Film and Female Consciousness Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women [Paperback]

Film and Female Consciousness analyses three contemporary films that offer complex and original representations of women's thoughtfulness and individuality: In the Cut (2003), Lost in Translation (2003) and Morvern Callar (2002). Lucy Bolton compares these recent works with well-known and influential films that offer more familiar treatments of female subjectivity: Klute (1971), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Marnie (1964). Considering each of the older, celebrated films alongside the recent, unconventional works illustrates how contemporary filmmaking techniques and critical practices can work together to create provocative depictions of on-screen female consciousness.

Bolton's approach demonstrates how the encounter between the philosophy of Luce Irigaray and cinema can yield a fuller understanding of the fundamental relationship between film and philosophy. Furthermore, the book explores the implications of this approach for filmmakers and spectators, and suggests Irigarayan models of authorship and spectatorship that reinvigorate the notion of women's cinema.

Film and Female Consciousness explores the representation of female consciousness on-screen and demonstrates the ways in which the thought of Luce Irigaray can be used to address the traditional problems of the objectification of women in cinema as outlined by feminist theory since the 1970s.Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
'Frozen in Showcases': Feminist Film Theory and the Abstraction of Woman
The Camera as an Irigarayan Speculum
In the Cut: Self-Endangerment or Subjective Strength?
Lost in Translation: The Potential of Becoming
Morvern Callar: In a Sensory Wonderland
Architects of Beauty and the Crypts of Our Bodies: Implications for Filmmaking and Spectatorship
Concluding Remarks: The Object is l$