Chapter One_Introduction
Female documentary directors make all kinds of non-fiction films with enormous success. Internationally the genre has the largest women’s participation in comparison to other sectors of global screen industries. This chapter introduces the scope of the book and raises the central question of what might constitute a ‘female gaze’. The position taken is that 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. However, the contribution of female documentary filmmakers globally has been enormously productive in understanding women’s circumstances and worldviews. This book demonstrates it is critical that there are equal opportunities for female perspectives and subjectivities—for the female gaze.
PART 1
Chapter Two_Women and Documentary
This chapter begins with a historical overview of women in documentary. It provides a representative indication of the international presence of women across the last century and captures 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 be challenges for women working in the form. Following this subjectivity, representation, aesthetics, approaches to documentary practice and questions of women’s access to their subjects and funding are examined.
Chapter Three_The ‘Female Gaze’
This chapter offers definition to the way in which the female gaze is conceived and examined in this book. It is envisioned 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 in women’s documentaries are characterised as tendencies, including the telling of stories from female points of view and an interest in issues that particularly impact women.
Chapter Four_Aesthetics and the Influence of Gender
The link between the aesthetics of a film and the artist who produced it is generally acknowledged. However, rarely examined (particularly in regard to documentary) is the question of whether film aesthetics respond to and reflect the lived experience of a particular author’s sex, or her experience of her gender. 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 is defined and framed as being central to understanding the female gaze.
Chapter Five_Feminisms, Feminist Theory and Documentary
This chapter is about feminisms and documentary and describes the connections between them, including the relationship of feminist film theory to documentary and 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, political, cultural, creative and economic change. Their films enable women’s agency and female or feminist subjectivity, which are hallmarks of feminist documentary practice and the female gaze.
PART 2
Case Studies
Chapter Six_Documentary as Artform: Pirjo Honkasalo’s Cinematic Poetics
Pirjo Honkasalo is celebrated as one of Finland’s finest filmmakers. Working across documentary and fiction, she was the first Finnish female cinematographer and the first woman to shoot a feature film. This chapter considers her oeuvre through the central lens of this book: the female gaze. It offers insight into her style, aesthetics and approach, with an emphasis on poetics and her artist’s vision, thematic preoccupations and her feminism. This is briefly set within the national and industrial context of Finland. 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 whether men can make ‘feminine’ films.
Chapter Seven_Transnational Feminism in the Cinema of Kim Longinotto
Kim Longinotto is one of the United Kingdom’s foremost independent documentarians. Through her prolific career she has given a voice to women’s stories and those people marginalised in their society and culture, making over twenty full length feature documentaries. 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. The idea of documentary as a form of witnessing trauma is discussed. 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.
Chapter Eight_Nishtha Jain: An Auto-ethnographic and a Postcolonial Feminist Gaze
ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain’s filmmaking is read through postcolonial feminist and auto-ethnographic frameworks. Her documentaries are introduced as principally concerned with 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. The documentary industry in India is introduced and an interview with Jain is featured in the chapter.
Chapter Nine_Marie Mandy: Female Subjectivity and Aesthetics
A textual analysis of Belgian filmmaker Marie Mandy’s documentary Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Film (2000) is featured, along with an interview with Mandy to examine 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. Interviews with filmmakers in her film include Sally Potter (UK), Agnès Varda (France), Catherine Breillat (France), Deepa Mehta (India), Safi Faye (Senegal), Patricia Rozema (Canada), and Jane Campion (Australasia).
Chapter Ten_A View From the Margins: the Films of Nancy D Kates
Multi-award winning independent American documentary filmmaker Nancy D Kates tells stories about minorities or outsiders whose lives have been absent from the screen. Kates’ interests include significant cultural and historical figures marginalised by their sexual identities. She recognises the importance, but the absence, of queer stories, which form the focus of her own films. Documentary scholar Bill Nichols claims that Kates’ approach typifies the voice of documentary today, which he sees as having an affinity with both the avant-garde and narrative storytelling. Kates has found her niche through her interest in history and in putting gay and lesbian subjects front and centre. Her films include Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003), and Regarding Susan Sontag (2014). An interview with Kates is included.
Chapter Eleven_Gillian Armstrong: The Line Between Fact and Fiction
Gillian Armstrong is an advocate for women in screen industries, a role model and 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 features and shorts. Throughout her career she has worked across both non-fiction and fiction, moving back and forth between the two. This chapter describes what might be understood to be a ‘Gillian Armstrong film’; how she feels about being labelled a woman director; how her feminism manifests in her films; and how she aestheticises female experience. There is a focus on the fine line between drama and documentary and her work in dramatised documentary. It concludes with an interview with Armstrong on the subject of the female gaze.
Chapter Twelve_Conclusion: Rendering Female Reality
Female reality is rendered through the female gaze. This book concludes with a summary of the study of the concept as 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 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.