As the year 2021 crept along, it became increasingly schizophrenic. Emerging from pandemic lockdowns was euphoric—until news of the redubbed Delta variant began to dash hope and cause doubt or panic. Still, theaters announced their reopenings and cinephiles flocked, some nervously, some exuberantly. The Pacific Film Archive, profiled in this issue, set September 1 as its indoor reopening date.
Film Quarterly’s webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications continued on June 22nd with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná and Philip Scepanski (Marist College) about his new book Tragedy Plus Time: National Trauma and Television Comedy (University of Texas Press, 2021), introduced by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.
A major theme of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series is West Indian joy. West Indian immigrants’ struggles against state resistance to everyday black life. In a rather profound contrast to McQueen’s other work—in which long takes of suffering bodies draw the viewer into the inescapability of the pain experienced by his subjects—joy disrupted provides the counterpoint to bodies in pain. Striking this balance between suffering and joyous bodies is one of the reasons that McQueen’s series may be his best effort yet to move between art cinema and popular genres.
Documentary’s Radical Unreal
The Antipodal in Argentine Documentary
Women and Work in South Korean Cinema
Death in Venice at Fifty
Special Focus on “Small Axe”
Sundance Report
Remembering Walter Bernstein
On May 27th, FQ’s B. Ruby Rich moderated a discussion with FQ contributors Christian Rossipal and James Williams and filmmakers Amel Alzakout (Purple Sea, 2020) and Dagmawi Yimer (Asmat, 2015) on new forms of expression in documentaries about Europe’s refugee crisis.
Shannon Kelley pays tribute to Liza Minnelli and analyzes her unshakeable appeal.
Gina Marchetti on the various ways in which China marks Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland”.
Film Quarterly’s webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications, continued on April 2nd with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná and Professor Lúcia Nagib (University of Reading) about her groundbreaking new book, Realist Cinema as World Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), introduced by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.
When I was growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, the combination of cultural censorship by the Islamic Republic and the ban on foreign imports stunted any prospects for global cinephile development. With cinemas shuttered, VHS bootlegging thrived but was largely focused on Bollywood’s tackiest melodramas. During any rare evening broadcast of an English-language film on state television, scenes deemed “non-halal” would abruptly transition into large pixelated forms instead of being spliced out altogether.
The 2019 Hong Kong protests witnessed not only sustained physical demonstrations by locals, but also a swell of online digital media that recorded and remixed conflicts between protestors and police. By documenting key moving images that circulated throughout social media and the film festival circuit, White’s essay reorients Hong Kong film studies’ relationship with the digital.