Senses of Cinema - Editorial, Issue 22

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editorial

welcome to Issue 22 of our journal!

There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man.
- Alice Guy-Blaché, 1913

As editors of the Special Women's Issue of Senses of Cinema, we could not have expressed it more eloquently. This special issue was conceived as an opportunity to highlight how women have in fact played a pivotal role in all aspects of the staging of motion pictures throughout the history of filmmaking. The extensive contribution to cinema that women have made and continue to make has, as with many other historical accounts of the visual arts, not always received adequate acknowledgment.

Women have been involved in the history of cinema from its earliest beginnings. Notable figures include our own trailblazer, Australia's first female producer Kate Howarde (profiled in Ina Bertrand's essay) and the pioneering French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché (the world's first woman director and according to many accounts, the first director of a fiction film, The Cabbage Fairy, 1896). Women have sometimes worked in tandem with their male filmmaker partners, as Jan Chapman notes in her Longford Lyell Lecture in relation to the Australian examples of Elsa Chauvel and Lottie Lyell, and as Susan Buchan also observes in her history of Swiss women filmmakers. Equally, women have been independently and impressively at forefront of cinematic movements, from the avant-garde filmmakers of earlier periods, Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren, to the precociously talented work of young Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf (see Adrian Danks' The House that Mohsen Built).

Women have been everywhere in the cinema, behind and in front of the camera, in supporting and starring roles, writing, critiquing and documenting the medium. In some cases, they have combined many of these roles in one brief, fascinating career, as with the maverick figure of the late actor, writer and director Zoë Lund, featured in Adrian Martin's Special Dossier.

The broad topic of women writing their own history and giving expression to their feelings, desires and experience is broached in Bérénice Reynaud's landmark essay on the overlooked, Wanda, Barbara Loden's only film. Loden's story is archetypal: as an actress and wife, she was 'read' and defined by men as an object of desire. She fought these constraints to find her own voice and means of expression. This issue celebrates women who have not only contributed to the history of cinema but who have fought dominant stereotypes and expectations.

In terms of debates regarding '70s feminist film theory and the question of female desire, Patricia MacCormack, in a fascinating piece that combines cinephilia with theory, outlines a notion of cinesexuality and desire that is beyond gender and specific to the cinema as a realm of affects. In the approach she advocates, cinema is less a medium of “representation” and more a complex and multi-faceted encounter between spectator and image in which meanings of gender and propriety are problematised.

We have been impressed with the level of interest and range of proposals to our call for contributions. As a result, we have decided to extend the focus on women over two consecutive issues. We hope, with this first instalment, to give an indication of the extraordinary breadth, diversity and talent of women working with celluloid.

Special thanks for this issue go to Jodi Brooks, William D. Routt, Chris Howard, Kent Jones and Ray Privett.

Rose Capp and Fiona A. Villella
Co-editors
Special Women's Issue

This issue marks the commencement of Michelle Carey as Great Directors Editor and Albert Fung as Great Directors Web Designer. Senses of Cinema acknowledges and thanks Jan Chandler and Mairead Phillips for their contributions as Senses of Cinema Manager. In particular, it thanks Mairead Phillips for her invaluable contribution, expertise and tireless support as editorial assistant to the journal since December 2000 and wishes her all the very best for the future.

At the start of August, Special Dossiers Editor Adrian Martin,
Special Dossiers Editorial Assistant Grant McDonald
and Great Directors/Top Tens/Founding Editor Bill Mousoulis
resigned from the production team of Senses of Cinema.

go to Contents, Issue 22

our mission

Senses of Cinema is an online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. It has been set up to address a lack of cinephilic writing in local discourse, that is, writing sprung from the desire to think and write seriously, knowledgeably and passionately about film.

Senses of Cinema is unique in its eclecticism: it encourages articles of all styles (casual, personal, academic, critical, impressionistic and poetic - or a combination of these), analytical approaches (thematic, psychoanalytic, etc) and subject matter. The only criteria that we prescribe are that all articles are demonstrably passionate, serious, intelligent and insightful reflections and/or analyses on the topic of cinema.

Senses of Cinema promotes various divergent "voices" that speak to a wide and diverse audience. It aims to bring together a mix of writers: established and emerging, theorists and un-published cinephiles, filmmakers and film programmers, and local and international writers.

We are particularly committed to discussing art, independent, experimental and third world cinemas (everything from Renoir to Antonioni to Solàs to Oshima to Morrissey to Jost to Friedrich to Snow, feature films as well as short films) , theorising new encounters with digital technologies, and promoting writing that increases one's understanding and appreciation of cinema.

We recognise that an object as ephemeral and ethereal as cinema continues to fascinate, to provoke, to inspire, to turn on, to evolve. And it is in relation to this object that we seek to facilitate and encourage expression and appreciation.

Want to contribute to this journal?
Click on the words above to read our guidelines for writers.

about us

FAV General Editor / Manager - Fiona A. Villella, 28, studied cinema studies at the University of Melbourne, travelled overseas for a year, dabbled in film production, and has written on film for publications like Metro, Real Time, IF, Cinema Scope, Screening the Past, and Muse. She is also co-curator of the Melbourne Filmoteca and a board member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Her favourite directors are Jean-Luc Godard, Nicholas Ray, John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, Roberto Rossellini, Claire Denis, Robert Bresson and Spike Lee. Her interests are American independent cinema, experimental film, globalisation and world peace.

You can email Fiona.

Great Directors Editor - Michelle Carey, 26, has studied Psychology, French and Screen Studies in Adelaide. She is a member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Committee and is enchanted by cinema. She has a particular interest in experimental, independent, contemporary Asian and modernist European cinema.

You can email Michelle.

Special Dossiers Editor - Adrian Martin, 42, is a film critic for The Age (Melbourne), and the author of Once Upon a Time in America (BFI, 1998) and Phantasms (Penguin, 1994). His current projects include books on Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, the Mad Max series and the anthology Movie Mutations (co-edited with Jonathan Rosenbaum). He is a Doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University.

You can email Adrian.

Web Designer / Top Tens Compiler - Chris Howard, 31, studied film at La Trobe University and was a programmer of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival again in 2002, for which a video clip for sometime band ilk, irregularly to be found playing and staging unlikely events around Melbourne, was almost ready. Favourite directors include Argento, Buñuel, Tsukamoto, Keaton, Jackson, Raimi, Svankmajer, Borowczyk, Kurosawa, Polanski and Tarkovsky. And Kubrick, Bergman, Hitchcock, Scorsese, Gilliam, Bava, Almodóvar etc.

You can email Chris.

Great Directors Web Designer / Links Compiler - Albert Fung, 23, has an honours degree in Cinema Studies. His interests in cinema are varied, but has particular interest in Asian film, documentary, non-narrative explorative forms and DIY "trash" cinema.
If you have a suggestion for the links page, contact Albert.

You can email Albert.

Assistant to the Editor - Mairead Phillips, 28, is a Professional Writing and Editing student at RMIT. She has a BA in Literature and Philosophy and is also completing a Grad. Dip in French at the University of Melbourne. Her favourite directors include: Hitchcock, Ophüls, Lang, French New Wave, Visconti, Antonioni, De Sica, Hawks, Ford and Peckinpah.

You can email Mairead.

Special Dossiers Assistant Editor - Grant McDonald, 36, studies film at the University of Melbourne. He orignally studied in the Italian Department and has a special love for Italian cinema. Two of his favourite directors are Brian De Palma and Pedro Almodóvar.

You can email Grant.

Founding Editor - Bill Mousoulis, 39, is an independent filmmaker with over 70 films to his name, including five low-budget features, the latest of which is Lovesick. He founded the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group in 1985, and was its administrator for six years. He founded Senses of Cinema in late 1999, was its co-editor until August 2000, its web designer until May 2001, its Top Tens compiler until July 2002, and he also initiated the Great Directors project, being its editor and web designer March-August 2002. Check out his website, Innersense.

You can email Bill.

Senses of Cinema (ISSN 1443-4059) is published approximately bi-monthly by Senses of Cinema Inc.

As under the Copyright Act 1968 (Australia), no part of this journal may be reproduced by any process without the written permission of the editors except for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review. These works may be read online, downloaded and copied for the above purposes but must not be copied for any other individuals or organisations. The work itself must not be published in either print or electronic form, be edited or otherwise altered or used as a teaching resource without the express permission of the author.

All views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and not the editors (unless indicated).

Senses of Cinema Inc
Cinema Studies Program
The School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology
The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia.

Senses of Cinema acknowledges the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission

Senses of Cinema acknowledges the financial assistance of Film Victoria

Senses of Cinema acknowledges the technical and administrative support of University of Melbourne, Cinema Studies Program

Senses of Cinema is indexed in the MLA (Modern Language Association of America) International Bibliography and is listed in the MLA Directory of Periodicals.

All Australian content in Senses of Cinema is indexed in APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service) of the National Library of Australia.

All reviews of individual films published in Senses of Cinema are indexed in the Movie Review Query Engine.

contents great directors cteq annotations top tens about us links archive search