Film 165A-01: Film, Video & Gender
University of California Santa Cruz
Spring 2002

Instructor: Dr. Gloria Monti
Voice-mail: 831-459-1498, e-mail: gloria.monti@topfive.com
Office hours: M & W 5:00-6:00 (Porter D-127)

Teaching Assistant and Reader
Niki Akhavan (nikia@cats.ucsc.edu)
Yoko Kumano (yokokumano@hotmail.com)

Class meetings: M&W 2:00-5:00 (240 College VIII)

Prerequisites: Film 20A or 20B

Requirements: Attendance at lectures and Screenings
Midterm exam
Midterm paper (5 pages)
Final paper (10 pages)
Final exam

Required Readings (available at Bay Tree Bookstore)
Reading packet

Grading: Midterm exam: 20%
Midterm paper: 20%
Final paper: 30%
Final exam: 30%

ATTENDANCE: Attendance is mandatory. You must be in class and you must be on time. If there is an assignment due on the day that you are unable to attend class, you are still responsible for turning in the assignment on that day, unless we have made specific arrangements. All cell phones and pagers must be turned off before class begins.

DEADLINES: All assignments are due on the assigned date, so plan your work in advance. Late work will be lowered 1/3 of a grade for every business day late.

COURSE FEES: $15.

Week One: What Women?
W 3/27
Screening
The Women (1939), George Cukor (133')

Reading Assignments
Smelik, Anneke. "What Meets the Eye: An Overview of Feminist Film Theory." And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. New York: Martin, 1998. 7-27.

Week Two: Working Girls

M 4/1
Screening
Mildred Pierce (1945), Michael Curtiz (112')

Reading Assignments
"Overview/About this Issue." Editorial. Mohanna, Christine. "A One-Sided Story: Women in the Movies." Women and Film 1.1 (1972). 3-12.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." 1975. Rpt. in Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 14-26.
"Feminism and Film: Critical Approaches." Editorial. Camera Obscura 1 (1976): 3-10.

W 4/3
Screenings
The Maids (1985), Muriel Jackson (28')
Trade Secrets (1985), Stephanie Antalocy (23')
Performing the Border (1999), Ursula Biemann (43')

Reading Assignments
Mulvey, Laura. "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Inspired by King Vidor's Duel in the Sun. " 1981. Rpt. in Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 29-38.
Robertson, Pamela. "Structural Irony in Mildred Pierce, or How Mildred Lost Her Tongue." Cinema Journal 30 (1990): 42-54.

Week Three: Mothers

M 4/8
Screening
Imitation of Life (1959), Douglas Sirk (122')

Reading Assignments
Kaplan, E. Ann. "Is the Gaze Male?" Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983. 23-35.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses". 1984. Rpt. in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Eds. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torre. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. 51-80.

W 4/10
Screening
Halving the Bones (1995), Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury (72')

Reading Assignments
Gaines, Jane. "White Privileges and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory." 1988. Rpt. in Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism. Eds. Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar, and Janice R. Welsch. Minneapolis. U of Minnesota P, 1994. 176-190.
Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. "Imitations of Life: The Black Woman's Double Determination as Troubling 'Other.'" Literature and Psychology 34.4 (1988): 44-57.

Week Four: Femmes Fatales

M 4/15
Reading Assignments
Rivière, Joan. "Womanliness as a Masquerade." 1929. Rpt. in Formations of Fantasy. Eds. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan. London: Routledge, 1986. 35-44.
Doane, Mary Ann. "Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator." 1982. Rpt. in Femmes Fatales. New York: Routledge, 1991: 17-32.
---. "Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator." 1988-1989. Rpt. in Femmes Fatales. New York: Routledge, 1991. 33-43.

W 4/17
Screening
Shanghai Express (1932), Josef Von Sternberg (84')
Meeting of Two Queens (1991), Cecilia Barriga (14')

Week Five: Exotic Others

M 4/22
Screening
Slaying the Dragon (1988), Deborah Gee (60')

Reading Assignments
Doane, Mary Ann. "Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and Cinema." Femmes Fatales. New York: Routledge, 1991. 209-248.
hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance." Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End P, 1992. 21-39.

W 4/24
Screening
Kismet (1944), William Dieterle (100')
Hollywood Harems (1999), Tania Kamal-Eldin (24')

Reading Assignments
Modleski, Tania. "Cinema and the Dark Continent: Race and Gender in Popular Film." Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a 'Postfeminis' Age. New York: Routledge, 1991. 115-134.

Midterm paper due on 4/24 in class

Week Six: Girlfriends

M 4/29: midterm exam

Screening
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1997), Mira Nair (114')

W 5/1
Screening
Khush (1991), Pratibha Parmar (24')

Reading Assignments
hooks, bell. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." 1992. Rpt in Black American Cinema. Ed. Manthia Diawara. New York: Routledge, 1993: 288-302.
Kaplan, E. Ann. "Travel, Travelling Identities, and the Look." Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York, Routledge, 1997. 3-26, 282-286.

Week Seven: Funny Girls

M 5/6
Screening
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Dorothy Arzner (90')

Reading Assignments
Silverman, Kaja. "The Female Authorial Voice." The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis And Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. 187-234.

W 5/8
Screening
Hanging Up (2000), Diane Keaton (94')

Reading Assignments
Johnston, Claire. "Dorothy Arzner: Critical Strategies." 1975. Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 36-45.
Mayne, Judith. "Dance, Girls, Dance". Directed by Dorothy Arzner. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. 131-147.
Taubin, Amy. "Desperate Men and Twisted Sisters." Village Voice 23-29 Feb. 2000. 31 Jan. 2001 .

Week Eight: LA Rebellion School of Black Filmmakers

M 5/13
Screening:
Your Children Come Back to You (1979), Alile Sharon Larkin (27')
Illusions (1982), Julie Dash (34')
Cycles (1989), Zeinabu irene Davis (17')
A Period Piece (1991), Zeinabu irene Davis (4')

Reading Assignments
Masilela, Ntongela, "Women Directors of the Los Angeles School." 1993. Rpt. in Black Women Film & Video Artists. Ed. Jacqueline Bobo. New York: Routledge, 1998. 21-41.
Larkin, Alile Sharon. "Black Women Filmmakers Defining Ourselves: Feminism in Our Own Voice." Female Spectator: Looking at Film and Television. Ed. Deirdre Pribram. New York: Verso, 1988. 157-173.
Harris, Kwasi. "New Images: An Interview with Julie Dash and Alile Sharon Larkin." Independent Dec. 1986: 16-20.
Redding, Judith and Victoria Brownworth. "Zeinabu irene Davis: A Powerful Thang." Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors. Seattle: Seal P, 1997. 219-224.
Wimmin with a Mission Productions. WWAM Productions. 8 Mar. 2000. .

W 5/15
Screening
Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash (113')

Reading Assignments
Bambara, Toni Cade. "Reading the Signs, Empowering the Eye: Daughters of the Dust and the Black Independent Cinema Movement." Black American Cinema. Ed. Manthia Diawara. New York: Routledge, 1993. 118-144.
Kaplan, E. Ann. "Healing Imperialized Eyes: Independent Women Filmmakers and the Look." Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York, Routledge, 1997. 218-239.

Week Nine: Identity Politics
Places

M 5/20
Screenings
Reassemblage (1982), Trinh T. Minh-ha (50')
Remembering Wei Yi-Fang, Remembering Myself... (1995), Yvonne Welbon (30')

Reading Assignments
Trinh, T. Minh-ha. "Difference: 'A Special Third World Women Issue.'" Discourse 8 (1986- 87): 11-38.
hooks, bell. "Third World Diva Girls: Politics of Feminist Solidarity," and "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness." Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End P, 1990. 89-102, 145-153.
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. "The Politics of Multiculturalism in the Postmodern Age." Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge, 1994. 338-362.

W 5/22
Screening
Color Schemes (1989), Shu Lea Cheang (28')
Knowing Her Place (1990), Indu Krishnan (40')

Reading Assignments
Kaplan, E. Ann. "'Speaking Nearby:' Trinh T. Minh-ha's Reassemblage [and Shoot for the Contents]." Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York, Routledge, 1997. 195-206.
Redding, Judith and Victoria Brownworth. "Yvonne Welbon: Memory." Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors. Seattle: Seal P, 1997. 112-116.
Sisters in Cinema. Our Film Works. 8 Mar. 2000. .

Final paper due on 5/22 in class
Week Ten: Identity Politics
Bodies

M 5/27
Screenings Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People (1985), Ayoka Chenzira, (10')
Two Lies (1989), Pam Tom (25')
The Body Beautiful (1991), Ngozi Onwurah (23')

Reading Assignments
hooks, bell. "To Gloria, Who Is She: On Using a Pseudonym." Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End, 1989. 160-166.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Questions of Multiculturalism." The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge, 1990. 59-66.
Suleri, Sara. "Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition." Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992). 756-769.

W 5/29
Screening
Privilege (1990), Yvonne Rainer (100')

Reading Assignments
Redding, Judith and Victoria Brownworth. "Ayoka Chenzira: I Really Wanted It to Move." Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors. Seattle: Seal P, 1997. 117-122.
Kaplan, E. Ann. "Body Politics: Menopause, Mastectomy, and Cosmetic Surgery in Films by Rainer, Tom, and Onwurah." Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York, Routledge, 1997. 256-291.

Final Exam: Tuesday 6/4/02
12:00-3:00PM