Female Authorship and the Documentary Image

Boel Ulfsdotter is Reader in Film Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her areas of research are rooted in theoretical perspectives on female subjectivity in visual and popular culture, with special focus on documentary cinema, visual style, and screen costume. She has also published on contemporary women’s power dressing, fashion exhibition practice, and screen costume. Boel Ulfsdotter’s latest scholarly publication is Documenting Fashion (2023), co-edited with Elena Caoduro. In 2018, Ulfsdotter co-edited a twin-volume on the topic of female authorship for Edinburgh University Press: Female Authorship and the Documentary Image, and Female Agency and Documentary Strategies. Anna Backman Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden.

• Preface by Belinda Smaill Introduction by Boel Ulfsdotter and Anna Backman RogersSection one: DOCUMENTARY PRACTICESChapter 1: LISA FRENCH: "Women in the Director’s Chair: The Female Gaze in Documentary Film"Chapter 2: ELIZABETH COFFMAN AND ERICA STEIN: "New Day Films: Collective Aesthetics and the Collection"Chapter 3: SHARON DANIEL: "The Female Auteur and Voice: A Personal Context"Interview: "The Final Projects of Hannah Wilke and Jo Spence": A dialogue between Elena Crippa and Anna Backman RogersSection two: DOCUMENTARY THEORIESChapter 4: GABRIELLE MCNALLY: "The Feminist Voice: Improvisation in Women’s Autobiographical Filmmaking"Chapter 5: RONA MURRAY: "Speaking About or Speaking Nearby? Documentary Practice and Female Authorship in the films of Kim Longinotto"Chapter 6: APARNA SHARMA: "A Politics of Nearness: Uses of Montage and Haptics in Documenting Cultural Experiences of Communities of India"Section three: FEMALE AUTHORSHIP AND GLOBAL IDENTITIESChapter 7: ANNELIES VAN NOORTWIJK: "The Other, The Same: Towards a Metamodern Poetics with Heddy Honigmann"Chapter 8: BOEL ULFSDOTTER: "The Memories of Belleville Baby: Autofiction as Evidence"Chapter 9: SOPHIE MAYER: "To::For::By::About::With::From:: Towards Solid Women: On (not) Being Addressed by Tracey Moffatt’s Moodeijt Yorgas"Chapter 10: WAKAE NAKANE: "Constructing an Intimate Sphere Through Her Own Female Body: Naomi Kawase’s Documentary Films"Chapter 11: CATHERINE SUMMERHAYES: "Celebrity/Activist/Photographer: Mia Farrow"Interview: "Being a Woman Documentary Maker in Taiwan": An interview with Singing Chen and Wuna Wu, by Chris Berry

This book serves as map and compass in the first concerted investigation of a crucial field of documentary studies as yet severely neglected. Mobilising a range of dynamic conceptual frameworks, it brings major paradigm shifts into focus, with compelling insights into women’s documentary production globally and timely directions for future explorations.