Building a Feminocentric Canon

In Building a Feminocentric Canon: Céline Sciamma and the Dawn of Post-Auterism, Tom Knoblauch positions Céline Sciamma as not just an important voice within contemporary cinema but also as the standard-bearer and skeleton key for a new vision of authorship and a reimagined feminocentric canon of tomorrow.

As the digital age has ruptured traditional cinematic norms and complicated logics of legitimacy and authorship, Knoblauch focuses instead on the promise of new conventions, contending that these seismic shifts call for a broader reevaluation of the current canon. Cinema’s future, he asserts, will exist in a space that is both post-cinema and post-auteur, eschewing what has often been an exclusionary politics of genius that has dominated the medium since the French New Wave.

In envisioning a new system of valuation for authentic expression that incorporates historically marginalized voices, Knoblauch embraces the new, uneven ground we find ourselves on to demonstrate how Sciamma’s influential filmography is well positioned to serve as the basis for a revitalized canon that offers a bold challenge to the status quo. This canon need not be viewed as radical rejection of tradition, but instead as a horizon upon which fresh, innovative traditions can be formed.