Lisa French (editor),
Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia.
Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2003.
ISBN: 1 876310 01 4
336pp
Au$29.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Damned Publishing)

Womenvision  makes an important contribution to writing on Australian cinema, one that continues the tradition of the landmark collection Don’t Shoot Darling! Women’s Independent Filmmaking in Australia  (Greenhouse Publications, 1987) edited by Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed and Freda Freiberg.

Like its precursor, Womenvision  is a diverse, wide-ranging collection of essays on Australian women behind and in front of the camera (and, today, the computer). This diversity lies in the range of topics covered and the variety of approaches and writing styles employed. All forms of moving image production are covered – from feature films and television to short films, documentaries, animation, computer games and dance films. The writers include industry practitioners, critics, activists, board members, teachers and researchers, both new to the field and established authorities. Indeed, some contributors wear several hats in their careers, combining their own experience as filmmakers with research and teaching or advocacy. Their writings range from historical surveys to thematic analyses of recent films by Australian women; from in-depth studies of Australian auteurs (Monica Pellizzari; Ann Turner; Tracey Moffatt) and single texts (Clara Law’s Floating Life  (Australia 1996); Jane Campion’s The Piano  (Australia/France/New Zealand 1993)) to deeply affecting personal accounts and reflections on women’s film-making practice. This is a collection that will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary Australian cinema and/or women’s moving image production, whether working in the industry or in academia.

There is the risk in collections of such diversity that the work fails to come together as a whole. Thankfully, Womenvision ‘s editor Lisa French has devised an elegant structure that groups these pieces thematically, to encourage the reader to see resonances across the pieces and similarities in methodologies. To give an idea of the book’s organisation and contents, I will provide an overview of French’s collection of essays before discussing some of the pieces in more detail. Divided into five sections, Womenvision  presents a thorough and systematic coverage of all aspects of women working in the film and television industries. Part one “Setting the scene” does just that, with three survey pieces from Ina Bertrand (looking back to women’s involvement in silent cinema), Marcia Langton (discussing Aboriginal women both in front of and behind the camera) and Lisa French (providing historical background to women’s filmmaking in Australia from the 1970s onwards). French’s piece doubles as an introduction to the book and the essays that follow. In Part two, “Working in the industry”, we find Julie James Bailey’s report on women in television echoing the concerns raised by Jane Castle and Virginia Murray in their pieces on the male-dominated field of cinematography (Castle) and the lack of support for industry workers with children (Murray). Bailey’s statistical analysis supports the findings of Castle and Murray, who use anecdotes from personal experience and interviews with female practitioners, respectively, to illustrate the ongoing struggle of women in an industry still rife with sexism and gender-defined roles. Part three of Womenvision  presents five pieces on “Film forms” that cover dance films (Dianne Reid), shorts (French), animation (Ann Shenfield), experimental films (Janet Merewether) and game design (Fiona Kerr). The documentary form is not included in this part; instead, documentaries are discussed in Part four “Gender, character and identity”, where Meredith Seaman analyses the autobiographical works of Corinne Cantrill (In This Life’s Body  (Australia 1984)), Merilee Bennett (A Song of Air  (Australia 1987)) and Anna Kannava (The Butler  (Australia 1997)). This and Part five are the largest sections of the book, with six essays in each. Part four is characterised by the ingenious deployment of new terms for considering Australian women’s film-making. These include Felicity Collins’ analysis of comedy through the framework of Kathleen’s Rowe’s “unruly woman”; Terrie Waddell’s history of the figure of “the scrubber” as a particularly Aussie inflection of female unruliness and grotesquerie; and Catherine Simpson’s reclaiming of the road movie from its association with masculinity in order to read the car – particularly the family dynamics contained within it – as an extension of the domestic space traditionally aligned with femininity. Part four’s engagement with theory is continued by Freda Freiberg and Joy Damousi’s survey of Australian cinema’s representations of the gendered Greek body and concludes with Jeni Thornley’s personal meditation on psychoanalysis and her lifelong journey with cinema, from her childhood memories of her father’s cinemas to her involvement with women’s collaborative film-making in the Sydney Women’s Film Group. The final section, Part five “Directors’ visions”, presents a range of close textual analyses and auteur studies that combine theoretical discussion with the filmmakers’ own reflections on their work, often gathered through first-hand interviews conducted by the contributors. Sally Hussey’s and Lisa French’s pieces are particularly valuable for the insights they offer from the film-makers themselves, Ann Turner (Hussey) and Gecko Films a.k.a. Sue Brooks, Sue Maslin and Alison Tilson (French). Both Rai Jones and Mary Alemany-Galway present detailed analyses of single works – Law’s Floating Life  and Campion’s The Piano  – that offer new models for reading these oft-discussed films. Rose Capp, writing on Monica Pellizzari’s films, and Catherine Summerhayes, discussing Tracey Moffatt’s work, produce rich appreciations of the body of work of these artists, by combining considerations of gender, race and avant-garde artistic practice within the auteur framework of their essays.

In such a wide-ranging collection of more than twenty essays, it is impossible to discuss each contribution in detail. So I would like to mention here some pieces that I found particularly engaging or informative – my personal highlights, if you will. The most affecting piece, and one of the most skilfully written, is cinematographer Jane Castle’s “When girls grow up to be cameramen” (57-67). Interweaving stories from film sets with feminist analysis of the sexual politics of cinematography, Castle’s contribution is personal, passionate and politicised. This is fine writing that marries confronting personal narrative with eloquent theorising, in a blistering revelation of the sexist attitudes women in the industry continue to face, on a daily basis, some thirty years after the second wave of feminism. The blokey sub-culture of the film set is immune to politics when the project at hand – getting the shot right, on time and on budget – is contingent upon everyone in the crew working together. The possibilities for changing the images of women produced by the mainstream seem very limited indeed. Perhaps this explains women’s attraction to experimental and short film forms, particularly animation. Ann Shenfield’s piece “Drawing time: some threads in animated films made by Australian women” (123-9) offers an explanation for the high number of female students and practitioners of animation. Animation can be an individual, independent form of filmmaking that does not require a large film crew, and as a narrative form, it is sympathetic to intimate stories drawn from everyday life and lived experiences. Shenfield acknowledges that the focus of her piece is on a style of animation that is “more painterly and fluid” (128) than traditional cell or computer animation. Fiona Kerr’s essay “The cybernetic woman: impossible perfection” (149-56) offers an interesting counterbalance to Shenfield’s discussion of animation by women. The field of computer animation and game design is dominated by men, both as producers and consumers. Kerr offers an accessible introduction to debates regarding gaming and cyber theory, and goes on to demonstrate why the greater involvement of women as both designers and gamers will prove mutually beneficial to women and to the industry as a whole, which is constantly seeking to increase sales and market share. Like Castle and many other contributors to Womenvision, Kerr combines a discussion of her own practice as a moving image producer (she is a 3D modeller/animator) with a feminist analysis of the field in which she works.

Another highlight of the collection is the trio of articles by Felicity Collins, Terrie Waddell and Catherine Simpson, published alongside each other in Part four “Character, gender and identity”. Each author engages in a witty and sophisticated analysis of the portrayal of women in contemporary Australian cinema. The humour of films such as Love and Other Catastrophes  (Australia,1996), Holy Smoke  (USA/Australia. 1999), Love Serenade  (Australia, 1996), A Fistful of Flies  (Australia, 1996), Road to Nhill  (Australia, 1997) and Radiance(Australia, 1998) pervades their analysis by these authors, as the title of Waddell’s piece suggests: “Scrubbers: ‘the great unwashed’ of Australian cinema” (183-95). [1] Within this sense of humour, however, lies theoretical depth and elegance of argument. Interestingly, all three writers are drawn to the character of Sweetie, played by Genevieve Lemon, from Jane Campion’s 1989 feature film of the same name. While other unruly women, scrubbers and road journeys are discussed, the centrality of Sweetie to each writer’s arguments suggests the continuing impact of this woman-child in the history of Australian cinema’s representation of women and the ongoing relevance of Campion’s bizarre, often confronting take on gender relations and family dynamics.

My one disappointment is the book’s presentation, particularly the quality of the film stills. While Womenvision is generously illustrated with some half dozen images per essay in four of the five parts [2] , the quality of the black and white reproductions is often poor, with blotchy patches on skin tones and pixellated fields that mar the image. This is an important publication that is let down by problems in presentation such as this and numerous proofreading errors. While Damned Publishing should be applauded for their recent contributions to the field of writing on Australian cinema, with this collection and 1999’s Twin Peeks: Australian and New Zealand Feature Films edited by Deb Verhoeven, I would like to see greater care taken with the presentation of future publications (of which, I hope, there will be many!).

Womenvision is both a celebration of women’s moving image production in Australia and a call to arms that reminds us we still have a long way to go in some of the male-dominated areas such as cinematography, technical departments in television production, and game design. It combines an appreciation of the past with an appraisal of the present, and inspires the reader to consider what might be possible in the future.

Fincina Hopgood
The University of Melbourne

Endnotes

[1] The (somewhat lengthy) titles of the other essays are “Brazen brides, grotesque daughters, treacherous mothers: women’s funny business in Australian cinema from Sweetie to Holy Smoke” by Felicity Collins (167-82) and “Volatile vehicles: when women take the wheel – domestic journeying and vehicular moments in contemporary Australian cinema” by Catherine Simpson (197-210).
[2] The exception being Part 2 “Working in the industry”, which has just two photographs for Castle’s essay (one of Castle’s mother Lilias Fraser, also a cinematographer, and one of Castle herself, both women on set), one for Murray’s piece (a reproduction of an Australian Film Commission childcare poster), and none for Bailey’s report, which features tables of statistics instead.
Created on: Friday, 30 April 2004 | Last Updated: 30-Apr-04