Film Quarterly’s original webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications continued on July 6th with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná (Boston University) and Lindsey Green-Simms (American University) about her new book, Queer African Cinemas (Duke University Press, 2022). Moderated by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.
Join Film Quarterly on July 6th for a conversation between Page Views Live editor Bruno Guaraná (Boston University) and Lindsey B. Green-Simms (American University) about her new book, Queer African Cinemas (Duke University Press, 2022). Moderated by B. Ruby Rich.
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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.
You may have seen Nicole Kidman last September, in a commercial for AMC theaters, stepping into an empty movie theater. “We come to this place for magic,” she says in voice-over, inviting patrons back into movie theaters after the hiatus forced by the worldwide spread of COVID-19. Pitching a return to normalcy while also emphasizing the theater’s cleanliness, safety, and, yes, magic, the commercial is also symptomatic of a delicate moment for movie exhibition.
Film Quarterly’s webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications continued on September 24th with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná (Boston University) and Rashna Wadia Richards (Rhodes College) about her new book, Cinematic TV: Serial Drama Goes to the Movies (Oxford University Press, 2021), introduced by FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich.
Much has been said about serial dramas such as The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), The Wire (HBO, 2002–8), Mad Men (AMC, 2007–15), and Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–13) bringing about a new golden age of television. A lot of these discussions, however, have centered on the idea that quality television has become more cinematic than ever—a modifier that implies a superiority of cinema and a teleological linearity toward a particular aesthetic. Notwithstanding the overuse of the term and its implications, there is no consensus about what exactly “cinematic” means in these contexts.
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.
Season 8 of Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) included an episode in which Monica and Chandler, en route to their honeymoon, are detained by TSA agents after Chandler mocks a TSA sign forbidding jokes about bombs. By the time the episode aired on October 11, 2001, however, the scene had been excised, its humor nullified in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The scene’s later resurrection as bonus material for a DVD box set—and, inevitably, on video and social-media platforms—reflects the sort of time-sensitive relationship between comedy and context that Philip Scepanski explores in Tragedy Plus Time: National Trauma and Television Comedy.
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.