Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Francesca Iucci: My article explores the symbolic role cigarettes take in Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai. Ever since watching the film, I was struck by the recurrence of cigarettes and smoking in scenes, which were essential to understand character dynamics. With my work, I strived to discover why and how cigarettes become relevant in characters’ interactions and obtain symbolic meaning that goes past their role as an object.
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The young characters in each film are molded to be smooth and more sturdy appearing. Mary and Max (Elliot, 2009).
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Taylor Floyd: My article explores the core aspects of how the unique elements of clay molding impact the genre of claymation. This exploration was conducted using three of Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot’s films, with the focus primarily being on the elements of mise-en-scene in each film.
Guy’s lighter is seen through Barbara’s glasses when they meet for the first time at the tennis court. Strangers on a Train (Warner Bros., 1951).
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Jack Zornado: This article is focused on Alfred Hitchcock’s use of sound and how he evolved as an experimental filmmaker, unafraid to experiment with new techniques, into an auteur that was renowned internationally for his films–and how his use of sound (informed by Soviet theories) changed through that evolution.
Film Matters is pleased to announce officially the release of the first 2022 issue, FM 13.1, edited by the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) and featuring dossiers guest edited by Mina Radovic (Goldsmiths University of London, UK) and Tom Ue (Dalhousie University, Canada).
FM 13.1 includes the following peer-reviewed feature articles:
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Hannah Vliet: “White Saviors Get Gold Trophies: Colorblind Racism and Film Award Culture” analyzes the cultural “text” of Green Book’s Best Picture acceptance speech at the 2019 Academy Awards to expose the neoliberal, colorblind mode of racism that infects the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the American film industry at large.
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The St Andrews Film Festival (SAFF), which took place 22-28 November 2021, celebrated its third year with a wide array of international films. Born in 2018 through the University’s Filmmakers’ Society, SAFF has become a charity committed to raising the profile of St Andrews and Scotland within the international film scene. Boris Bosilkov, Mina Radović, and Walid Salhab curated a fine week-long experience full of excellent films – from around the world and Scotland itself – accompanied by fascinating talks with the directors. But while the festival moving to a purely online format – due to the pandemic – allowed for an unprecedented degree of flexibility, it also limited the connection between filmmaker and audience that film festivals usually bring. Therefore, it was such a brilliant initiative by Boris to host talks on Zoom with some of the filmmakers, which allowed for lively Q&A conversations. With sixty films to choose from, this helped to draw attention to the more notable entrants. Rounding off the week with a Zoom-based ceremony with around twenty awards also helped unite the filmmakers and audience after the week’s uncharacteristic isolation, giving additional promotion for some remarkable films that would otherwise have been overlooked. The SAFF team did an excellent job crafting a platform for St Andrews, pushing the town as a hub for global cinema.
Posted inArticles|Comments Off on Building a Scottish Platform for International Filmmakers: A Review of the St Andrews Film Festival 2021. By Ash Johann
An abandoned Buy N Large newspaper, surrounded by Buy N Large dollars, the paper’s headline centers on the BNL CEO declaring global emergency. WALL-E (Walt Disney Pictures, 2008).
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Georgina Beeby: This article is about pretrauma cinema in relation to the film WALL-E. It explores E. Ann Kaplan’s proposal of pretrauma as a subgenre by explaining how pretrauma films are defined and examining what their function may be. WALL-E is closely analyzed as an example of a pretrauma film as it fulfills the definitions but showcases how the function of the subgenre is difficult to pinpoint. The article aims to show how pretrauma cinema functions to both encourage audiences to face the climate anxieties of our society, but also how these films sometimes simply act as catharsis to the audience whilst no real change is enacted.
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Promotional photo of Sharon Tate for Don’t Make Waves (MGM, 1967).
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Reid Anderson: In this article, I aim to provide context to and shed light on not only the career and star image of Sharon Tate throughout the late 1960s, but also how the events of her death have worked to overshadow and transform the public’s perception of her as a cult victim/cult star. Specifically, I argue that the reinstated images of Tate across Mansonsploitation media has functioned in categorizing the late star as (1) strictly a cult victim and, thus, (2) allowing the hyperreal representations of Tate to be unconsciously accepted as accurate depictions of the late star.
Red-tinted Stalin, from The Vow (Goskino USSR, 1946).
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Leo Nelki Göpfert: This is an article analyzing the film WR: Mysteries of the Organism by Dusan Makavejev through the lens of a totally different filmmaker’s theory. The theory is Matsumoto Toshio’s “neo-documentary,” which outlines the potential of synthesizing surrealism and documentary techniques. I argue that Makavejev has stumbled across the same technique, probably by accident, and that his film helps demonstrate the power of this filmmaking style to depict social movements.
Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Emily Nighman: This article compares Disney’s original 1998 animated film, Mulan, and the 2020 live-action remake to examine the negative and positive treatment of Chinese/American representation in each film. The article also places the films into broader discourses surrounding race and gender studies, as well as the sociopolitical contexts surrounding the films’ production and release.
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