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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Film and Media Studies
Frenetic Journey Toward Muddledness: An Experimental Short Film, Fernando Vieira
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
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 …
Disrupting Paradise: A Pan-Caribbean Film Series, Dessane L. Cassell
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 …
İbne, Gey, Lubunya: A Queer Critique Of Lgbti+ Discourses In The New Cinema Of Turkey, Azmi Mert Erdem
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 …
The Essential New York City Films, Nikola M. Durkovic
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 …
Impressive Failures: Mavericks Of Film Authorship And The Impossibility Of Success In Hollywood, Tom S. Davies
Impressive Failures: Mavericks Of Film Authorship And The Impossibility Of Success In Hollywood, Tom S. Davies
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation directly challenges the critical and commercial primacy of success attached to Hollywood films and their filmmakers, especially when one argues for or against their quality and/or importance within cinematic history. Through a process of shifting and multiplying perspectives within a broader narrative that is critical of what separates success and failure, certain films and filmmakers that were judged as failures or disappointments under impossible prerequisites of creating a successful film––commercially, aesthetically, or both–– are, instead, reconsidered as constructive counterpoints to the expectations of the Hollywood economic field of production as well as to the inevitable disappointment of the …
Smita Patil: Fiercely Feminine, Lakshmi Ramanathan
Smita Patil: Fiercely Feminine, Lakshmi Ramanathan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Smita Patil is an Indian actress who worked in films for a twelve year period between 1974 and 1986, during which time she established herself as one of the powerhouses of the Parallel Cinema movement in the country. She was discovered by none other than Shyam Benegal, a pioneering film-maker himself. She started with a supporting role in Nishant, and never looked back, growing into her own from one remarkable performance to the next. She quickly became the go-to actress for most of the film-makers working in Parallel Cinema at the time. Patil was soon critically acclaimed both within …
The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel
The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) is one of Egyptian cinema’s most prominent leading actors, with work spanning three decades of critical films that informed a generation’s visual register of masculinity. However, the beginnings of his career were marked by public skepticism around his place as a leading actor due to him being “too dark” and “too poor”; as his career continued to flourish, those very markings of racing and classing Zaki because a foundation for increasingly stamping his public image with the “authenticity” of an Egyptian citizen. At a particularly neoliberal moment in the Egyptian economy, that of the early 80s, new …
Dancing Silhouettes: Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures Of Prince Achmed: A Critical Study, Maria N. Rhodes
Dancing Silhouettes: Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures Of Prince Achmed: A Critical Study, Maria N. Rhodes
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed has been relegated to a curiosity in film history textbooks for some time. Known as the first surviving feature length animated film, it is talked about but rarely seen. However, it is more than just a point in a film history timeline. The film is a beautiful piece of art that engages with the time period in which it was made in a critical and political way. The subject matter, silhouettes as animation, the political atmosphere of Weimar Republic Era Berlin and the role of the spectator are all explored in this thesis …
Actuality Or Mystifying Spectacle? War In Cinema And Electronic Gaming, Christopher Robert Workoff
Actuality Or Mystifying Spectacle? War In Cinema And Electronic Gaming, Christopher Robert Workoff
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This essay, using as a jump-off point François Truffaut's view that it is impossible to make a true anti-war film, examines the degree to which certain Hollywood films about war treat the subject as a spectacle for the audience. With the aid of critical articles discussing the war film's presentation from the standpoint of narrative and aesthetic, three films are examined for their ability (or lack thereof) to curtail the tendency of war as entertainment. Furthermore, with the increasing prominence of the videogame as a narrative medium, as well as the prevalence of game narratives dealing with war, the question …
Manifestation Of Humanity And Humanism In Czechoslovak Cinema 1949-1953, Selma Rockova
Manifestation Of Humanity And Humanism In Czechoslovak Cinema 1949-1953, Selma Rockova
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The period 1949-1953 was one of the most inhuman times in Czechoslovak history. Almost immediately after the Communists violently took over the country in 1948, the Communist party started a campaign of terror in order to spread fear. It made the society weak and obedient. The terror never disappeared completely but it lost its enormous intensity after Stalin's death in 1953. The end of 1940s and beginning of 1950s was a time of political trials with the party insiders. The false accusations and executions of the innocent people were used to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the power and loyalty …
Comparing Hitler And Stalin: Certain Cultural Considerations, Phillip W. Weiss
Comparing Hitler And Stalin: Certain Cultural Considerations, Phillip W. Weiss
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
There is a great temptation to compare the Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. This is true for two reasons: first, the careers of both men converged at the same point in history, thus doubling the impact both made and second, because the names Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin have become metaphors for ideologies and crimes that today are reviled. The question then arises: who was worse, Hitler or Stalin? This project shows that there is no viable, credible, definitive, or final answer to this question, and that prevailing attitudes about Hitler and Stalin have become so ingrained in contemporary society …