Chapter 27
CAMERA OBSCURA COLLECTIVE
FEMINISM AND FILM
Critical approaches
1 Context
Tih JOURNAL C4MERA oDSCURA HAS EVOLVED from the recopiio
ofa eed for theoretic) study of fim in this country from a feminist and sociale pen
pei: This kindof analysis recognizes tat women are oppressed not only economies
Policcally, but ako in the very forms of reasoning, signifying and symbolic exchange of ma
culture, The cinema i privileged place fora examination of dis kind in its unique cone
ture of political, economic and cultural codes
A femiiat film analysis recognizes that Sn i a specific eakral product, and acne
to examine the way in which bourgeois and patriarchal ideology is insciled in film. The,
involves a process of investigation and theoretical reflection on the mechanisis by wit
‘meaning is produced in film, A theoretical examination of films in terms of their sign
Process means understanding that depictions of socal “vali are mediated by a sgn
mode with its own specific structures and determinations. It locates analysis atthe intersect,
of the process of construction of the text and the social context which determines and
represented in that text. This dialectical interaction isthe process of siguiiation, The stay
of film as a sigilying practice (through rigorous analysis of films as texts) contributes uo ay
understanding of how ideology determines and is determined by the mode of represematin
1s important to know where to locate ideology and patriarchy within the made of repre
sentation in order to intervene and transform society, co define 2 praxis for change. Cre
{0 the feminis struggle san awareness that any theory of hove to change consciousness tes
@ notion of how consciousness is formed, of what change is and how it occurs
In the last few years, there has been, for the first time, theoretical work in the area of
feminist avalysis of film, Some of the most significant contibutions have come out of werk
done in England and published in the journal Seren, oF in conjunction with iy for example,
Pam Cook and Clute Johnston's texts on ‘Tourneur, Araer and Walsh, and Laura Malve’s
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, The work of Kati Hanct and Jarqucline Rose hss
extended methods of textual analysis for the stady of film within a feminist context through
ritical analyses of the structuring activity of films seen as texts and the prodvetion of meaning
through textual operations. We see our activity on Camera Obscura within the context of sith
theoretical works, and want the journal to provide a locus for other work of this kind, Toward
this end we are publishing translations of some of the most important work on film theory
ccarrently being done in Franee. We want to encourage theoretical work on ehuematie 1
sentation and the signifying function of woman within this system,
i
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|FEMINISM AND FILM 235
i Texts
{ve are presenting in this issue our analyses of two fils made by women. ‘The film-texts we
jove chosen, in their specific textual operations, their mode of structuration, offer a critique of
jnematic representation in general, and more specifically of the representation of woman.
in dassical cinema, They cootribute to the development oa feminist counter-cinema both by
having as their central concern a feminist problematic, and by operating specilic challenges
tocinematic codes and narrative conventions of ilusionist cinema,
YYwontne Rainer’s Fin abour @ woman who! .. explores problems of sexual relationships
ani the formation of the woman’s self-image lrom the point of view of a generalized “she”
Disjunctive sequences echo each other thematically while exploiting formal possibilities for
locating and retocating sound, image, subject and spectator. ‘The film is organized to engage
the viewer it a dynamie, or even in a dialectical, velationship with the “story*, such as itis
or might be. In the interview with Rainer, which took place in February 1975 and was subse-
iy modified and expanded both by Rainer and ourselves, we argue that the analytical
Svle which she uses in both Lives of Peyformers and Film about a woman wha . is more elfee-
tive in provoking an avvareness in the viewer of the general and social nature of the sexual
voblematic she is dealing with than is, to cite Rainer’s counter-example, an illusionist film.
lke The Mother and the Whore.
Raynal’s film offers a critique
ineena, Her film poses the problem of the place of woman x
thom mode and enacts transgressions on the structure of that representation. In its