This contribution to cultural studies with specific reference to the media inquires into the role of film as gender technology. Taking movies like »Pretty Woman« and »Copykill« as examples, it indicates realization mechanisms in classical narrative approaches to cinema that definitively present naturalized femininity as 'otherness'. But as discourse the film has always been imperfective. A look at present-day approaches to movie-making, like Sally Potter's »Orlando«, Susan Streitfeld's »Female Perversions«, or Yvonne Rainer's »Murder and murder«, clearly points up tendencies toward representing femininity as a concept that is problematic from the outset.