Friday, May 26 • – 6
This paper will discuss the political aspects of contemporary approaches to cinema practice and feminist historical materialism in the American vs European cinematography context of the 21st century. It will focus on feminized work related to maintaining housework, living spaces, and productive forces.
One of the core issues explored will be treating cinematic thinking as a political economy of the social reproductive sphere against the capitalist organization of cinematic production. I will focus on fem cinematography with radical interventions in treating social reproduction theory, including visual representations of theoretical recognitions and political demands in the cinema of pre-pandemic times and the present, featuring filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Martha Rosler, Jeanne Dielman, and Mary Maggic.
To analyze these works, the paper will employ the methodology of social reproduction philosophy, and the social philosophy of Nancy Fraser and Silvia Federici’s Beyond the Periphery of the Skin in relation to visual cinema practices as resistance to capitalism, by rereading topoi such as the kitchen, home, living spaces, migration studies, climate changes, displacement, and non-paid labor.
Senka Anastasova is a full-time professor of Aesthetics and Political Philosophy at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, and the Beatrice Bain Visiting Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests encompass feminist political economy, philosophy of culture/subculture, aesthetics and politics, and socialist feminism.