Women filmmakers of the African and Asian diaspora: decolonizing the gaze, locating subjectivity

Abstract

An examination of the works of six contemporary black and asian women filmmakers. It also includes a detailed introduction and a chapter entitled Other Voices, documenting the work of other black and asian filmmakers. The book analyzes the key films of Zeinabu Irene Davis, one of a growing number of independent black women filmmakers who are actively constructing an 'oppositional gaze'; British filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah and Julie Dash, two filmmakers working with time and space; Pratibha Parmar, a Kenyan/Indian-born British black filmmaker concerned with issues of representation, identity, cultural displacement, lesbianism and racial identity; Trinh T. Minh-ha, a Vietnamese-born artist who revolutionized documentary filmmaking by displacing the voyeuristic gaze of the ethnographic documentary filmmaker; and Mira Nair, a black Indian woman who concentrates on interracial identity.