The Monkey Puzzle shorts block of Cucalorus features experimental shorts existing in the limbo between dream and nightmare. These shorts use surreal imagery to convey indescribable parts of the human experience or fears we don’t dare speak of. This review covers the first five short films in the Monkey Puzzle block in the order they were aired at Cucalorus 2023.
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“You’re really happy driving this taxi? Is that your whole goal in life?”
So asks Victoria, a Beverley Hills casting agent who has just offered her cab driver an acting role. Filmed with velveteen richness as dusk bleeds into night, the opening chapter of Jim Jarmusch’s five-vignette Night on Earth (1991) audaciously questions the American Dream and the constituents of success. “Are you saying you don’t want to be a movie star?” Victoria asks in disbelief as Corky, the driver, declines. “I want to be a mechanic,” she retorts, before driving away from Beverley Hills to her next pick-up.
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Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Vanessa Zarm: My article centers around Eduardo W. Roy Jr’s 2016 Filipino film Ordinary People, which explores the central issue of street children and baby-snatching in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Through a stylistic examination of the film, namely the use of surveillance footage and its long takes, I particularly highlight many thematic questions throughout the article. These include the prejudice and media exploitation of street children, the vulnerability and abuse experienced amongst female adolescents, and the ethical dilemma of the baby’s separation from their impoverished environment.
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Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Jade Courchesne: This article discusses the Australian television drama, Cleverman, a show that blends together science fiction, conventions of the superhero genre and influences from Indigenous storytelling to yield an honest critique of modern Australian politics. Tackling Australia’s documented history of Indigenous maltreatment while weaving in elements of the Dreaming, the essay dissects how Cleverman depicts the legacy of intercultural and intergenerational trauma inflicted upon Indigenous populations, provoking a discourse on how government initiatives continue to have serious, negative repercussions on marginalized communities.
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Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Saveria Amicucci: I’m a big fan of Zacharias Kunuk, and my article began as my attempt to articulate what drew me to his films. I think it’s fascinating how his film style is so tied to his culture, how he’s essentially playing with form to express Inuit culture in a way that defies mainstream representation.
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FM 13.2, jointly edited by Chapman University and the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), is officially out. Ably introduced by Sophia Bain, “Generation Anxiety: Preface,” FM 13.2 includes the following feature articles, on the theme of “Generation Anxiety,” peer reviewed by Chapman:
And these features peer reviewed by UNCW:
These Chapman featurettes:
This UNCW featurette:
The following book reviews:
A healthy dose of film reviews:
And, finally, these DVD/Blu-ray reviews:
For more information about this issue, please visit:
https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/fm/13/2
Are you an undergraduate author who wants to be published in Film Matters? Then we want to work with you! Please check out all the different ways you can publish with us.
Here is wishing you a happy October!
Film Matters is actively seeking book and film/DVD/Blu-ray reviews by current undergraduate students for future print issues.
Here is our list of available books:
We also have the following Blu-ray(s) from Criterion (before requesting a Blu-ray, please make sure you can play region A/1 media via your technology):
Students interested in this opportunity should send a brief statement of interest (taking care to indicate any relevant qualifications for reviewing a specific title, like past course work, etc.) to:
futurefilmscholars AT gmail.com
It definitely helps to provide some backup selections in your statement, in the event that your first-choice request has already been claimed by someone else.
Students who are selected for this opportunity will receive a review copy of the item, which they can keep with our (and the distributor’s) compliments in exchange for the written review. Build your CV with us!
During my senior year of undergrad, I was assigned to peer review papers for a film studies class I was taking. Usually, this process is pretty uneventful, with the biggest offense typically amounting to a couple of comma splices and a sentence fragment here or there. This time, however, I was baffled by what I read. Around halfway through the text, the author vividly described a violent rape scene while paradoxically suggesting the rapist’s actions were justified. Reading the paper from start to finish made me wildly uncomfortable, but what turned my stomach even more was the barely occupied bibliography with only a few sources– all written by white men. At this discovery, I became defeated and angry. It was hard to imagine that someone could detail a topic so horrific and intrusive without even considering a female perspective.
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Alfred Hitchcock has long been considered the “master of suspense,” most commonly because of how he used cinematography to instill fear in the audience. Yet, Hitchcock made distinct use of other elements of filmmaking along with visuals to induce horror. Together with composer Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock crafted a visceral atmosphere for his thriller Psycho (1960). In order to captivate audiences and ensure their fright, Hitchcock and Herrmann intertwined sound and image to achieve the desired effect. Along with sound and the lack thereof, an analysis of Affect Theory and Dr. Paul Ekman’s six basic emotions is useful when examining the emotional impact of the famed shower scene. Herrmann claimed he believes music and film are inseparable, which is evident in Psycho’s storytelling through sound (Sullivan 26). In Psycho, Hitchcock integrates sound and scoring into the film as part of its visual world; the space he creates becomes all-encompassing through his conjoining sound, music, and visuals to amplify and escalate suspense.
Continue readingFilm Matters is pleased to announce our open call for papers from current undergraduates, authors who have been invited to revise and resubmit previous submissions (including authors who did not make it past our prescreening for a previous call), and recently graduated undergraduates for consideration in issue 16.1 (2025).
The deadline is March 1, 2024.
Please note, starting with this call, Film Matters is now requiring a contributor intake form with submissions. Please download the form (DOCX) here:
As a reminder, Film Matters is now using MLA 9th edition style, although we will still accept MLA 8th edition formatting — so please prepare your submissions accordingly. Purdue OWL’s MLA Formatting and Style Guide is an excellent resource to consult for help with this.
For more information about this call for papers, please see the official document (PDF):
Submissions should include the mandatory contributor intake form, which collects author and essay metadata, as well as your essay; all other identifying information should be removed from the body of the text and the headers/footers in order to aid the blind peer review process.
Submissions and questions should be directed to:
Please note that Film Matters does not accept submissions that are currently under review by other journals or magazines.
Submit your film- and media-related research papers today! We look forward to receiving and reviewing your work!
