[Commlist] Frames Cinema Journal, Issue 16 "Magical Women, Witches & Healers" Published

*/Frames Cinema Journal/*

*Magical Women, Witches & Healers*

*Issue 16, Winter 2019*

Dear colleagues,

It is with great enthusiasm which we announce thatIssue 16 of Frames 
Cinema Journal, “Magical Women, Witches & Healers”Frames Cinema 
Journal, “Magical Women, Witches & Healers”, 
<https://framescinemajournal.com/>/Frames Cinema 
Journal,<https://framescinemajournal.com/>/“Magical Women, Witches & 
Healers”, <https://framescinemajournal.com/> has now been published!

Having taken inspiration from the current resurgence of witches in 
popular culture, the/FCJ/editorial team wanted the journal’s 16^th issue 
to acknowledge and celebrate the magical woman’s rich global onscreen 
history by investigating her manifestations in the 21^st century and 
revisiting those of the past century. Our mission with this issue was to 
unearth previously undiscussed cinematic witches and tease out the 
histories and representations of a variety of magical women.

We are pleased to announce that this issue is stocked with a diversity 
of articles that examine the magical woman from a myriad of perspectives 
and contexts, offering original and insightful writing on the topic.

Our*Features*section includes articles which examine the magical woman 
from a diversity of national and historical contexts. They each 
investigate how the magical woman is imbued with meaning by the culture 
and lore in which she exists, and how this affects her visual and 
narrative representation in film. More broadly, these articles are 
connected by their discussion of female sexuality, femininity, cultural 
function, power, and defiance of patriarchy.*Lilla Tőke*dissects the 
image of the fox-fairy in Károly Ujj Mészáros’s/Liza, a 
rókatündér///Liza, The Fox-Fairy/(2015) to argue how the figure of the 
witch or magical woman is a product of internalised patriarchy.By 
addressing the misogynistic doctrine of the/Malleus 
Maleficarum/(1487),*Chloe Carroll*offers a feminist analysis of/The 
Witch/(2016), which argues how film is returning to the roots of 
historical female persecution to reconstruct and restore this imagery 
and functions as a source of empowerment of women today.*Zahra 
Khosroshahi*examines how the diasporic Iranian horror films/A Girl Walks 
Home Alone at Night/(2014) and/Under the Shadow/(2016) use magical and 
monstrous elements to explore non-Western femininity – both as 
domestically understood and as stereotyped by the world’s media.*Amelia 
Crowther*focuses on the cinematic appropriation of the hag witch in the 
late-1960s, discussing its multitudes of meaning, from the monstrous 
incarnation of the female body to female resistance and liberation in 
films concerning patriarchal horror.*Sandra Huber*explores the treatment 
of vengeance, grief, and joy in/Midsommar/(2019), highlighting the 
excess of fluids in the film and their transformative 
potentials.*Christine Hui*refers to the concept of Shōjo to explore the 
politics of magical agency and girlhood present in the figures of 
contemporary animated fairy tale films, specifically/Tangled/(2010) 
and/Kaguya-hime no Monogatari///The Tale of Princess 
Kaguya/(2013).*Edmund Cueva*traces the historical descriptions of Medea 
in literature and the arts, and examines their influence of the filmic 
representation of Medea as a fearsome magical woman in Pier Paolo 
Pasolini’s/Medea/(1969), Jules Dassin’s/A Dream of Passion/(1978), 
Arturo Ripstein’s/Así es la vida/Such Is Life/(2000), and Lars von 
Trier’s/Medea/(1988).*Kwasu D. Tembo*reads/The Witch/(2015) 
and/Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse/(2017) in terms of Nietzsche’s 
discussion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, approaching their 
folk-horror witches as figures of both excess and excrescence.

Our*POV*section includes articles which foreground the performativity of 
the witch, taking specific consideration of her appearance, materiality, 
and personification.*Teresa Castro*questions what it means to gaze at an 
onscreen witch, by exploring the representational politics of the 
feminine figure. She considers her modality in classic narrative 
filmographies and in the work of experimental female filmmakers, to 
argue how she is saddled between the law of feminised nature and western 
patriarchy.*Judith Noble*investigates Maya Deren’s ‘artist-magician’ 
persona, developed over the films/Meshes of the Afternoon/(1942),/At 
Land/(1944), and/Ritual in Transfigured Time/(1946), as a reflection of 
the artist’s own personal life-long commitment to magic and witchcraft, 
as well as to argue its influence on feminist artist-filmmakers working 
in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on the figure of Elaine from/The Love 
Witch/(2016) for inspiration,*Cathy Lomax*illuminates the connection 
between makeup and witchcraft, and recalls its subversive and scandalous 
onscreen history.*Ted Fisher*explores the concept of the choreographer 
as witch – born from the image of Mary Wigman’s “Witch Dance” – offering 
analyses of Pina Bausch in/Un jour Pina a demandé/…//On Tour with Pina 
Bausch/(1983), Mathilde Monnier in/Toward Mathilde/(2005), Bobbie Jene 
Smith in/Bobbi Jene/(2017), and Wigman’s reimagined Witch Dance in the 
recent remake of/Suspiria/(2018).*Lisa Duffy*develops a genealogy of 
Disney witches, focusing on how the camp characteristics that long 
signified the evilness of these characters have been reclaimed to more 
positive ends in recent titles, such as/Frozen/(2013).

In a new section for the journal, our*Film Featurettes*provide 
historical and cultural discussions of their closely examined 
films.*Martin F. Norden*discusses the political forces that encumbered 
and eventually terminated Tod Browning’s film project/The Witch of 
Timbuctoo/, highlighting Hollywood’s white washing of, and colonial 
anxieties around, its voodoo subject. Drawing on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 
notion of the oneiric ability of film,*Anna Marta Marini*explores the 
visualisation of magic in/Bless Me, Ultima/(2013) as imagined in the 
Chicano 1972 novel of the same name by Rudolfo Anaya.

Our*Book Review*section features reviews of Heather Greene’s*/Bell, Book 
and Camera: A Critical History of Witches in American Film and 
Television/*//(2018), Thomas J. Connelly’s*/Cinema of 
Confinement/*//(2019), Steven Rawle’s*/Transnational Cinema: An 
Introduction/*//(2018), and*Auteur Publishing’s Devil’s Advocates*series.

*Issue 16: Table of Contents*

*Feature Articles*

Witch’s Curse: Hegemonic Narratives, Female Melancholy, and the 
Perseverance of Patriarchy in/Liza, the Fox-Fairy/

By Lilla Tőke

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”: Female Persecution and 
Redemption in/The Witch/

By Chloe Carroll

Vampires, Jinn and the Magical in Iranian Horror Films

By Zahra Khosroshahi

Hag Witches and Women’s Liberation: Negotiations of Feminist Excess in 
the U.S. Horror Film, 1968-1972

By Amelia Crowther

Blood and Tears and Potions and Flame: Excesses of Transformation in Ari 
Aster’s/Midsommar/

By Sandra Huber

Sun Flowers and Moon Powers: Princesses and Magical Agency 
in/Tangled/and/The Tale of the Princess Kaguya/

By Christine Hui

Medea: The Magical Woman Since Antiquity

By Edmund Cueva

The Left-Hand Path: On the Dialectics of Witchery in/The 
Witch/and/Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse/

By Kwasu D. Tembo

*POV*

Gazing at the Witches: From Women on the Verge of a Breakdown to 
Reclaiming the Eco-Witch in 1960s-1970s Film

By Teresa Castro

Maya Deren: The Magical Woman as Filmmaker

By Judith Noble

Makeup as Dark Magic:/The Love Witch/and the Subversive Female Gaze

By Cathy Lomax

The Choreographer as a Witch in Contemporary Dance Documentaries

By Ted Fisher

 From the Evil Queen to Elsa: Camp Witches in Disney Films

By Lisa Duffy

*Film Featurettes*

The Witch Who Wasn’t: The Erasure of Afrocentric Sorcery in/The Witch of 
Timbuctoo/

By Martin F. Norden

/Bless me, Ultima/and the Representation of Social Relations in the 
Mexican-American Borderlands

By Anna Marta Marini

**

*Book Reviews*

/Bell, Book and Camera: A Critical History of Witches in American Film 
and Television/

Reviewed by Ana Maria Sapountzi

/Cinema of Confinement/

Reviewed by Cassice Last

/Transnational Cinema: An Introduction/

Reviewed by Sanghita Sen

/The Devils/and The Devil’s Advocates

Reviewed by Matthew Melia

With this issue, we hope to have provided a deserving spotlight in 
academic scholarship for the filmic and cinematic witch.

Happy reading!

Ana Maria Sapountzi and Peize Li

*Co-Editors-in-Chief of**/Frames Cinema Journal/*

**

*Thank you to:*Patrick Adamson,Jane Barnwell,Dr Fátima Chinita,Dr 
Jonathan Evans,Ke Fang,Dr Ruth Farrar,Dr James Fenwick,Andrea 
Gelardi,Frieda Gerhardt,Sophie Hopmeier,Darae Kim,Dr George S. 
Larke-Walsh,September Liu,Dr Shana MacDonald, Dr Connor McMorran,Maria 
Fernanda Miño Puga,Dr Matilde Nardelli,Forrest 
Pando,Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal,Dr Maria Velez-Serna,Lucy 
Szemetova,Kata Szita,Dr Kim Walden,Dr Jonathan Wroot.*Without your hard 
work this issue would have not been possible.*

**

*Follow us at @FramesJournal on Twitter!*

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