83
E. ANNKAPLAN
T H E O R I E S A N D S T R AT E G I E S
OFTHE FEMINIST
D O C U M E N TA R Y ( 1 9 8 3 )
Over the past decade, a large number of
womens independent films have been pro-
duced internationally; they reflect a wide
variety of styles and genres (from realism to
animation, from the non-narrative abstract
film to fiction films), a broad range of sub-
jects, and a wide spectrum of ideological
perspectives. Women interested in bringing
about change, however (I reserve the word
feminist for such women), have been
involved in the question of strategies in two
important ways: first, ever since the pub-
lication in 1973 of Claire Johnstons essay,
Womens Cinema as Counter-Cinema,
filmmakers and critics have been involved in
an often heated debate about the most eec-
tive strategies to be used within film texts;
second, and more recently, they have been
concerned with the question of strategies of
production, exhibition, and distribution of
independent feminist films. Both of these
involve the positioning of the spectator, but
in the first, focus is on how a text positions
the spectator (if, indeed, we agree that texts
monolithically do this); while in the second,
the focus is on how the institutional context
of a films production and reception aect
the way the spectator reads the film.
In structuring my discussion around
the issues of strategies for bringing about
change, Irealize that Iam entering the slip-
pery terrain where theory and practice over-
lap. This is dangerous on two levels:there is
first the danger of alienating both theorists
and those involved in practice; and second,
there is the danger of slippage of terms as
one moves from one discourse to another.
But in the case of feminism in particu-
lar the bridging of discourses seems cru-
cial: feminism, as it has always defined
itself historically, is a social and political
movement; it has risen out of the realm of
the social, that is, out of womens dissatis-
faction with their political and social posi-
tioning. It is thus particularly inappropriate
for feminist thought to remain locked into a
theoretical discourse unrelated to practice.
This is not to say that feminists should not
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
develop theoryfar from it. For if theory
needs a practice to which it relates, practice
without theory is equallyempty.
In this first part of the essay, concerned
with the debate about the most eective cin-
ematic strategies, I will first, demonstrate
that the attack on womens realist docu-
mentary was part of an attack on realism in
general and that it involved a related attack
on essentialism, or the assumption that
there existed a specific female power in the
body of individual women. Second, I will
discuss two well-known early womens
documentaries in order to show that these
criticisms have a certain validity while at the
same time exploring some of the problems
with the theory out of which the criticisms
emerge; and finally, Iwill analyze and eval-
uate some alternative cinematic strategies
that arose specifically out of the theoretical
problems with realism.
In the second (shorter) part of the essay,
Iwill deal with the strategies of production,
exhibition and reception, and raise a num-
ber of questions about work that needs to
be done as we look back at the enterprise of
the last decadean enterprise that reveals
a shift from the essentially didactic and
propagandistic strategies of early activists
and bourgeois feminists, to the focus on
signifying practices, that is, on representa-
tion and the cinematic apparatus, which are
now seen as crucial concerns in any eort to
bring about change.
PartI
First, the objection against realism and
cinema verit: In her essay, Claire Johnston
argued that cinema verit or the cinema of
non-intervention, was dangerous for femi-
nists since it used a realist aesthetic devel-
oped specifically out of Capitalist notions of
representation. Verit films do not break the
illusion of realism. Since the truth of our
oppression cannot be captured on celluloid
681
by means of an innocent camera, for fem-
inist cinema to be eective, she argued, it
must be a counter-cinema.
Any revolutionary must challenge
the depiction of reality; it is not
enough to discuss the oppression of
women within the text of the film;
the language of the cinema/depic-
tion of reality must also be inter-
rogated, so that a break between
ideology and text is aected.1
Feminist filmmakers, that is, must con-
front within their films the accepted rep-
resentations of reality so as to expose their
falseness. Realism as a style is unable to
change consciousness because it does not
depart from the forms that embody the
old consciousness. Thus, prevailing realist
codesof camera, lighting, sound, editing,
mise-en-scnemust be abandoned and the
cinematic apparatus used in a new way so
as to challenge audiences expectations and
assumptions about life.
Noel King argues something very simi-
lar in a recent Screen article on two political
feminist documentariesUnion Maids and
Harlan County U.S.A. (which belong in the
category of historical/retrospective films).
He elaborates on points that Johnston,
given her brief essay, was unable to develop,
and attempts to read these documentaries
against the grain, to refuse the reading it is
the work of their textual systems to secure.2
In doing this, he is applying the same criti-
cal categories that have been used to decode
Hollywood films, making essentially no dis-
tinction between the realist techniques used
in the classical Hollywood tradition and
those being used in the new feminist docu-
mentary. (He is here building on work done
by Stephen Neale on the 30s Populist films
and Nazi propaganda films.)3 King points,
for example, to the way the films strate-
gies work to suppress any discourse on the
social construction of the subjects being
interviewed in the interests of asserting
682 talkingback
the individuals responsibility for bringing
about change through a moral insight into
injustice:
In this sense, the politics in Union
Maids might be termed a redemp-
tive politics: that is to say a sys-
tem where questions of individual
responsibility are paramount. It
is a politics articulated by textual
mechanisms which fix the individ-
ual subject as responsible, as either
fulfilling, or not fulfilling a morally
given imperative and this in turn
results in a notion of triumph or
guilt.4
Second, he talks of the films strategies as
essentially narrative ones:they use, he says
a series of sub-forms of narratives:biogra-
phy, autobiography and popular narrative
history. These, King shows, all follow a
cause-eect relationship, the origin always
containing the end. Through the linking
of archival footage, the anecdotal reminis-
cences constructed in the interviews, and
the bridging voice-over narration (spoken
by the three women) talking about America
in the 1930s, Union Maids produces a dis-
course of continuity which results not in
the past but in the eect of the past.5 What to subvert the production of woman as
King is ultimately objecting to is the way
the narrative in Union Maids and Harlan
County U.S.A. produces a syntagmatic flow
of events, an easy diachronic progression
which ensures a working out of all prob-
lems, guarantees an increase in knowledge
on the readers part, promises containment
and completion.6 This kind of suturing is,
of course, the traditional device of the clas-
sic Hollywood film in its arm to smooth
over possible contradictions, incoherences,
and eruptions that might reflect a reality far
less ordered, coherent, or continuous than
Hollywood wants to admit or to know. Like
Claire Johnston, King concludes by assert-
ing the necessity of creating a dierent
type of text, one that resists the rhetorical
conventions of populist cultural history that
depicts its own strategies and practices, and
which does not provide a complete, unified
representation of class and collectivity.7
The second overall objection to womens
realist films is summarized by the charge
of essentialism. In their discussion of sev-
eral textual strategies employed by women
artists, Sandy Flitterman and Judith Barry
argue that female creators of all kinds must
avoid claiming a specific female power
which could find expression if allowed to
be explored freely. They realize that the
impulse toward this notion is understand-
able for the way it seeks to reinforce satis-
faction in being a woman in a culture that
does the opposite8 and to encourage soli-
darity amongst women through emotional
appeal. But, they argue, this form of femi-
nist art harbors a danger by not taking into
account the social contradictions involved
in femininity. They suggest that a more
theoretically informed art can contribute to
enduring changes by addressing itself to
structural and deep-seated causes of wom-
ens oppression rather than its eects. A
radical feminist art would include an under-
standing of how women are constructed
through social practices in culture.9 They
argue ultimately for an aesthetic designed
commodity, much as Claire Johnston had
earlier stated that to be feminist, a cinema
had to be a counter-cinema.
Before analyzing the validity of these posi-
tions on realist womens documentaries,
it is important to understand the theoreti-
cal sources for such arguments. Although
Russian Formalism and Brecht had some
place in their development, by far the most
important influence on new film criticism
generally came from the fields of semiology,
structuralism and psychoanalysis as they
were developed in France in the 50s and
60s by writers such as Lvi-Strauss, Lacan,
Metz, Barthes, Kristeva and Althusser. They
found their way into British film criticism
in the 70s and shortly afterwards, into the
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
work of American graduate students who
studied at the French Cinema School orga-
nized in part by Metz and Bellour. The com-
bined influence of the French and British
film theory produced a new body of theory
in America that has far-reaching implica-
tions in relation to the underlying view of
the human subject and of women in society,
as is evident from the attack on realism.
[]
Realism as an artistic style is designed
to perpetuate this illusion of a stable world;
and within realism it is of course the verit
documentary that seems most confidently
a window through which (the) world is
clearly visible, and where the signifiers
appear to point directly and confidently to
the signifieds.10 The realist aesthetic semi-
ologists were in opposition to was developed
in the post-war period, stimulated in part by
the Italian neo-realist movement. Theorists
Kracauer and Bazin argued for the cinema
as the redemption of physical reality, and
for the belief that realist techniques allowed
us to perceive actuality for ourselves, unme-
diated by the distortions produced through
other cinematic techniques. The realism
outside of the commercial cinema, stimu-
lated by World War II, whether documen-
tary or fiction, took as its aim the capturing
on film of the daily experiences of ordinary
people. Directors saw their closer relation-
ship to lived experience as arising from (a)
their use of working class people and issues
for their subjects (i.e. this class, and its
concerns, are somehow more real than
the middle classes); (b) their basing of
their films on real life rather than fictional
events; (c) their use of on-location shooting
rather than artificial studio sets: (d) finally,
their use of cinematic techniques, such as
the long-take, which were assumed to pre-
vent the meddling with actuality that was
characteristic, in their view, with montage.
The first independent womens films
that I will discuss situated themselves
essentially in the kind of realist tradition
which is anathema to the semiologists.
683
The immediate influence was primarily
the British Free Cinema movement and the
work of the National Film Board of Canada,
but the French New Wave was also impor-
tant. Particularly influential for womens
documentaries, in the midst of this com-
plex interaction aecting film generally, was
the work of the American Newsreel collec-
tive, started in 1962 and largely inspired by
Norm Fruchter after working in England.
Newsreels aims (partly influenced by
Vertovs weekly newsreel of events from the
War front) were explicitly propagandistic; i.e.
to publicize the many political events that
60s radicals were involved in, including
civil rights, community organizing, black
power, the Vietnam movement, strikes and
sit-ins, the take-over of educational institu-
tions, and finally, the womens movement.
They used the, by this time familiar, verit
techniques (that originated in the French
New Wave) of fast film stock (with its grey,
grainy tones), handheld camera, interviews,
voice-over (not necessarily commentary),
editing both for shock eect and to develop
a specific interpretation of political events.
Made on a very low budget, and in a collec-
tive mode, the films are necessarily rough,
often sloppy: but this reflects merely the
overriding aim not to produce aesthetic
objects but to create powerful organizing
tools. It is precisely their validity as organiz-
ing tools that the new theory questions. For
according to the theory, the films draw on
codes that cannot change consciousness.
This is expressed most strongly by Eileen
McGarry in her article on Documentary,
Realism and Womens Cinema. She points
out that long before the filmmakers arrive
at the scene, reality itself is coded first in
the infrastructure of the social formation
(human economic practice) and secondly
by the superstructure of politics and ideol-
ogy.11 The filmmaker, then, is not dealing
with reality, but with that which has become
the pro-filmic event: that which exists and
happens in front of the camera.12 She
argues that to ignore the manner in which
684 talkingback
the dominant ideology and cinematic tradi-
tions encode the pro-filmic event is to hide
the fact that reality is selected and altered
by the presence of the film workers, and the
demands of the equipment.13
While this is true to a certain extent (obvi-
ously any screen image is the result of a
great deal of selection, both in terms of what
footage to show, which shot to place next to
which, the angle and distance from the sub-
ject, what words to use, etc.), as we will see,
the documentarist neither has total control
over the referent nor is she totally controlled
by signifiying practices. Paradoxically, what
she does have more control over is precisely
ideology. For I cannot even begin a discus-
sion of the films without dierentiating them
according to ideological perspectivei.e.
their feminist politicsand this is a dis-
tinction that the theory does not allow for,
given its high level of abstraction. All the
early films used the same cinematic strate-
gies, but the ends to which these strategies
were directed fell into two broad camps:
there were first, films like the pioneering
Newsreels Womans Film that exhibited a
clear leftist-activist politics; and films like
Reichert/Kleins Growing Up Female that
reflected a more liberal-bourgeois stance,
showing how sex-roles in our society were
clearly demarcated so as to privilege men,
but not analysing the underlying reasons
for gender-typing or dealing with class and
economic relations. The Newsreel film
aimed to raise consciousness explicitly and
exclusively on the matter of exploitation of
working-class women by a capitalist sys-
tem geared to support private enterprise,
and the accumulation of individual wealth;
while the second film urged women to try
to free themselves from the sex-roles that
limited their opportunities for a rich, ful-
filling, challenging, individual life. Yet, the
cinematic devices in the two films were
identical.
Let us now look at two early films, Joyce
at 34 and Janies Janie (made shortly after
those already mentioned) in order to assess
the degree to which some of the semiologi-
cal theoretical criticisms are indeed valid,
and the degree to which they are clearly
inadequate: (a) to explain concrete dier-
ences between the films in terms of their
ideology: (b) in terms of the conception of
the cinematic apparatus; so that fiction and
documentary are seen as essentially the
same; (c) in terms of the conception of the
positioning of the spectator as fixed, by
the codes of the signifying practices.
First, let me summarize the degree to
which this criticism of realism is valid for
aspects of both Joyce at 34 and Janies Janie.
To begin with, the cinematic strategies of
both films are indeed such as to establish an
unwelcome imbalance between author and
spectator. The authors in each case assume
the position of the one in possession of
knowledge, while the spectators are forced
into the position of passive consumers of
this knowledge. The filmic processes leave
us with no work to do, so that we sit pas-
sively and receive the message in the first
film about how marriage, family, and career
can together function harmoniously, and in
the second, about how, with some determi-
nation, a woman on welfare can organize
her community for needed changes. There
is a classic resolution in each case, since
both heroines arrive at some destination,
leaving us with a sense of completion, as
though there were nothing left for ustodo.
Second, the direct mode of address in
both films encourages us to relate to the
images of Joyce and Janie as real women,
as if we could know them. Yet, in fact both
figures are constructed in the film by the
processes of camera, lighting, sound, edit-
ing. They have no other ontological status
than that of representations.
Third, the reason we do not realize that
each female figure is a representation is
that, neither film draws attention to itself as
film, or makes us aware that we are watch-
ing a film. Neither film, thus, breaks our
usual habits of passive viewing in the com-
mercial cinema.
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
Fourth, underlying all of the above is the
key notion of the unified self that character-
izes pre-semiological thought. Both Joyce
and Janie, as subjects, are seen in the auto-
biographical mode, as having essences that
have persisted through time and whose
personal growth or change is autonomous,
outside the influence of social structures,
economic relations, or psychoanalytic laws.
The use of both home movies and old pho-
tographs is crucial as a device that estab-
lishes continuity through time and that
reflects the fiction-making urge that, as
Metz and Heath have shown, pervades even
the documentary. Used as unproblematic
representations, the past images function to
seal individual change instead of providing
evidence of the way women and their bod-
ies are constructed by the signifying prac-
tices of both the social and psychological
institutions in which they are embedded.
(Interestingly enough, this construction
makes a main theme in Michelle Citrons
Daughter Rite [1978] where the slowing
down of home movies enables us to see that
the representations are far from an inno-
cent recording, that the process of making
the movies in itself functions to construct
the place for the female children.)
But this is as far as the similarities in the
realist mode go; the dierences rise out of
the dierent relationship to class issues on
the part of the filmmakers. In Joyce at 34, all
mention of class and of economic relations
is suppressed, so that we are never allowed
to focus on the privileged situation that Joyce
enjoys with her freelancing writer husband
(he can be at home much of the time) nor
the support of her comfortably middle-class
parents. The cinematic strategies here work
to suture over conflicts and contradictions
as in a Hollywood film. Joyces voice-over,
with its metaphysic of presence keeps the
spectator believing in Joyce as a person. It
guides us and makes coherent what would
otherwise be a disoriented, disconnected,
chaotic world, a series of shots with no nec-
essary connection. Her voice alone makes a
685
comfortably reassuring world where the sig-
nifiers respond to an apparently solid signi-
fied. And as representation, Joyce does not
in herself threaten accepted norms, while
her unusually handsome husband adds a
gloss to Joyces environment which, in any
case, fits the bourgeois model of commer-
cial representations.
The structure of Joyce at 34, thus, per-
petuates the bourgeois illusions of the pos-
sibility of the individual to eect change
and of the individuals transcendence of the
symbolic and other social institutions in
which he/she lives. In fact, reading the film
against the grain, one can see how Joyce is
very much at the mercy of the structures
that shaped her! Janies Janie, on the other
hand, shows a woman who is aware of the
economic and class structures that formed
her and who has made a deliberate, and
decisive, break with those structures. She
speaks of her awareness of her position as
Other to the two men in her lifefather and
husbandwithout blaming them person-
ally for the oppression she suered at their
hands. They are also victims of the symbolic
organization of things.
Second, Janies image itself violates
normal codes. As a working class figure
(one that is rarely treated without conde-
scension in visual representation or with-
out being seen as co-optable by reform or
charityas are the figures in Griersons and
Jennings work), who speaks roughly and
is not elegantly turned out, Janies image
is subversive. As an unabashedly militant,
determined woman who is ready to fight,
Janie resists dominant female placing.
Third, in contrast to Joyce at 34, the tra-
ditional apparatus of the gaze does not
come into play in Janies Janie. Janie is not
placed as object of the male look (although
she cannot avoid the look of the camera or
of the male audience). Within the diegesis,
she is never looked upon by men or set up
for their gaze as in commercial cinema.
Finally, the cinematic strategies are not
as boringly realist as are those in Joyce at34.
686 talkingback
There are soft superimpositions (Janies
face in the kitchen window superimposed
on the street and house outside), darkly-lit
shots (to suggest Janies loneliness before
starting community organizing, a poignant
music track, odd angles of filming, and
suggestive shots of washing blowing in the
wind. There is, thus, a nice before and
after division. This is a realist film which,
given its parameters, manages to achieve
much both ideologically and visually.
This comparison of Joyce at 34 and Janies
Janie has, I think, shown that while criti-
cisms of the realist verit film are to a degree
entirely valid, their monolithic, abstract
formulation is a problem. When one looks
closely at individual realist films, one real-
izes the weakness of the large generaliza-
tions. Realist films, that is, are far more
heterogenous and complex in their strate-
gies than the theoretical critique can allow
for. We need a theory that will permit/accept
dierent positionings toward class and eco-
nomic issues in the realist mode, and that,
while not mitigating any of the semiologi-
cal problems, especially around the overall
positioning of the spectator as passive recip-
ient of knowledge, at least grants a limited
area of resistance to hegemonic codes in
certain examples of the form.
It is at this point important to explore the
implications of the position from which the
critique of realism emerged, particularly in
relation first, to the concept of the human
subject in society as well as in film (i.e. is
the theory of knowledge underlying the
objection to realism valid?); and second, in
relation to the theory of the cinematic appa-
ratus, and the way that it functions.
First, realism is objected to because
semiology denies that there is any knowable
reality outside discourse, that is, outside sig-
nifying practices. If the eighteenth-century
neo-classical critics went wrong in demand-
ing that the discrepancy between poetry
and reality be eliminated (i.e. in asking
that poetry imitate the external world as it
is, keeping to the kinds of objects that we
know to exist, and the kinds of events that
we know to be possible, on the basis of an
empirical knowledge of nature and natures
laws);14 and if the Romantic critics who fol-
lowed went wrong in asserting a privileged
poetic discourse that reflected not external
reality but the spontaneous overflow of feel-
ings (i.e. the poets mind as it transformed,
by intense emotional excitement, external
nature and put forth images, that corre-
sponded to nothing outside of the poet);15
then semiology goes wrong (in some appli-
cations) in conceiving of art and life as
equally constructed by the signifying prac-
tices that define and limit each sphere.
The documentary filmmakers were mis-
guided in returning to the eighteenth-century
notion of art as capable of simply imitat-
ing life, as if through a transparent glass,
and in believing that representation could
aect behaviour directly (i.e. that an image
of a poor woman would immediately bring
political awareness of the need to distribute
wealth more fairly). But there are problems
also in making the signifier material in the
sense that it is all there is to know. Discussing
semiology in relation to Marxism, Terry
Eagleton points out the dangers of this
way of seeing for a Marxist view of history.
History evaporates in the new scheme; since
the signified can never be grasped, we can-
not talk about our reality as human subjects.
But, as he goes on to show, more than the
signified is at stake:It is also, he says, a
question of the referent (i.e. social actuality),
which we all long ago bracketed out of being.
In rematerializing the sign, we are in immi-
nent danger of dematerializing its referent;
a linguistic materialism gradually reverts
itself into a linguistic idealism.16
Eagleton no doubt overstates the case
when he talks about sliding away from
the referent, since neither Saussure nor
Althusser denied that there was a referent.
But it is true that while semiologists talk
about the eruption of the real (i.e. acci-
dents, death, revolution), on a daily basis
they see life as dominated by the prevailing
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
signifying practices of a culture, i.e., as
refracted through those discourses which
define reality for people. While I have
no quarrel with this concern with the dis-
courses which define and limit our notions
of reality and agree that these discourses
are essentially controlled by the classes that
are in power, it seems important to allow for
a level of experience that diers from dis-
course, or that is not only discourse. Where
semiology and post-structuralism are most
useful is in finally ridding us of the notion
of a privileged aesthetic discoursea notion
that has only perpetuated a hampering dual-
ism between art and science (broadly con-
ceived). But if we want to create art that will
bring about change in the quality of peoples
daily lives in the social formation, we need
a theory that takes account of the level now
usually referred to scornfully as naively
materialistic.17
But before leaving the attack on realism
as a cinematic strategy, Iwant to deal briefly
with two assumptions about the cinematic
apparatus that appear in the theory. First,
how valid is it to apply the same criticism
to realist practices used in the commercial,
narrative cinema and to those used in the
independent documentary form? I would
rather loosen up the theory, and argue that
the same realist signifying practices can
indeed be used for dierent ends, as we
have already seen in comparing Janies Janie
and Joyce at 34. Realism in the commercial
cinema may indeed be a form analogous to
the nineteenth century novel, in which a
class-bound, bourgeois notion of the world
is made to seem natural and unproblem-
atic. But Janies Janie is not An Unmarried
Woman; while Joyce at 34 does come close to
the form as used in Mazurskyswork.
Johnstons and Kings attack on realism
is confused by their assumption that the
realist cinematic mode in itself raises prob-
lems about the relation of representation
to lived experience. The problems reside
rather in either the filmmakers or the audi-
ences assumptions about this relation. But
687
taken simply as a cinematic style that can be
used in dierent genres (i.e. documentary
or fictional), realism does not insist on any
special relation to the social formation.18 As
Metz has noted, it is the impression of real-
ity experienced by the spectator the feel-
ing that we are witnessing an almost real
spectacle. that causes the problems.19 It
is, Metz continues, the fact that films have
the appeal of presence and of a proximity
that strikes the masses and fills the movie
theaters.20
In fact, as Metz goes on to show, the
crucial dierence is not between cin-
ematic modes (illusion of realism versus
anti-illusionism), but between an event in
the here and now, and a narrated event. As
soon as we have the process of telling, the
real is unrealized (or the unreal is realized,
as he sometimes puts it).21 Thus, even the
documentary or the live television coverage,
in narrating the event creates the distance
that aects unrealization. Realism, Metz
notes, is not reality. [it] aects the orga-
nization of the contents, not narration as a
status.22
Thus, despite the fact that documentary
and fiction films begin with dierent mate-
rial (the one actors in a studio, the other
actual people in their environment), once
this material becomes a strip of film to
be edited as the author wishes, to be con-
structed in whatever way he/she wishes,
the dierence almost evaporates. Both fic-
tion and non-fiction tend to create fiction,
as weve seenoften in the family romance
mode. And indeed, if we go along with
McGarry, we have seen that even before the
filming starts, the pro-filmic event is heavily
coded by the cultural assumptions people
bring to the process of making a film. So
the documentary ends up as much a nar-
rative in a certain sense, as an explicitly
fiction film. Working from the opposite
direction, in addition, one can argue (as has
Michael Ryan) that all fiction films are really
documentaries in that all of us watching
know, on one level, that everything has been
688 talkingback
enacted, that we are watching a star playing
at being someone, at actions manipulated
in a studio to look like real events.23
Yet, on two fundamental levels, one
that aects the filmmakers and one that
involves the spectator, documentary and fic-
tion are dierent. As regards the filmmak-
ers, there is clearly a degree more control
in the fiction film than in the documen-
tary. Documentary filmmaking may per-
mit more or less control depending on the
project (i.e. a retrospective film, relying on
real footage, allows more reconstruction of
actual events through montage in the man-
ner of narrative films), than, say, does a
documentary about a demonstration when
the filmmakers on the scene have little idea
of how things will work out.) But what hap-
pens in fiction is only controlled if one is
working within certain genres, or within
institutions, like Hollywood, that permit
only certain things to happen. Otherwise,
fiction has the potential for representing
imaginative possibility(e.g. models for
change)once the Oedipal mode is broken.
My aim in asserting a dierence between
fiction and documentary from the per-
spective of the filmmakers is to avoid the
unsatisfactory alternatives of (1) a fixed,
binary opposition between fiction and docu-
mentary; or (2) annihilating all dierence
through the assertion that all cinematic dis-
course is controlled by the same signifying
practices that define and limit what can be
represented. While Metzs broad distinction
between an event and a narrated event obvi-
ously holds, it works only on a very abstract
and general level. In fact, we need to make
distinctions between dierent genres in the
narrated category, recognizing that there
is a broad spectrum of film typesfrom
narrations limited by their reliance (to a
degree) on the physical world, to those that
use everyday logic but construct their envi-
ronments, to those that use the supernatu-
ral (what Metz calls a non-human logic).
The problems that the filmmakers face in
each case are dierent and each film-type
has certain dangers, certain advantages.
Second, as regards the spectator: audi-
ences are clearly positioned dierently in
fictional and in documentary films, as may
be seen from the betrayal spectators experi-
ence in films like Mitchell Blocks No Lies
or Michelle Citrons more recent Daughter
Rite. In both cases, the directors use verit
techniques, deluding us into thinking we
are watching non-actors while in fact at the
end we learn that everything was scripted,
with actors playing the roles. The anger that
audiences experience must mean that a dif-
ferent identification process takes place in
the two situations, and this may well have
implications for calculating the ultimate
eect on the spectator.
Any discussion of these eects must,
unfortunately, be entirely speculative, given
the lack of reliable research into this area.
If I may descend into totally non-scientific
evidence for a moment, some responses
by students lead me to believe that its true
(as Mulvey has argued) that the identifica-
tion with stars in a fiction film involves a
return to the world of the Imaginary (i.e.
some evocation of an ego-ideal that, in
Lacans system, predated the entry into
the Symbolic); whereas the documentary
involves a relating to images that is analo-
gous to, i.e. not the same as (this was the
error of the neo-classical movement) the
way we respond to people in our daily lives.
Although on one level the documentary
realist strategies do indeed construct the
spectator as passive recipient of the knowl-
edge the authors hold, on another level,
the spectator may be making judgements
about the screen-image woman that indeed
have to do with the codes of signifying prac-
tice, but which result from the sociological
and political positioning of the spectator,
i.e. his/her class, race, gender, educational
background, as this aects experiences with
signification.24 For instance, some students
react quite hostilely to Janie, criticizing the
way she treats her children (she is too rough
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
on them, she does not dress them well, she
does not love them enough, she does not
educate them properly); some may object to
the way she looks, to the fact that she wears
a wig or dyes her hair dierent colors,etc.
Two things may be happening here: a
Barthesian answer is that the spectator
is applying to the screen image the codes
through which we learn to perceive reality
in the outside world; but in addition, the
spectator may be resisting being presented
with an unconventional image, one which
violates his/her expectations, given com-
mercial representations. In other words,
much more may be taking place as people
watch such documentaries than we know
about (the representations may bore, shock,
please, or inform, depending on the class,
race and background of the spectator), but
an active response is being evoked, one that
has potential for (a) challenging assump-
tions about what we expect from cinema
and (b) adding to what we know about the
world.
However, as specific organizing strate-
gies, the films may very well not work. If
semiologists were wrong in denying that
realism can produce an eect leading to
change, then leftist-activists were wrong
in assuming that merely showing some-
thing is an argument in its own right. The
authors of Janies Janie evidently assumed
that any spectator would automatically side
with Janie because they had set her up as a
figure to be admired, presented her change
as an exemplary one. They did not seem
aware of the possibility that Janie as image
would appear in another light than Janie as
the real woman they knew, and thus would
be shocked by the kinds of readings my
studentsgave.
[]
I have tried to show that the debate about
realism is in some sense a false debate,
premised first on an unnecessarily rigid
theory about the relationship between form
and content; and second on a theory of
knowledge which, while it illuminates our
689
contemporary system of relationships (par-
ticularly the relationship of the individual
to language and the other social structures
in which he/she lives) is nevertheless inad-
equate when applied to a practice intent
upon bringing about concrete change in the
daily lives of women.25
[]
The exposing of the decentered, prob-
lematic self through semiology and psy-
choanalysis (I am not now questioning its
validity) has not been followed by sucient
study of its political and social implica-
tions. So much concern has been given to
undermining bourgeois modes of thought
and perception that we have failed to con-
sider the problem of where this leaves us.
Women critics and filmmakers have been
placed in a position of negativityin strat-
egies subverting rather than positing. The
dangers of undermining the notion of the
unified self and of a world of essences are
relativism and despair.
At this point, then, we must use what
we have learned in the past ten years to
move theoretically beyond deconstruction
to reconstruction. While it is essential for
feminist film critics to examine signifying
processes carefully in order to understand
the way in which women have been con-
structed in language and in film, it is equally
important not to lose sight of the material
world in which we live, and in which our
oppression takes concrete, often painful,
forms. We need films that will show us
how, having once mastered (i.e. understood
fully) the existing discourses that oppress
us, we stand in a dierent position in rela-
tion to those discourses. Knowledge is, in
that sense, power. We need to know how
to manipulate the recognized, dominating,
discourses so as to begin to free ourselves
through rather than beyond them (for what
is there beyond?).
It should be clear that Iam far from advo-
cating a return to realism as the best or only
viable cinematic strategy for bringing about
change, and it should also be clear that Iam
690 talkingback
excited by (and have in fact been one of the
main promoters of) the new theory-films.
On the level of theory, I am arguing for a
less dogmatic approach to cinematic prac-
tice, one that would allow directors to see
realism as a possible mode, given that we
now know more about the way it operates,
are aware of its limitations, and understand
it as a system of representation, not truth.
And meanwhile theorists should continue
to push the limits of cinematic practice, to
see what dierent techniques canyield.
PartII
I want to turn, finally, to the strategies of
reception, the importance of which has
become increasingly evident. The problem
is that the debate that I have followed has
taken place mainly on an abstract, theo-
retical level, divorced from the concrete
situation of production, exhibition, and
reception. We have been so concerned with
figuring out the correct theoretical posi-
tion, the correct strategies theoretically,
that we have forgotten to pay attention first,
to the way subjects receive (read) films;
and second, to the contexts of production
and reception, particularly as these aect
what films can be made and how films are
read.26
That criticism is finally turning to
this area may be seen from a reading of
recent articles in Screen, and elsewhere27
as well as Willemen/McPherson in British
Independence which looks back at the 30s
in order to discover how production, exhi-
bition and distribution practices shaped, or
influenced, certain documentary forms.28
Although it is hard to grasp the implica-
tions of practices as one is living them,
the Willemen/McPherson book shows the
importance of attempting to understand
the ways in which apparently independent
practice is in fact formed by the social insti-
tutions in which it is inevitably embedded.
Total independent cinematic practice is a
utopian myth.
Let me substantiate this last statement by
looking briefly at some of the contradictions
which have dominated alternate practices of
all kinds during the very years when critics
have been debating cinematic strategy:
a) Filmmakers have had to rely for funding
on the very system they oppose;
b) In the case of the anti-illusionist films,
directors have been using cinematic
strategies that are dicult for the
majority of people raised on narrative and
commercial films;
c) Having made the films, directors have not
had any mechanism for the distribution
and exhibition of their films on a large
scale (screenings have been by necessity
limited to small art cinemas in a few
large cities and to college campuses. It is
important to note that things are rather
dierent, and slightly better in Europe).
d) The culminating contradiction is that
filmmakers whose whole purpose was to
change peoples ways of seeing, believing
and behaving, have only been able to
reach an audience already committed to
their values.
Thus critics (hopefully increasingly together
with independent filmmakers) need to dis-
cuss cinematic strategies not only in terms
of the most correct theory, but also in rela-
tion to the contradictions outlined above. We
have to re-examine together (as a unit, that is)
our theory, our cinematic strategies and the
strategies of reception as they aect the way
a film is read. But even before doing this,
we need to look carefully at the economic
base for film production and at the possible
influence that funding agencies have had on
the very shape of alternate practice.
[]
It is essential for both feminist film the-
orists and feminist filmmakers to focus on
these central questions if we are to move
beyond the impasse that I think we have
 theories and strategies of feminist documentary
reached after ten years of intensive, var-
ied, and exciting work. We must begin to
create institutions in which feminist theo-
rists and filmmakers can work together for
the mutual benefit of both groups. As Ive
shown, at least in Britain, an apparently
beneficial collaboration between filmmak-
ers and theorists has resulted in a group
of interesting and innovative films. Such
a collaboration is just beginning over
here (cf., for example, Michelle Citrons
Daughter Rite, which shows the influence
of the new theories on her filmmaking
practice in her attempt to bridge the gap
between the early realist-verit films and
the new anti-illusionist ones). Such col-
laboration will, I think, produce some
interesting work in the near future. Let us
use what we have learned from the work
of the past decade to overcome divisions
between filmmakers and film theorists,
and between people with diering theo-
retical conceptions in each group, so that
we can challenge and change dominant
discourses and secure ourselves a power-
ful and permanent voice.
notes
1. Claire Johnston, Womens Cinema as Counter-
Cinema, in Johnston, ed., Notes onWomens
Cinema (SEFT:London, 1973)p.28.
2. Noel King, Recent Political DocumentaryNotes
on Union Maids and Harlan County, USA, Screen,
Vol. 22, No. 2 (1981),p.9.
3. Cf. Steve Neale, Propaganda, Screen, Vol. 18, No. 3
(1977),p.25.
4. King, op. cit.,p.12.
5. Ibid.,p.5.
6. Ibid.,p.17.
7. Ibid.,p.18.
8. Sandy Flitterman and Judith Barry, Textual
Strategies: The Politics of Art Making, Screen, Vol.
21, No. 2 (Summer, 1980), p. 37.
9. Ibid.,p.36.
10. Ibid., p.143.
11. Eileen McGarry, Documentary Realism and
Womens Cinema, in Women in Film Vol. 2, No. 7
(Summer, 1975), p. 50.
12. Ibid.,p.50,
13. Ibid.,p.51.
14. M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp. Romantic
Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford
University Press, 1953), p. 267. The whole of this
chapter (10) explores the issues of truth to nature.
691
15. Ibid., Chapters V and VI on the development of the
Romantic theory of poetry.
16. Terry Eagleton, Aesthetics and Politics, New Left
Review No. 107 (Jan.-Feb., 1978),p.22.
17. What I have in mind here is the danger of a theory
that ignores the need for emotional identification
with people suering oppression. We may be able
to explain the situation of a strike, for example,
in terms of dominant versus minority discourses:
the dominant discourse in the factory is that of the
owners who construct the position of the workers
to suit their (the bosses) own interests. One of
the few reactions to domination available to the
oppressed group is that of striking, although it is
clear that this position is very much a defensive
one, constructed by the dominant discourse and
causing the workers themselves a lot of hardship.
The workers, thus, are on a basic material level
in need of support (food, clothing), and on the
psychological level, in need of emotional support.
The level of abstraction on which the theory
functions often makes it seem as if these other
levels are unimportant or not worth mentioning.
That Metz is one of the few critics who retains
constant awareness of the level of the social
formation is evident not only in his discussion of
realism in Film Language (see below), but also in an
interview in Discourse (paradoxically, his statements
here prompted Noel Kings article referred to
above), where he supports the naively realist
documentary, like Harlan County U.S.A. Asked
if he thinks a documentary of a strike could be
misleading insofar as it assumes that knowledge
is unproblematic, and on the surface, replies
Metz: If the film has a very precise, political and
immediate aim; if the filmmakers shoot a film
in order to support given strike what could I
say? Of course, its o.k. Talking specifically about
Harlan County, Metz continues:
It is the kind of film that has nothing really
new on the level of primary/secondary identi-
fication, but its a very good film It is unfair,
in a sense, to call a film into question on terms
which are not within the filmmakers purpose.
She intended to support the strike and she
did it. Its a marvelous film and Isupportit.
The Cinematic Apparatus as Social
InstitutionAn Interview with Christian
Metz, in Discourse, No. 1 (Fall, 1979),p.30.
18. Cf. Dana Polan, Discourses of Rationality and the
Rationality of Discourse in Avant-Garde Political
Film Culture, Ohio University Film Conference,
April,1982.
19. Christian Metz, Film Language:ASemiotics of the
Cinema. Trans. Michael Taylor. (NewYork:Oxford
University Press, 1974),p.4.
20. Ibid.,p.5.
21. Ibid.,p.22.
22. Ibid., pp.2122.
23. Cf. Michael Ryan, Militant Documentary: Mai 68
Par Lui, in Cin-tracts, No. 7/8.
24. For further discussion of this problem, see
Gledhill, op. cit., pp.469-473.
692 talkingback
25. For a full discussion of realist theories of
knowledge and society, together with a critique
of Althusserian theories, see Terry Lovell,
Pictures of Reality (London:The British Film
Institute,1980).
26. Julia Lesage began to think about problems of
production, exhibition and distribution in a
1974 article, Feminist Film Criticism:Theory
and Practice, Women and Film, Vol. 1, Nos.
5-6, pp.1220; and in general the journal Jump
Cut focussed more than others on matters of
the social and political context for feminist
films. Julia Lesages article is reprinted in
slightly revised version in Patricia Erens, ed.,
Sexual Stratagems:The World of Women in Film
(NewYork:Horizon Press, 1979) pp. 156167.
27. Cf. for example, Marc Karlin, et al. Problems
of Independent Cinema, Screen, Vol. 21, No.
4 (1980/81), pp. 1943; John Hill, Ideology,
Economy and British Cinema, in Ideology and
Cultural Production, Michael Barrett, et al., eds.
(London: Billings and Sons, Ltd., 1979); Anthony
McCall and Andrew Tyndall, Sixteen Working
Statements, Millennium Film Journal, Vol. 1, No.
2 (Spring/Summer, 1978), pp. 2937; Steve Neale,
Oppositional Exhibition: Notes and Problems,
Screen, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1980), pp. 4556; Michael
OPray, Authorship and Independent Film
Exhibition, Screen, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 1980),
pp. 7378; Susan Clayton and Jonathan Curling,
Feminist History and The Song of the Shirt,
Camera Obscura, No. 7 (Spring, 1981), pp. 111127;
and their On Authorship, Screen, Vol. 20, No. 1
(Spring 1979), pp. 3561; John Caughie, Because I
am King and Independent Cinema, Screen, Vol. 21,
No. 4 (1980/81), pp. 918; Steve Neale, Art Cinema
as Institution, Screen, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1981),
pp. 1141.
28. Don Macpherson, ed. Traditions of Independence
(London: British Film Institute, 1980); cf.
especially, Claire Johnston Independence
and the ThirtiesIdeologies in History: An
Introduction, pp. 923; and Annette Kuhn,
British Documentary in the 1930s and
IndependenceRecontextualizing a Film
Movement, pp. 2435.