User:Nicolelswords/sandbox

Angès Varda
Compared to other female filmmakers, Angès Varda's page is quite detailed and throughly outlines he career as a feminist filmmaker. There aren't that many disputes on the Talk page minus one editor altering a comment under one of her film discussion, using a quote from a lecture Varda gave on it. Of course, there is room for improvement. On her page, there is an outline of all of the films she is involved. The last column of the box reveals if she was merely the director, writer, producer, or all three. It would interesting to find sources that outline her different experiences with each title. Perhaps Wikipedia editors can draw from her own literary works to capture her experience with each line of work. Although I admire the editors attempts to avoid bias by citing sources not from Varda personally, citing her own works could show more perspectives in the article. Aside from excluding citations from her own literary works, the citations are legitimate and draw from a variety of sources while avoiding plagiarism. There is one portion of the article where I wish the editor used a specific source to back their opinion. The editor claims that Varda identified more so with the Left Bank movement although I believe this argument would seem less biased if there was a source explaining so and not just a hyperlink to the movement. Another area of improvement is the Personal Life section. There isn't that much information offered on Varda and the random facts that are spewed in are certain panels she has been apart of and the face that she partook in Jim Morrison's funeral. The personal life section is also lacking in citations.

Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat (French; born 13 July 1948) is a French filmmaker, novelist and Professor of Auteur Cinema at the European Graduate School. In the film business for over 40 years, Catherine Breillat choses to normalize previously taboo subjects in cinema. Taking advantage of the medium of cinema, Breillat juxtaposes different perspectives to]\highlight irony found in society. Through film, she attempts to redefine the female narrative in cinema by showing female characters who undergo similar experiences as their male counterparts. Many of Breillat's films explore the transition between girlhood and adulthood. The females of her films attempt to escape their adolescence by seeking individuality. There is an unsaid silence in society for girls to hide their sexuality and desires unless directly confronted about them. Breillat offers a platform to discuss female pleasure and sexual responsibility by exposing social and sexual conflicts in her films' themes.

Demystifying Female Sexuality
Throughout her career, Catherine Breillat makes it a priority in her films to expose female sexuality and desire. A self proclaimed romanticist herself, Breillat creates a new definition of romance that encapsulates varying aspects. In her films, she shows a more realistic portrayal of romance that doesn't sugarcoat every situation a women encounters either in a relationship or single. According to Breillat, the word romance contains sentiments of darker passion and an unattainable relationship ideal Through the lens of her definition of romanticism, Catherine Breillat brings narratives about the female experience to the fore front.

In her film Romance (1998), Breillat rebels against the traditional mainstream narrative in which the female is the passive figure in a relationship. Her protagonist in Romance, Marie, tackles a gender role reversal in her relationship with her partner, Paul. Marie has a lustful appetite for sex and doesn't see much more in a relationship besides the physical aspect of one. Although Paul views her sexual hunger as exhausting, Marie yearns for something much deeper than just sex: true intimacy She attempts to find this missing component by cheating on Paul with various lovers. Each new lover she encounters reveals that sex plays an integral role to understanding a human's identity Breillat uses graphic, sometimes discomforting, sex scenes to show Marie's understanding of different components of a relationship. She experiences negotiating in sex, BDSM and submission, and consent for sexual encounters.

Similar to Romance, Breillat's film Anatomy of Hell (2003) explores the exchange between two individuals in a relationship and the power dynamics that go along with it. Although the plot of the film isn't too complex, Breillat uses this opportunity to experiment with the idea of the male gaze and the male fantasy through her unnamed female protagonist and the man she pays to explore her body over the course of 4 nights. As she lies passively on the bed, the women asks the man what he sees. Breillat suggests that a woman is susceptible to a male gaze and sometimes almost dependent on it in a variety of cinema. However, Breillat challenges the male gaze through her selective cropping and editing of the female body. In the scene where the man applies red lipstick both on the woman's lips and vagina, Briellat creates an interesting dichotomy between the lips of her mouth and the lips of her labia. The camera cropping doesn't sexualize or objectify the female body. The film further moves away from objectifying women, since the main male character is a homosexual. His "gaze" on her body becomes one more of curiosity rather than fetishizing her body.