All posts tagged: B. Ruby Rich

Be Like Water: Film, Politics, Legacy

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Bruce Lee counseled: “Be water, my friend,” alternately translated as “Be like water.” The protests that engulfed Hong Kong in early summer drew inspiration from the great martial-arts star, as reported by columnist Nicolas Atkin. He detailed how Lee’s famous saying “has become a clarion call among the young protesters” and “inspired a new form of guerilla tactics … with protesters moving in unexpected waves, rolling from one spot to another.” At the same time, as Atkin reminded readers, Jackie Chan has become persona non grata among these same young people for his pro-Beijing politics, which have tarnished his reputation.

Inspiration, Lost and Found

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Film Quarterly can hopefully, with your help, contribute to the imperative to provoke, build, and revitalize the field of film and media studies beyond the acceptable and parochial, to push it to aim higher and think more creatively. Surely this is a time that demands not retreat, but the imagination to push forward and unsettle old assumptions. Where are the films and television and web series that can do that? FQ will keep looking, stay on the prowl, keep alert, and continue to bring reports and salutations, analyses and revelations, back to its readers.

Status Updates: Travel through Manifestations, Memories, Manifestos

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News flash: recently, my faith in the power of film was restored. Paradoxically, this lift of spirits was occasioned by witnessing film’s power in cultures where it cannot be taken for granted, where threats and constraints make access fraught or impossible, where public assembly is more difficult yet ever more desirable than back home in the United States. As much as I love the joys and ease of streaming, the surprise of online discoveries, and the thrill of privilege when a DVD or Blu-ray lands unbidden in the mailbox, I am still a sucker for the theatrical experience and the transformative power of people assembling, all together in a hall, to share a screen.

In Search of Optimism

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After too many editorials penned in the shadow of the 2016 election, all suffused with a mix of nostalgia and dread, perhaps it’s time to change the lens. As a grumpy daughter, I used to complain that my anxious mother could always find the cloud around any silver lining. Consider this editorial, then, an attempt to break with such attitudes and appreciate the silver wherever it may be found. And since dire times can inspire great writing, Film Quarterly should have ample cause for celebration in future issues, too, as the news out of Washington DC shows no sign of turning any less dire—and, in fact, worsened with the Senate hearings in the fall and the confirmation of a certain Supreme Court justice (no, I will not include his name) in defiance of women’s testimonies and an unjust process grounded in brutalism and misogyny. The state of the country, the state of government, the state of cinema: these are not unrelated entities.

A Deer in the Headlights

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First things first: this issue marks the arrival of Rebecca Prime as Associate Editor of Film Quarterly. Rebecca first published a book review in FQ back in 2006 and also had one in the last issue, with articles in other journals in the interim. Rebecca is a film historian, editor of Cinematic Homecomings: Exile and Return in Transnational Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2014), and author of Hollywood Exiles in Europe: The Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2014).