BARBARA ZECCHI
BARBARA ZECCHI
COLLABORATIONS
& RESEARCH PROJECTS
ONGOING
To move beyond the constraints of terms like “feminist cinema,” “cinema by women,” or “women’s cinema,” and to address the crisis of naming in feminist film criticism identified by Ruby Rich, I coined the term “Gynocine.”
I argue that the term Gynocine is useful for several reasons:
1) Interpretive displacement: Unlike the label “feminist,” which carries implicit connotations, gynocine shifts the interpretive work to my analysis. In other words, I am the one engendering this corpus through a feminist lens. Gynocine itself is not necessarily feminist, but its interpretation is.
2) Beyond biological determinism: A film does not need to be directed by a cisgender woman to be considered gynocine; what matters is that its perspective is gynocentric and feminist in scope.
3) Inclusive of women’s experience: While not all cinema is gynocine, and not all gynocine is explicitly feminist, all films directed by women are included, because even those who distance themselves from feminism operate within a system of practices and institutions structured by sex-gender discrimination.
4) Expanded notion of authorship: Gynocine recognizes that filmmaking is collaborative. Screenwriters, actors, and other contributors can also be considered “authors” of gynocine, reflecting the collective nature of cinematic creation.
GYNOCINE
In my monographs I approach gynocine according to three different angles: Desenfocadas (Barcelona: Icaria, 2014) develops an analysis of the historical evolution of gynocine through four generations of Spanish women directors; La pantalla sexuada (Madrid: Cátedra, 2014) is a cross-sectional study of the major concepts that have been influential in feminist film theory and the shaping of gynocine; and, finally, El género del género (in progress) focuses on the most common genres of gynocine, such as melodrama, comedy, thriller, etc., by tackling the so called genre/gender debate.
Funded by a University of Massachusetts Digital Humanities Initiative seed grant, the Gynocine Project --that I have directed since 2011-- develops an open access online database on gynocine's production. The original outcome of this project was to offer resources related to the production of women directors in the Spanish state, but its scope has recently expanded to other countries of Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
FOUNDER
& Principal Investigator
ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES LAB (2026-2028)
CO-FOUNDER & CO-DIRECTOR
Funded by a Research and Creative Laboratories Grant from the College of Humanities and FIne Arts at the University of Massachusetts, and co-directed by Profs. Barbara Zecchi and David Bendiksen, The Environmental Humanities Lab envisions an innovative hybrid environment that redefines research-creation. Its novelty lies in combining critical media analysis with sustainable film practice:
Eco-Criticism: This component will build on existing work in videographic criticism—particularly its potential as an affective, embodied, and non-extractive form of knowledge production. Participants will explore how audiovisual essays can model ecological modes of thinking through temporal layering, archival reuse, and sensory engagement.
Eco-Praxis: Production and processing of 16mm films using organic, non-toxic, and plant-based materials, thus exploring “green” chemical alternatives for developing film stock—such as developers made from used coffee grounds, banana peels, food waste, and sustainably foraged plants—as acts of both ecological responsibility and aesthetic invention. This work will situate analog film practice within broader ecological discourses, emphasizing tactility, decay, and impermanence as creative principles.
The lab’s distinctive contribution lies in treating these two dimensions not as parallel activities but as mutually constitutive practices. Eco-criticism informs eco-praxis, while eco-praxis embodies eco-criticism. Through this recursive exchange, the lab will cultivate a methodology of thinking-with-materials—a form of scholarship that is at once theoretical, sensorial, and sustainable.
VIDEOGRAPHIC VENICE (2026-2028)
The videoessay at the intersection of place and practice
VENICE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY INVITED SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR
What does it mean to create media in a city poised at risk of vanishing? What can the video essay do to preserve, reframe, and reimagine our relationship to vulnerable spaces, ecologies, and cultural heritages? Step into Venice, one of the world’s most fragile landscapes, not as a visitor, but as a videoessayist, and learn to navigate through delicate terrains. The city itself unfolds like a living editing timeline: canals as dissolves, narrow streets as cuts, archives as layered tracks, and emergent narratives as overlays—each frame waiting to be sequenced, juxtaposed, and brought into dialogue.
This newly established, three-year summer program (2026-2028) organized at the Venice International University brings together scholars, artists, and educators to explore the video essay as a vibrant, interdisciplinary method of research and pedagogy.
Set against the richly layered urban and cultural landscape of Venice, the workshop positions the city as both site and subject for spatial inquiry and audiovisual experimentation. By linking the local context of Venice to global media flows, the program expands its reach and relevance, inviting participants to critically engage with the layered entanglements of place, media, and moving images.
https://www.univiu.org/study/summer-schools/videographic-venice
CinemAGEnder
In 2017, in collaboration with Raquel Medina (Aston University, Birmingham, UK), I founded the international interdisciplinary research group CinemAGEnder.
This initiative is dedicated to the examination of the intersection of age with gender in visual cultures.
CO-FOUNDER & CO-DIRECTOR
The interdisciplinary character of CinemAGEnder transcends traditional academic boundaries, demonstrating a commitment to establishing a collaborative network with diverse social stakeholders, including associations, non-governmental entities, social groups, and the broader public. Among the key participants in this collaborative network are notable organizations such as the Association of Actresses "De 50 para arriba," CIMA (Asociación de mujeres en el audiovisual), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Spain, Lesgaicinemad, and others. The network underscores the imperative for synergies among the realms of artistic creation, academic research in visual culture, and gerontology/geriatrics. This concerted effort aims to collectively raise awareness regarding the discrimination faced by older individuals
REFRAMING THE ARGUMENT
CO-ORGANIZER, TEAM MEMBER
What might a thesis or dissertation look like as a video essay? How can we communicate our written argumentation/ideas in an audiovisual form, without relying on explicitly explanatory crutches? How can we apply videographic tools as research methodologies that enable us to rethink our objects of study?
“Reframing the Argument” is a workshop designed to establish and explore videographic practices for graduate students in support of building a globally and linguistically-diverse community of scholarly practice.
Organized in collaboration with Colleen Laird, Ariel Avissar, Matthew Payne, and funded by a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connections Grant (PI Colleen Laird) , the project consisted of a 5-day intensive workshop held at The University of Notre Dame in June 2025 that generated exercises, theoretical discussion, collaborative research, engagement and critique, and mentorship for each participant to produce a final video essay that expresses the central argument of their dissertation or thesis.
Selected video essays developed during the workshop will be published in the peer-reviewed journals [in]Transition (2026) and Screenworks (2026)
SELECTION OF COMPLETED PROJECTS
MEDIATIZATION OF WOMEN RAGE
(2021-2024)
TEAM MEMBER
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2024): Right to rage: Subjectivity and activism
Co-edited Diana Fernández Romero and Barbara Zecchi
The articles and video essays that form this volume interrogate who the subjects of rage are and how they are discursively constructed, while also scrutinizing its impact on feminism. They inquire into why some expressions of rage gain political traction while others are rejected, and they undertake a critical analysis of the strategies employed to disembody rage and overcome its pathologization. They also ask how to challenge the heteropatriarchal norms of neoliberalism. The richness of the diversity of formats allows for a thorough investigation of the narratives of rage, thereby shedding light on its transformative potential and the complexities surrounding its expression within the context of activism.
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/TEKN/issue/view/4092
Mediatization of Women's Rage: Intelligibility Frameworks and Strategies of Politicizing Transformation (REMUVIC) / Mediatización de la rabia de las mujeres: marcos de inteligibilidad y estrategias comunicativas de transformación politizadora. The project analyzes how women's rage is represented and communicated in the media, and its role in political transformation, particularly in relation to digital platforms, social media, and feminism in Spain. Principal Investigators (IP): Sonia Núñez Puente and María José Gámez Fuentes.
Based at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), Universidad Jaume I (UJI), and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM).
Research focus:
—Feminist Resistance: Exploring how resistance to violence and inequality is articulated.
—Mediatization of Rage: Investigating how online platforms shape representations of female anger.
—Case Studies: Analyzing specific cases like the podcast Estirando el chicle, the film Cerdita, and digital campaigns such as #YoSíTeCreo and #SeAcabó.
—Theoretical Framework: Addressing misogynistic discourses online (such as "feminazi" or "gender ideology") and the cooptation of victimhood by misogynistic sector
WOMEN FILM PIONEER IN SPAIN
PROJECT LEAD
Until very recently, the presence of a female gaze in the origins of “the moving image” in Spain was limited to little more than a speculation. Unlike what has happened to British, American, French and Italian histories of cinema, that have recovered the work of their first women directors, in Spain it is practically impossible to find a woman behind the camera during the silent era. Since the publication of Susan Martin-Márquez’s book Feminist Discourses in Spanish Cinema in 1999 a few female names have been rescued from oblivion –Helena Cortesina, Carmen Pisano, Isabel Roy and Elena Jordi. In a few publications, these names have been added to that of Rosario Pi Brujas, who for years was mentioned as the first woman director in the histories of Spanish cinema (if she was mentioned at all). However, as in the case with many films of this era, the work of these women pioneers, to date, has disappeared, and very little information has been gathered.
TEAM MEMBER
I have been a member of the Research Goup Cos i Textualitad (Body and textuality) based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, since its formation in 2009. The research group, directed by Meri Torras, studies the body as
a text that results out of the inscription and re-inscription of cultural
discourses, a place where debating and discussing are transformed constantly.
The body has been presented to us as natural, not cultural; prefixed and immediate, not constructed or mediated; anatomic, exterior, superficial, not psychological, not interior, nor deeep; set, not changing, especially concerning gender-sex categories. It is set under the label of normative discourses which act as a form of control. The body is a representation of the body itself, a place where identity remains.
Project Website: https://webs.uab.cat/cositextualitats/
Imagologías: Imágenes del otro
(2005-2008)
TEAM MEMBER
“Images of the Other: Immigration on contemporary Spanish Literature and Film ” is a research project based at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (2005-2009).
Directed by Montserrat Iglesias, the project focused on the representation of the immigrant "Other" through different artistic practices in contemporary Spain. Literature, drama and cinema, among others, have their particular way to react towards this new Spanish reality.
“Images of the Other” has planned different seminars, courses and supervises some doctoral thesis. The project is also collecting a catalogue of textbooks, films and images about the immigrant’s imaginaries in order to support its current research and similar ones in the future.
Project Website: https://www.uc3m.es/ss/Satellite/GruposInvestigacion/es/TextoDosColumnas/1371333231358/
Adaptations, Transmedialities, Translations
PROJECT LEAD
Film Adaptation: Theory and Practice
On the topic of film adaptations, in addition to several articles in which I analyze specific case studies, I published an edited volume with the title Teoría y práctica de la adaptación fílmica (Madrid: Editorial Universidad Complutense, 2012). The idea of working on an edited book on film adaptations started in a graduate class, “From Paper to Celluloid,” that I taught in 2008, and continued with a Research Practicum. I wanted to equip my students with the necessary skills to be able to transform their papers into publishable material. This is how Teoría y práctica de la adaptación fílmica was born. The volume includes essays written by five UMass students, in addition to ten more articles by scholars in the field of Film Adaptations. The volume is introduced by my 44-page chapter “La adaptación multiplicada” with a chronological table that summarizes the major arguments of adaptation theories.
Teoría y práctica de la adaptación fílmica focuses on practical examples of Spanish film adaptations. The essays are arranged chronologically (from the adaptation of Golden Age classics to that of contemporary works) and thematically (memory, politics, gender, and so on). What’s more, the study is not limited to the adaptation of literary works, but includes that of “other” texts, such as comics, video games and the remakes. The common goal of the collected essays is to analyze the fundamental differences between the written word and the visual image by going beyond questions of fidelity. Instead of addressing “what” and “how” a text is transformed and translated into another text, my goal is to reflect upon the surprisingly little studied ideological implications of such operations (the “why” of adaptations) --including, of course, gender implications.
The interest on Adaptation Studies has grown considerably in the last years, and my book has become part of the reading lists for classes in Spain and beyond.
