Until now, there hasn't been one single-volume authoritative reference work on the history of women in film, highlighting nearly every woman filmmaker from the dawn of cinema including Alice Guy (France, 1896), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Penny Marshall (U.S.), and Sally Potter (U.K.). Every effort has been made to include every kind of woman filmmaker: commercial and mainstream, avant-garde, and minority, and to give a complete cross-section of the work of these remarkable women. Scholars and students of film, popular culture, Women's Studies, and International Studies, as well as film buffs will learn much from this work.
The Dictionary covers the careers of nearly 200 women filmmakers, giving vital statistics where available, listings of films directed by these women, and selected bibliographies for further reading. This is a one-volume, one-stop resource, a comprehensive, up-to-date guide that is absolutely essential for any course offering an overview or survey of women's cinema. It offers not only all available statistics, but critical evaluations of the filmmakers' work as well. In order to keep the length manageable, this volume focuses on women who direct fictional narrative films, with occasional forays into the area of the documentary and is limited to film production rather than video production.

Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary

Biographies & Memoirs

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Arts & Literature

Greenwood

Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance

Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance is an interdisciplinary study of etiquette texts, conduct literature, and advice books and films. GwendolynAudrey Foster analyzes the work of such women authors as Emily Post, Christine de Pizan, Hannah Webster Foster, Emily Brontë, Frances E. W. Harper, and Martha Stewart as well as such women filmmakers as Lois Weber and Kasi Lemmons.
Specifically,” Foster notes, I was interested in the possibility of locating power and agency in the voices of popular etiquette writers.” Her investigation led her to analyze etiquette and conduct literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Within this wide scope, she redefines the boundaries of conduct literature through a theoretical examination of the gendered body as it is positioned in conduct books, etiquette texts, poetry, fiction, and film.
Drawing on Bakhtin, Gates, Foucault, and the new school of performative feminism to develop an interdisciplinary approach to conduct literatureand literature as conductFoster brings a unique perspective to the analysis of ways in which the body has been gendered, raced, and constructed in terms of class and sexuality.
Even though women writers have been actively writing conduct and etiquette texts since the medieval period, few critical examinations of such literature exist in the fields of cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, Foster’s study fills a gap and does so uniquely in the existing literature. In examining these voices of authority over the body, Foster identifies the dialogic in the texts of this discipline that both supports and disrupts the hegemonic discourse of a gendered social order.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Southern Illinois University Press

Identity And Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman

Considered to be one of the most influential auteurs in world cinema, Chantal Akerman (1950 - 2015) had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde film. She was an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinematic arts in works such as I...You...He...She (Je tu il elle,1974); Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Meetings with Anna (Les Rendez-vous d'Anna,1978); American Stories/Food, Family, and Philosophy (Histoires d'Amérique,1989); and From the East (D'Est,1993). Akerman created new and unexpected films that explore ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration. This collection of essays edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster assesses Akerman's wide-ranging oeuvre, particularly her exploration of identity and memory, and considers her development as an artist and as a social force. Along with a detailed filmography and bibliography, ten of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving-image discourse explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship, and Jewish diasporic identity. The contributors include Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Jennifer M. Barker, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Judith Mayne, and Kristine Butler. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Flicks Books, this marks the first United States edition of Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture

Oprah Winfrey,  Roseanne Barr, Martha Stewart, and Britney Spears typify class-passers--those who claim different socioeconomic classes as their own--asserts Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture. According to new rules of social standing in American popular culture, class is no longer defined by wealth, birth, or education. Instead, today's notion of class reflects a socially constructed and regulated series of performed acts and gestures rooted in the cult of celebrity. In examining the quest for class mobility, Foster deftly traces class-passing through the landscape of popular films, reality television shows, advertisements, the Internet, and video games. She deconstructs the politics of celebrity, fashion, and conspicuous consumerism and analyzes class-passing as it relates to the American Dream, gender, and marriage.Class-Passing draws on dozens of examples from popular culture, from old movie classics and contemporary films to print ads and cyberspace, to illustrate how flagrant displays of wealth that were once unacceptable under the old rules of behavior are now flaunted by class-passing celebrities. From the construction worker in Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? to the privileged socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of The Simple Life, Foster explores the fantasy of contact between the classes. She also refers to television class-passers from The Apprentice, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Survivor and notable class-passing achievers Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and P. Diddy.Class-Passing is a notable examination of the historical, social, and ideological shifts in expressions of class. The first serious book of its kind, Class-Passing is fresh, innovative, and invaluable for students and scholars of film, television, and popular culture.TABLE OF CONTENTS:1. Class - Passing and The American Dream2. Class - Passing, Consumerism and Gender3. Class - Passing and Negotiations of Masculinity4. Celebrity Fantasies: Marriage and Class Mobility5. Live on Your World, Class - Pass in Ours6. Classing the Body, Cash - Passing and Class Mashup

Oprah Winfrey, Roseanne Barr, Martha Stewart, and Britney Spears typify class-passers--those who claim different socioeconomic classes as their own--asserts Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture. According to new rules of social standing in American popular culture, class is no longer defined by wealth, birth, or education. Instead, today's notion of class reflects a socially constructed and regulated series of performed acts and gestures rooted in the cult of celebrity. In examining the quest for class mobility, Foster deftly traces class-passing through the landscape of popular films, reality television shows, advertisements, the Internet, and video games. She deconstructs the politics of celebrity, fashion, and conspicuous consumerism and analyzes class-passing as it relates to the American Dream, gender, and marriage. Class-Passing draws on dozens of examples from popular culture, from old movie classics and contemporary films to print ads and cyberspace, to illustrate how flagrant displays of wealth that were once unacceptable under the old rules of behavior are now flaunted by class-passing celebrities. From the construction worker in Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? to the privileged socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of The Simple Life, Foster explores the fantasy of contact between the classes. She also refers to television class-passers from The Apprentice, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Survivor and notable class-passing achievers Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and P. Diddy. Class-Passing is a notable examination of the historical, social, and ideological shifts in expressions of class. The first serious book of its kind, Class-Passing is fresh, innovative, and invaluable for students and scholars of film, television, and popular culture. TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Class - Passing and The American Dream 2. Class - Passing, Consumerism and Gender 3. Class - Passing and Negotiations of Masculinity 4. Celebrity Fantasies: Marriage and Class Mobility 5. Live on Your World, Class - Pass in Ours 6. Classing the Body, Cash - Passing and Class Mashup

The history of international cinema is now available in a concise, conveniently sized, and affordable volume. Succinct yet comprehensive, A Short History of Film provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present. More than 250 rare stills and illustrations accompany the text, bringing readers face to face with many of the key players and films that have marked the industry. Beginning with precursors of what we call moving pictures, Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster lead a fast-paced tour through the invention of the kinetoscope, the introduction of sound and color between the two world wars, and ultimately the computer generated imagery of the present day. They detail significant periods in world cinema, including the early major industries in Europe, the dominance of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s, and the French New Wave of the 1960s. Special attention is also given to small independent efforts in developing nations and the corresponding more personal independent film movement that briefly flourished in the United States, the significant filmmakers of all nations, censorship and regulation and how they have affected production everywhere, and a wide range of studios and genres. Along the way, the authors take great care to incorporate the stories of women and other minority filmmakers who have often been overlooked in other texts. Compact and easily readable, this is the best one-stop source for the history of world film available to students, teachers, and general audiences alike.

A Short History of Film

Wheeler Winston Dixon

Rutgers Univ Pr

A Short History of Film, Third Edition

Rutgers University Press

Considered to be one of the most influential auteurs in world cinema, Chantal Akerman (1950 - 2015) had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde film. She was an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinematic arts in works such as I...You...He...She (Je tu il elle,1974); Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Meetings with Anna (Les Rendez-vous d'Anna,1978); American Stories/Food, Family, and Philosophy (Histoires d'Amérique,1989); and From the East (D'Est,1993). Akerman created new and unexpected films that explore ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration.This collection of essays edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster assesses Akerman's wide-ranging oeuvre, particularly her exploration of identity and memory, and considers her development as an artist and as a social force. Along with a detailed filmography and bibliography, ten of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving-image discourse explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship, and Jewish diasporic identity.The contributors include Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Jennifer M. Barker, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Judith Mayne, and Kristine Butler.Note - There is also a revised edition if this book, published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2003. ISBN-13: 978-0809325139.

Identity and Memory: the Films of Chantal Ackerman (Cinema Voices)

Flicks Books

Disruptive Feminisms Raced, Gendered, and Classed Bodies in Film

Springer

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary

Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance

Identity And Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman

Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture

Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture

A Short History of Film

A Short History of Film, Third Edition

A Short History of Film, Third Edition

Identity and Memory: the Films of Chantal Ackerman (Cinema Voices)

Disruptive Feminisms Raced, Gendered, and Classed Bodies in Film