Asynchronicity of Sound and Vision. Towards a Feminist Semiotics of Cinematic Rhythm

Abstract

This essay is an inquiry into the intersections between feminist experimental film and cinematic formalism since the 1970s. It sheds light on how three German filmmakers—Ulrike Rosenbach, Ute Aurand, and Anja Czioska—have explored the material properties of the medium to dismantle conventional modes of cinematic representation. By experimenting with techniques of fragmentation and distortion and by working against the conventions of continuity and synchronization, these feminist filmmakers disrupt the rhythmic patterning that is rightly understood as a hallmark of cinema. Their formal interventions into the material conditions of filmic representation can be read in the context of a larger debate in feminist film theory over how to break down and subvert the traditional roles assigned to women in the mainstream and mass media. (SB)