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Delving into the deeply fascinating topic of the ‘female gaze’ and how it can be understood in relation to documentary, this book privileges the viewpoints of contemporary female documentary directors, revealing their practices and experiences as women filmmakers.
This is contextualised within the history of women’s contribution across global documentary circuits. Readers will understand from this text what women have contributed to the genre and why it is essential to achieve a gender balance in our screen industries.
Helene Granqvist, President, Women and Film and Television International (WIFTI). Global documentary circuits
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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 “go-to” resource in film studies.
Deane Williams Monash University, Australia
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Apart from being a brilliantly thought out and well researched text, it is a provocative and thoroughly pleasurable read and I have absolutely no doubt it will become a seminal reference book for students, teachers, academics and filmmakers for many years to come. … she has started with a compelling question and interviewed a group of truly outstanding women directors from around the world. And the answers are varied, surprising, stimulating and form the spine of the book’s analysis of “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”. … Lisa is courageous to do this at a time when the very notion of gender is contested, let alone addressing women documentary filmmakers and their work through a prism such as the ‘female gaze’. But while she is the first to point out that gender identification is only one part of any person’s identity, she is not prepared to deny female subjectivity and as a result, has unearthed a rich field that surprisingly has not been discussed in any depth until now. … As a filmmaker, it has made me think more deeply about my own documentary work. … What Lisa has done in a series of engaging interviews with women documentary directors contextualised by her detailed analysis, is discover that there is a multitude of ways in which the female gaze operates – from offering female subjects an opportunity to represent themselves; to stylistic choices such as pacing, intimate observations and non-linear narratives; to gaining privileged access to female spaces; to speaking up to power and inducing change. All this despite most agreeing with Gillian Armstrong that they hate the label of ‘woman’ director and have robust views that differ on this question of the ‘female gaze’. … There are enormous differences in female experience across cultures but all women experience what it means to be female in a patriarchal society. I believe that Lisa has succeeded in her project to ensure that through this book, women filmmakers claim a place for female subjectivity – the female gaze.
Sue Maslin AO, Extract from book launch speech: 1 December 2021, Capitol Theatre, Melbourne.