Women’s Epistolary Cinema. Exploring Female Alterity and Intersubjectivity: Letter-Films and Filmic Correspondences

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the relevance of female authorship in the creation of contemporary epistolary cinema, focusing on letter-films and filmic correspondences. The works of various filmmakers are essential to understand the evolution of these enunciation devices since the emergence of cinematic modernity to the present moment. Since Agnès Varda represented an epistolary correspondence between women – L’une chante, l’autre pas (1977) – and Marguerite Duras created an epistolary diptych as two identity-alterity variations – Aurélia Steiner (1979) –, other women filmmakers have developed these cinematic forms. Letter-films delve into epistolary seriality and materiality – Cartas visuales (Tiziana Panizza, 2005–2012), and Envíos (Jeannette Muñoz, 2005–2017) – and deepen the concept of alterity – Elena (Petra Costa, 2012). Filmic correspondences work on emotion-image – This World (Naomi Kawase and Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1996), In Between Days (Naomi Kawase and Isaki Lacuesta, 2009) – and show female intersubjectivity – Correspondencia: Fernando Eimbcke – So Yong Kim (2011), Life May Be (Mania Akbari, Mark Cousins, 2014), A Moon for My Father (Mania Akbari, Douglas White, 2019), Transoceánicas (Meritxell Colell Aparicio, Lucía Vassallo, 2020). Women’s letter-films and filmic correspondences delve into the exploration of intimate space, authorial vindication and epistolary materiality, in order to create diverse experiences of female alterity and intersubjectivity that become sisterhood practice.

Keywords:

• women’s cinema
• epistolary cinema
• letter-film
• filmic correspondence
• alterity
• intersubjectivity

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez

Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez is a Film Studies researcher at the Institut ACTE, Paris 1 University Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she carries out the research project EDEF - Enunciative Devices of the European Francophone Essay Film, awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. She received her PhD in the doctoral program Literature and Visual Arts: Comparative Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. She previously completed a degree in film direction at ECAM Film School in Madrid and worked as a film critic for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma – España. Also member of the international and interdisciplinary research group La Europa de la escritura (UCM), her research interests are in the filmic writings of the self and the relationships between literature and cinema. Monterrubio Ibáñez is the author of De un cine epistolar (Shangrila, 2018) and editor of Epistolary Enunciation in Contemporary Cinema (Área Abierta, 2019). She has also published several articles on the essay film, the autofiction film or the cinematic diary.