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  • No sex please: Film, feminism and sex in the 1970s and 1980s

Garfield, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4747-4150, 2023, Book Section, No sex please: Film, feminism and sex in the 1970s and 1980s In: Knowles, Kim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5395-253X and Walley, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2216-2409, (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Experimental Cinema. Palgrave MacMillam, London, pp. 313-327. ISBN 978-3-031-55255-7

Abstract or Description:

This text aims to explore the representation of sex and relationships within the context of the sex positive and negative debates of second wave feminism. Using examples from Vivienne Dick (Liberty’s Booty, 1980), Bette Gordon (Anybody’s Woman,1981) and Tessa Hughes Freeland (Baby Doll, 1982) this chapter discusses why these artists filmmakers and their work have been elided by the Anglophone second wave feminist debates, dominated by the sex negative position. This context has made a hostile environment for these artists who have focussed on the lived experience of women as sexually active agents. Dick, Gordon and Hughes Freeland deliver an empathetic portrayal of the complexities of women’s lives as lived rather than as abstract categories of representation. Often shot on a near zero budget, working with friends and filming them, using fast montages, and an extreme form of parallel editing (as opposed to ‘long look’ work) these films proffered a punk aesthetic that offered its own negation of the expectations and politics of femininity within the works that speak urgently to the concerns of young women today in exploring community, care and a flat organisational approach to their world.

Official URL: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-5...
Subjects: Creative Arts and Design > W100 Fine Art > W190 Fine Art not elsewhere classified
School or Centre: School of Arts & Humanities
Identification Number or DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-55256-4
Uncontrolled Keywords: Experimental Film; Feminism; Sex; Feminist Film; 1980s
Date Deposited: 28 Mar 2025 10:43
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2025 10:43
URI: https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/6143
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