Cahiers du cinéma n°745 - June 2018 (2018-06)Cahiers du cinéma
Gender, feminism, and cinema
Though Cahiers du cinéma hasn't always maintained friendly relations with feminism and its activists, women in cinema has been the subject of ongoing renewed questioning, and several female directors found significant critical support within its pages.
Cahiers du cinéma n°30 - special issue Noél 1953 (1953-12)Cahiers du cinéma
Movie buffs
Even though women have always attended cinemas in large numbers, cinephilia and its codes and critical practice became strongly associated with the male gender in the 50s and 60s. Cahiers was no exception to this phenomenon.
In issue no. 30 (Christmas 1953) titled La Femme et le cinéma (Woman and Cinema), only 5 editors out of 19 were women. They were Marie-Claire Solleville, director Nicole Védres, Lotte H. Eisner, Suzanne Audrey, and actor Mylène Demongeot. Sylvie Pierre—the first woman on the editorial board—can be cited as one of the critics who wrote for the Cahiers for a long time.
When most articles addressed the aura of Greta Garbo or a female actor's power of incarnation, Solleville dedicated the article Nos amies les femmes (Our Female Friends) to the working conditions of women within the dream factory of cinema, while Pierre Kast focused on the other side of this myth of "women in cinema".
"I will not be made to believe that the profession of director is a matter of vocation, or even of nervous resistance or physiological capacity. In reality, cinema is the exclusive domain of men due to the critical importance of representing female characters. In short, mystification." (Pierre Kast, Cahiers du cinéma no. 30)
Fellow female moviemakers
Cahiers du cinéma has offered critical support to many female directors, including Agnès Varda, Marguerite Duras (who edited a special issue), Chantal Akerman, Marie-Claude Treilhou, Patricia Mazuy, Pascale Ferran, Claire Denis, and, more recently, Lucrecia Martel, Kelly Reichardt, Justine Triet, Alice Rohrwacher, Joanna Hogg, and Sophie Letourneur, among others.
Marguerite Duras
"In Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver), when the sound fades away, and we talk about the dark light, the eyes, the hair, the body in the mirror, when we talk about a veiled image, and of the beauty she discovers within...
Cahiers du cinéma n°312 / 313 - juin 1980 (1980-06)Cahiers du cinéma
...all this against the black of the large blocks of granite that can cause injury, and tear you apart, I'm not in the cinema, but suddenly elsewhere, elsewhere again, in an undistinguishable zone within myself, where I recognize something without having ever seen it, where I know something without understanding it...
...Here, everything comes together, melts, the wound, the icy edge of the black stone, and the warm softness of the threatened image. The happy coincidence between the image and the words fills me with confidence, with pleasure." Marguerite Duras, on her movie Aurélia Steiner.
Cahiers du cinéma No. 130 - April 1962 (1962-04)Cahiers du cinéma
Agnès Varda
The April 1962 issue of Cahiers du cinéma (number 130) showcases Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) on its cover and includes a feminist analysis of her work, focusing particularly on this film.
Cahiers du cinéma No. 274 - March 1977 (1977-03)Cahiers du cinéma
Chantal Akerman
An image from Chantal Akerman's Je, tu, il, elle (I, You, She, He) is featured on the cover of Cahiers du cinéma issue 274 from 1977.
Cahiers du cinéma n°545 - April 2000 (2000-04)Cahiers du cinéma
Claire Denis
Cahiers du cinéma issue 545 features several themes and in-depth articles, notably an analysis of Claire Denis' Beau Travail (Good Work) that explores its hierarchy and visual narrative, and includes an interview with the director.
Tap to explore
Cahiers du cinéma first mentioned the International Women's Film Festival in April 1985, when it moved to Créteil, France. It was created in 1979 in Sceaux by Jackie Buet and Elisabeth Tréhard in order to promote and improve access to the works of women moviemakers, who were largely under-represented at festivals. It's the longest-running women's film festival still going on today.
Cahiers du cinéma n°478 - April 1994 (1994-04)Cahiers du cinéma
At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, several female writers began to write more regularly for Cahiers, including Camille Taboulay, Camille Nevers, Marie Anne Guérin, and Laurence Giavarini.
Upheaval
In the 2010s, the issue of women in the industry was becoming more and more important, particularly since the momentous #MeToo movement. Cahiers du cinéma dedicated two issues to this, in September 2012 and July/August 2019.
Cahiers du cinéma n°681 - September 2012 (2012-09)Cahiers du cinéma
Tensions appeared regarding the two ways of approaching criticism and the pitfalls linked to each. On the one hand, there was the more esthetic-centered concept that defended an intimate tête-à-tête between the subject and the movie, as far as possible from sociology and its interpretive framework, which was criticized for blurring the singularity of works, particularly works by women.
On the other hand, there were interpretations influenced by the emergence of American gender studies, which underlined the importance of informing the way in which works are viewed in a society structured around certain relationships in terms of gender, class, and race.
The magazine, a historical bastion of the first option, tried to provide a framework for the debate: "Thinking about differences should not be limited by conservative discourse (which replaces difference with hierarchy), or by gender discourse (which replaces difference with compartmentalization). Thinking about differences is, on the contrary, the beginning of critical reflection." (Stéphane Delorme, September 2012 editorial).
Catching up
In July and August 2019, Cahiers published a lengthy piece tracing the history of female directors, from silent cinema to the 1990s. On the cover was Wanda, the only movie by Barbara Loden (who also played the eponymous character) and a feminist milestone in cinema.
Cahiers du cinéma n°771 - December 2020 (2020-12)Cahiers du cinéma
In 2020, the editorial board of Cahiers du cinéma was on equal footing.
In February 2024, the new editorial team approached the subject again, gaining perspective on the positions long held by Cahiers, and addressing the many questions raised by the advances in feminist theory in the critical sphere as well as the upheavals that the world of French and international cinema was experiencing.
Cahiers du cinéma n°806 - February 2024 (2024-02)Cahiers du cinéma
This is the longest collection dedicated to women and feminism in the magazine to date, written and designed by women.
Cahiers du cinéma n°609 - February 2006 (2006-02)Cahiers du cinéma
