Scholars & Feminists and Women & Film

After a brief introduction by Barnard College President Judith Shapiro, the morning plenary panel began: "Images: Representations of Women In Film" presented four perspectives, two academic and two critical, on women in front of the camera, and even ones behind the camera or in front of the screen. On their own, each of the four offerings were insightful, but the panelists comments rarely converged. The academic perspectives proved somewhat too academic for this listener -- I found myself wondering how the discussion at hand would effect female viewers or how theories would impact on women filmmakers.

Patricia White of Swarthmore College peppered her discussion about the forums available for women-centered movies (like the upcoming New York Women's Film Festival) and pointed to works she believes will contribute to the scholarship of women in film, notably Carine Adler's soon-to-be-released "Under The Skin" -- "a harrowing film that I think will be talked about," said White. "If we don't write about [feminist film theory] as academics, the [issue] will just disappear," she predicted.

On to a less daunting discussion, New York Daily News film critic Jami Bernard, with the slightest hint of sarcasm, described some of the men that women have found irresistible in the movies: Rhett Butler - "a gambler, sexually unfaithful, a drunk and a good-time Charlier;" Max DeWinter - "a cold, aloof man who infantilizes women, turning on them with rages; and Harry Tasker of "True Lies", who does all kinds of bad things to the dull, homey wife played by Jamie Lee Curtis, only to transform her in the end to a sexy, exciting, adventurous partner. The rather depressing list of testosterone begs the question -- What does this tell us about those making movies and what they think women want?

Lesbians in film was the topic at hand for Georgetown University's Suzanna Danuta Walters, who touched on the ways lesbians have (or haven't) been portrayed: a willful invisibility of lesbians, or the often outlandish stereotypes, or coded depictions of lesbians in pre-gay liberation cinema. There are more of the incidental lesbian characters in movies today, Walters noted, like the Swoosie Kurtz-Kelly Preston characters in "Citizen Ruth," or the lesbian daughter in "First Wives Club." Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" and the neo-noir thriller "Bound" didn't escape Walters examination, given the centrality of lesbianism to the films. Both works point up the current "cinematic hipness" of lesbianism, and both, Walters said, contribute to a "narrowing of lesbian culture and politics." And both avoided the traditional endings for lesbians (or gays) in film: the characters aren't killed off, they're not rescued by men, they're not hyper- or desexualized, and they're not redeemed by heterosexuality.

Afternoon break-out sessions included topics like The Making of Documentaries, How To Make A Low-Budget Feature Film, Costuming And The Construction of Gender In Film, and Women In Avant -Garde Film. I sat in on the documentary film session, led by Deirdre Boyle of The New School's graduate media studies program. Boyle's history of female documentarians pointed up the historic place women hold in the medium, from Esther Shov in the 1920's, to Lenny Riefenstahl's "Triumph Of The Will" in the '30's, to Margaret Mead, Helen Levitt and Hope Dryden. It was in the '70's that much of the ground-breaking work emerged, noted Boyle, given the availability of less expensive technologies and equipment -- the use of 16 mm and video took off in this decade. And the social movements and issues involving and affecting women resulted in an important body of work that examined women and labor, family politics, and issues of health and sexuality. Documentary filmmakers Martha Sandlin and Judith Helfand rounded out the session. Both talked about their experiences making documentaries, and clips of their work were screened (from Sandlin's "Indian Outlaws And Angie Debow," one of PBS's American Experience episodes, and Helfands' "A Healthy Baby Girl" which aired on PBS's POV series).

[Dimitra Kessenides is a freelance journalist and the coordinator of the Thessaloniki USA 1998 festival of Greek and Balkan films, to be held the first week of June in New York City.]