"To read Rainer's screenplays is to rediscover, even reinvent, the films all over again, but more importantly to realize that images and mise-en-scà ̈ne are as key to how Rainer's films work as is language." -- The Independent "The scripts record the unique structure of [Rainer's] films, the stresses, strains, and crackling of voices layering over and into one another. Their publication is an important moment for feminist film." -- Cineaste "Rainer's films are not highly accessible but are important to the critical imagination as an example of the sustained exploration of political and feminist theory." -- Choice "Rainer's important work in the area of avant-garde filmmaking in the seventies and eighties is amply recorded in this book... " -- Cantrills Filmnotes' The scripts of Rainer's five films, presented here along with essays, an interview, and bibliography, demonstrate the evolution of her political consciousness as well as her creative engagement with the contemporary film and cultural scene. These texts challenge the illusionist and ideological presumptions of mainstream culture and cinema.

Analyzes the treatment of women in American movies and examines the themes of a variety of contemporary movies made by women.

"Written with unequivocal enthusiasm for film, feminism and theory, "Women and Film" is a welcome and useful guide to a complex area."--"The Arts"

Noted film scholars analyze some of the most challenging films of the 20th century

Kommentierte Bibliografie. Sie gibt Wissenschaftlern, Studierenden und Journalisten zuverlässig Auskunft über rund 6000 internationale Veröffentlichungen zum Thema Film und Medien. Die vorgestellten Rubriken reichen von Nachschlagewerk über Filmgeschichte bis hin zu Fernsehen, Video, Multimedia.

Essays aimed at understanding performance in a postmodern world.

In this stimulating collection of theoretical writings on film, photography, and art, Timothy Murray examines relations between artistic practice, sexual and racial politics, theory and cultural studies. Like a Film investigates how the cinematic apparatus has invaded the theory of culture, suggesting that the many destabilising traumas of our culture remain accessible to us because they are structured so much like film. The book analyses the impact of cinematic perceptions and productions on awide array of cultural practices: from the Renassance works of Shakespeare and Caravaggio to modern sexual and political fantasy; and the theoretical work of Lyotard, Torok, Barthes, Ropars-Wuilleumier, Zizek, Silverman and Laplanche.Like A Film responds to current multicultural debates over the value of theory and the aim of artistic practice.

On dance and culture

An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema. The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion: Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.

How Yvonne Rainer's art shaped new ways of watching as well as performing; how it connected 1960s avant-garde art to politics and activism. In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body—stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer—or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display. Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s—from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser-known Vietnam war-era protest dances—Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called “the seeing difficulty.” (As Rainer said: “Dance is hard to see.”) Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art. Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover—when images of war played nightly on the television news—Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer, but as a sculptor of spectatorship.