num_pages: 208
description: In considering Jane Campion's early award-winning short films on through international sensation  The Piano  and beyond, Kathleen McHugh traces the director's distinctive visual style as well as her commitment to consistently renovating the conventions of "women's films." By refusing to position her female protagonists as victims, McHugh argues, Campion scrupulously avoids the moral structures of melodrama, and though she often works with the narratives, mise-en-scene, and visual tropes typical of that genre, her films instead invite a distanced or even amused engagement.  Jane Campion  concludes with four brief, revelatory interviews and a filmography. Campion spoke twice with Michel Ciment—after the screening of her short and medium-length films at the Cannes Film Festival 1986, and three years later, after the Cannes screening of  Sweetie.  Judith Lewis narrates a Beverly Hills interview with Campion that followed the release of  Holy Smoke,  and Lizzie Francke's interview, reprinted from  Sight and Sound, centers on Campion's film  In the Cut,  adapted from Susanna Moore's novel. A volume in the series Contemporary Film Directors, edited by James R. Naremore
language: English
title: Jane Campion
titlecomplete: Jane Campion (Contemporary Film Directors)
genres: Film, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 13
series: Contemporary Film Directors
publisher: University of Illinois Press