Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Frenetic Journey Toward Muddledness: An Experimental Short Film, Fernando Vieira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As an artist and Film Studies student, I saw the capstone option as an opportunity to consolidate academia with the art of filmmaking into one project. This became Frenetic Journey Toward Muddledness, an experimental short film written, directed, and edited by me. It is a film influenced by early avant-garde cinema, German expressionism, and film noir. Composed of pieces of unrelated footage and featuring an ambiguous, non-linear, and mostly silent narrative, the editing of the film prompted me to ask myself questions about its genre. Its hybridity made it possible to position the film within different categories, but there …

Urban Space, Genre And Subjectivity In African And Latin American Cinema, Matthew Marcus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project studies twelve African and Latin American films from a range of eras and countries, with an emphasis on their treatment of urban space, their manipulation of genre elements, and their approaches to character subjectivity. The analysis draws on major works of urban theory by Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Jane Jacobs, and others in order to investigate the relationship between cinema and the urban experience. As the films in the study are mostly set in cities that are not discussed by the theorists, the analysis entails testing their theories against the realities of these other settings, as …

Bi Erasure And Bi Invisibility In Media And Medicine: Moving Beyond, Lacy M. Telles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the bisexual erasure and invisibility that is found in film, television, literature, and in the field of reproduction. Even though bisexual people make up a large portion of the LGBTQ community, because of bi invisibility, they tend to get lost in the cause. This website offers information about bi invisibility, highlights obstacles faced by bisexuals, provides resources for bisexuals, and includes some fun topics for bisexual people. It also has a page of bisexual testimonies: real bi people with real bi stories. There is evidence of erasure and invisibility, especially in children’s books and the field of …

Cashing Out (Documentary), Girard Tecson

Theses and Dissertations

My 30-minute documentary film, Cashing Out, explores my journey into the world of sneaker culture and the major impact it made in my life.

An Epic (Fail): Humor, Play, And Politics In Chilean Contemporary Art From The Early 1980s, Paula Solimano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis foregrounds the methodology of humor and play employed by Chilean artists during the late 1970s and early 1980s. I argue that, through comic relief, collaborative practice, and melodrama, artists from different fields worked together in Santiago to reimagine the relationship between intellectuals and the public sphere and criticize the Pinochet regime.

Charting The Rise Of The Queer Criminal Trope In The Age Of “Peak Tv”, Natalie I. Rash

Capstones

Two shows in 2022 dipped their toes into the world of the queer mobster, an age-old trope seen in film and television since the days of film noir cinema, but that is also rooted in a real and complicated history in film, television and real-life.

https://medium.com/@natalie.rash74/charting-the-rise-of-the-queer-criminal-trope-in-the-age-of-peak-tv-c1f58dc71cc6

Introduction To Film, 2nd Edition, Teresa Fisher

Open Educational Resources

This textbook explores the world of cinema providing a students a look at the various elements of filmmaking to develop an appreciation for the film form. The textbook begins with a look at film history and the fundamentals of cinematic language. It then continues looking at film through a different lens for each chapter -- mise-en-scene, narrative, cinematography, editing, acting, and sound. The book ends with a look at documentary films, experimental films, and animation.

Jews In Film And Fiction, Amy W. Kratka

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Inheritance, Katherin Machalek

Theses and Dissertations

Inheritance is a feature documentary that investigates the concept of spiritual inheritance, that which is passed from parent to child. More precisely, it examines how the experiences and struggles of an individual may be transferred and reprocessed by their children. Life experience is studied not as personal, but rather a continuous process that transcends the parent and projects onto the children. The film is a hybrid composed of experimental sequences and false starts, which all bring attention to the nuances of a not-so-straightforward story. The film begins as an essay focusing on an investigation into my parents’ divorce with the …

At Home Among Strangers, Aleksandra Gorbacheva

Theses and Dissertations

At Home Among Strangers is a character-driven documentary that explores the price of freedom for a gay person in a society that lacks freedom and civil rights. It follows an asylum seeker from Russia, Sasha Smirnov, during a crucial moment of his life: starting over in New York City at 40 as a journalist without English language skills. The film reflects on the choices one makes and the consequences of staying true to oneself.

Steve Mcqueen, The Filmmaker, And Kant’S Sensus Communis, Livia Melamed Margon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects on the ways in which art reinforces community and reduces political polarity by stimulating shared feelings, namely through Kant's idea of sensus communis. To illustrate its argument, this thesis analyzes the work of Steve McQueen, a politically aware, ethically engaged, and broadly recognized filmmaker and artist.

Hail, Caesar!, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

This piece looks at queer characters in the Coen Brothers’ film Hail, Caesar! (2016). The film takes place during the heyday of the Hollywood film studio set in 1951 and draws on many films during that time period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

The Real And The Digital: Female Agency And Resisting The Male Gaze In Lynn Hershman Leeson’S Works, Kelly Chou

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis focuses on three major feminist works by multimedia artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), that grapple with the construction and potential of female identity. Considering the works within the context of Laura Mulvey’s seminal text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” this paper will attempt to elucidate how Hershman Leeson’s works have engaged with the male gaze and its social and cultural implications on female identity in visual spheres. This research demonstrates how Hershman Leeson’s efforts to understand the limitations and boundaries for women reflect the same phenomenons observed by Mulvey within “Visual Pleasure.” Rejecting this, Hershman Leeson also …

Disrupting Paradise: A Pan-Caribbean Film Series, Dessane L. Cassell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As one of the regions most economically dependent on tourism in the world, the Caribbean is a place where the impacts of colonial myth-making remain viscerally felt. Long framed as a tropical “paradise,” the Caribbean has been marked by campaigns to package and promote the region as idyllic, picturesque, and available for (primarily Western) consumption. Building upon the writings of Krista Thompson, Ian Gregory Strachan, and Angelique V. Nixon, Disrupting Paradise connects the myth of “paradise” and the modern tourism industry to the long, extractive history of colonialism in the region. Taking shape as a film series, this project examines …

Essays On Communication, Shawn M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the central issues of contemporary philosophy and biology is the nature of communication. Early accounts of communication tended to focus on just one side of the communicative divide – the speaker side or the receiver side – and took as their starting point the case of human language. Animal communication, historically, was largely treated as a special case. Now things are different. Now it appears we might have a model that makes sense of sign use in both the human and animal realms and brings together both sides of the signaling divide. It’s still to be seen, however, …

Lightning Design, Ent 4450, Course Outline, Miguel A. Valderrama

Open Educational Resources

This course supports the aesthetics of lighting as a visual art, students analyze theater, concert, and film/video scripts for lighting requirements and develop a workable design concept. Students then generate complete lighting paperwork common to the job of an assistant lighting designer. Requires use of CAD (Vectorworks) software to develop renders. Students should be able to develop sophisticated responses to a set’s architectural problems and a common stage for live performances.

Drama 111: Theater Design Historical Film Analysis Project, Meghan Healey

Open Educational Resources

This project asks students to both analyze an existing design rooted in Historical research and to create their own original contributions by adding themselves to the film in historically accurate garb. In this way the students must synthesize their understanding of primary historical research and the principles of design.

Starless Nights, Deepak Rauniyar

Theses and Dissertations

A film about the filmmaking process and the life of a filmmaker. But it's also a story about immigration, home, and negotiation. We constantly negotiate in our lives to maintain our relationships, opportunities, and dreams.

Guía Básica De Análisis Del Documental "Rigoberta Menchú: Daughter Of The Maya" (Dawn Gifford Engle, 2016), Álvaro Baquero-Pecino

Open Educational Resources

Guía básica de análisis del documental Rigoberta Menchú: Daughter of the Maya (Dawn Gifford Engle, 2016). La guía está destinada, principalmente, a estudiantes de español. Se compone de una breve serie de preguntas para antes, durante y después del visionado. El objetivo es ayudar a la comprensión del documental por parte de los estudiantes y fomentar la discusión en clase.

Introduction To Filmf, Teresa Fisher

Open Educational Resources

This textbook provides an introduction into the history of film and the filmmaking process. It begins with the history of film and how to watch a film. It then looks at specific areas of filmmaking: cinematography, mis-en-scene, acting, sound, editing, and narrative. The book ends with a look at documentary films, experimental films, and animation.

Reframing The Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother In U.S. Theatre And Film 1939–1963, Alison Walls

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reframing the Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother in U.S. Theatre and Film, 1939–1963 investigates the U.S. plays, films, and musicals of this period that abound with heroines who mother children to whom they are not genetically tied. This dissertation asks why such a figure was so resonant in this era between the beginning of World War II and the emergence of more radical 1960s politics. Newly in the spotlight as a romantic protagonist, the “surrogate mother,” as I have chosen to call her, re-envisions the archetypal mother through a contemporizing lens, distinctive in her mother/not-mother status. Critical analysis of Penny …

Under The Skin, Silvana Silveira

Theses and Dissertations

Under the Skin is an animation depicting the struggles of Laila, a fictional ten-year-old Salvadoran girl child who risks her life crossing the desert to realize her dream of finding a better life in America.

Through Laila's experiences inside the American Immigration system, Under the Skin focuses on the vicissitudes and emotions that unaccompanied migrant children (UMC) arriving in the US across the US-Mexico border encounter.

By combining 2D animation and soundscapes with hand-made textures and paintings, this art film puts a human face to the ongoing immigration crisis. The organic, almost tactile universes created by these textures enhance the …

Fascist Aesthetics From 1940 To Contemporary Times, Anna M. Gellerman

Publications and Research

Movies and literature all over the world share some common aesthetics: militarization, romanticization of death, beauty of perfection, and even purity. What most don't think about is how these tropes rose to popularity due to Nazi Germany's propaganda films. This work describes these fascist aesthetics, and uses famous publications from the 1940s until now to paint just how common these themes are.

The Monster And The Comics: Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder And America Popular Culture, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Whatever Happened To The Movie Theme Song?, Luka Vasic

Capstones

Film music is as important as it’s ever been and a good theme song can absorb you into the world of a movie. Despite this, our idea of the theme song has changed a lot, and the kinds of themes that have traditionally been memorable parts of classic cinema have now lost their importance and role in modern filmmaking.

http://lukavasic.com/capstone/

Needle And Thread, Caitlin Carvalho

Theses and Dissertations

Needle and Thread is an expanded cinema performance that involves the projection of 16mm film, archival footage, video, 35mm slide projection, soundscape and liquid light projection. It explores the fibers of connection, the thread that ties together my matriarchy, utilizing the language of cinema to piece together the memories.

Without A Scratch, Samantha Farinella

Theses and Dissertations

Without a Scratch is a short form personal essay film that explores the themes of fear, loss, love, hope and renewal as it relates to my brain tumor diagnosis spanning from the initial symptoms through my recovery.

İbne, Gey, Lubunya: A Queer Critique Of Lgbti+ Discourses In The New Cinema Of Turkey, Azmi Mert Erdem

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my thesis, I examine the intersections between liberalism, neoliberal globalism, and LGBTI+ visibility and identity politics, through films that present “openly” non-normative sexualities through cis/transgender male, female, or non-binary characters in the new cinema of Turkey. First, I survey existing scholarship on how liberal capitalism impacts the formation of LGBTI+ subjectivities and identity politics. Furthermore, I trace how non-normative sexualities, practices, and discourses evolved along with socioeconomic and political shifts in the Turkish Republic following the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, I review Turkey’s adoption of neoliberal ideologies in the 1980s and how these ideologies engage with its local, heterogenous gender …

"He Who Is Conscious Of The Bright But Keeps To The Dark": The Fame And Legacy Of Jack Kerouac, Regina Crotser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the legacy and fame of Jack Kerouac from his lifetime up until current day. Since his death, pop-culture has glorified and stereotyped Kerouac to the point where he is an easily digestible concept of counterculture and coolness. This speaks to what our society craves--celebrities boiled down into clickbait titles and single-faceted understandings. Amidst chaos, who can blame us? But when we look at the real Kerouac, who the biographies and archival research say he is, we see someone much more complex than that. And, through writing autobiographical fiction, he introduced that complexity and messiness to his own …

The Essential New York City Films, Nikola M. Durkovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Films play significant part in the creation and preservation of the New York City’s image and must be consulted by anyone interested in exploring the City’s history and character. The essential New York films tell stories about New Yorkers and how they deal with their reality of extreme diversity and competition. In my opinion, there are six essential New York City films: Shadows (1959), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Manhattan (1979), and 25th Hour (2002). My goal is to explore the essential New York films and demonstrate how their content and form reflect …