Film Matters Magazine

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Mohsina Shafqat Ali: Yes, the picture is HAL’s eye. However, the red eye not only resembles HAL’s eye, but also a demon’s eye. Is the computer a demon in this age? How and why did humans let it control us so much? These are the questions that are the foundation of my article, especially for 2001,when HAL has control over the whole ship. But also, for Blade Runner, when Deckard uses and misuses the computers.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Lubna Umar: My article explores Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s films, Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat, to show how aesthetics in Bollywood films play a major role in “re-Orientalizing” India. The article uses postcolonial theory to critically analyze how the politics of aesthetics positions societal groups in a strict hierarchy, based on morality and nationalism. While watching these films, I recognized the recurring theme of demonizing and otherizing Muslim characters, and upon initial research, I found out that more film scholars discovered the same. I felt the need to explore this idea even further and showcase how it affects the Muslim spectator.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Sarah Mae Fleming: In this article, I analyze Jordan Peele’s Get Out in terms of both the horror genre and Hollywood conventions. My essay argues that the film subverts both generic conventions specific to horror and broader cinematic traditions to create a film that expresses a Black fear and anxiety toward whiteness, in direct conflict to Hollywood’s long history of portraying a white fear of Blackness.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Sarah Kazuko Chow: My article examines the life of Anna May Wong, a Chinese American actress who rose to fame in the 1920s, and her complicated relationship with her racial identity. During the silent film era, Wong was the only prominent Asian American actress, and one of the few women of color to find leading roles in Hollywood. Through looking at Wong’s dealings with the press, I argue that she traversed between two contradicting public personas, the exotic foreigner and the loyal American, to connect with both Asian and white audiences. While she belonged to both the East and the West in the eyes of audiences, Wong’s words reveal that she felt like an outsider in both. The struggles she faced in overcoming racist perceptions of Asian Americans and navigating between two identities that didn’t fully represent her place in society, are challenges that many actors still face today. Ultimately, the movement for greater Asian American representation in cinema began with Wong.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Roman Accardi: My article, “British Documentary Cinema, Growing Up,” combines a close analysis of Michael Apted’s Up documentary series with a history of British documentary cinema. The Up series began in 1963, when a team of researchers interviewed fourteen British schoolchildren, then seven years old. That team has returned every seven years thereafter to interview those same children. The children are now sixty-three. I contend that the early Up films find their roots in several movements in British social realism, and explore how the goal of the series shifts over the years from predominantly political to more artistic and humanist.