Feminism at the Movies

Release on 2012-03-22 | by Hilary Radner

The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, ...

Feminism at the Movies
  • Author: Hilary Radner
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781136519123
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 320
  • View: 615

Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema examines the way that contemporary film reflects today’s changing gender roles. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the central issues in feminist film criticism with analyses of over twenty popular contemporary films across a range of genres, such as chick flicks, teen pics, hommecoms, horror, action adventure, indie flicks, and women lawyer films. Contributors explore issues of femininity as well as masculinity, reflecting on the interface of popular cinema with gendered realities and feminist ideas. Topics include the gendered political economy of cinema, the female director as auteur, postfeminist fatherhood, consumer culture, depictions of professional women, transgender, sexuality, gendered violence, and the intersections of gender, race, and ethnic identities. The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, David Hansen-Miller (with Rosalind Gill), Gary Needham, Sarah Projansky, Hilary Radner, Rob Schaap, Yael D Sherman, Michele Shreiber, Janet Staiger, Peter Stapleton, Rebecca Stringer, Yvonne Tasker, and Ewa Ziarek.

The New Woman s Film

Release on 2017-01-20 | by Hilary Radner

This book seeks to fill this void by focusing on the steady stream of films about and for women that emerge out of independent American and European cinema, and that are designed to address an international female audience.

The New Woman s Film
  • Author: Hilary Radner
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781317286479
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 212
  • View: 613

With the chick flick arguably in decline, film scholars may well ask: what has become of the woman’s film? Little attention has been paid to the proliferation of films, often from the independent sector, that do not sit comfortably in either the category of popular culture or that of high art––films that are perhaps the corollary of the middle-brow novel, or "smart-chick flicks". This book seeks to fill this void by focusing on the steady stream of films about and for women that emerge out of independent American and European cinema, and that are designed to address an international female audience. The new woman's film as a genre includes narratives with strong ties to the woman’s film of classical Hollywood while constituting a new distinctive cycle of female-centered films that in many ways continue the project of second-wave feminism, albeit in a modified form. Topics addressed include: The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995); the feature-length films of Nicole Holofcener, 1996-2013; the film roles of Tilda Swinton; Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008); Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013); Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012), Belle (Amma Asante, 2013), Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (Sundance Channel, 2013-).

Feminism at the Movies

Release on 2011 | by Hilary Radner

The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, ...

Feminism at the Movies
  • Author: Hilary Radner
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 0415895871
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 310
  • View: 947

Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema examines the way that contemporary film reflects today�s changing gender roles. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the central issues in feminist film criticism with analyses of over twenty popular contemporary films across a range of genres, such as chick flicks, teen pics, hommecoms, horror, action adventure, indie flicks, and women lawyer films. Contributors explore issues of femininity as well as masculinity, reflecting on the interface of popular cinema with gendered realities and feminist ideas. Topics include the gendered political economy of cinema, the female director as auteur, postfeminist fatherhood, consumer culture, depictions of professional women, transgender, sexuality, gendered violence, and the intersections of gender, race, and ethnic identities. The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, David Hansen-Miller (with Rosalind Gill), Gary Needham, Sarah Projansky, Hilary Radner, Rob Schaap, Yael D Sherman, Michele Shreiber, Janet Staiger, Peter Stapleton, Rebecca Stringer, Yvonne Tasker, and Ewa Ziarek.

The Changing Role of Women in Disney s Princess Movies Feminism in the U S

Release on 2019-06-18 | by Sarah Wenzel

Introduction It was only last Christmas that my five year old godchild, Mina, got
the Disney Princess Movie Collection, a box ... struck me in the context of my
seminar about Feminism, in what way these movies influence little girls and also
boys.

The Changing Role of Women in Disney s Princess Movies Feminism in the U S
  • Author: Sarah Wenzel
  • Publisher: GRIN Verlag
  • ISBN: 9783668960329
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 18
  • View: 565

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Cultural Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Würzburg (Philosophische Fakultät I), course: Feminism in the U.S.: History, Ideas, and Politics, language: English, abstract: Bewitched by the magical atmosphere these films create, millions of girls are dreaming of becoming a Disney princess one day. Seeing girls and boys re-enact these fairy tales and in that way slip into the role of a princess the thought struck me in the context of my seminar about Feminism, in what way these movies influence children. Which concepts of womanhood do they foster and are these fairy tales really as timeless as the grandparents think they are? Taking a closer look at the most successful and best known of all Disney princess movies, there are basically three waves, defined by their date of release. The first feature-length animated film Disney created was a story based on the Brother Grimm fairy tale “Schneewittchen”. The Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was premiered in 1937 and was an instant success, followed by Cinderella in 1950 and Sleeping Beauty in 1959. The next wave of princess movies were produced between 1989, starting with Little Mermaid, followed by Beauty and the Best (1991), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995) and ending in 1998 with Mulan, so basically during the 1990s. The latest wave of Disney princess films is from 2009 on with The Princess and the Frog, then Tangled (2010), Brave (2012) and the last one was Frozen (2013). This is an enormous timeframe. The 1930s, 40s and 50s provided a completely different audience than the 1990s or the current decade, as society and especially gender roles changed a lot over time. Consequently one can also expect differences in the way the Walt Disney Company chose to depict its characters over the years. This research paper will show that female gender roles in Disney princess movies respond to the change of society by portraying their Disney heroine much more assertive and less passive over time. To support this thesis one movie from each of the three waves which were introduced above will be analyzed exemplary for the period.

Women Labor Activists in the Movies

Release on 2015-04-25 | by Jennifer L. Borda

Jasmine Paul and Bette J. Kauffman, “Missing Persons: Working-Class Women
and the Movies, 1940–1990,” Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global
Diversities, ed. Angharad N. Valdivia (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 173.

Women Labor Activists in the Movies
  • Author: Jennifer L. Borda
  • Publisher: McFarland
  • ISBN: 9781476606835
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 240
  • View: 347

Some of the most indelible images of women in recent American film have been of working women fighting for labor reform or to expose corporate corruption. This critical text explores films with female labor activists as main protagonists, illuminating issues of gender and class while depicting the challenges of working class women. Films covered include Salt of the Earth, Pajama Game, Union Maids, With Babies and Banners, Norma Rae, Silkwood, and Live Nude Girls Unite! Through comparative analysis, the text examines the responses of these films to the labor and feminist movements of the last half century, and how American cinema has articulated notions of disempowerment, ambivalence and, at times, the resistance of both women and the working class at large.

Chick Flicks

Release on 2008-03-03 | by Suzanne Ferriss

The essays consider chick flicks from a variety of angles, touching on issues of film history, female sexuality (heterosexual and homosexual), femininity, female friendship, age, race, ethnicity, class, consumerism, spectatorship, pleasure ...

Chick Flicks
  • Author: Suzanne Ferriss
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781135895945
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 272
  • View: 644

From An Affair to Remember to Legally Blonde, "chick flicks" have long been both championed and vilified by women and men, scholars and popular audiences. Like other forms of "chick culture," which the editors define as a group of mostly American and British popular culture media forms focused primarily on twenty- to thirtysomething, middle-class—and frequently college-educated—women, chick flicks have been accused of reinscribing traditional attitudes and reactionary roles for women. On the other hand, they have been embraced as pleasurable and potentially liberating entertainments, assisting women in negotiating the challenges of contemporary life. A companion to the successful anthology Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction, this edited volume consists of 11 original essays, prefaced by an introduction situating chick flicks within the larger context of chick culture as well as women’s cinema. The essays consider chick flicks from a variety of angles, touching on issues of film history, female sexuality (heterosexual and homosexual), femininity, female friendship, age, race, ethnicity, class, consumerism, spectatorship, pleasure and gender definition. An afterword by feminist film theorist Karen Hollinger considers the chick flick’s transformation from the woman’s films of the ’40s to the friendship films of the ’80s and those of the "return to the classics" trend of the ’90s, while highlighting the value of the volume’s contributions to contemporary debates and sketching possibilities for further study.

Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Release on 2019-10-16 | by Valerie Estelle Frankel

'Re-Vision'? Feminist Film criticism in the twenty-First century.” Feminism at the
Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, edited by
Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stinger, Routledge, 2011, pp. 1–9. Rothschild,
Sarah.

Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Author: Valerie Estelle Frankel
  • Publisher: McFarland
  • ISBN: 9781476637600
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 232
  • View: 384

 Fourth wave feminism has entered the national conversation and established a highly visible presence in popular media, especially in cutting-edge science fiction and fantasy films and television series. Wonder Woman, the Wasp, and Captain Marvel headline superhero films while Black Panther celebrates nonwestern power. Disney princesses value sisterhood over conventional marriage. This first of two companion volumes addresses cinema, exploring how, since 2012, such films as the Hunger Games trilogy, Mad Max: Fury Road, and recent Star Wars installments have showcased women of action. The true innovation is a product of the Internet age. Though the web has accelerated fan engagement to the point that progressivism and backlash happen simultaneously, new films increasingly emphasize diversity over toxic masculinity. They defy net trolls to provide stunning role models for viewers across the spectrum of age, gender, and nationality.

Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman

Release on 2016-10-20 | by Mari Ruti

Hilary Radner, Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer
Culture (New York: Routledge, 2011). This book shows how the needs of
conglomerate Hollywood have encouraged an emphasis on consumer culture
within films ...

Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman
  • Author: Mari Ruti
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • ISBN: 9781501319433
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 216
  • View: 147

In Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman, Mari Ruti traces the development of feminist film theory from its foundational concepts such as the male gaze, female spectatorship, and the masquerade of femininity to 21st-century analyses of neoliberal capitalism, consumerism, postfeminism, and the revival of “girly” femininity as a cultural ideal. By interpreting Pretty Woman as a movie that defies easy categorization as either feminist or antifeminist, the book counters the all-too-common critical dismissal of romantic comedies as mindless drivel preoccupied with trivial “feminine” concerns such as love and shopping. The book's lucid presentation of the key concerns of feminist film theory, along with its balanced reading of Pretty Woman, shed light on a Hollywood genre often overlooked by film critics: the romantic comedy.

Reel to Real

Release on 1996 | by Bell Hooks

In Reel to Real, Hooks enhances our visual experience of movies, enabling us to see in a new way. Her work, like the best films of our time, provokes thought and creates a context for dialogue.

Reel to Real
  • Author: Bell Hooks
  • Publisher: Psychology Press
  • ISBN: 0415918243
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 244
  • View: 836

In Reel To Real, bell hooks talks back to films as a way to engage the pedagogy of cinema--the way film teaches its audience. bell hooks comes to film as a cultural critic, fascinated by the issues movies raise--the ways cinema depicts race, sex, and class. Reel To Real collects hooks' classic essays on films such as Paris Is Burning or the infamous "Whose Pussy Is It" essay about Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, as well as newer work on Pulp Fiction, Crooklyn and Waiting To Exhale. hooks also examines the world of independent cinema. Conversations with filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Arthur Jaffa are linked with critical essays, including a piece on Larry Clark's Kids, to show that cinema can function subversively as well as maintain the status quo.

Reel to Real

Release on 2009 | by Bell Hooks

In 'Reel to Real', Hooks enhances our visual experience of movies, enabling us to see in a new way. Her work, like the best films of our time, provokes thought and creates a context for dialogue.

Reel to Real
  • Author: Bell Hooks
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9780415964807
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 312
  • View: 356

Movies matter – that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks’ classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks – one of America’s most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics – talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fictionto the work of Spike Lee. Including also her conversations with master filmmakers such as Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, Reel to Realis a must read for anyone who believes that movies are worth arguing about.

Neo Feminist Cinema

Release on 2010-11-01 | by Hilary Radner

" Examining their narrative format, as it revolves around the story of an ambitious unmarried woman who defines herself through consumer culture as much as through work or romance, Radner argues that these films exemplify neo-liberalist ...

Neo Feminist Cinema
  • Author: Hilary Radner
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781136995996
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 240
  • View: 196

What lies behind current feminist discontent with contemporary cinema? Through a combination of cultural and industry analysis, Hilary Radner’s Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture shows how the needs of conglomerate Hollywood have encouraged an emphasis on consumer culture within films made for women. By exploring a number of representative "girly films," including Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, The Devil Wears Prada, and Sex and the City: The Movie, Radner proposes that rather than being "post-feminist," as is usually assumed, such films are better described as "neo-feminist." Examining their narrative format, as it revolves around the story of an ambitious unmarried woman who defines herself through consumer culture as much as through work or romance, Radner argues that these films exemplify neo-liberalist values rather than those of feminism. As such, Neo-Feminist Cinema offers a new explanation as to why feminist-oriented scholars and audiences who are seeking more than "labels and love" from their film experience have viewed recent "girly films" as a betrayal of second-wave feminism, and why, on the other hand, such films have proven to be so successful at the box office.

Religion Feminism and the Family

Release on 1996-01-01 | by Anne E. Carr

WILLIAM D. ROMANOWSKI Take your girlie to the movies if you can't make love
at home" was a popular song in 1919. Like other songs from New York's Tin Pan
Alley, it was written to capitalize on a current fad or fashion, in this instance, ...

Religion Feminism and the Family
  • Author: Anne E. Carr
  • Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
  • ISBN: 0664255124
  • Category: Religion
  • Page: 398
  • View: 911

Contemporary women's movement and the future of the American family.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women Sex And Feminism

Release on 2006-03-01 | by Carrie L. Lukas

2 It's this image of men that's reflected in the marquee feminist movie, Thelma
and Louise. Each man that the heroines encounter exemplifies a different aspect
of the abuse women suffer at the hands of men: a rapist attacks Thelma after she
 ...

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women Sex And Feminism
  • Author: Carrie L. Lukas
  • Publisher: Regnery Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781596980037
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 221
  • View: 455

Argues that American feminism advocates values which do not take into account some of the complexities of career, family, and sexuality faced by women and that women need to make more informed choices using factual evidence rather than ideology.

Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Release on 2013-06-28 | by J. Gwynne

Contemporary. Hollywood. Cinema. Joel GwynneandNadineMuller Recent years
have witnessed what can onlybe described as an explosion of scholarly interest
in the representation of feminism and femininity at the turn of the millennium and
 ...

Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
  • Author: J. Gwynne
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 9781137306845
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 257
  • View: 974

By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema and illustrates the need for a renewed scholarly focus on contemporary film production.

The Hallmark Channel

Release on 2020-05-04 | by Emily L. Newman

By creating reliable and consistent content, Hallmark offers people a calming retreat from the real world. This collection of new essays strives to fill the void in academic attention surrounding Hallmark.

The Hallmark Channel
  • Author: Emily L. Newman
  • Publisher: McFarland
  • ISBN: 9781476678108
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 211
  • View: 139

Originally known as a brand for greeting cards, Hallmark has seen a surge in popularity since the early 2010s for its made-for-TV movies and television channels: the Hallmark Channel and its spinoffs, Hallmark Movie Channel (now Hallmark Movies & Mysteries) and Hallmark Drama. Hallmark's brand of comforting, often sentimental content includes standalone movies, period and contemporary television series, and mystery film series that center on strong, intuitive female leads. By creating reliable and consistent content, Hallmark offers people a calming retreat from the real world. This collection of new essays strives to fill the void in academic attention surrounding Hallmark. From the plethora of Christmas movies that are released each year to the successful faith-based scripted programming and popular cozy mysteries that air every week, there is a wealth of material to be explored. Specifically, this book explores the network's problematic relationship with race, the dominance of Christianity and heteronormativity, the significance placed on nostalgia, and the hiring and re-hiring of a group of women who thrived as child stars.

The Wow Climax

Release on 2006-12-24 | by Henry Jenkins

Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1979); Kim Newman, “The Roger Corman Alumni
Association,” Monthly ... Pam Cook, “Exploitation Films and Feminism,” Screen,
1976, pp.

The Wow Climax
  • Author: Henry Jenkins
  • Publisher: NYU Press
  • ISBN: 9780814743119
  • Category: Social Science
  • Page: 285
  • View: 545

Henry Jenkins at [email protected] (video) Vaudevillians used the term "the wow climax" to refer to the emotional highpoint of their acts—a final moment of peak spectacle following a gradual building of audience's emotions. Viewed by most critics as vulgar and sensationalistic, the vaudeville aesthetic was celebrated by other writers for its vitality, its liveliness, and its playfulness. The Wow Climax follows in the path of this more laudatory tradition, drawing out the range of emotions in popular culture and mapping what we might call an aesthetic of immediacy. It pulls together a spirited range of work from Henry Jenkins, one of our most astute media scholars, that spans different media (film, television, literature, comics, games), genres (slapstick, melodrama, horror, exploitation cinema), and emotional reactions (shock, laughter, sentimentality). Whether highlighting the sentimentality at the heart of the Lassie franchise, examining the emotional experiences created by horror filmmakers like Wes Craven and David Cronenberg and avant garde artist Matthew Barney, or discussing the emerging aesthetics of video games, these essays get to the heart of what gives popular culture its emotional impact.

Movies and Methods

Release on 1976 | by Bill Nichols

If, as feminist film critic Barbara Halpern Martineau has convincingly argued in
her lectures, most narrative films reflect a structure that is remarkably close to the
conventional pattern of male sexual response (build-up of tension, climax, ...

Movies and Methods
  • Author: Bill Nichols
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520054091
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 764
  • View: 616

Fifty theoretical essays by distinctively original and influential film critics and filmmakers are grouped in categories having to do with general considerations, structuralism-semiology, political factors, genre, feminism, auteur theory, and mise-en-scene

Digital Platforms and Feminist Film Discourse

Release on 2017-04-27 | by Rosanna Maule

Rosanna Maule is professor of Film Studies in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, Montreal.

Digital Platforms and Feminist Film Discourse
  • Author: Rosanna Maule
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 9783319480428
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 134
  • View: 667

This project offers a critical overview of how online activities and platforms are becoming an important source for the production and promotion of women’s films. Inspired by a transnational feminist framework, Maule examines blogs, websites, online services and projects related to women’s filmmaking in an interrogation of the very meaning of women’s cinema at the complex intersection with digital technology and globalization. It discusses women’s cinema 2.0 as a resistant type of cinematic expression and brings attention to the difficulties inherent in raising and expanding visibility for women’s filmic expression within a global sphere dominated by neo-liberalism and post-feminism. The author pays close attention to the challenges and contradictions involved in bringing a niche area of filmmaking and feminist discourse to the broad and diverse communities of the Internet and global media market, while also highlighting the changing forms of media and feminism.

Reel Knockouts

Release on 2010-01-01 | by Martha McCaughey

In the first book-length study of violent women in movies, Reel Knockouts makes feminist sense of violent women in films from Hollywood to Hong Kong, from top-grossing to direct-to-video, and from cop-action movies to X-rated skin flicks.

Reel Knockouts
  • Author: Martha McCaughey
  • Publisher: University of Texas Press
  • ISBN: 9780292778375
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 291
  • View: 335

When Thelma and Louise outfought the men who had tormented them, women across America discovered what male fans of action movies have long known—the empowering rush of movie violence. Yet the duo's escapades also provoked censure across a wide range of viewers, from conservatives who felt threatened by the up-ending of women's traditional roles to feminists who saw the pair's use of male-style violence as yet another instance of women's co-option by the patriarchy. In the first book-length study of violent women in movies, Reel Knockouts makes feminist sense of violent women in films from Hollywood to Hong Kong, from top-grossing to direct-to-video, and from cop-action movies to X-rated skin flicks. Contributors from a variety of disciplines analyze violent women's respective places in the history of cinema, in the lives of viewers, and in the feminist response to male violence against women. The essays in part one, "Genre Films," turn to film cycles in which violent women have routinely appeared. The essays in part two, "New Bonds and New Communities," analyze movies singly or in pairs to determine how women's movie brutality fosters solidarity amongst the characters or their audiences. All of the contributions look at films not simply in terms of whether they properly represent women or feminist principles, but also as texts with social contexts and possible uses in the re-construction of masculinity and femininity.

Feminist Auteurs

Release on 2006 | by Geetha Ramanathan

Reading Women's Films Geetha Ramanathan. 3 GENRE COVERS In confronting
the viewer , we have explored one of the ways in which feminist filmmakers
contested the visual configurations of black subjects , and observed the change ...

Feminist Auteurs
  • Author: Geetha Ramanathan
  • Publisher: Wallflower Press
  • ISBN: 190476469X
  • Category: Performing Arts
  • Page: 239
  • View: 713

Feminist Auteurs examines a rich and diverse body of work that has received insufficient attention both in film studies and in feminist theory on film. Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song, Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women's film.