Distorted view: The female point of view that changed the premises of filmmaking

This article will argue that experimental filmmaking is the essential element that provided women to integrate alternative forms and manipulate the techniques of filming and editing in order to create a counter cinema, which represents an alternative model to traditional Hollywood filmmaking. The methodology used during the creation of this article presents results of an extensive research of publications related to the topic, and an analysis of the cinematic work by female experimental filmmakers. For an aspiring female filmmaker, it is important to know the components of the new visual language these filmmakers created, and how these changes are reflected in their work. This research references feminist film theories on spectator’s gaze and woman as an image, in order to determine just what it is that so strictly shaped conventional narrative cinema, and how experimental filmmaking allowed women to explore and break the conventions of a coded visual language and narration that were rooted within the viewer. Further analysis of experimental films directed by women, as well as feminist film theories, will serve as an indicator of how women used the medium of experimental filmmaking to explore many issues that could not have been represented in a classical narrative film. On the other hand, I will analyse the presence of leading female characters in Hollywood narrative films, and aspects of feminist film theories that can be applied in these examples, in order to examine the argument and verify if feminist film theories are exclusive for experimental film or not.