Monday, September 11, 2017

Alexandra Hidalgo's Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition

New from Computers and Composition Digital Press is Alexandra Hidalgo's (Michigan State UniversityCámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. It is a video book that enacts the strategies and practices that it articulates.

One of my favorite quotes from the Introduction is when Hidalgo writes, 
"I have five years of experience as a documentary filmmaker but nothing taught me more about life behind the camera than these fevered, rushed, ecstatic weeks when there was never enough footage to fill the six chapters that comprise this video book."

The subtitle of "A Feminist Filmaking Methodology" makes me think of the idea that women's rights are human rights, and the methodology that Alexandra Hidalgo outlines is an articulation of ethical practices that are collaborative and reciprocal, thereby postulating an approach to filmmaking that is humanistic and considerate of the rights of all involved.

Each chapter runs somewhere between 15-30 minutes each and include interviews, memoir, and professional considerations. The ebook is open source and free to read from Computers Composition Digital Press, the electronic imprint of the University of Utah Press. Below is the preview for the book, although the link is also here (http://ccdigitalpress.org/camara/intro.html). 






Hidalgo outlines the chapters as follows:
"Chapter 1 defines the video book’s key terminology and introduces viewers to the qualitative study I draw from as I make my arguments about film and video production in Rhetoric and Composition.Chapter 2 uses my filmmaking experience and interviews with women filmmakers to define feminist filmmaking through six key principles.
Chapter 3 provides a taxonomy of the film and video work currently done by rhetoricians.
Chapter 4 explores the ways in which rhetoricians use the principles of feminist filmmaking to learn how to make moving images and provides a set of guidelines for Rhetoric and Composition’s film and video production.
Chapter 5 uses the principles of feminist filmmaking to provide strategies for making film and video production count toward tenure and promotion.
Chapter 6 discusses the particular benefits that rhetoricians bring to academic film and video production and presents my thoughts on the future of moving images in Rhetoric and Composition."
This is not any kind of exhaustive review of Hidalgo's important project; however, it is a ringing endorsement for those interested in filmmaking, feminist practices, feminist theory, and multimodal scholarly publishing.

MLA
Hidalgo, Alexandra. Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2017. Web.

Read the ebook herehttp://ccdigitalpress.org/camara/intro.html

Alexandra Hidalgo can be found on Twitter @SabanaGrandePro

Or visit find more from her here:

-->