This thesis seeks to increase recognition of contemporary Palestinian women’s cinema and locates it firmly within the Palestinian film industry. I argue that Palestinian women’s cinema has created and developed a nuanced cinema whilst sustaining and enhancing the Palestinian film industry. The twenty-first century has undeniably witnessed the vigorous development of a Palestinian women’s cinema and the number of Palestinian women filmmakers and films is still on the rise. Scholars have often focused on increasing worldwide recognition of mainstream Palestinian films directed and produced by well-known Palestinian filmmakers. This has resulted in the marginalisation of Palestinian women’s cinema within an already marginalised Palestinian film industry. I locate Palestinian cinema, in the introduction, as a transnational cinema and I also explain my rationale for placing women’s film under the category of “women’s cinema”. In order to offer a comprehensive analysis and to understand and examine the corpus of films in this thesis, I firstly provide an overview of the historical and contemporary background of Palestinian popular arts and cinema, highlighting Palestinian women’s participation. In chapter 2, I discuss women’s roles in Palestinian politics in order to trace women’s positions and roles in political public life because it is difficult to separate activism from social life and thus from cinema, as these three intersect and mutually influence one another. In chapter 3, 4 and 5 I argue, through detailed discussion and analysis of this body of work that, unlike Palestinian cinema at large, Palestinian women filmmakers embody, interweave and reflect on the complex and often contradictory contemporary and historical issues taking into account ideologies and socio-cultural differences in a complex geopolitical space (e.g. sexual restrictions, power and authority, femininity and masculinity, restriction on movement and hyphenated identities). I also argue that these women filmmakers are interested in developing responses to what they see as heterogeneous and hyphenated Palestinian identities while adapting traditional and modern filmic styles. Here I have studied their works thematically as this provided greater insight into the social and historical contexts of contemporary Palestinian lives. I argue that films by Palestinian filmmakers living inside Palestine focus and revolve around socio-culturally sensitive and underrepresented issues of love and sexuality (chapter 3), violence and power (chapter 4). I also argue that hyphenated Palestinian filmmakers, in this case, Palestinian American filmmakers, explore through their work themes of displacement and the imagined homeland by reflecting on historical events and also through examining the different ‘journeys’ of their hyphenated characters, both internal and geographical. I study the films in this thesis within contemporary discourses on culture, cultural capital, discourses of power, identity, migration and diaspora, exile, feminist debates, gender politics, postcoloniality and borderlands.

This thesis studies the impact of the work of Elena Jordi during the first Spanish avant-garde period (1890-1920) and the relationship between the myth of Thaïs and her homonymous film released in 1918. Here I track the trajectory of her career from its beginnings to culmination, when she directed Thaïs while leading an innovative vaudeville theatre company. The first chapter discusses the activity of Jordi as a Catalan actress, and woman entrepreneur in vaudeville. It analyzes the effect of the introduction of foreign vaudevilles on the reception of her work by critics through the theorization of Herni Gidel´s on vaudeville as genre. The second chapter reviews the cinematographic work of Jordi and situates it within the context of Catalan cinema´s early development as Spain´s first woman film director. After reflecting about the possible cultural influences that informed Jordi’s Thaïs, I explore the literary origins of the Legend of the Saint, an hagiography of Greek origins, and review relevant literary, operatic, and cinematic productions that incorporated this myth during the early Spanish avant-garde period. My conclusion highlights the original and similar features of Elena Jordi and Thaïs in their respective fields and different manifestations, simultaneously placing Jordi’s Thaïs in dialogue with the myth´s resurrection and its impact on the avant-garde feminist milieu. This demonstrates the formative influence of both Jordi as a pioneering artist and the enduring cultural influence of the myth of Thais on twentieth-century cultural production.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise étudie le traitement cinématographique de la sexualité et de la corporéité féminines dans le travail de réalisatrices contemporaines. Il prend appui sur les films Anatomie de l’enfer (Catherine Breillat, 2004), Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011), Nuit #1 (Anne Émond, 2011), et Klip (Maja Milos, 2012). Notre hypothèse est que ces réalisatrices adoptent une posture féministe, affirmée ou non, par leur révision des stéréotypes de genre relatifs au corps et à la sexualité féminine. Dans un premier temps, nous nous intéressons à la dynamique érotique entretenue, à travers l’Histoire, entre la femme comme objet de désir et l’homme comme sujet désirant, au cinéma comme ailleurs. Puis, nous analysons la déconstruction des stéréotypes de genre féminins de pudeur et de passivité au sein du corpus choisi. Nous démontrons ainsi qu’en révisant ces stéréotypes, les réalisatrices déjouent volontairement le spectateur dans son expérience érotique. Enfin, nous examinons les stratégies d’auto-réification du corps féminin récurrentes chez les cinéastes étudiées. Nous estimons que les cinéastes s’inscrivent de la sorte dans une tendance à la subversion observable dans les pratiques artistiques féministes contemporaines. / This master’s thesis examines how female corporeality and sexuality are dealt with in the work of contemporary female film directors. It draws on the films Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat, 2004), Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011), Nuit #1 (Anne Émond, 2011), and Clip (Maja Milos, 2012). Our hypothesis is that these directors adopt a feminist attitude, whether it is asserted or not, by reviewing gender stereotypes about the female body and sexuality. To begin with, we focus on the erotic dynamic, maintained throughout history, between the woman as an object of desire and the man as a desiring subject, in film and elsewhere. Subsequently, we analyze the deconstruction of female gender stereotypes pertaining to modesty and passivity in the chosen corpus. Thus, we demonstrate that by revising these stereotypes, the directors voluntarily thwart the spectator’s erotic experience. In conclusion, we examine the recurring self-objectification strategies of the female body employed by the filmmakers. These directors are part of a trend of subversion which can be observed in contemporary feminist artistic practices.