ABSTRACT
Working on this book with Anna has for me been an illuminating and exciting experience, but it has also in some ways been disorientating. Due to our decision to concentrate on contemporary issues, new perspectives on recurrent debates, and contributions from relatively young scholars, I have experienced at first hand the generational gap between now and my own early writing about women and film. As a result, this introduction reflects on changing histories and ideas that have affected the film and feminism conjuncture over the last four decades. But there is a particular twist of fate for me: the opportunity to look backwards offered by this introduction exactly coincides with the fortieth anniversary of the publication of my essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” This accident of timing has made it difficult for me to avoid considering some of the questions raised by the “1970s” and the various aspects of feminist film theory and experimental practice that are rooted there.
