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Nia DeCosta’s ‘Little Woods’: The Female-Led Neo-Western PG . 6

A N I N T E R V I E W W I T H L A U R A M U LV E Y

Laura Mulvey (b. 1941) is best known for the groundbreaking essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1973, published 1975) in which she coined the term ‘male gaze’ and tackled the asymmetry at the heart of cinema – the centrality of the male viewer and his pleasure. The ideas developed throughout her long career as both film theorist and filmmaker have cast a long shadow, continuing to influence a host of other thinkers and makers, many of whom appear in this journal. At present, she is professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

WINTER 2019

ISSUE NO.1

Could you start by telling me a little about what was latterly termed your ‘cinephile period’, before your involvement in the theorising of and making of films? I was born in 1941 and lived in the countryside for the whole of the war so I didn’t see any films until I came back to London at the age of six. Because of this, I remember the first films I ever saw quite clearly. I think the first was Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922), because my father was from the far North of

Canada and was interested in Inuit culture. The other films that stand out very vividly for me, from the early

2 ISSUE 01

fifties, are Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948) and Jean Renoir’s The River (1951).

WINTER 2019

I sometimes think that it’s because I didn’t see many films in my childhood that these two films are indelibly marked on my cinematic unconscious. My genuinely cinephile days started when I left university and started going to the cinema with a group of friends, including Peter Wollen. These friends were all influenced by the Cahiers du Cinéma, so that marked a shift into an adoration of Hollywood, and of those directors that the Cahiers had sanctified as part of the ‘politique des auteurs’. That took up a great deal of my time in the sixties…Going to see films that weren’t so current but hadn’t fallen out of currency, and the National Film Theatre was beginning to show retrospectives, and we were going to Paris, the Cinémathèque and any of the

FROM STAR

SUDDENLY A

TO DIRECTOR

WOMAN SPECTATOR

A Look at Kinuyo Tanaka’s Directorial Debut

An Interview with Laura Mulvey

movement, so that I was suddenly watching films that I’d

Between 1953 and 1962,

Mulvey coined the term

Tanaka directed six films,

“

making her the first woman in Japan to have a career as a film director.

cinemas on the Left Bank, and building up as much of a knowledge of Hollywood cinema as we could.

“

My shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically out of the influence of the women’s loved and films that had moved me with different eyes.

WHERE WE

RUNGANO NYONI'S

ARE IS HERE

I AM NOT A WITCH

JEANNE MOREAU AND

TOUCH AND

MARGUERITE DURAS:

ITS HESITATIONS

On Film, Love and Female Friendship

In Ildiko Enyedi’s ‘On Body and Soul’

On the Influence of Female Filmakers

Accusations and Tourism in Zambia

In this representation of

Enyedi unravels a series of

Avant-garde women’s

Nyoni’s provocative satire

‘male gaze’ and tackled the

an aging, alcoholic genius

contrasts and more formal

cinema showed that women

revolves around a young

inequality at the heart of

Jeanne Moreau plays Duras

than metaphysical, these

were active in the Hollywood

girl sentenced to life

cinema — the centrality

in the story of her incipient

contrasts mediate the film’s

big leagues as well as at the

imprisonment at a state

of the male viewer.

affair with her much younger

affective exploration of

indie margins.

run witch camp.

fan, lover, collaborator, and

touch — its hesitations as

carer, Yann Andréa.

well as its limit-points.

And what did you see this knowledge as being for? Or was it just pleasure? Yes, pleasure. I think it was just pure enjoyment of going to the cinema. I remember reading the Cahiers during what’s now referred to as ‘the yellow period’, but it was really accumulating the films and absorbing the culture, quite unreflectively, from my point of view at least – just for pleasure. So when did this reflectiveness kick in? Was it from watching more avant-garde cinema, where the

C O N T E N T S

techniques were made deliberately more visible? No, my shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically out of the influence of the women’s movement, so that I was suddenly watching films that I’d loved and films that had moved me with different eyes. Instead of being absorbed into the screen, into the story, into the mise-en-scène, into the cinema, I was irritated. And instead of being a voyeuristic spectator, a male spectator as it were, I suddenly became a woman spectator who watched the film from a distance and critically, rather than with those absorbed eyes.

7 the groundbreaking essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1973, published 1975) in which she coined the term ‘male gaze’ and tackled the asymmetry at the heart of cinema — the centrality of the male viewer and his pleasure. The ideas developed throughout her long career as both film theorist and filmmaker have cast a long shadow, continuing to influence a host of other thinkers and makers, many of whom appear in this journal. Currentl, she is professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Could you start by telling me a little about what was latterly termed your ‘cinephile period’, before your involvement in the theorising of and making of films? I was born

Peter became very caught up with new avant-garde tendencies and was becoming very influenced by

in 1941 and lived in the countryside for the whole

Godard. Around the late sixties, early seventies, when I started being influenced by feminism, whole new

of the war so I didn’t see any films until I came back to London at the age of six. Because of this,

types of cinema were appearing in London that hadn’t been seen before. New Brazilian cinema, Godard,

I remember the first films I ever saw quite clearly.

Straub-Huillet, African cinema: much more radical ways of approaching storytelling but also ways of visualising

I think the first was Nanook of the North (Robert

ideas and thinking cinematically.

J. Flaherty, 1922), because my father was from the far North of Canada and was interested in Inuit

At the time, we felt very strongly that Hollywood was finished. If you’d asked me… in 1972, I would have said

culture. The other films that stand out very vividly and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948)

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Suddenly A Woman S pe c tator

for me, from the early fifties, are Michael Powell

or industrial – that it had possessed before.

and Jean Renoir’s The River (1951). I sometimes think that it’s because I didn’t see many films in my childhood that these two films are indelibly Il l u s t r a t i o n b y N a t a l i e B r i s c o e

marked on my cinematic unconscious. My genuinely cinephile days started when I left

A N I N T E R V I E W W I T H L A U R A M U LV E Y

university and started going to the cinema with a group of friends, including Peter Wollen. These

BY A N OT H ER GA Z E

friends were all influenced by the Cahiers du

0 8 .1 5 . 201 8

Cinéma, so that marked a shift into an adoration

My shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically out of the influence of the women’s movement, so that I was suddenly watching films that I’d loved and films that had moved me with different eyes.

S uddenly A Woman S pe c tator

that Hollywood would continue to make films, but that it would no longer have the power – either cinematic

“

S U D D E N LY A WO MAN S PE C TATO R

Laura Mulvey (b. 1941) is best known for