How French Women (Re)invented Cinema

Catalog description

Film as a technology was invented by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in 1895. But it was a French woman, Alice Guy, who transformed cinema into an art form. She directed the first narrative fiction film, La Fee aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages, 1896) - a whimsical debunking of maternal myths and gender stereotypes. She was also the first female film producer, pioneered innovative special effects, and was the first to cast an all-Black production, in 1912. Yet, until recently, she has been erased from history books. This course tells another history of cinema: one written entirely by women, and often in Paris. From Alice Guy to Agnes Varda, Claire Denis, and the bold post-#metoo innovators Celine Sciamma, Julia Ducourneau or Mona Achache, women have revolutionized the seventh art, its techniques, its imaginary, and challenged the male gaze from within. Along with female screenwriters, actresses, directors of cinematography and producers, they have transformed cinema into a poetic and political tool to explore new forms of subjectivity, love, womanhood, and reshape French culture. In the wake of #metoo - which started in the film industry - and amid a series of high-profile sexual violence scandals (Depardieu, Polanski, Benoit Jacquot), France is undergoing profound cultural shifts around gender equality, power, violence, and the representation of women. As both an art form and an industry that capitalizes on images of pleasurable bodies, cinema stands at the heart of these debates. The guests for this course will address this conjuncture from their lived professional experience.