When feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey famously described classic Hollywood cinema as an art form dominated by a male gaze that objectifies women, she forgot to specify that this only applies to women under 35 – the rest remain invisible. By contrast, European cinema increasingly seems to offer important roles for women over 60, and stories that validate and expand on the experience of ageing people of all genders.
Under the title “Never Too Old to Be Seen. Ageing and Gender in European Cinema”, this winter semester the Cornelia Goethe Colloquia brings together experts from all over Europe to address the topics of age and gender on the screen. The colloquia will open with a panel discussion on
“Understanding Old Age and Visibility: A Dialogue between Gerontology and Cinema Studies” held on Wednesday, November 1, at 6 p.m. c.t. in the PEG Building, Room PEG 1.G191, Goethe University Frankfurt’s Westend Campus.
Vinzenz Hediger, Bettina Kleiner, Miranda Leontowitsch and Asja Makarević will explore the question of how the experience of ageing and its representation in visual and virtual media have changed and how cultural studies of ageing can contribute to understanding this development.
In cooperation with the AGE-C project (Ageing and Gender in European Cinema) and Goethe University’s GRADE Center Gender, the Cornelia Goethe Center for Women’s Studies and the Study of Gender Relations (CGC) invites you to this series of public events. Admission is free; the lectures are in English.
Additional dates:
15.11.2023 / Luis Freijo: Man in Search for Meaning: Masculinity and Ageing in a Transnational European Context.
29.11.2023 / Alexandre Moussa: Acting Old: Ageing as Screen Performance.
20.12.2023 / Andrea-Adriana Virginás and Boglárka Angéla Farkas: Mothers (as) Grandmothers in Recent European (Small National) Cinemas: Figures of Authority, Goddesses of Wisdom, or Mad Rebels, and/or Societal Waste?
17.01.2024 / Francesco Pitassio and Gloria Dagnino: (Not) Looking One’s Age: The Double Standard of Ageing On-Screen.
31.01.2024 / Vinzenz Hediger and Asja Makarević: Have You Seen These Women? – Cultural specificity and the (In)visibility of Old Age across Film Cultures.
Detailed information on the program: https://cgc.uni-frankfurt.de/veranstaltungen/cornelia-goethe-colloquien
