Countering Established Conventions. Re-Inventions of Femininity in Maya Deren's Avant-Garde Cinema


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1,7, University of Regensburg, language: English, abstract: The Ukrainian-American avant-garde video artist Maya Deren is going to be in the object of study in the main body of this paper which focuses on the question of what, in particular, makes her representations of femininity outstanding and contrary to the ones in the contemporary woman's film. As to the structure of the paper at hand, the first part will briefly outline Simone de Beauvoir's academic theory of femininity, the key aspects of representation of women in woman's cinema and give information on avant-garde cinema. In the second part, then, Maya Deren's approach to gender will be introduced. Following and based on the first part, the third part will then closely analyze, how femininity is treated in her works and, thus, how it differs from the woman's film's approach. Finally, the results will be summarized into a conclusion and an outlook will be offered.




Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde


Book Description

Regarded as one of the founders of the postwar American independent cinema, Maya Deren was a poet, photographer, ethnographer and filmaker. These essays examine Deren's writings, films, and legacy from a variety of perspectives.




Women's Experimental Cinema


Book Description

This volume offers introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde American women filmmakers.




A History of Experimental Film and Video


Book Description

Avant-garde film is almost indefinable. It is in a constant state of change and redefinition. In his highly-acclaimed history of experimental film, A.L. Rees tracks the movement of the film avant-garde between the cinema and modern art (with its postmodern coda). But he also reconstitutes the film avant-garde as an independent form of art practice with its own internal logic and aesthetic discourse. In this revised and updated edition, Rees introduces experimental film and video to new readers interested in the wider cinema, as well as offering a guide to enthusiasts of avant-garde film and new media arts. Ranging from Cézanne and Dada, via Cocteau, Brakhage and Le Grice, to the new wave of British film and video artists from the 1990s to the present day, this expansive study situates avant-garde film between the cinema and the gallery, with many links to sonic as well as visual arts. The new edition includes a review of current scholarship in avant-garde film history and includes updated reading and viewing lists. It also features a new introduction and concluding chapter, which assess the rise of video projection in the gallery since the millennium, and describe new work by the latest generation of experimental film-makers. The new edition is richly illustrated with images of the art works discussed.







Screendance


Book Description

The practice of dance and the technologies of representation has excited artists since the advent of film. This book weaves together theory from art and dance as well as appropriate historical reference material to propose a new theory of screendance, one that frames it within the discourse of post-modern art practice.







Women's Cinema


Book Description

Women's Cinema provides an introduction to critical debates around women's filmmaking and relates those debates to a variety of cinematic practices. Taking her cue from the groundbreaking theories of Claire Johnston, Alison Butler argues that women's cinema is a minor cinema that exists inside other cinemas, inflecting and contesting the codes and systems of the major cinematic traditions from within. Using canonical directors and less established names, ranging from Chantal Akerman to Moufida Tlatli, as examples, Butler argues that women's cinema is unified in spite of its diversity by the ways in which it reworks cinematic conventions.




Materialist Film


Book Description

A polemical introduction to the avant-garde and experimental in film (including making and viewing), Materialist Film is a highly original, thought-provoking book. Thirty-seven short chapters work through a series of concepts which will enable the reader to deal imaginatively with the contradictory issues produced by experimental film. Each concept is explored in conjunction with specific films by Andy Warhol, Malcolm LeGrice, Lis Rhodes, Jean-Luc Goddard, Rose Lowder, Kurt Kren, and others. Peter Gidal draws on important politico-aesthetic writings, and uses some of his own previously published essays from Undercut, Screen, October, and Millennium Film Journal to undertake this concrete process of working through abstract concepts. Originally published in 1989.




Cinema, Trance and Cybernetics


Book Description

We ve all had the experience of watching a film and feeling like we ve been in a trance. This book takes that experience seriously, explaining cinema as a cultural technique of trance, one that unconsciously transforms our perceptions. Ute Holl moves from anthropological and experimental cinema through nineteenth-century psychological laboratories, which she shows developed technique of testing, measuring, and classifying the mind that can be seen as a prehistory of cinema, one that allows us to see the links among cinema, anthropology, psychology, and cybernetics."