ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman (ReFocus: The American Directors Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1474482341 ISBN 13: 9781474482349

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2021

Synopsis

Producer, distributor, and director Doris Wishman (1912–2002) was a pioneering woman in the film industry, leaving a body of work almost 30 films strong. Largely overlooked by critical and cultural analysis, Wishman worked in the normatively neglected film genre of sexploitation and adult film, but works like Hideout in the Sun (1960), Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965), Double Agent 73 (1974) and Each Time I Kill (2007) demonstrate an interest in complicated, ideological and often troubling social performances of the contemporary human condition. ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman positions Wishman as a significant and overlooked force in American independent film, with an impact on how we currently understand the categories of cult, exploitation, horror, experimental and avant-garde cinema.

About this title

About the Authors

Alicia Kozma is an educator, writer, and researcher who specializes in the everyday work of the media, including a dual focus on how the film industry runs, the composition of industry employees, and the form and function of their labor; and the industrial, financial, and technological evolutions of film exhibition and its impacts on independent film. She is the author of The Cinema of Stephanie Rothman: Radical Acts in Filmmaking, and co-editor of Refocus: The Films of Doris Wishman and Mobilized Identities: Mediated Subjectivity and Cultural Crisis in the Neoliberal Era. Her work has been published widely, including in Media Industries, Film Comment, Camera Obscura, Television and New Media, and other venues. Kozma is the Director of the Indiana University Cinema, where she oversees programming, operations, and academic and industry initiatives. She is affiliate faculty in IU's Media School and the IU Wells Scholar Professor for 2025. Dr. Kozma holds a PhD in communication and media studies from the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Farrah Freibert is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University. With research that spans media history and industry studies, global media circulations and LGBTQ+ history, she has published widely in peer-reviewed scholarly venues such as Film Criticism, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, Monstrum, Porn Studies, the Journal of Homosexuality, Spectator, Synoptique, and Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture. Dr. Freibert is coeditor with Alicia Kozma of Refocus: The Films of Doris Wishman (2021).

From the Back Cover

Producer, distributor, and director Doris Wishman (1912-2002) was a pioneering woman in the film industry, leaving a body of work almost 30 films strong. Largely overlooked by critical and cultural analysis, Wishman worked in the normatively neglected film genre of sexploitation and adult film, but works like Hideout in the Sun (1960), Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965), Double Agent 73 (1974) and Each Time I Kill (2007) demonstrate an interest in complicated, ideological and often troubling social performances of the contemporary human condition. ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman positions Wishman as a significant and overlooked force in American independent film, with an impact on how we currently understand the categories of cult, exploitation, horror, experimental and avant-garde cinema. Alicia Kozma is Chair and Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Washington College. Finely Freibert is a part-time Senior Lecturer in Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville and an adjunct Lecturer at the Kentucky College of Art and Design.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474482341
• ISBN 13: 9781474482349
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Kozma Alicia, Freibert Farrah