Full Description
Gaze Regimes is a bricolage of essays and interviews showcasing the experiences of women working in film, either directly as practitioners or in other areas as curators, festival programme directors or fundraisers. It does not shy away from questioning the relations of power in the practice of filmmaking and the power invested in the gaze itself. Who is looking and who is being looked at, who is telling women's stories in Africa and what governs the mechanics of making those films on the continent?
The interviews with film practitioners such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Jihan El-Tahri, Anita Khanna, Isabel Noronhe, Arya Lalloo and Shannon Walsh demonstrate the contradictory points of departure of women in film - from their understanding of feminisms in relation to lived-experiences and the realpolitik of women working as cultural practitioners.
The disciplines of gender studies, postcolonial theory, and film theory provide the framework for the book's essays. Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann, Nobunye Levin, Dorothee Wenner and Christina von Braun are some of the contributors who provide valuable context, analysis and insight into, among other things, the politics of representation, the role of film festivals and the collective and individual experiences of trauma and marginality which contribute to the layered and complex filmic responses of Africa's film practitioners.
Contents
Acknowledgements; List of illustrations; Foreword by Katharina von Ruckteschell, Goethe-Institut sub-Saharan Africa; Introduction - By way of context and content - Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann; African women in cinema: An overview - Beti Ellerson; 'I am a feminist only in secret' - Interview with Taghreed Elsanhouri and Christina von Braun by Ines Kappert; Staged authenticity: Femininity in photography and film - Christina von Braun; 'Power is in your own hands': Why Jihan El-Tahri does not like movements - Interview with Jihan El-Tahri by Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann; Aftermath - A focus on collective trauma - Interview with Djo Tunda wa Munga and Rumbi Katedza by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry; Shooting violence and trauma: Traversing visual and social topographies in Zanele Muholi's work - Antje Schuhmann; Puk Nini - A filmic instruction in seduction: Exploring class and sexuality in gender relations - Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry; I am Saartjie Baartman - Nobunye Levin; Filmmaking at the margins of a community: On co-producing Elelwani - Jyoti Mistry; On collective practices: Jeppe on a Friday - Interview with Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo by Jyoti Mistry; 'Cinema of resistance' - Interview with Isabel Noronha by Max Annas and Henriette Gunkel; Dark and personal - Anita Khanna; 'Change? This might mean to shove a few men out' - Interview with Anita Khanna by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry; Barakat means enough! - Katarina Hedren; 'Women, use the gaze to change reality' - Interview with Katarina Hedren by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry; Post-colonial film collaboration and festival politics - Dorothee Wenner; Tsitsi Dangarembga: A manifesto - Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga by Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann.
