Through the I of the camera: Women and autobiography in contemporary European film

Abstract

Given that contemporary European culture has been fundamentally shaped by issues of memory and history, and haunted by complex and problematic questions of identity, it is significant, if scarcely surprising, that European film production in the last quarter of the twentieth century should have been dominated by autobiographical discourse, by first-person memory narratives in which personal experiences of the past are articulated as a means of attaining a clearer understanding of the present. One of the most fascinating and least studied aspects of this phenomenon is the contribution that has been made by women filmmakers, and the purpose of this article is to provide a brief exploration of this issue. Situating its discussion within the wider parameters of the nature and generic identity of filmic autobiography, it will focus on a number of autobiographical films by women directors, in order both to evaluate the suitability of the genre to their discourse and to identify what insight such films reveal in relation to postmodern and postcolonial filmmaking in Europe.