Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema

Description

In Film Bodies, Katharina Lindner took film studies into a new direction, integrating queer and feminist theory with film phenomenology. Her groundbreaking book explores the presence of women's bodies in movement in a range of genres, including the dance film, the sports film and queer cinema, providing detailed textural analyses of Black Swan (2010), The Tango Lesson (1997), 2 Seconds (1998), Offside (2006), Tomboy (2011), and Girlhood (2014), and discussing the queer feminist encounters they give rise to. Published after Lindner's untimely death in 2019, this new paperback edition of Film Bodies includes a special foreword by Jenny Chamarette, exploring the embodied, time travelling nature of Lindner's work. "Trailing gloriously in the wind behind Film Bodies are all the beginnings, the experiences that shape it, the visceral connections that give the book a bodymind from which to speak."

Katharina Lindner was Lecturer in Film and Media and a member of the Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University of Stirling, UK. Before becoming an academic, she was a celebrated professional footballer, scoring 128 goals for Glasgow City before she retired from the game in 2011.

Lindner provides a welcome guide through new terrain. Deftly navigating the challenge of bringing feminist and queer thought together, Film Bodies raises important questions about how the social, spatial and corporeal coordinates of cinematic being are imbricated. * Film-Philosophy * I cannot think of a single other scholar in the world who combines such an integrated approach to philosophical phenomenology, queer theory and feminist theory while also examining contemporary films in such insightful detail. -- Jenny Chamarette, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London In this challenging and provocative book, Katharina Lindner tackles the problems that film phenomenology has skirted around for years. What is a queer feminist phenomenology? What about female bodies that are in movement, that disrupt, that display themselves and unsettle? Who can speak about them and for them? Lindner looks at filmic female bodies that dance and play sport, and that are performatively queer, and examines the thrilling spaces and affective timeframes in which they move. The result is a new realm of queer feminist embodiment that enables different kinds of non-normative lived bodies to become visible and active, from tango dancers to tomboys, and boxers to ballerinas. A vital and significant development of film phenomenology. -- Lucy Bolton, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London Film Bodies vibrantly explores the intersections between film phenomenology and queer and feminist theories. Through a series of agile textual analyses, Lindner draws out the potential of the gendered body to trouble both cinema's sensory experience and film theory s critical categories. Film Bodies is an essential contribution to queer film scholarship. -- Rosalind Galt, Head of Department of Film Studies, King's College London