Introduction: The Place of the Contemporary Female Director

This introduction to the special issue titled “The Place of the Contemporary Female Director” outlines the genesis of the issue and aims of the editors. Building on a workshop that took place in Film and Television Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, in 2011, the essays in the issue explore the theme “between worlds.” In particular, the theme offers a cue for authors to consider how, given the mutable cultural terrain of the twenty-first century, the work of female directors might be negotiating different, perhaps even disjunctive, worlds. In-betweenness functions throughout the essays as a critical prism through which individual authors consider the current industrial, theoretical, and cultural values that frame female directors and their work.