From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jan 25 2008 - 14:47:10 PST
> "Most of the filmmakers [in this collection] are
> American, and all either
> worked in the United States or are involved in
> contemporary political or
> aesthetic concerns familiar to US
> scholars...Although there are many
> international women filmmakers, past and present,
> whose work deserves
> recognition, this anthology's national focus seeks
> to rectify the commonly
> held notion that the American avant-garde was
> exclusively male."
>
> One assumes, unfortunately, that a title along the
> lines of
>
> Women's Experimental Cinema:
> A collection of essays,
> being an argument regarding the exclusion of
> women
> from the canon of the American avant-garde film,
> and,
> proposing certain examples that may work toward
> ameliorating this situation,
> though in doing so,
> citing filmmakers exclusively from within the
> North American tradition,
> which in no way should marginalize or otherwise
> denigrate
> the existence of other women filmmakers
> worldwide,
> past, present or in perpetuity
>
> Was not the type of thing her publishers would go
> for, despite its admirable
> comprehensiveness.
To be fair tho "Female filmakers of the American-Avant
Garde" might have worked not just as a more
descriptive title but a more helpful one too for those
reasearching the american avant-garde.
Of course the point being that the publishers might
not like that title as much either, so you are right
in pointing out how the intentions of publishers come
into play.
In fact the wording of the introduction seems to
indicate the author might be aware of some kind of
problem with the title but feels powerless to do
anything about it??
...or maybe not?
Anyway, the fact that someone has had to write this
book does illustrate the kind of problems that are out
there however. Why have women filmmakers been
ghettoized into seperate books for instance? I really
hope that when authors are writing more general books
in the future, they will be able to get hold of these
books for their reasearch and include some of the
film-makers who have been left out in the past!
It's good that people are writing these books, and
that people are having these conversations, it
indicates that people are wanting to make changes for
the better and to try to rectify some of the mistakes
of the past.
"A good start" as they say in Iceland. :)
love
Freya
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