Women and Experimental Filmmaking gathers essays by some of the top scholars in cinema studies dealing with women experimental filmmakers. Tracking the topic across racial, economic, geographic, and even temporal boundaries, Jean Petrolle and Virginia Wexman's selections refiect the deep diversity of methodologies and research. The introduction sets out by addressing the basic difficulties of both historiography and definition before providing a historical overview of how these particular filmmakers have helped shape moviemaking traditions. The essays explore the major theoretical controversies that have arisen around the work of groundbreaking women such as Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Nina Menkes, and Faith Hubley. With the film- makers representations of women's subjectivity ranging across film, video, digital media, ethnography, animation, and collage, Women and Experimental Filmmaking represents the full spectrum of genres, techniques, and modes.

The book provides a detailed introduction to the essential themes, style, and aesthetics of Pedro Almodovar's films, put in the context of Spain's profound cultural transitions since 1980. With precise and close analysis, the book covers the major concerns of the most successful of all Spanish film directors and makes direct, clear connections to the logic of Almodovar's aesthetic and stylistic choices. By spanning the entirety of Pedro Almodovar's feature making career, the book emphasizes the director's sensibility to make the outrageous believable and to always give a unique spin to the issues Spanish history, culture and identity. A detailed and comprehensive approach to all of Pedro Almodovar's feature films from the outrageous 1980 'Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap' to the sophisticated 2004 'Bad Education', this book provides more than an introduction an intimate look at the topics, style, aesthetics and cultural sensibilities of Spain's most distinguished and celebrated film director since Luis Bunuel. By focusing on a film-by-film, and often scene-by-scene analysis, this book offers a meticulous interpretation of characters, situations, allusions and cultural intersections, as well as emphasizing the meaning and weight of cultural, historical and social contexts. The book traces the evolution of Almodovar's career, from the perspective of aesthetic, narrative and stylistic concerns and places those changes in the logical context of Spain's historical trajectory from the end of Franco's dictatorship to the transition to democracy, exploring Almodovar's interest on issues of identity, sexuality, and nationalism.

Includes names from the States of Alabama, Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.