Women and New Hollywood book launch

Join us to celebrate the publication of Women and New Hollywood: Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema!

The book's editors, Aaron Hunter and Martha Shearer, will be introducing a screening of Claudia Weill's Girlfriends (1978) on Wednesday October 18th at the IFI, followed by a drinks reception.

The screening starts at 18:30, and the film is 88 mins plus the introduction. You can book tickets for the film here: https://ifi.ie/film/the-bigger-picture-girlfriends/

The drinks reception will follow the screening, on the IFI Terrace. Please register for that here :)

On Women and New Hollywood:

The 1970s has often been hailed as a great moment for American film, as a generation of “New Hollywood” directors like Scorsese, Coppola, and Altman offered idiosyncratic visions of what movies could be. Yet the auteurist discourse hailing these directors as the sole authors of their films has obscured the important creative roles women played in the 1970s American film industry.

Women and New Hollywood revises our understanding of this important era in American film by examining the contributions that women made not only as directors, but also as screenwriters, editors, actors, producers, and critics. Including essays on film history, film texts, and the decade’s film theory and criticism, this collection showcases the rich and varied cinematic products of women’s creative labor, as well as the considerable barriers they faced. It considers both women working within and beyond the Hollywood film industry, reconceptualizing New Hollywood by bringing it into dialogue with other American cinemas of the 1970s. By valuing the many forms of creative labor involved in film production, this collection offers exciting alternatives to the auteurist model and new ways of appreciating the themes and aesthetics of 1970s American film.

"Women and New Hollywood provides the much-needed and long-awaited intervention on 1970s American movie industry mythologies, paying tribute to those whose talents, contributions, and perseverance were until now un(der)appreciated and, in so doing, modeling feminist media historiography at its finest."

--Maria San Filippo, author of Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media

"A major disruption of conventional narratives about New Hollywood in the 1970s, this collection demonstrates how essential women were to all levels of filmmaking and film culture during a period of fundamental transformation and transition."

--Shelley Stamp, author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood and Movie-Struck Girls

"This ambitious and impressive edited collection, with contributions from some of the field’s most exciting scholars, is a much-needed feminist intervention into scholarship around the so-called 1970s Hollywood Renaissance. The essays place the women creators and collaborators—and vitally, their labor—back to the center of discussion where they belong. A stimulating and provocative read."

--Julie Turnock, author of The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism

More on the book here: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/women-and-new-hollywood/9781978821798