This collection brings together an exciting group of established and emerging scholars to consider the history of feminist film theory and new developments in the field and in film culture itself. Opening the field up to urgent questions and covering such topics as new experimental film, the digital image, consumerism, activism, and pornography, Feminisms will be essential reading for scholars of both film and feminism.

Citizen Kane's reputation as one of the greatest films of all time is matched only by the accumulation of critical commentary that surrounds it. What more can there be to say about a masterpiece so universally acknowledged? Laura Mulvey, in a fresh and original reading, illuminates the richness of the film, both thematically and stylistically, relating it to Welles's political background and its historical context. In a lucid and perceptive critique she also investigates the psychoanalytic structure that underlies the film's presentation of Kane's biography, for once taking seriously what Orson Welles himself disparagingly referred to as 'dollar-book Freud.' In her foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Laura Mulvey focuses on the film's politics, highlighting the contemporary 'rhymes' in Kane's portrayal of a scandal-prone press baron in a time of economic crisis.

The 1970s was an enormously creative period for experimental film. Its innovations and debates have had far-reaching and long-lasting influence, with a resurgence of interest in the decade revealed by new gallery events, film screenings and social networks that recognise its achievements. Professor Laura Mulvey, and writer/director Sue Clayton, bring together journalists and scholars at the cutting edge of research into 1970s radical cinema for this collection. Chapters are at once historically grounded yet fused with the current analysis of today's generation of cine-philes, to rediscover a unique moment for extraordinary film production. Other Cinemas establishes the factors that helped to shape alternative film: world cinema and internationalism, the politics of cultural policy and arts funding, new accessible technologies, avant-garde theories, and the development of a dynamic and interactive relationship between film and its audiences. Exploring and celebrating the work of The Other Cinema, the London Film-makers' Co-op and other cornerstones of today's film culture, as well as the impact of creatives such as William Raban and Stephen Dwoskin - and Mulvey and Clayton themselves - this important book takes account of a wave of socially aware film practice without which today's activist, queer, minority and feminist voices would have struggled to gather such volume.

This book marks a return for Laura Mulvey to questions of film theory and feminism, as well as a reconsideration of new and old film technologies. Its title, Afterimages, alludes to the dislocation of time that runs through many of the films and works in this book, and the way we view them. Structured in three main parts the book begins with a section on the theme of woman as spectacle. Part Two focuses on films drawn from different parts of the world, directed by women and about women, and all adopting radical cinematic strategies. In Part Three Mulvey considers moving image works made for art galleries and argues that the aesthetics of cinema have persisted into this environment. Afterimages also features an appendix of ten frequently asked questions on her classic feminist essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in which Mulvey addresses questions of spectatorship crucial to our era of #MeToo. An urgent and compelling book for anyone interested in the power and pleasures of moving images.

The Couch and the Silver Screen is a collection of original contributions which explore European cinema from psychoanalytic perspectives. Both classic and contemporary films are presented and analysed by a variety of authors, including leading cinema historians and theorists, psychoanalysts with a specific expertise in the interpretation of films, as well as the filmmakers themselves. This composite approach offers a fascinating insight into the world of cinema.

The Couch and the Silver Screen is illustrated with stills throughout and Andrea Sabbadini's introduction provides a theoretical and historical context for the current state of psychoanalytic studies of films. The book is organised into four clear sections - Set and Stage, Working Through Trauma, Horror Perspectives and Documenting Internal Worlds - which form the basis for engaging chapters including:

* easily readable and jargon-free film reviews.
* essays on specific subjects such as perspectives on the horror film genre and adolescent development.
* transcripts of live debates among film directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, actors, critics and psychoanalysts discussing films.

The cultural richness of the material presented, combined with the originality of multidisciplinary dialogues on European cinema, makes this book appealing not only to film buffs, but also to professionals, academics and students interested in the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the arts.

The essays collected in this book reflect some of the commitments and changes during the period that saw the women's movement shift into feminism and the development of feminism's involvement with the politics of representation, psychoanalytic film theory and avant-garde aesthetics.;The essays also tell, implicitly, a personal story - of someone gradually learning to express themselves in writing through feminism and becoming visibly more articulate over the course of time. Central to the collection is Mulvey's famous polemic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Mulvey has directed six films with Peter Wollen and is a major British cultural theorist.

The innovations and debates in experimental film in the 1970s have had far-reaching and long-lasting influence, with a resurgence of interest in the decade revealed by new gallery events, film screenings and social networks that recognise its achievements. Professor Laura Mulvey, and writer/director Sue Clayton, bring together journalists and scholars at the cutting edge of research into 1970s radical cinema for this collection. Chapters are at once historically grounded yet fused with the current analysis of today's generation of cine-philes, to rediscover a unique moment for extraordinary film production. Other Cinemas establishes the factors that helped to shape alternative film: world cinema and internationalism, the politics of cultural policy and arts funding, new accessible technologies, avant-garde theories, and the development of a dynamic and interactive relationship between film and its audiences. Exploring and celebrating the work of The Other Cinema, the London Film-makers' Co-op and other cornerstones of today's film culture, as well as the impact of creatives such as William Raban and Stephen Dwoskin - and Mulvey and Clayton themselves - this important book takes account of a wave of socially-aware film practice. Without this body of work, today's activist, queer, minority and feminist voices in cinema would have struggled to gather such impact.

In "Death 24 x a Second", Laura Mulvey addresses some of the key questions of film theory, spectatorship and narrative. New media technologies, such as video and DVD, have transformed the way we experience film, and the viewers' relationship to film image and cinema's narrative structure has also been fundamentally altered. These technologies give viewers the means to control both image and story, so that films produced to be seen collectively and followed in a linear fashion may be found to contain unexpected (even unintended) pleasures. The tension between the still frame and the moving image coincides with the cinema's capacity to capture the appearance of life and preserve it after death. Mulvey proposes that with the arrival of new technologies and new ways of experiencing the cinematic image, film's hidden stillness comes to the fore, thereby acquiring a new accessibility and visibility. The individual frame, the projected film's best-kept secret, can now be revealed, by anyone, at the simple touch of a button. As Mulvey argues, easy access to repetition, slow motion and the freeze-frame may well shift the spectator's pleasure to a fetishistic rather than a voyeuristic investment in the cinematic object. The manipulation of the cinematic image by the viewer also makes visible cinema's material and aesthetic attributes. By exploring how new technologies can give new life to old' cinema, "Death 24 x a Second" offers an original re-evaluation of film's history and also its historical usefulness.

Writer and film-maker Laura Mulvey is widely regarded as one of the most challenging and incisive contemporary cultural theorists, credited for incorporating film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. Part of the pathbeating 1970s generation of British film theorists and independent film-makers, she came to prominence with her classic essay on the pleasures - and displeasures - of
narrative cinema, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. She went on to make her own avant-garde films, co-directed with Peter Wollen, and to write further, greatly influential works - including this one.
"Fetishism and Curiosity" contains writings which range from analyses of "Xala," "Citizen Kane" and "Blue Velvet," to an extended engagement with the creations of Native American artist Jimmie Durham and the feminist photographer Cindy Sherman. Essays explore the concept of fetishism as developed by Marx and Freud, and how it relates to the ways in which artistic texts work.
Mulvey returns to some of the knottier issues in contemporary cultural theory, especially the links between looking, fantasy and theorisation on the one hand, and the processes of historical change on the other. What are the modes of address that characterise 'societies of the spectacle'? How might 'curiosity' be directed towards deciphering the politics of popular culture? These are just some of the questions raised in this brilliant and subtle collection.
Published as part of the BFI Silver series, this new edition of Mulvey's classic work of feminist theory features a new, specially commissioned introduction and stills from the films discussed.

Essays and interviews that span Mary Kelly's career highlight the artist's sustained engagement with feminism and feminist history. When Mary Kelly's best-known work, Post-Partum Document (1973-1979), was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1976, it caused a sensation-an unexpected response to an intellectually demanding and aesthetically restrained installation of conceptual art. The reception signaled resistance to the work's interrogation of feminine identity and the cultural mythologizing of motherhood. This volume of essays and interviews begins with this foundational work, offering an early statement by the artist, a subsequent interview, and an essay situating the work within a broader broader discourse of art and social purpose in the early 1970s. Throughout, the collection addresses such themes as labor, war, trauma, and the politics of care, while emphasizing the artist's sustained engagement with histories of feminism and generations of feminists. The contributions also consider such specific works as Kelly's Interim (1984-1989), the subject of a special issue of October; Gloria Patri (1992), an installation conceived in response to the first Gulf War; The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi (2001), an extensive project including a 200-foot narrative executed in the medium of compressed lint and the performance of a musical score by Michael Nyman; and two recent works, Love Songs (2005-2007), which explores the role of memory in feminist politics, and Mimus (2012), a triptych that parodies the House Un-American Activities Committee's 1962 investigation of the pacifist group, Women Strike for Peace. Essays and Interviews by Parveen Adams, Emily Apter, Rosalyn Deutsche, Hal Foster, Margaret Iversen, Mary Kelly, Helen Molesworth, Laura Mulvey, Mignon Nixon, Griselda Pollock, Paul Smith

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen co-write and co-direct this 1970s avant-garde feature. The film follows the struggles of middle-class mother Louise (Dinah Stabb) and her young daughter Ana (Riannon Tise) as they live in a patriarchy. Their story is interlaced with a depiction of Greek mythical hero Oedipus's encounter with the Sphinx who ruled over Thebes by forcing travellers to answer a riddle, killing those who responded incorrectly.

Writer and film-maker Laura Mulvey is widely regarded as one of the most challenging and incisive contemporary cultural theorists, credited for incorporating film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. Part of the pathbeating 1970s generation of British film theorists and independent film-makers, she came to prominence with her classic essay on the pleasures - and displeasures - of narrative cinema, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. She went on to make her own avant-garde films, co-directed with Peter Wollen, and to write further, greatly influential works - including this one. Fetishism and Curiosity contains writings which range from analyses of Xala, Citizen Kane and Blue Velvet, to an extended engagement with the creations of Native American artist Jimmie Durham and the feminist photographer Cindy Sherman. Essays explore the concept of fetishism as developed by Marx and Freud, and how it relates to the ways in which artistic texts work. Mulvey returns to some of the knottier issues in contemporary cultural theory, especially the links between looking, fantasy and theorisation on the one hand, and the processes of historical change on the other. What are the modes of address that characterise 'societies of the spectacle'? How might 'curiosity' be directed towards deciphering the politics of popular culture? These are just some of the questions raised in this brilliant and subtle collection. Published as part of the BFI Silver series, this new edition of Mulvey's classic work of feminist theory features a new, specially commissioned introduction and stills from the films discussed.