Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Tomb Of The Unknown Marxist, Anna Ozbek

Theses and Dissertations

Tomb of the Unknown Marxist tracks a journey of uncovering an individual’s past as a leftist revolutionary in late 1970s Turkey. In doing so, the project explores the political movements of that turbulent period and asks what remains of the revolution in the revolutionary once these moments are well in the past.

Shared Resources (Contractual Obligations), Jordan Lord

Theses and Dissertations

Shared Resources (Contractual Obligations) is a feature-length documentary that seeks to understand how various kinds of debt––emotional, historical, moral, social and financial––are entangled in my family. After my dad was fired from his job as a debt collector, my parents declared Chapter 13 bankruptcy––a 5-year debt repayment plan. The film follows my parents over the course of their bankruptcy, joining observational footage of their day-to-day lives with essayistic voiceover narration, my parents’ reactions to an early edit of the film, my family members’ and my own audio descriptions of what is visible in the film, and open captions of the …

“Where Are We Now?” The Image Construction Of Arabs And Muslims In Bodyguard, Safa K. Khairy

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decade Arab and Muslim representations in the media have been either negative or overly simplified as a way to avoid criticism from watchdog groups. Arab and Muslim culture is viewed by the mainstream Western perspective as different, and inferior. According to Edward Said this divide and hierarchy between Eastern and Western comes through the process of Othering and is at the heart of Orientalism. This thesis investigates how Arabs and Muslims are Othered through a case study of the successful BBC television series Bodyguard.

Bodyguard presents the British government and police force attempting to stop various terrorist …

Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, And Paradox In Subaltern Labor Photography, Mahnure Janis

Theses and Dissertations

Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, and Paradox in Subaltern Labor Photography is an expanded cinema performance examining 'cheap' labor in the fast fashion industry through a self-reflexive diasporic lens. The images and narration explores the garment factories in Bangladesh and contains ‘a photographer’s cognitive meta-data’, including ethical dilemmas while taking the images.

Between Time, Evan Remick

Theses and Dissertations

Between Time is an intimate conversation between transgender artists on their own terms. The film is a ritual in entering the past and writing the future from the present moment. Conversations weave through natural landscapes and present as both intensely personal and connected to a greater story about the vastness of trans experience.

Under The Paving Stones, The Beach, Amanda L. Katz

Theses and Dissertations

Under the paving stones, the beach investigates the human labor that goes into sustaining life inside of a luxury condominium on Brooklyn’s newly redeveloped East River waterfront. The rhythms of labor and leisure occasionally synchronize as we sense the physical, psychological and environmental limits of our current way of life.

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.

Changemaker, Evgenia Kovda

Theses and Dissertations

Changemaker is a 20-minute narrative short film about a film student (played by me) who sets out to make a documentary about the process of making a documentary feature film.

Game On, Theresa Loong

Theses and Dissertations

Game On is a 25-minute documentary about game designer Brenda Romero, a successful woman in a male-dominated industry. Brenda, whose career spans over thirty-five pioneering years, has contributed to almost fifty game titles, developing innovative video and board games. How is her life a game space?

Seat 20d, Jill A. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

When artist Suse Lowenstein’s son Alex was murdered in the 1988 bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, to combat her grief, she spent 15 years creating 75 life-sized sculptures of mothers’ of the victims naked and posed in mourning. Now she needs to find them a home.

Fast Glass: Modernity, Technology, And The Cinematic Lens, Allain Daigle

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation tells a cultural history of how lenses became cinema lenses. While lenses are essential for film production, we know very little about the early history of cinema lenses. Rather than just focusing on which lenses were used on certain movies, I historicize how lens production became an industry. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, lens production shifted from an artisanal craft to a commercial industry. By looking at how companies created lenses for film production and projection, I expand early film history to account for the creative work of opticians, engineers, advertisers, and distributors. In more specifically focusing …

Behind Closet Doors: Horror And Dislocation In The Queer Closet, Corey C. Allen

Theses and Dissertations

“Behind Closet Doors: Horror and Dislocation in the Queer Closet,” is composed of a collection of sculptures, videos, and sound works that are directly associated with themes of horror and anxiety derived from the precarious space of the queer closet as detailed in this thesis of the same name.

(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner

Theses and Dissertations

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.

The Mountains At The End Of The World: Subcultural Appropriations Of Appalachia And The Hillbilly Image, 1990-2010, Paul L. Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

There is an aversion within the field of Appalachian Studies to addressing the cultural formulations of the Appalachian/hillbilly/mountaineer as an icon of aggressive resistance. The aversion is understandable, as for far too long images of the irrationally and savagely violent mountaineer were integral to the most gross popular culture stereotypes of Appalachia. Media consumers often take pleasure or comfort in these images, which usually occur in a reactionary context with the hillbilly as either a type of nationally necessary savage OR as an unregenerate barbarian against whom a national civilization will triumph and benefit by the struggle.

I bookend my …

The Puppets Look Like Flowers At Last, Evie Metz

Theses and Dissertations

The urge to uncover aspects of human condition permeates my work, from the fundamental curiosity of a child tearing apart their doll to uncover what lies within to continuing a quest in uncovering basic human urges through my puppet animated dramas and tragedies. There is a controversial line between the childlike and the adult-like that can be ambiguous, and at some times more discernible while other times less. I create handcrafted stop-frame puppet animations that explore self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment, shame, and envy within unpredictable life scenarios. These are animations about inner life, attempting to resolve conflicting elements of …

Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys

Theses and Dissertations

I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

Parallel Narrative: Short-Video Social Media Platforms’ Influences On Contemporary Narrative, Ruiqi Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Through the study of Kwai, a popular short-video social media platform in China, this thesis investigates the social issues, media class divides and aesthetics specific to Kwai culture. It further proposes a strategy of artistic practice - parallel narrative - an experiment in video art production and editing techniques that explores new possibilities of narrative in video art. Integrating theoretical research on Post-Internet art and object-oriented ontology, this thesis reveals people’s ability to digest multisource information and shows how mobile technologies and open-source materials contribute to the formation of parallel narratives.

Out Of The Margins: Evolving Narrative Representation Of Women In Video Games, Rowan Lucas

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines narrative representation of female characters in video games and how game narratives and representations contribute to socio-cultural discourse. First, this thesis explores and defines the cultural background for female representation in video games. It then defines video games as a type of text and describes the features that are unique to games, such as the use of avatars, and what impacts these features have on game narratives. The thesis attempts to establish evidence of an evolutionary arc of comprehensive female representation in video games by first exploring historical female narrative tropes, and then comparing them to narrative …