100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
Previously searched by you
Summary Book 15. Olivieri, Domitilla. 2018. “Trinh T. Minh-ha_ Feminist Approaches to Documentary Film.” In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture$3.21
Summary Book 15. Olivieri, Domitilla. 2018. “Trinh T. Minh-ha_ Feminist Approaches to Documentary Film.” In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture. For Introduction to Gender Studies at UU. (2018/2019)
Summary Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2018. “The Arena of the Colony_ Phoolan Devi and Postcolonial Critique.” In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture
Summary_ Book 4. The arena of knowledge_ Virginia Woolf and the Feminist Practice of Situated Knowledges _ Kathrin Thiele in Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture
Summary_ Book 3. The arena of the body_ The Cyborg and Feminist Views on Biology _ Cecilia Asberg in Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture
All for this textbook (8)
Written for
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Taal- en Cultuurstudies
Introduction to Gender Studies
All documents for this subject (11)
1
review
By: kgavandam • 9 months ago
Seller
Follow
elenavanhattum
Reviews received
Content preview
‘REALIST DEBATE’ IN DOCUMENTARY FILMS Summary Book 15. Olivieri, Domitilla. 2018.
“Trinh T. Minh-ha: Feminist Approaches to Documentary Film.” In Doing Gender in
Media, Art and Culture
Elena van Hattum
Feminist film theorists have been working for decades on how cinema, as an apparatus and
a medium, produces and reproduces normative ideas about people and communities, about
femininities and masculinities, and about gender roles and the power relations therein. The
tension between fact and fiction, reality and representation, sign and referent is one of
the concerns of feminist theory on documentaries in particular. This has resulted in debates
on realism in feminist film theory and the politics of looking in documentary representation. It
is important to look at the relation between reality and film, and between subjectivity and
knowledge production.
Trinh T. Minh-ha is an independent filmmaker, writer, composer and feminist postcolonial
theorist. She was born in Hanoi in Vietnam in 1953. In 1970 she moved to the US to college
and was confronted with a diverse community, often isolated as a ‘minority’. She finds
herself greatly attracted to and moved by Afro-American writers. She moves to Senegal to
teach, where she produces her most renowned film and book, and becomes an exchange
student to France. In an interview she stresses how important it has been for her education
to have lived in such a transnational context and across various environments. The
experience of the paradoxes of contemporary (post)colonial societies have forged her
theoretical elaborations. She refers to her own life and locations, which shows how her
personal experiences have been crucial to her position as a theorist and filmmaker. Her
career as a filmmaker started in the early 1980s in Senegal. Six of her films have been
honoured and she has received numerous awards. Trinh’s approach to making films and
theorising them offers critical insights:
- Her work offers a nuanced reading of documentary as a genre that, while having
a privileged relation to the representation of reality and actuality, engages with
fictional cinematographic techniques and creative mediations. This approach
enables a reading that is attentive to the power relations in documentaries and to
how dominant discourses are reproduced in these audio-visual representations. It
makes possible to deconstruct the assumption that documentary films present an
objective or truthful account of the events or subjects filmed.
- Her films are more or less explicit critique of the act of representing in terms of
‘making visible’, and the role vision has in the western tradition of perceiving,
studying and producing knowledge about the world.
‘Documentary’ usually refers to a specific genre of films. It is now a sort of umbrella term to
identify a highly heterogeneous corpus of filmic representations. It is generally defined as a
non-fiction genre with its specific characteristics as ‘distinct from’ or ‘opposed to’ other film
genres. Characteristic of documentary is that its filmed subjects are not trained actors but
‘real people’ in their ‘real environments’ or that its subject matter is actuality: actual events
and people in their everyday experience and lived world. This holds a certain kind of ‘less
mediated’ connection with reality and retains a certain degree of realism in the form of
its representation.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller elenavanhattum. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $3.21. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
