Experimental Women: Mapping Cinema and Video Practices from the Post-war Period Up to Present

Experimental cinema, as well as experimental video practices, have always been art forms widely explored by women. Yet, while the field of cinema studies has devoted research — although only recently — to women involved in narrative and commercial films, as directors, actresses, screenwriters and in other roles of cinema industry, the history of women’s experimental audio-visual production is still little explored and would benefit from being retraced and framed in a wider historical and theoretical perspective. This special issue of Cinéma&Cie is therefore aimed at tracing women’s experimental practices at the intersection of cinema and the arts by intertwining a theoretical and historical approach through the analysis of cases studies from the mid-century up to the present time.


Table of Contents

Sarah Keller, Elena Marcheschi and Giulia Simi
The Experimental Women: An Introduction

Rebecca A. Sheehan
'Give me a body then...': (In)corporated Thinking in the Cinema of Menken, Deren, and Arledge

Shana MacDonald
The Aesthetic Lives of Performers: Rethinking Intermediality in the Films of Yvonne Rainer and Carolee Schneemann

Oksana Chefranova
After Nature: The Expanded Landscapes of Ana Mendieta and Ana Vaz

Ivelise Perniola
Marguerite Duras, Experimental Filmmaker Between Antinarration and Iconoclasm

John Powers
Rediscovering Caroline Avery: Submerged Narrative, Affect and the Legacy of Minor Cinema

Anita Trivelli
Gazes Upon the World of Italian Contemporary Women Filmmakers

Polina Golovátina-Mora, Bridget Sheridan, and Ana María López Carmona
On Visual Walking-Remembering Warmipura - Among Women

Beyond Cinema
Lydia Tuan
Screening Screens: Cinematic Spectatorship in the Desktop Film Noah

Reviews / Comptes-rendus

Contributors / Collaborateurs

Sarah Keller is Associate Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on experimental forms and feminist issues in cinema. She co-edited the collection Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, and in her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control she examines the role of unfinished work, focusing on Deren’s oeuvre. Most recently, she published her book Anxious Cinephilia (2020), which centers on the intertwined role of love and anxiety in encounters with cinema, and she has just completed a manuscript on the career of experimental filmmaker and artist Barbara Hammer (forthcoming 2021).

Elena Marcheschi is Junior Assistant Professor at University of Pisa where she teaches ‘Cinema and the Arts’ and ‘Art and Multimedia’. Her research, on which she has written books, articles and contributed to essay collections, concerns video art, experimental cinema and forms of video installation, with particular attention to the analysis of the contemporary world, female languages and self-representation. She is part of the editorial staff of Cinéma&CIE. International Film Studies Journal and since 2005 she has been the artistic consultant to INVIDEO, Mostra internazionale di video e cinema oltre (Milan). Her publications include the monographs Videoestetiche dell'emergenza. L'immagine della crisi nella sperimentazione audiovisiva (Kaplan, Torino 2015) and Sguardi eccentrici. Il fantastico nelle arti elettroniche (ETS, Pisa 2012) as well as the edited collection Videogame Cult. Education, art, music (ETS, Pisa 2019).

Giulia Simi is an independent scholar and curator. She obtained her PhD in History of Art and Media at the University of Pisa with a thesis focused on the relationship between amateur cinema practices and the Rome-based 1960s avant-garde. Her research interests include the Post-War Italian arts scene and the entanglement between experimental, amateur and autobiographical practices, particularly in women’s cinema. She has published articles in international peer-reviewed journals and essays in edited volumes. She is the author of the monograph Corpi in rivolta: Maria Klonaris e Katerina Thomadaki tra cinema espanso e femminismo (ETS, 2019).