When a filmmaker makes a film with herself as a subject, she is already divided as both the subject matter of the film and the subject making the film. The two senses of the word are immediately in play – the matter and the maker—thus the two ways of being subjectified as both subject and object. Subjectivity finds its filmic expression, not surprisingly, in very personal ways, yet it is nonetheless shaped by and in relation to collective expressions of identity that can transform the cinema of 'me' into the cinema of 'we'. Leading scholars and practitioners of first-person film are brought together in this groundbreaking collection to consider the theoretical, ideological, and aesthetic challenges wrought by this form of filmmaking in its diverse cultural, geographical, and political contexts.
Price: $29.00
Pages: 288
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: WallFlower Press
Series: Nonfictions
Publication Date:
29 May 2012
ISBN: 9780231162159
Format: Paperback
Global in its reach, sensitive to the political valences of self-inscription, ground-breaking in its attention to new formats and technologies, The Cinema of Me offers unmistakable proof that the first person film is a vital strand of contemporary media production. Once thought to be the refuge of the privileged, self-absorbed Western-man, autobiography exists today as a ubiquitous act of self-expression and political agency. Spanning a breadth of modalities—including the essay film, i-movie, cinematic self-portrait, home movie remix, blog—The Cinema of Me testifies to the power of media practices that can transform private lives into social subjectivities.
Alisa Lebow is a Reader in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research is generally concerned with issues related to documentary film, recently to do with questions of the political in documentary. Her book First Person Jewish (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) explores aspects of the representation of self and subjectivity in first person film. She is also a filmmaker whose films include Outlaw (1994), Treyf (1998) and For the Record: The World Tribunal on Iraq (2007).
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction, by Alisa Lebow
Part 1. First Person Singular
The Role of History in the Individual: Working Notes for a Film, by Michael Chanan
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Andrés Di Tella
Impersonations of Glauber Rocha by Glauber Rocha, by José Gatti
The Self-portrait Film: Michelangelo's Last Gaze, by Laura Rascaroli
Cycles of Life: El cielo gira and Spanish Autobiographical Documentary, by Efrén Cuevas
From the Interior: Space, Time and Queer Discursivity in Kamal Aljafari's The Roof, by Peter Limbrick
Part 2. First Person Plural
Jennifer Fox's Transcultural Talking Cure: Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, by Angelica Fenner
Secrets and Inner Voices: The Self and Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Documentary, by Sabeena Gadihoke
In the Eye of the Storm: The Political Stake of Israeli i-Movies, by Linda Dittmar
Part 3. Diasporic Subjectivity
Looking for Home in Home Movies: The Home Mode in Caribbean Diaspora First Person Film and Video Practice, by Elspeth Kydd
'If I Am (Not) for Myself': Michelle Citron's Diasporic First Person(s), by Sophie Mayer
The Camera as Peripatetic Migration Machine, by Alisa Lebow
Part 4. Virtual Subjectivity
Blogging Identity.com, by Peter Hughes
The ME and the WE: A First Person Meditation on Media Translation in Three Acts, by Alexandra Juhasz
Filmography
Index
