We can talk and argue about feminism in cinema for ever and a day. The unrealistic and masculine images of feminists in the Soviet cinema of the thirties, the naïve and exaggerated feminists in American cinema or the "silly" suffragettes who were fighting for "something of their own" — the reality of masculine feminism of the beginning of cinema.

However, feminism penetrated into cinema, albeit slowly, but very steadily. It introduced not just fresh new images, but whole theories and terms. This is the whole terminology of feminist film theory that we are going to talk about today.

The beginning of the feminist revolution in cinema is usually considered to be the Second Wave of feminism, which emerged around the 1970s. Before that we only encountered parodies of the free woman — the "feminist" on the screen acted as a comrade-in-arms, a courageous hero, a strong woman or a trophy friend for life.

However, it cannot be found anything in common here with the value of a real-life female character. The woman still occupied an honourable second place to the man or looked ridiculous against his background, needing his help. British and American sociological research has helped to stimulate interest in gender issues in cinema among film critics.

Representatives of feminist film theory in the United States changed the focus from class to gender in their analysis of films. Their approach was based on sociological theory and focused on examining the function of female characters in films. They looked at female gender identity and representation in film, and examined common stereotypes about women in films.

Among the significant works of this period is Laura Marvy's essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', which she wrote under the influence of Freud and Lacan. This work was the first to changed the focus of film theory to psychoanalytical aspects and to talk about feminism not as a disease, but as a full-fledged movement.

The psychoanalytic approach paid attention to the spectator. According to this approach, the objectification of the female character occurs from three positions: the camera, the male character, the viewer. The viewer in the cinema identifies with the male gaze because the film is shot from the perspective of the male character. As a result, there is identification with the male character regardless of the gender of the viewer. This contributed to the question of the female viewer experience and the female gaze, as the female viewer could only identify with the male character.

In 1976 another significant work, Camera Obscura . students Janet Bergstrom, Sandy Flitterman, Elizabeth Lyon and Constance Penley, came out to talk about how women are involved in films, but not involved in the development of these films or excluded from the process. "Camera Obscura" is still published by Duke University Press and has moved from film theory to media studies.

In patriarchal ideology, the image of a woman can only mean something in relation to men, so the label 'woman' is a negative representation of a 'non-male'. All these works only marked the beginning of the development of feminist film theory, which received a new lease of life in the 1980s and 1990s. We will talk about the revolutionary ideas and absurdity of that time in the second part.