Overview

Examining the significance of women's work in popular film genres, Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers sheds light on women's contribution to genre cinema through an exploration of filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow, Diablo Cody, Sofia Coppola and Kelly Reichard. Exploring genres as diverse as horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedy, the book interrogates questions of authorial subversion, gendered concepts of film authorship and male/female genre divisions, as well as re-evaluating certain genres as a space worthy of feminist criticism. By offering an analysis of the films themselves and the circumstances of production and reception, this book redefines political, theoretical and commercial conceptualisations of women's cinema, and offers new perspectives on how women filmmakers explore the aesthetic and imaginative power of genre.

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9781474425261

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Reviews

"'Interested in the relationship been genre and gender, Paszkiewicz proposes that genre is both constricting and liberating for female filmmakers. She examines recent films directed by female auteurs in genres considered ""male"": 　Jennifer's Body (2009), a horror film directed by Karyn Kusama; The Hurt Locker (2008), a war film by Kathryn Bigelow; Meek's Cutoff (2010), a western by Kelly Reichardt; Marie Antoinette (2006), a costume drama by Sofia Coppola; and The Intern (2015), a romantic comedy by Nancy Meyers. Each of these women demonstrates not only an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre in which she is working but also a willingness to play with and on the conventions of the genre, imbuing it with a feminine perspective. Paszkiewicz's own knowledge, both of genres and of the scholarly literature on the subject, is equally encyclopedic, and one would say that she has mastered her own particular genre--the academic theoretical essay.' --W. A. Vincent, Michigan State University ""CHOICE """

Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers is a challenging, complex and critically intelligent work. It offers new perspectives on the cinema s fraught relationship with women directors and their significant contribution to popular genre cinema from the war and horror film to the western and biopic. An important addition to feminist film theory, Paszkiewicz's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the most recent debates around gender, genre and the achievement of women filmmakers. -- Professor Barbara Creed, The University of Melbourne, author of The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis

Author Information

Katarzyna Paszkiewicz lectures in the English Studies Department at the University of Barcelona.

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