Gender

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity.

Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences and documents written by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, in many other contexts, including some areas of social sciences, gender includes sex or replaces it. Although this change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s, a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed in 1993 when the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex. In 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation." In non-human animal research, gender is also commonly used to refer to the physiology of the animals.

Actress (film)

Actress is a 2014 American documentary film directed, edited and photographed by Robert Greene. The film was produced by Douglas Tirola and Susan Bedusa, and is a 4th Row Films and Prewar Cinema production. It was distributed by The Cinema Guild.

Synopsis

Actress is a documentary about Brandy Burre, most known for her recurring role as Theresa D’Agostino on HBO’s The Wire as she attempts to return to her acting career after abandoning it to concentrate on raising a family.

Set in suburban Beacon, NY, Burre struggles with duties and relationships in her domestic life. During the film, she pursues re-entering her former profession by meeting old contacts in the industry and rebuilding herself while juggling motherhood and her personal life.

Actress has been recognized for its use of poetic, more directed techniques and mise-en-scene, a tactic that is something of an anomaly in documentaries. Poetic aspects were used mostly to represent Burre’s crumbling emotional state. Greene has said that there was a performance to all of Burre’s behavior. His use of “composed indie-film moments,” seen in the consciously lit, stage-like opening scene, slow motion shots, and collaboration with Burre, allowed her to become more than just a subject. This enabled the actress to, “explore her own authenticity,” in a way that became a very cathartic experience for her. Seeing her dismantling personal life told in present tense, Burre performs in roles as a mother and caregiver, as well as an actress pursuing a career, and a woman in romantic turmoil with her longtime partner and father of her children.

Actress (musician)

Darren J. Cunningham (born in Wolverhampton, England) is a British electronic musician, best known under the pseudonym Actress. His music has been released by a variety of different recording labels, which most prominently include Ninja Tune, Honest Jon's Records, Nonplus Records, and Werkdiscs, a label he co-founded in 2004.

Discography

Albums

Singles and EPs