This book contributes to the growing literature on the biopic genre by outlining and exploring the conventions of the postfeminist biopic. It does so by analyzing recent films about the lives of famous women including Sylvia Plath, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen.

By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema and illustrates the need for a renewed scholarly focus on contemporary film production.

This book is a thought-provoking study that expands on film scholarship on noir and feminist scholarship on postfeminism, subjectivity, and representation to provide an inclusive, sophisticated, and up-to-date analysis of the femme fatale , fille fatale , and homme fatal from the classic era through to recent postmillennial neo-noir .

This book explores the dramatic rise in popularity of the women’s biopic in contemporary Bollywood, within the context of wider cultural shifts over the past decade. Delving into the societal shifts reflected in the genre, both on and off screen, the book explores the contours of individual agency and the centring of women in Indian cinema. The book offers new insight into women-centric Hindi biopics, a fast-rising genre carving out a tradition of its own, with female directors and actors contributing to this rising postfeminist celebration of women’s agency and individuality. The authors posit that the alternative narratives, created by Bollywood and accepted by mainstream audiences, have become a catalyst to elevate women or female actors to protagonists, without the need to conform to the sexist mores of mainstream Bollywood. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and upper-level students in the areas of film studies, media industries, gender and feminism, and South Asian studies.

With the chick flick arguably in decline, film scholars may well ask: what has become of the woman’s film? Little attention has been paid to the proliferation of films, often from the independent sector, that do not sit comfortably in either the category of popular culture or that of high art––films that are perhaps the corollary of the middle-brow novel, or "smart-chick flicks". This book seeks to fill this void by focusing on the steady stream of films about and for women that emerge out of independent American and European cinema, and that are designed to address an international female audience. The new woman's film as a genre includes narratives with strong ties to the woman’s film of classical Hollywood while constituting a new distinctive cycle of female-centered films that in many ways continue the project of second-wave feminism, albeit in a modified form. Topics addressed include: The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995); the feature-length films of Nicole Holofcener, 1996-2013; the film roles of Tilda Swinton; Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008); Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013); Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012), Belle (Amma Asante, 2013), Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (Sundance Channel, 2013-).

In the 21st century, films about the lives and experiences of girls and young women have become increasingly visible. Yet, British cinema's engagement with contemporary girlhood has - unlike its Hollywood counterpart - been largely ignored until now. Sarah Hill's Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film provides the first book-length study of how young femininity has been constructed, both in films like the St. Trinians franchise and by critically acclaimed directors like Andrea Arnold, Carol Morley and Lone Scherfig. Hill offers new ways to understand how postfeminism informs British cinema and how it is adapted to fit its specific geographical context. By interrogating UK cinema through this lens, Hill paints a diverse and distinctive portrait of modern femininity and consolidates the important academic links between film, feminist media and girlhood studies.

This collective book offers new insight on the genres of biography and autobiography by examining the singular path of those deemed to be ‘outsiders’, such as Winnie Mandela, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X and Harvey Milk. Its specific focus on these female leaders and civil rights activists, who refused to be constrained by gender, race and class, shifts attention away from the great men of history and places it solely on those who have transformed their personal lives into a fight for collective goals. With an interdisciplinary approach that looks at literature, cinema and cultural studies, Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Cinema argues that life writing is a key source of artistic creativity and activism which enables us to take a fresh look at history.