Women's experimental cinema: critical frameworks

Women's Experimental Cinema provides lively introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde women filmmakers, some of whom worked as early as the 1950s and many of whom are still working today. In each essay in this collection, a leading film scholar considers a single filmmaker, supplying biographical information, analyzing various influences on her work, examining the development of her corpus, and interpreting a significant number of individual films. The essays rescue the work of critically neglected but influential women filmmakers for teaching, further study, and, hopefully, restoration and preservation. Just as importantly, they enrich the understanding of feminism in cinema and expand the terrain of film history, particularly the history of the American avant-garde.

Swing and sway: Marie Menken's filmic events / Melissa Ragona -- Different/same/both/neither: the polycentric cinema of Joyce Wieland / Paul Arthur -- Excavating visual fields, layering auditory frames: signature, translation, resonance, and Gunvor Nelson's films / Chris Holmlund -- Moving and moving: from minimalism to Lives of performers / Noël Carroll -- Eye/body: the cinematic paintings of Carolee Schneemann / M.M. Serra and Kathryn Ramey -- "Absently enchanted": the apocryphal, ecstatic cinema of Barbara Rubin / Ara Osterweil -- Amy Greenfield: film, dynamic movement, and transformation / Robert A. Haller -- Barbara Hammer: lyrics and history / Chuck Kleinhans -- Chick Strand's experimental ethnography / Maria Pramaggiore -- Amnesis time: the films of Marjorie Keller / Robin Blaetz -- In the ruins of the image: the works of Leslie Thornton / Mary Ann Doane -- Sounds, intervals, and startling images in the films of Abigail Child / Maureen Turim -- Peggy's playhouse: contesting the modernist paradigm / William C. Wees -- Su Friedrich: breaking the rules / Janet Cutler -- The experimental "dunyementary": a cinematic signature effect / Kathleen McHugh -- Women's experimental cine…