francisco Women’s Health Collective,1974), 104, 105 Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee 1985), 22 Shinjuku Boys (Kim Longinotto 1995), 140, 152 Shooting the Mafia (Kim Longinotto 2019), 135 Silences, The (Margot Nash 2015), 62 Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web (Emily James 2017), 135 Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich 1990), 76, 101 Sisters in Law (Kim Longinotto 2005), 8, 66, 134, 140, 153n1 6 Yards to Democracy (Nishtha Jain 2006), 161

  FILM INDEX 

Smokes and Lollies (Gillian Armstrong 1976), 36, 223, 224, 233, 236, 243n1, 244n8, 244n11, 250 Something Like a War (Deepa Dhanraj 1991), 163 Song of Air, A (Merilee Bennett 1988), 101, 102 Sorry Cupid (Marie Mandy 1991), 184 Sound it Out (Jeanie Finlay 2011), 147 Startup.com (Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim 2001), 55, 56, 143 T Tales of the Night Fairies (Jeanie Finlay 2002), 163 Tanjuska and the 7 Devils (Pirjo Honkasalo 1993), 59, 114–116, 127 Taxi to the Dark Side (Eva Orner 2007), 50 Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table, The (Aviva Slesin, 1987), 51 Thanks Girls and Goodbye (Sue Maslin and Sue Hardisty 1988), 101 Their Own Vietnam (Nancy D Kates 1995), 200, 203, 206, 207 Theroux: Mothers on the Edge (Louis Theroux 2019), 62 They Also Serve (Ruby Grierson 1940), 18 Third Eye, The (Susan Nicchiarelli 2003), 31 This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous (Barbara Kopple 2017), 24 Three Lives (Louva Irvine and Susan Kleckner 1971), 104 Tina Goes Shopping (Penny Woolcock 1999), 135 To Be a Woman (Jill Craigie 1951), 19 To Kid or Not to Kid (Maxine Trump 2019), 65

265

Traces of Missing Women (Audrey Huntley 2004), 96 Trapped (Dawn Porter 2016), 26 Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl 1935), 18 Truth or Dairy, The (Franny and Rachel Armstrong 1994), 24 12th & Delaware (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing 2010), 65, 164 20 Feet from Stardom (Caitrin Rogers, Morgan Neville and Gil Friesen 2013), 51 U Untouchable (Ursula Macfarlane 2019), 93, 98, 205 V Veiled Hope: Women of Palestine, The (Norma Marcos 1994), 32 Velorama (Daisy Asquith 2014), 135 W Waiting for August (Teodora Mihai 2014), 58 Waste Land (Lucy Walker 2010), 135 Water (Deepa Mehta 2005), 164 We Are Half of Iran’s Population (Rakhshan Bani-Etemad 2009), 65, 97 What is Democracy? (Astra Taylor 2018), 25 Women Are Warriors (Jane Marsh 1942), 18 Women Who Loved Cinema (Marianne Khoury 2002), 41n12 World Before Her, The (Nisha Pahuja 2012), 164

Name Index1

A Abtahi, Sepideh, 57, 58, 82, 94 Akerman, Chantal, 30, 31, 85, 86 Ansara, Martha, 230 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 94 Armstrong, Franny, 24, 135 Armstrong, Gillian, 9, 10, 34, 36, 55, 64, 80, 107n11, 219–242, 249, 250 Armstrong, Rachel, 24 Asquith, Daisy, 135 B Baccar, Selma, 21 Banietemad, Rakhshan, 65, 69, 97, 106n5, 226 Barrese, Beniamino, 62 Beauvoir, Simone de, 55, 63, 64, 173, 181

1

Bendjellou, Malik, 25 Bennett, Merilee, 101, 102 Berman, Brigitte, 50 Bigelow, Kathryn, 58, 232 Bonnefoy, Mathilde, 50 Bourne, Sue, 135 Bouton, Laura, 18 Briski, Zana, 50 C Campion, Jane, 9, 81, 107n11, 146, 147, 178, 220 Carr, Erin Lee, 98, 205 Chai Vasarhelyi, Elizabeth, 27, 29 Clarke, Shirley, 11n5, 20, 120 Craigie, Jill, 19 Crawley, Judith, 18

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D Dhanraj, Deepa, 163 Dineen, Molly, 135 Dörrie, Doris, 81, 194n2 Dwyer, Catherine, 41n12, 230

Hong, Li, 23 Honigmann, Heddy, 58, 66, 67, 86, 87, 208 hooks, bell, 91 Huntley, Audrey, 96

E El Abnoudy, Ateyyat, 21 Engle, Vanessa, 135 Ewing, Heidi, 11n5, 28–29, 65, 164

I Irvine, Louva, 104

F Faye, Safi, 9, 11n5, 81, 178, 185, 226 Field, Connie, 22, 75, 101 Fiennes, Sophie, 135 Finlay, Jeanie, 135, 147 Florio, Maria, 50 Fox, Jennifer, 76 Friedrich, Su, 76, 101, 102 G Gavron, Sarah, 136, 147 Gharavi, Tina, 135 Ghosh, Shohini, 163 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 29 Grabsky, Phil, 150, 151 Grady, Rachel, 11n5, 29, 65, 164 Grierson, John, 5, 18 Grierson, Marion, 18 Grierson, Ruby, 18 Guy, Alice, 179 H Hardisty, Sue, 101 Haren, Christen, 200 Hegedus, Chris, 20, 35, 39, 55, 56, 120, 143

J Jain, Nishtha, 32, 61, 63, 64, 66, 85, 86, 93, 159–173, 207, 251 James, Emily, 135 Jargil, Mira, 25 Johnson, Osa (and Martin), 17, 204 K Kates, Nancy, 9, 199–214, 250 Kernochan, Sarah, 50 Keshavarz, Mina, 57, 63, 66 Khoury, Marianne, 41n12 Kleckner, Susan, 104 Kopple, Barbara, 20, 24, 28, 35, 41n13 L Labrune, Jeanne, 184 Leahy, Gillian, 230 Lee, Spike, 200 Lee Mock, Freida, 50 Leibovitz, Annie, 201 Light, Allie, 50 Longinotto, Kim, 8, 35, 36, 57, 63–66, 93, 133–153, 250, 251 Lynn, Zhang, 98

  NAME INDEX 

M Macfarlane, Ursula, 93, 98, 205 Mandy, Marie, 9, 27, 30, 34, 54, 55, 60, 80–82, 103, 177–194, 249, 251, 252n1 Marazzi, Alina, 31 Marcos, Norma, 32 Marrs, Audrey, 50 Marsh, Jane, 18 Maslin, Sue, 27, 101, 213 McElwee, Ross, 22 Mehta, Deepa, 9, 81, 164, 178, 226 Mihai, Teodora, 58 Miller, Barbara, 50 Mita, Heperia, 62 Moodysson, Lukas, 141, 143, 147 Moore, Michael, 22 Morley, Carol, 135 Mudd, Victoria, 50 Mullen, April, 38 Mulvey, Laura, 6, 21, 53, 54, 67n1, 104, 166, 173n2, 225 N Nash, Margot, 62, 230 Nicchiarelli, Susan, 31 Nichols, Bill, 9, 22, 134, 154n2, 204 Noujaim, Jehane, 55, 143 O Obama, Barack, 201 Orner, Eva, 50 Osmond, Louise, 135 P Pahuja, Nisha, 164 Panahi, Jafar, 143 Poitras, Laura, 50

269

Pool, Lea, 103, 182, 249 Porter, Dawn, 26 Potter, Sally, 9, 30, 80, 178, 182, 183 R Rawat, Pushpa, 163 Raymond, Susan, 50 Reichert, Julia, 22 Reticker, Gini, 97 Rezaei, Nahid, 57 Riefenstahl, Leni, 18, 107n11 Rogers, Caitrin, 51 Rustin, Bayard, 200, 201, 203, 210–212 S Saget, Bob, 200 Salahsoor, Sahar, 68, 69 Sargentini, Fabiana, 31, 49 Schwartzman, Nancy, 97, 98, 205 Scorsese, Martin, 227 Shahani, Kumar, 160 Shub, Esfir, 17, 40n4 Singer, Bennett, 200 Slesin, Aviva, 51 Soloway, Jill, 58, 60, 61, 67n4 Sontag, Susan, 200, 201, 203, 204, 206, 208, 212, 214n1 Srour, Heiny, 21 Stanculescu, Ileana, 11n5, 33 Svilova, Elizaveta, 17, 40n5 T Taylor, Astra, 25 Treays, Jane, 135 Trent, Barbara, 51 Trump, Maxine, 65 Turkiewicz, Sophia, 62

270 

NAME INDEX

V Varda, Agnès, 9, 11n5, 19, 20, 54, 55, 61, 80, 85, 103, 107n11, 178, 179, 181, 184, 195n6, 226 Vertov, Dziga, 17, 40n5 W Waad, Al-Kateab, 97 Walker, Alice, 135 Walker, Lucy, 135 Wallworth, Lynette, 25

Wang, Nanfu, 98 Waterlow, Caroline, 51 Watts, Edward, 97 Wei, Louisa. S, 41n12 Woolcock, Penny, 135 Z Žbanić, Jasmila, 11n5, 66, 70, 84 Zemeckis, Robert, 200 Zimmerman, Deborah, 29 Zournazi, Mary, 26 Zubrycki, Tom, 226, 230

Subject Index1

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS #MeToo, 93, 106n3, 106n4

Authorship, 7, 102–105 Auto-ethnographic, 8, 159–173

A Academy Award, 16, 21, 25, 28, 114, 204, 241 Access, 6, 11n4, 24, 26–30, 33, 36–38, 82, 92, 95, 96, 118, 129, 134, 138, 140, 159, 171, 240 Activism, 8, 21, 23, 26, 64, 92, 93, 105, 106, 137, 138, 159, 162–163, 188, 230, 231 Aesthetic, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 16, 22, 30, 41n15, 54, 55, 71–87, 94, 99, 119, 140–141, 163, 177–194, 242, 249, 252 Aestheticisation, 74, 249 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), 220, 231, 239, 244n9 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, 220, 228

B Barriers, 5, 10, 16, 28, 39, 39n1, 121, 125, 170, 188, 208, 225 Body, the, 9, 57, 81, 99, 119, 151, 166, 168, 178, 180–184, 204, 207, 208, 230, 232, 242, 251

1

C Canadian National Film Board (NFB), 18, 19 Capitalism, 32, 137, 138, 165, 170 Change agents, 7, 16, 93, 96–98, 138, 162 Cinécriture, 103 Cinéma-vérité, 23, 41n9, 106n1 Colonised, 9, 38, 55, 61, 73, 81, 178, 182, 185

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Colonised gaze, 183–185 Colour film, 18 Compilation film, 17 Counter-cinema, 76, 88n3, 100 Crowdfund, 24 D Desire, 9, 30, 31, 53, 60, 76, 80, 91, 172, 180, 182, 184, 190, 193, 250, 251, 252n1 Digital divide, 24 Digital storytelling, 24 Direct Cinema, 20, 23, 41n9, 92, 106n1 Distribution, 20, 21, 24, 92, 103, 127, 136, 164, 179 Diversity, 28, 30, 39, 64, 72, 91, 160 Drama documentary, 226 Dramatised documentary, 220, 226–230 E Economic anxiety, 25, 26 Emmy Awards, 25 Environment, vii, 25, 26, 28, 62, 66, 137, 187, 221, 233, 235, 240 Equality, 3, 19, 35, 41n12, 92, 137, 164, 188, 194n1, 222 Equity, 3, 35, 92, 194n1, 201, 215n5 F Factual drama, 226 Feeling, 22, 29, 30, 38, 41n15, 58, 60, 65, 66, 68n7, 68n8, 79, 83–87, 124, 142, 145, 167, 173, 183, 207, 240, 249–252 Female aesthetic, 6, 9, 59, 67, 68n7, 71, 73–77, 79–83, 85, 87, 119, 140, 177–194, 195n10, 242, 251

Female authorship, 102–105 Female director, 3, 6, 10, 19, 27, 34, 54, 65, 82, 104, 123, 125, 127, 135, 164, 222, 226, 241 Female experience, 3, 10, 29, 30, 34, 39, 55, 60, 61, 65, 67, 68n7, 74, 78–79, 84, 87, 104, 105, 178, 194, 194n1, 221, 222, 225, 242, 249, 250 Female gaze, viii, 1–3, 5–8, 10, 16, 20, 26, 38, 39, 53–67, 71, 79, 80, 95, 103–106, 114, 118, 122–124, 129, 134, 140–141, 143, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 162, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 186, 193, 194, 195n10, 206, 212–214, 221, 249–252 Female perspective, 10, 30, 54, 57, 64, 67, 76, 79–81, 87, 93–97, 105, 106, 123, 129, 182, 195n10, 224, 236, 250, 252 Female subjectivity, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 16, 29–31, 33–35, 53–56, 62, 67, 74–76, 83, 87, 95, 100, 105, 129, 140, 177–194, 232, 236, 242, 251, 252 Feminine aesthetic, 77–78, 85 Feminine films, 8, 114, 193 Feminine gaze, 58, 87 Feminism(s), vii, 1, 5–8, 19, 21, 22, 31, 41n16, 63–64, 72, 75–77, 88n4, 91–106, 133–153, 160, 163, 165–166, 179, 181, 188, 192, 194n1, 221, 222, 230, 243n6, 250 Feminist, 3–5, 8–10, 18–23, 25, 34, 35, 38, 55, 61, 63, 72, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 85, 87, 88n2, 91–106, 117, 129, 134, 137, 138, 159–173, 177, 179–182, 188, 191, 192, 194n1, 195n7, 202, 203, 205, 207, 210, 213,

  SUBJECT INDEX 

214, 215n7, 222, 228, 231, 237, 241, 242, 244n6, 250 Feminist aesthetic, 9, 75–77, 94, 137, 222, 242 Feminist countercinema, 101 Feminist documentary, 7, 92–96, 98–99, 101, 105, 163 Feminist film, 6, 18, 21, 53, 75, 92, 95, 98, 99, 105 Feminist film criticism, vii, 98, 105 Feminist filmmaking, 92, 95–96, 100 Feminist film practice, 93, 101, 159 Feminist gaze, 8, 64, 159–173 Feminist perspective, 23, 63, 75, 95, 96, 137, 222 Feminist subjectivity, 95, 105 Film critic, 32, 55, 87, 225 Film studies, 7, 98–99, 105 French New Wave, 19, 160 Funding, 24, 28, 29, 116–118, 135, 136, 164, 188, 206, 208, 214n1, 230, 231, 243n2 G Gatekeepers, 24, 26, 28, 64, 188, 225 Gendered dynamics, 222 Gender equality, vii, 19, 28, 37, 76, 93, 106n9, 117, 118 Gender Matters (Screen Australia), 231 Gender pay gap, 19 Glass ceiling, 16 H Herstory, 22, 41n12, 76, 100, 101, 181, 195n8, 203, 228 Historical documentaries, 101 Hollywood, 32, 53, 97, 143, 173n2, 214n1, 221, 242 Humanism, 114, 140, 193, 252

273

Humanist, 21, 25, 65, 66, 129, 172, 222, 242 Human rights, 8, 91, 96, 97, 114, 134, 153, 179 I Identification, 2, 3, 5, 16, 28–30, 58, 60, 72, 77, 79–82, 87, 95, 104, 153, 178, 186, 202, 251 Identity, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 16, 20, 24, 30, 34, 35, 54, 72, 74, 94, 99, 106n9, 129, 181–183, 199–202, 223, 228, 249, 251 Immigration, 25 Independent filmmaker, 204, 214n1 Interactive documentary, 154n2 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), 7, 35, 36, 55, 57, 67, 87, 114, 116, 118, 123, 127, 141, 147, 148, 166, 168, 185, 186, 192, 205, 206, 208 Intersectional, 3, 8, 23, 30, 34, 72, 74, 91, 99, 137, 160, 165 Intersectionality, see Intersectional Intimacy, 37, 59, 104, 134 Islamic Feminism, 75, 99, 106n9 L LGBTQ, 202 M Male gaze, 6, 20, 53, 60, 124, 163, 166 Male-stream, 214, 215n7 Memoirs, 22 Migration, 25 Minorities, 9, 28, 96, 117, 174n4, 199, 201, 215n6, 244n7 Mobile phones, 24

274 

SUBJECT INDEX

N Neocolonialism, 32 New documentary movement (China), 23 New technology, 25 O Observational documentary/ documentaries, 20, 58, 134 Oppression, 4, 32, 33, 62, 64, 73, 74, 86, 92, 93, 100, 134, 137, 138, 153, 161, 165, 194n1, 244n6 Other, 2, 39, 101, 170, 174n4, 215n6 Otherness, 2, 62, 65, 174n4, 215n6 Outsiders, 9, 137, 169, 199, 200, 207, 212, 213 P Participation, 5, 7, 10, 15, 16, 26–29, 38, 39, 64, 96, 117, 118, 136, 154n2, 170, 188, 209, 215n5, 231, 249 Participatory documentary, 154n2 Pay, 19, 26, 28 Poetics, vii, 5, 8, 61–63, 65, 87, 107n10, 113–129, 130n1, 160, 193, 226 Political activism, 23, 92 Populist movements, 25 Postcolonial, 8, 99, 137, 159–173, 194n1 Practice-based research, 252n1 Practice-led research, 182, 251, 252n1 Precarious work, 28 Profilmic event, 4, 20, 40n5 Public health, 25, 26 Q Queer voices, 201–202

R Realism, 76, 99–102, 160, 195n7 Realist films, 22, 101 Refugee, 25, 32 Representation, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 19, 21, 23, 30, 31, 39, 55, 61, 63–64, 67, 79, 81, 85, 93, 96, 100, 104–106, 159, 162, 164, 173n2, 174n4, 179, 181–185, 213, 215n6, 224, 230 Role model, 28, 114, 118, 120, 204, 220 S Screen Australia, 16, 28, 231 Sexual identity, 9, 200–201 Silent film, 17 Social change, 41n12, 75, 91, 97, 105, 172 Sound period, 18 Soviet film, 17 Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), 208, 227–229, 231 Story, 5, 6, 8, 9, 21, 27, 29–31, 38, 39, 40n6, 41n12, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 64–67, 76, 80, 82–84, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–103, 105, 115, 116, 127–129, 134, 140, 143, 151–153, 154n8, 160, 164, 165, 168, 169, 171, 173, 183, 185–192, 195n9, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 209–214, 222–224, 226–229, 232, 235–242, 244n12, 250, 252 Subjectivity, 1–3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 20, 23, 29–31, 33–35, 42n16, 53–56, 60–63, 67, 72, 74–76, 78, 83, 87, 94, 95, 99, 100, 103–105, 117, 129, 139, 140, 163, 173, 177–194, 214, 225, 232, 236, 242, 249–252

  SUBJECT INDEX 

Sundance Film Festival, 24, 153n1, 228 Swedish Film Institute, 28 Systemic issues, 5, 16, 28, 39n1, 117, 225 T Television, 1, 11n3, 16, 20, 26, 28, 31, 41n8, 42n18, 96, 114, 117, 118, 126, 135, 136, 178, 209, 214n1, 235, 244n12 Theory and practice, 5, 6, 17, 91–106 Third Cinema, 32 Third World, 32, 98, 138, 139, 159, 165 To be-looked-at-ness, 225, 230 Transnational, vii, 5, 8, 73, 75, 99, 114, 117–118, 133–153, 164 Typecasting, 222

275

U Unconscious bias, 19, 28, 40n7, 72, 117, 222 V Venice Film Festival, 18, 114 W Witnessing trauma, 8 Woman filmmaker, 1, 5, 10, 17, 34–39, 55, 80, 104, 163, 186, 191 Women filmmaker label, 5 Women in Film and Television (WIFT), 215n5, 240 Women Make Movies, 23, 29, 178 Women’s cinematic language, 9, 179, 193–194 Women’s movement, 22, 92, 205 Women’s poetics, 61–63