Belén Vidal

Labyrinths of loss: The letter as figure of desire and deferral in the literary film

This paper reframes prevailing discourses around realism and nostalgia in the heritage film through a close look at one particularly rich ‘figure’ in the film text: letters and letter-writing. By focusing on the figure of the letter in two romantic period dramas - The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) and Onegin (Martha Fiennes, 1998) -this paper explores the visual rhetoric of the letter in the film text to articulate narratives of desire and deferral. Beyond its cultural and narrative significance, the letter stands for the motif of woman as the ‘unreachable/unreadable love object’ from which the films derive their emotional impact. However, by inscribing a figure of absence in the visual text the letter also rewrites the familiar realism of period reconstruction with the strangeness of the codes and rituals that enact these fantasy scenarios of desire and loss.

The cinephilic citation in the essay films by José Luis Guerin and Isaki Lacuesta

This paper investigates the contemporary turn to cinephilia as an object of theoretical analysis and historiographical investigation through the essay films by José Luis Guerin and Isaki Lacuesta. In particular, I focus on Innisfree (José Luis Guerin 1990), Tren de sombras (Train of Shadows, José Luis Guerin 1997), Las variaciones Marker (The Marker Variations, Isaki Lacuesta 2008) and La noche que no acaba (All the Night Long, Isaki Lacuesta 2010). This work recovers and restages “cinephilic moments” through the evocation of particular films, film-makers and stars. By looking at the formal strategies in the above essay films – especially the play with the disappearance of their original referents – I contend that the cinephilic moment generates a richly generative framework to reflect on the medium itself and its potential for cultural appropriation in the context of a renewed experimental strand in Spanish film production.

The Postfeminist Biopic. Narrating the Lives of Plath, Kahlo, Woolf and Austen

defend a town against tank fire and military attack planes. The large billboard proclaiming ‘Peace and Justice in ‘72’ voices her mission. Having grown up reading Women Woman comics and admiring her as a girl, Ms editor Gloria Steinem saw in Wonder Woman an image of womanhood that encapsulated the feminist values of the time (285). Yet her critics, which included radical feminist group the Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, were opposed to the individualist model of the ‘liberated woman’ that they believed Wonder Woman represented. The mythical superwoman could not articulate the struggles of the everyday woman, for whom superpowers were clearly out of reach. The Redstockings also questioned the suitability and efficacy of advocating for women’s agendas through a mainstream magazine format—a vehicle financed by patriarchy and capitalism (291). It is a question worth revisiting in light of the politics surrounding the development of a newWonder Womanmovie slated for 2017. In the male-dominated movie industry, comic book franchises stand out for the ubiquity of male directors, the privileging of male characters and masculine values of strength and violence. It seems that the criteria for what and who can make a blockbuster movie is casting a negative shadow on the project. Already, director Michelle MacLaren has been sacked by Warner Bros. pictures over concern for her lack of action picture credentials. She was replaced by another female director Patty Jenkins, allegedly to avoid further backlash should MacLaren have been replaced by a male. It would seem that Wonder Woman’s feminist legacy offers no guarantee that a ‘kickass’, ‘empowered’ female superhero on the screen is representative of the status of women in the film industry, or life in general. The battles for women’s advancement fought by Sanger and her peers—the feminists who directly influenced the formation of Wonder Woman as an icon of the emancipated woman—are still being played out. What better words to express this state of affairs than Wonder Woman’s own proclamation ‘Suffering Sappho!’.