On women's films : across worlds and generations /

Margulies and Szaniawski's superb collection on women's cinema includes essays from both established critics and younger scholars. The collection starts with Elena Gorfinkel's essay on Barbara Loden's feminist classic Wanda (1970), and in subsequent essays Margulies (Hunter College, CUNY) looks at the cinema of Chantal Akerman; Szaniawski (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) looks at Valérie Massadian, who made the jump from art director to director with such films as Milla (2017); Andréa Franca looks at the films of Maria Ramos; Laura Mulvey, the work of Rakhshan Bani-Etemad; Rebecca DeRoo and Jean Ma, the legacy of the great French filmmaker Agnès Varda; and Katrin Pesch, Claire Denis's Bastards (2013). The volume also includes essays on Xiaolu Guo, a Chinese-born writer and filmmaker now working in the US; the films of Taiwanese director Huang Yu-shan; and Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (2002). This is just a brief taste of the volume's fine offerings. This collection makes an urgent call for including women's cinema as an essential part of film history and practice. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. --Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln