Research Paper Sample on Role of Female Directors

Introduction

This reserarch paper aims to explore the global art cinema field as a probable stage for addressing feminist writing and feminism as a whole. For a long time now, female directors have played a critical role in filmmaking but have always been given little to no attention to scholarly work on art cinema. Renowned directors like Porter and Dulac have done outstanding works in the art cinema but are yet to be recognized and acclaimed as their male counterparts. Whenever any female-oriented scholarly work has been done, it has mostly concentrated on Hollywood female filmmakers and turned a blind eye on the female filmmakers in the art cinema sphere. Exploring the relationship between female directors and producers and art cinema is yet to be fully explored. This thesis, therefore, addresses this niche by paying particular attention to art cinema. The thesis argues that art cinema acts as a route to film production for women directors, giving them an arena for expressivity through its value of artistic freedom. The value gives the directors the power to create content free of dominance and subversion of themes. Art cinema is also elite and auteur oriented.

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Different Settings

The thesis employs the case study approach by looking at several art cinema films from different socio-political settings. Doing so offers a detailed version of females' contribution to the art cinema industry as both characters and filmmakers. Through its analysis of how female producers advocate for women's issues through radical and creative preoccupation negotiations, the proposition attempts to reestablish art cinema as a traditional arena that pulls the marginalized nearer to the typical, creating an avenue for women to have a productive ideological dialogue.

This paper analyzes the specific cases that address social reality in art cinema through social realism. The paper will address the importance of social realism as a style in addressing gender issues in society through film making. As Nowell-Smith argues, film researchers plus criticizers have been swayed by the 'presumed privileged relationship of the film camera to the outside world's movement that comes into its field view' (Nowell-Smith 147). When we consider cinema's ability to record reality, we cannot afford not to mention Siegfried Kracauer and Bela Balazs. Nowell-Smith further explains that reality presentation has not always been the focal point of film production; a trend is highly dominant in many surreal and experimental films (Nowell-Smith 148-9). Besides, diverse systems of realism are portrayed in different tactics to reveal realism in traditional Hollywood, Italian Neo-realism, and British social realism. British realism will be the first case study in this analysis.

For this paper's reasons, it will emphasize social pragmatist practices and highpoint these expansions in the following chosen films of concern: Arnold's Fish Tank (2009) and The Apple (1998) by Samira. This paper will analyze how the two films use realism to tackle specific social issues in their nations of origin, both British and Iran. Both films address the issue of existing gender inequality in the two different socio-political settings.

Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank

In feature-length film directing, Arnold’s debut was in 2006 through her work in Red Road, after completing her studies in Los Angeles and directing several short films between 1998 and 2005. The Red Road got a bench award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, Andrea directed an equally appreciated film, Fish Tank. In 2011 again, she directed Wuthering Heights, which emerged as the Best in Cinematography category at the annual Venice Film Festival. Although fleetingly, these awards have intentionally been mentioned to underscore Arnold's outstanding contribution to art cinema as a woman.

In her works, she uses social realist practices to show the audience from the marginalized working-class woman's viewpoint, a social setting she was personally brought up as she has alluded to in several interviews. Her films present the reality of the social issues that have clouded British cinema history. From the 1950s and 1960s, art cinema has been used as a stage to address the British film art cinema field's social issues (Bordwell 152).

The Blue Lamp (1950), Room at the Top (1959), and A kind of Loving (1962) all addressed these issues. Later on, in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s, High Hopes (1988), Raining Stones (1993), and All or Nothing (2002) also engaged the British Film industry with the burning and critical social issues in the industry. In recent times, Shan Meadows has become the newest entrant in this category of socially active auteurs. A striking similarity between Meadows and Arnold is that they both grew up in the middle-class working environments depicted in their films.

Despite these efforts since the 1950s, there has been little effort to accommodate women in the British cinema representations. The representations have maintained their display as a male-dominated field. Women players have their backseat position as marginal to the narrative or as stereotypes. We cannot, however, fail to appreciate the efforts made by films such as Tyrannosaur (2011) by Paddy Considine, which have tried to address issues affecting women. In general, there is a clear-cut difference between how males and females are depicted in films. Unfortunately, it is the women who have to bear the harmful brunt of this relationship.

From this review of Fish Tank, we will see how Arnold has contributed to the social activism within the art cinema sphere and the significance of her contribution to the female advocacy efforts in the general British society. She appreciates that art cinema is male-dominated and tries to present a feminist version of social realism in her work. Precisely, she depicts the women from society's fringes that no other author has managed to do so far. Social realism form part of her authorial work and hence a viable consideration for this study. Before analyzing how Fish Tank plays out as a social realist art cinema, it is essential that we first look at the female working-class rhetoric in the British social tradition.

Essential Position

As is mostly referred to, the kitchen sink cycle is a British New Wave in the film industry that holds an essential position in the industry even though it just lasted for a concise time. The represents the continuous fascination with realism in the industry even though the films are not the British filmmaking's main products. The films are prominently criticized, showing the impact they are having on society. The impact is mainly due to the film quality's ability to hit home on matters touching the daily lives of the ordinary people. This is to say that, in British, cinema-quality is tied to education and social objectivity as opposed to cars, which are meant for entertainment and pleasure (Lay 55). The films in this wave have adapted contemporary novels for their screenplays, and they were meant to depict the working class.

Some of the most outstanding figures who came into prominence during the New Wave filmmaking period are Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson. They took advantage of the free cinema screening idea of 1956-1959 to make an impact by launching their careers in filmmaking (Lay 58) According to John hill (128), the free cinema movement, unlike the documentary movement of the 1930s, focused more on poetic realism. In Lay’s view, the British New Wave was a continuous rebranding of free cinema, focusing on presentation of social realism and distinguishing disparities. The primary difference was that free cinema makers packaged and promoted it as a political movement, whereas the British New Wave merely was a label placed on particular films by critics and is thus non-unified (Lay 59).

According to Samantha Lay, documentaries in the British art cinema are constructed by the filmmakers' creativity as the sole link between the world reality and the representations on the screen. Considering this, the films approach realism in a very complex manner and concurs with Raymond Williams's observation that "the consciously interpretative concerning a particular political viewpoint" (68) illustrated in Fish Tank through methods and intentions the directors.

Conclusion

Fish Tank, as earlier mentioned, was Arnolds' second full feature-length film. The film's settings are in North East London, and the specific production sites are Essex, Havering, Barking, and Dagenham. Katie Jarvis plays the role of the main character, Mia. Sources indicate that she was identified by accident when she was involved in a public fight with her boyfriend at a train station. This was advantageous to the film because Katie is very close to the character Mia. Kierston Wareing plays Joanna, the mother to Mia, and Michael Fassbender plays Connor, Joanna's lover. Unlike Katie, the two are established actors, having played roles in it is a Free World (2007) and Angel (2007), respectively, among other films. Using a non-professional actor as a lead role despite the other two but secondary actors being professionals is a useful technique of adding rawness and realism to the film.