Books like Shot/countershot by Lucy Fischer

A collection of influential essays on feminist film criticism by scholars from the United States and Britain.

Feminist film theory has been one of the, if not the, most important strands within film theory. Shohini Chaudhuri's book will focus on the work of three leading feminist film theorists - Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman and Teresa De Lauretis, whose working (in keeping with the format for generic RCT volumes) represents key schools of thought or emphases within feminist film theory. Key ideas explored through a discussion of the work of these three thinkers include the male gaze, the female voice, technologies of gender, fantasy and body horror, and masculinity in crisis.

If there was a moment during the sixties, seventies, or eighties that changed the history of the women’s film movement, B. Ruby Rich was there. Part journalistic chronicle, part memoir, and 100% pure cultural historical odyssey, Chick Flicks—with its definitive, the-way-it-was collection of essays—captures the birth and growth of feminist film as no other book has done. For over three decades Rich has been one of the most important voices in feminist film criticism. Her presence at film festivals (such as Sundance, where she is a member of the selection committee), her film reviews in the Village Voice, Elle, Out, and the Advocate, and her commentaries on the public radio program “The World” have secured her a place as a central figure in the remarkable history of what she deems “cinefeminism.” In the hope that a new generation of feminist film culture might be revitalized by reclaiming its own history, Rich introduces each essay with an autobiographical prologue that describes the intellectual, political, and personal moments from which the work arose. Travel, softball, sex, and voodoo all somehow fit into a book that includes classic Rich articles covering such topics as the antiporn movement, the films of Yvonne Rainer, a Julie Christie visit to Washington, and the historically evocative film Maedchen in Uniform. The result is a volume that traces the development not only of women’s involvement in cinema but of one of its key players as well. The first book-length work from Rich—whose stature and influence in the world of film criticism and theory continue to grow—Chick Flicks exposes unexplored routes and forgotten byways of a past that’s recent enough to be remembered and far away enough to be memorable.