A01=Hester Baer
artistic expression
Author_Hester Baer
Category=ATFA
Category=JBSF1
Category=JBSF11
cinematic feminism
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film revival
friendship
gender inequality
gender roles
German feminist film
social identity
societal challenges
women's empowerment
women's subjectivity
Product details
- ISBN 9781640140998
- Weight: 162g
- Dimensions: 133 x 191mm
- Publication Date: 29 Mar 2022
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Restores the first German feminist film, long neglected, to its rightful status as a classic forebear of more recent cinefeminism, demonstrating that the film is as relevant today as it was upon its 1968 release.
Acclaimed as postwar Germany's first feminist film, Ula Stöckl's The Cat Has Nine Lives disappeared from view shortly after its 1968 premiere when its distributor went bankrupt. Although it laid the groundwork for the flourishing feminist cinema that emerged in West Germany and beyond during the 1970s, Stöckl's vibrant film long remained largely unknown. Yet it is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it debuted half a century ago. Revived at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), The Cat Has Nine Lives is now available for the first time on DVD with English subtitles. Posing the question, "Women have never had as many possibilities to do what they want as they have today, but do they know what they want?," Stöckl's film follows the intertwined stories of five characters to explore the possibilities for and limitations on women's subjectivity, desire, friendship, work, and artistic expression in a society defined by gender inequality. Restoring this singular film to its rightful place as a German film classic, Hester Baer argues that The Cat Has Nine Lives forms an important aesthetic and theoretical precursor to the unfolding cinefeminism of later decades.
HESTER BAER is Professor of German Studies and an affiliate in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Maryland.
