BY DAN GOLDING “Every generation has a legend.” I have seen these words twice in my lifetime. The first time, I was twelve years old and downloading the first teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace on a 56k dial-up modem in rural Australia. These were the early days of the … More The legacy and nostalgia of the Star Wars franchise
BY TRACE REDDELLUniversity of Denver One of the challenges I faced while researching and writing The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film concerned the terminology of the “new” and the role of “futurity.” Early drafts of the project emphasized thematic clusters that brought together films from very different … More Sonic Science Fiction: Programming the Thought Synthesizer
BY LUKA ARSENJUKUniversity of Maryland, College Park “It certainly seems that all art forms in their extreme manifestations, i.e. where they attempt to expand the limits of their potential and their material, invariably end up by trying to appropriate the rudiments of the art of the future: the art of cinema.” In Sergei Eisenstein’s conception, … More Sergei Eisenstein and the Ecstasies of the Book.
BY NICHOLAS DE VILLIERS I have just returned from a lovely experience filming an interview segment for Juliana Piccillo’s documentary Whores on Film (forthcoming 2018), which she has conceived as The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995) for sex workers: primarily sex workers discussing tropes in representations of sex workers in Hollywood movies, … More Sexlexia: Reading Sex Work and Genre
The French poster for the 2014 film Snowpiercer. Global science fiction cinemaand its common depiction of post-apocalyptic scenarios is increasingly resonatingwith current world events. BY JENNIFER FEELEY AND SARAH ANN WELLS Last week, Beijing resembled an apocalyptic scene from a science fiction film. Shrouded in thick smog, China’s capital city came to a standstill. For … More On global science fiction cinema and environmental catastrophe.
While filming Barclay’s Tangata Whenua television series in 1972, cameramanKeith Hawke has the camera about 10 meters from the people on the porch,leaving them as free as possible from the paraphernalia of filmmaking.Image: Pacific Films. BY ANGELA MOEWAKA BARNESMāori media researcher It has been more than 25 years since the acclaimed Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay’s … More Remembering the struggles and achievements of Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay.
BY JOHN Ó MAOILEARCAProfessor of film studies at Kingston University, London Equality and inequality are fast becoming commonplace themes, given our straitened times and recent efforts to uncover not only the vast social inequities around us but also the origins of such inequality. One could wax on about the unequal distribution of monetary wealth, or … More Thinking In Equality: On Laruelle’s Democracy of Thought
Beyoncé (feat. Jay-Z) “Drunk in Love” Unofficial Emoji Video from JESSE HILL on Vimeo. BY JEFF SCHEIBLEAssistant professor of cinema studies at Purchase College, State University of New York Last year, Austin-based video producer Jesse Hill made a video to impress his girlfriend for Beyoncé and Jay Z’s “Drunk in Love” that transcribes the entire … More What do ellipses do for us?
BY TONY PEAKEBiographer of Derek Jarman On the 19th of February, it will have been 20 years since Derek Jarman died, at age 52, of HIV-related causes. To mark the occasion, a range of activities have been planned in the UK, kicking off with Derek Jarman: Pandemonium, an exhibition at King’s College, London, where Jarman … More ‘Pandemonium’ and the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s passing
A Q&A with Benn Schulberg, who is the son of Budd Schulberg, author of The Disenchanted, which was reissued in a University of Minnesota Press edition in September 2012. The moving, controversial novel captured both the dazzling spirit and the bitter disenchantment of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. It centers around an ill-fated screenplay writing … More The Disenchanted: On Budd Schulberg’s Hollywood writing assignment with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
