Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by second-wave feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years feminist film theory has developed and changed to analyse the current ways of film and also go back to analyse films past. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.
Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. She is also known for originating the Bechdel test.
Dykes to Watch Out For was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the Bechdel test, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.
Born in Flames is a 1983 American dystopian docufiction drama film written, directed, produced and edited by Lizzie Borden that explores racism, classism, sexism and heterosexism in an alternate socialist democratic United States. The title comes from the song "Born in Flames" written by a member of Art & Language, Mayo Thompson of the band Red Krayola.
Kim Longinotto is a British documentary film maker, well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination. Longinotto has made more than 20 films, usually featuring inspiring women and girls at their core. Her subjects have included female genital mutilation in Kenya, women standing up to rapists in India, and the story of Salma, an Indian Muslim woman who smuggled poetry out to the world while locked up by her family for decades.
Sheffield DocFest, short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Industry Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England.
Bath Film Festival, known as FilmBath, is a film festival established in 1991, in Bath, England, by members of the Bath Film Society. The organisation has expanded in duration, venues, and titles. In 1997, it was registered as a non profit-distributing company and, in 2000, as a charitable organisation. The festival has also expanded its programme over the years to include workshops for festival-goers, live music accompaniments to silent cinema, and more recently, open-air cinema, starting in 2003 with a screening of E.T. in partnership with the Holburne Museum of Art. Since its foundation, the festival has screened over 1000 films.
Komedia is an arts and entertainment company which operates venues in the United Kingdom at Brighton and Bath, and a management and production company Komedia Entertainment. Beyond hosting live comedy, the venues also host music, cabaret, theatre and shows for children, featuring local, national and international performers. The Brighton and Bath venues operate cinemas within their buildings in partnership with Picturehouse. Komedia also creates broadcast comedy and has most notably co-produced and hosted the live recordings of seven series of the Sony Award-winning Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! for BBC Radio 4 and is a co-producer on BBC1's sitcom Count Arthur Strong.
Erika Lust is a Swedish erotic film director, screenwriter and producer. Since the debut of her first indie erotic film The Good Girl in 2004, Lust has been cited as one of the current leading participants in the feminist pornography movement, asserting that an ethical production process sets her company apart from mainstream pornography sites. Lust has stated that she finds no issue in calling her films porn, since she expects viewers to be sexually aroused, unlike other directors of erotic films who make a distinction between their work and porn even when both types contain sexually explicit scenes. In addition to directing and producing a number of award-winning films, she has written several books.
Rakhshān Banietemad is an internationally and critically acclaimed Iranian film director and screenwriter who is widely considered a premier female director and her films have been praised at international festivals as well as being popular with Iranian critics and audiences. Her title as "First Lady of Iranian Cinema" is not only a reference to her prominence as a filmmaker, but also connotes her social role of merging politics and family in her work. Her signature style is that she focuses on a character representing a part of society to explore it while staying objectively neutral. The first period of Banietemad's cinematic activity originates from dark humor. Still, in the second period of her work, dark humor gives way to serious and influential films, and deeper and broader issues are addressed. Banietemad has a more realistic view of life.
The Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women be named is sometimes added.
Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American feminist media critic and public speaker. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. Her video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, examines tropes in the depiction of female video game characters. Media scholar Soraya Murray calls Sarkeesian emblematic of "a burgeoning organized feminist critique" of stereotyped and objectified portrayals of women in video games.
Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.
The Invitation is a 2015 American horror film directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. The film stars Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michiel Huisman, and Emayatzy Corinealdi. The Invitation premiered March 13, 2015, at the SXSW film festival, and began a limited release on April 8, 2016, and through video on demand, by Drafthouse Films.
Snowflake is a 2014 Italian short film written and directed by Italian director Francesco Roder and filmed in New York City. The short film stars American actresses Ele Keats and Tracy Middendorf.
We Should All Be Feminists is a book-length essay by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. First published in 2014 by Fourth Estate, it talks about the definition of feminism for the 21st century.
Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.
Cassie Jaye is an American film director, best known for directing the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill about the men's rights movement.
The Bechdel Cast is a weekly podcast about the representation of women in film. It is named after the Bechdel test. The Bechdel Cast is hosted by Los Angeles–based comedians Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus.
Johanson analysis, developed by film critic MaryAnn Johanson, provides a method to evaluate the representation of women and girls in fiction. The analysis evaluates media on criteria that include the basic representation of women, female agency, power and authority, the male gaze, and issues of gender and sexuality. Johanson's 2015 study, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, compiled statistics for every film released in 2015, and all those nominated for Oscars in 2014 or 2015. She also drew conclusions about movie profitability when women are represented well.
