Inappropriate Bodies: Contemporary Filmmakers Challenging Gender Constructions through Appropriation
UCLA Center for Study of Women Update Newsletter, 2009, pp. 7-11
Found footage filmmaking has long been a method that filmmakers have used to critique media images or to pay homage to them–or sometimes both simultaneously. Well-known filmmakers like Abigail Child, Su Friedrich, William E. Jones, Chick Strand, and Leslie Thornton, among others, have appropriated images in the service, at least in part, of challenging the audience to rethink the gender constructions posited by the mainstream media. While the use of found footage goes back almost to the beginning of film history, there is now a rising generation of filmmakers using appropriated images to further deconstruct and reconstruct the gender roles established by Classical Hollywood films, television commercials, medical textbooks, pornography, and other institutions of power.
ITEM 2009.129 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
I Love (Hate) You Gloria – Kate Raney
Nana Reedit – Kristy Norindr
Anything for My Gal – Anthony Hay
About Town – Marnie Parrell
XXX – Jesus Rodriguez
Speechless – Scott Stark
Pledge – Ann Steuernagel
I Am Man – Elisa Kreisinger
Is it True Blondes Have More Fun? – Jesus Rodriguez
The Ship – Brandon Downing
They have a name for girls like me – Julie Perini
The Garden LIfe – Nada Gordon
Dream of Me – Agnes Moon
Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed – Sasha Waters Freyer
Intermittent Delight – Akosua Adoma Owasu