Overview

Producer, distributor, and director Doris Wishman (19122002) was a pioneering woman in the film industry, leaving a body of work almost 30 films strong. Largely overlooked by critical and cultural analysis, Wishman worked in the normatively neglected film genre of sexploitation and adult film, but works like Hideout in the Sun (1960), Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965), Double Agent 73 (1974) and Each Time I Kill (2007) demonstrate an interest in complicated, ideological and often troubling social performances of the contemporary human condition. ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman positions Wishman as a significant and overlooked force in American independent film, with an impact on how we currently understand the categories of cult, exploitation, horror, experimental and avant-garde cinema.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alicia Kozma (Chair and Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Washington College) ,  Farrah Freibert (Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the School of Media Arts, Southern Illinois University)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781474482349

ISBN 10:   1474482341
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   21 May 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xi Foreword xii Joan Hawkins Introduction: Making Films in Hell 1 Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert 　 PART 1 Gender and Genre 1 The Body as Apparatus: Doris Wishman’s Double Agent 73 18 Elena Gorfinkel 2 The Girls in the Mirror: Women’s Horror Filmmaking and Doris 43 Wishman’s Each Time I Kill (2007) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas 3 Trans/sexual negativity and the ethics of (s)exploitation in 64 Let Me Die a Woman Harper Shalloe PART 2 Cultural History and Adult Film Studies 4 Hardcore Wishman 94 Whitney Strub 5 Bad Bis Go to Hell: Bisexuality as Transgressive and Lucrative in 112 Doris Wishman’s Roughies Finley Freibert 6 ""It’s Strange, but It’s Wonderful"": Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon 147 Karen Joan Kohoutek PART 3 Comparative Approaches to Authorship 7 Depicting Female Bodies: Doris Wishman, Carolee Schneemann, and 172 Legacies of Subversion Hannah Greenberg 8 Revolutionization of the Erotic Screen: The Films and Doris Wishman 203 and Wakamatsu Koji Molly Kim 9 ""You can’t say you’re not getting a horror film here!"": Authorship, 224 Genre, and the Accidental Avant-Garde in Doris Wishman’s A Night to Dismember"" Jamie Hook 10 My Teenage Cinematic Love Affair with Doris Wishman 252 Rebekah McKendry

Reviews

"This book is a must for scholars in a range of different areas. The collection explores the sexual politics of Wishman's films and provoke fascinating questions about our understanding of genre. It also explores what it means to consider Wishman an ""artist"" and, in the process, explores her relationship to other filmmakers and film movements. In short, this book is much more than a study of a fascinating figure: it provides a fascinating take on film history in particular, and cultural history more generally, that demands to be read by those who have never heard of Wishman and who may consider themselves uninterested in lowbrow culture more generally.-- ""Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia"""

This book is a must for scholars in a range of different areas. The collection explores the sexual politics of Wishman's films and provoke fascinating questions about our understanding of genre. It also explores what it means to consider Wishman an ""artist"" and, in the process, explores her relationship to other filmmakers and film movements. In short, this book is much more than a study of a fascinating figure: it provides a fascinating take on film history in particular, and cultural history more generally, that demands to be read by those who have never heard of Wishman and who may consider themselves uninterested in lowbrow culture more generally.-- ""Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia""

Author Information

Alicia Kozma is an educator, writer, and researcher who specializes in the everyday work of the media, including a dual focus on how the film industry runs, the composition of industry employees, and the form and function of their labor; and the industrial, financial, and technological evolutions of film exhibition and its impacts on independent film. She is the author of The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman: Radical Acts in Filmmaking, and co-editor of Refocus: The Films of Doris Wishman and Mobilized Identities: Mediated Subjectivity and Cultural Crisis in the Neoliberal Era. Her work has been published widely, including in Media Industries, Film Comment, Camera Obscura, Television and New Media, and other venues. Kozma is the Director of the Indiana University Cinema, where she oversees programming, operations, and academic and industry initiatives. She is affiliate faculty in IU's Media School and the IU Wells Scholar Professor for 2025. Dr. Kozma holds a PhD in communication and media studies from the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Farrah Freibert is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University. With research that spans media history and industry studies, global media circulations and LGBTQ+ history, she has published widely in peer-reviewed scholarly venues such as Film Criticism, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, Monstrum, Porn Studies, the Journal of Homosexuality, Spectator, Synoptique, and Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture. Dr. Freibert is coeditor with Alicia Kozma of Refocus: The Films of Doris Wishman (2021).

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