[Commlist] Symposium: Feminists Making Movies Between Theory and Practice

*Call For Presentations*

*Symposium: Feminists Making Movies Between Theory and Practice*

Date: 19th of July, 2023.

Location: Arts West, University of Melbourne.

Feminist film theory has developed in uneven relation to feminist 
filmmaking. Initially prescriptive in its commentary, the field has 
since attended to a variety of practices and multiplied its analytical 
frameworks. Strangely absent from such work, however, is a dimension of 
self-reflexivity. Feminist film theory has done little to reflect on its 
influence on relevant practitioners, or indeed the role of the feminist 
filmmaker in the formation of its own paradigms. This one-day symposium 
aims to populate this critical gap, exploring the commerce between 
feminist film theory and practice across film history.

It is true that feminist film theory and practice have worked well 
together at certain historical moments. Perhaps most famously, Laura 
Mulvey put the ideas explored in her//written manifesto, “Visual 
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), into action in her avant-garde 
film, /Riddles of the Sphinx /(1977). More recently, Céline Sciamma paid 
tacit homage to Mulvey as she characterised /Portrait of a Lady on Fire 
/(2019) as an exercise in the construction of a “female gaze”. Just as 
often, however, feminist film writing and making have existed in awkward 
opposition to one another. Experimental filmmakers such as Barbara 
Hammer, Marjorie Keller and Agnés Varda have been vocal about the role 
of the academy in the misrecognition, devaluation, or suppression of 
their work. Where these filmmakers depend on that space for viewership, 
legitimacy and even funding, the prejudices of feminist criticism carry 
very real weight. Recent developments in cinema studies have inverted 
this dynamic again. Once-key critics suggest that feminist film theory 
no longer exists as a distinct mode of inquiry but has instead become 
enfolded into parallel investigations (L. Williams, 2004). It could thus 
be said that feminist work within the academy depends now, more than 
ever, on feminist practice for its survival.

This symposium explores the relay between feminist film theory and 
feminist film practice. We intend “feminist” to refer to the disposition 
of the thinker or maker, who may or may not be woman-identifying. While 
the organisers recognise the importance of temporal markers for a 
counter field like feminism, we hope that papers will adopt a flexible 
relation to history, one that looks back to the 1970s and earlier, as 
well as forward to the future. While investigations within the realm of 
experimental cinema are of particular interest to the symposium, we also 
welcome submissions focused on documentary and narrative (feature or 
short) forms. Moreover, we are especially keen on submissions that 
explore the interchange between feminist film theory and practice in a 
local context, within Australia and New Zealand.

Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

  * Productive, fraught, or otherwise dynamic relations between feminist
    film theory and practice (from early cinema to the present)
  * Proto-feminist film theory, or looking back on earlier practices
    through the lens of feminist film theory
  * Women filmmakers who also write about film (e.g., Germaine Dulac,
    Maya Deren, Marjorie Keller, Abigail Child, Peggy Ahwesh)
  * Seminal feminist texts that inspired directions in feminist thought
    (e.g., /Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles /[1975]
    and feminist temporalities; /The Watermelon Woman /[1996] and
    feminist archives)
  * Problems or developments in archiving and restoration for the course
    of feminist film theory and/or practice
  * Advents in film technology that have informed feminist film theory

*Keynote Lecture: Professor Sarah Keller, University of Massachusetts 
Boston.*

Please email an abstract (250 words) and short bio to Wendy Haslem 
(wlhaslem /at/ unimelb.edu.auby) the 1^st  of May, 2023.


Organising Committee: Dr Alicia Byrnes, Professor Sarah Keller and 
Associate Professor Wendy Haslem.


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