Directed by two members of family of filmmakers known as the Ramsay Brothers, pioneers of Indian horror cinema, the 1988 film Veerana (Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay) centers on the figure of the chudail, or witch, as she haunts the surroundings of a mansion. She seduces men while in womanly form, only to later reveal her horrific nature.
Long before provisionally becoming the most important film market in the world, much of China’s territory lacked the infrastructure necessary to develop a sustainable film-exhibition network. Despite the lack of electricity in rural areas in the mid–twentieth century, the newly established socialist state spared no effort in bringing cinema to even the most remote of its villages.
The trailer for Meghan O’Hara and Mike Attie’s In Country (2014) opens with archival footage of the Vietnam War accompanied by a voice-over whose source is quickly revealed to be that of a man dressed in fatigues. The contrast between the grainy look of the archival footage and the crisp audio of the interview signals a dual temporality that is central to the film’s subject matter: an annual reenactment of the Vietnam War in the Oregon woods.
The first film directed by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen opens with a mime staging of the German Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist’s tragedy Penthesilea. The nearly bare stage is shot by a fixed camera in an uninterrupted take that lasts over fifteen minutes, culminating in the suicide of Penthesilea, the Amazon warrior-queen, immediately after she kills her lover, Achilles.
Looking back at my television diet of the past twenty years or so, I can point to many moments of discomfort. They have come up frequently in some series, more fleetingly in others. Often, though, these moments seemed to test the range and limits of my affective responses.
Film Quarterly’s original webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications continued on March 6th with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná (Boston University) and Jean Ma (Stanford University) about her new book, At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators (University of California Press, 2022). Moderated by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.
Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná interviews Jean Ma about her new book At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators.
Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná discusses TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life with author Lynn Spigel.
The first romantic sequence in Rafiki, by the Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu, opens with a close-up of a pair of sneaker-clad feet on a skateboard, its wheels thumping along the asphalt. The feet belong to the teenage Makena, who arrives at her friend Ziki’s apartment building to take her out around town for the day. After Ziki’s mother answers the door, an elliptical cut thrusts the viewer into a montage sequence in which the two teenage girls sit close together on a tuk-tuk ride around the streets of Nairobi.
Film Quarterly’s webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications continued on April 22nd with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná (Boston University) and Ross Melnick (University of California Santa Barbara) about his new book Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022), introduced by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.