Cinematic Experience Research Articles

Counting Kisses at the Movies: The Screen Kiss and the Cinematic Experience in Egypt

AbstractIn this article, I use the 1969 Egyptian film Abi fawq al-Shagara and the motif of the kiss as a launch pad to explore broader cinematic experiences and cultures in 1960s Egypt and beyond. I argue that the deployment and debates around screen kisses not only represented wider conflicting and shifting impulses around questions of audience tastes, sexuality, and the role of the cinema, but became central motifs through which audiences experienced the movies. Inspired by a historical approach to the study of cinema, one in which media texts and audiences are central, this article shifts the gaze away from the screen to consider the public lens through which films were appreciated, the broader global media landscape in which they existed, and the tensions between audiences and critics. I bring popular magazines, audience reactions and memories, and wider international cultural trends into the frames of analysis not only to nuance our understanding of Egyptian cinematic cultures, but to shed light on an often-neglected component of Egyptian history of the 1960s; the fun, the pleasures, and the anxieties of a quickly changing cultural and leisure landscape, and the wider cultural mood that helped shape a generation's experiences of the cinema.

The Mighty Bite by Nathan Hale (review)

Reviewed by: The Mighty Bite by Nathan Hale Ally Byerly Hale, Nathan The Mighty Bite; written and illus. by Nathan Hale. Amulet/Abrams, 2023 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781419765537 $14.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781647008758 $13.49 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 1-4 Trilobite (an ancient arthropod which falls between a horseshoe crab and a rolypoly) lives happily and humbly on the Island of Losta Founda, a land populated by prehistoric and mythic creatures, until a vivid dream ignites his hunger for fame and fortune. Unfortunately, Trilobite and his companion, Amber the Ambulocetus (an amphibious whale that resembles a crocodile), don't quite know how they'll go about finding fame (an attempt at singing goes terribly awry) until they encounter Tiffany Timber, a paleo-newscaster who wields a taser and a tablet in her hunt for the latest scoop. Trilobite and Amber are quickly drawn into the absurdities of Timber's newscaster world, stumbling from one episodic misadventure to the next and facing everything from a claymation smear campaign to an interview with a [End Page 260] sea cucumber in their quest for fame, fortune, and journalistic integrity. The story's premise is as creative as it is absurd, and the farcical volume is structured like a series of daily strips, replete with silly gags and wry one-liners. Hale's dynamic layouts guide the eye to create a quick, accessible read, and perspective and transitions are skillfully used to produce an immersive, cinematic experience that blurs the boundaries between space, time, and genre. Hand-drawn, heavily cross-hatched illustrations brilliantly juxtapose with the modern video interface of the fame-hungry protagonists without privileging one medium over the other. Instead, the narrative plays on the commonalities between the sequential art forms—from the framing to the timing to the editing, and ultimately pays homage to the timeless craft of storytelling. This will be an absolute treat for any reader who likes their natural history with a side of whimsy. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Slaughterhouse (Macello)

<i>Slaughterhouse</i> (Macello)

ROBERTA AT THE CAPITOL AND ROXY: FASHION, CINEMA, AND MODERNITY IN INTERWAR BUCHAREST

This paper follows the distribution, reception, and influence of Hollywood productions, using the particular case of the movie Roberta, starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers. It follows all stages from preparation, production, dissemination, and critique, and how they were seen from and reacted to in interwar Bucharest. The timeline focuses on the mid-1930s and two-three years before and after. Owing to the difficulties experienced by cinema studios on both sides of the Atlantic and the impending financial crisis in Hollywood, the movie had to rely on the popular Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers pair. Because of this change, the original story was modified to fit the two dancing stars, promising more of a Fred and Ginger extravaganza than a typical romantic musical. Because Roberta did not follow the Fred and Ginger formula, it was soon overtaken by the pair’s largest success, Top Hat, released roughly a year later and has remained largely ignored. The movie was first shown in Bucharest seven months after its initial release in March 1935, at the cinemas Capitol and Roxy, then American, and, finally, Orfeu, until early 1937. Movie reviews and reactions abounded in the general and specialized press, especially in 1936. Beyond its perceptible flaws in plot coherence and expected cinematic experience, Roberta can now be viewed as the closest snapshot into mid-1930s realities, from the level of the story, its modifications from the original informed by financial and censorship reasonings, the necessary promotional language and actions, and its reception, focusing on interwar Bucharest. It can provide valuable social, cultural, aesthetic, and even political clues about the United States, Hollywood in particular, and 1930s Bucharest in its modernity, cosmopolitanism, or fashion-consuming aspects.

Новации в поэтике и эстетике советского кино во второй половине ХХ века

This work is the part of a big project on film philosophy – one of the directions of film theory. In the very beginning of this research it’s necessary to point out that G. Deleuze’s book became the starting point. G. Deleuze proclaimed the turn that had taken place in the middle of the last century in aesthetics, poetics and, of course, in cinema. This turn identified the subsequent periods in film practice. Basing on the ideas of the West philosopher the author of this article is aimed at the consideration of the experience of national cinema. In particular the late soviet and post-soviet period of the national cinema development covering the last three decades of the XX century will be in the focus of this research paper. It is substantiated that despite the circumstances of the specific political situation of that period the national cinema was not isolated from the world cinema process.

Child spectators: towards a phenomenological perspective on the imaginary transformations of reality

ABSTRACT This paper establishes the motif of ‘child spectators’ within the self-reflexive tradition of modern European cinema since the 1940s and within discourses on the affinity of childhood and cinema, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a close reading of The spirit of the beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) and Jacquot de Nantes (Agnès Varda, 1991) that deals with the impact of the cinema experience on a child’s life, I analyze how this motif stages spectatorship, cinephilia, and filmmaking. First, I show how these films reflect on the impact of film experience and the process of film education as based on the existential being described by phenomenology. Second, I argue that this motif implies specific aesthetic strategies that are often linked to childhood and cinema. The child spectator calls for the understanding of childhood as a film aesthetical category and invites us to engage in a distinctive form of spectatorship. If the children in these films represent and address the phenomenological dimension of film experience, they also invite us, third, to reconsider aspects rarely addressed by phenomenology, especially the integration of imagination and materiality in film experience, and the interdependence of film experience and education.

Gone with the sound: critical perspectives on studying imaginability of American cinematic experience in the “sound” era, 1927-1935

This article explores the human-technology relationship during the transition from silent films to sound films in American history and analyzes how this specific technology has influenced film audiences’ experiences. The author revisits the importance of human-centered technology and uses the term “imaginability” to describe the likelihood for both spontaneous bodily responses and technologically cultivated thinking activities inspired by cinematic engagement. The article challenges the discourse of technology as progress while focusing on the audiences’ experience during their cinematic engagement. The author's hypothesis is that sound film provides a linear channel of synchronization and hence produces restrictions on the audience’s imagination by limiting their temporal and spatial sensibilities. This synchronized sound technology offers a streamlined audiovisual reality through matching sounds and images in real-time, leading to a shortened processing of images, sounds, and their interconnections. The transitions between filmmaking and cinematic presenting have also revolutionized theater design, leading to the liminality that describes the state of transitioning under this circumstance led by sound technology, which generates metrics, measuring how fast and how thoroughly technology conquers an outdated society by enforcing innovations. The article focuses on the interplay between the spectatorship that addresses the condition of viewing films and the sound consciousness led by the synchronized sound system as applied to filmmaking. The analysis of imaginability becomes measurable, descriptive, and referential. The author suggests that the preservation and scrutiny of silent films are urgent and necessary to recognize the values of silent film production and the audience’s cinematic experience during the silent film era.

Spotlight: Kam Copeland

Spotlight:Kam Copeland TreaAndrea M. Russworm Kam Copeland is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California and Dissertation Fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. Currently, he is writing his dissertation, "Muhammad Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema in the US," a representational history of Black American Muslims in cinema. This project also explores how Black Muslims have developed alternative gazes and liberatory cinematic practices to resist dominant framings of Muslimness in US media. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Kam Copeland. Photograph courtesy of Kam Copeland. TreaAndrea M. Russworm: What are some of the consistent stories and insights among texts that are central to your research on media representations of US Black American Muslims? Kam Copeland: The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on The Hate That Hate Produced (WNTA-TV, 1959), a television documentary by Louis Lomax and Mike Wallace about the growth of Black Nationalism that aired in New York. With a primary emphasis on the Nation of Islam (NOI)—which the broadcast refers to as "the Black Muslims"—The Hate That Hate Produced [End Page 8] represents Black Muslimness as theologically inferior and politically menacing to white Western society. I argue that this broadcast produced the trope of the Black Muslim fanatic—a combination of the cinematic caricatures of the Black brute and the Muslim terrorist—via the white hegemonic gaze. Nevertheless, that trope was rejected by a Black radical gaze that reimagined revolutionaries who critiqued white supremacy and US empire (such as Malcolm X) as Third World heroes. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, new Black public affairs television programs—such as Black Journal (NET/PBS, 1968–1977), Soul! (WNDT, 1968–1973), and Say Brother (WGBH, 1968–1997)—adopted the latter approach to reject the hegemonic gaze's representation of Black Muslimness. The image of the fanatic and the Third World hero is a dichotomy that I trace from the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced to contemporary representations. Russworm: I know your work also argues for considering media through the rubric of the cinematic. What's so generative for you about this approach? Copeland: In centering Black gazes, I focus on collective viewing practices. For example, St. Clair Bourne's documentary The Nation of Common Sense (1970), which aired on the television program Black Journal and profiled the day-to-day lives of Muslims in the NOI, was shown to audiences at banquets and other events hosted by mosques throughout the country. This allowed Muslim audiences to engage in a unified viewing experience, as though watching films at a cinema, while expressing melodic sounds of approval in line with the call-and-response traditions that exist in spiritual expressions throughout the African diaspora. I am also interested in how scholars such as Kara Keeling conceptualize various forms of the moving image, using the rubric of the cinematic to challenge dominant understandings of race, class, and gender.1 While my research and teaching interests focus on Black religion and media, this approach provides me with a framework that emphasizes collective struggle and helps me explore how theologies of Black liberation are mapped onto cinematic experiences and practices. Russworm: Tell us about a film that invites connections about race and religion and also prioritizes a Black cinematic gaze. Copeland: A chapter of my dissertation centers home videos produced in the late 1970s by the El Rukns (formerly known as the Blackstone Rangers), a Chicago-based street organization. While serving a prison sentence, Blackstone Ranger co-founder Jeff Fort embraced Islam and became known as Abdul Malik Ka'bah; he would also change the name of his organization to El Rukn. Although they would eventually embrace Sunni Islam, the El Rukns were initially affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Muslim movement that arose during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. In the late 1970s, the El Rukns would host parties at their mosque, or headquarters. Affectionately referred to as "The Fort," it was located at 3947 South Drexel Blvd. in an edifice formerly known as the Oakland Square Theatre. Two home videos...

Fan translation and film criticism in China

Abstract Film criticism in China has been changing due to a growing fan community and their active participation in online film reviewing. While social media has democratized who can write reviews, there remain distinct hierarchies of professional and amateur reviewers. Drawing upon Henry Jenkins’ (2006b) concept of “knowledge community” and Alex Bruns’ “produsage” model (2008), this article will explore how Chinese film fans use translation to shape the online reception of a film and participate in the debates over film criticism in the digital age. Through a case study of the Chinese translations of an English review of The Wandering Earth (2019), a Chinese sci-fi blockbuster, it argues that translation, as an alternative form of self-expression, constitutes both an important cinematic experience for fans and a response by grassroots consumers to the existing reviewing system influenced by media capital.

“Cinema was a Tunnel That Led To The Street For Us”: An Analysis on the Cinema Experience Women From Mardin in the 1960-1980s

Bir kent eğlencesi olan sinema, Mardin’de Halkevi Sineması (1938) aracılığıyla bilinir hale gelir, ellili yıllarda açılan özel sinemalar ile beraber kentin en önemli eğlencesi olur. Çalışmada 1960-1970’li yıllarda Mardinli kadınların sinema deneyimi, sinemaya gitme pratikleri derinlemesine görüşmelerle incelenmiştir. Yapılan inceleme sonucunda Mardinli kadınlar için sinemanın kamusal mekâna çıkış anlamına geldiği görülmüştür. İncelenen dönemde gündelik hayatta kamusal alanda sık görünmeyen kadınlar için sinemanın sokağa çıkma, sosyalleşme ve görünür olmayla ilişkilendirildiği tespit edilirken, kadınlar matinesiyle cinsiyetlendirilmiş yarı kamusal/yarı özel mekân olan sinemanın ataerkilliği ve kentsel mekandaki eşitsizliği yeniden ürettiği saptanmıştır. 12 Eylül Askeri Darbesi’nden sonra ülkedeki değişimler sinemaya da yansır. Darbe ve sonrasında yaşanan toplumsal olaylar, Türk sinemasının en önemli hedef kitlesi olan aile ve kadını sinemadan koparıp, sinema salonlarını homososyal mekanlar haline getirir. Bu değişim ve kopuş, Mardin’de de görülür, seksenli yıllardan sonra kadınlar sinemaya gitmeyi bırakır. Kentin önemli eğlence mekânı, kadınlar için yarı özel/yarı kamusal mekân olan sinemalar, kahvehanelere dönüştürülür.

Audiovisual Means to Therapeutic Ends. The Cinematic Dispositive within Medical Humanities

Dominant narratives across Medical Humanities have been focused on the cultural construction of the notion of medicine as epistemic discourse and social practice, on the role of humanities in medical design of the disease as well as on the humanization of the clinical encounter in order to facilitate the anamnesis, the therapy and the care. Among the main declinations, a more complex point of view arises, suggesting the critical integration and exploitation of a variety of methodologies, previously used by art and humanities research, into a peculiar human-centered dispositive, both narrative and therapeutic, in which audiovisual practices and languages acquire new healing potential and activate bias for unprecedented processes of subjectivization for particular target of suffering human beings. Based on the aforementioned premises, the essay aims at investigating the therapeutic set as performative and methodological model, consistent with art-therapy and narrative-based medical approaches, applicable in specific pathological conditions and health-care contexts. Within such reflexive and operational framework including documentary studies and visual anthropology, self-representational and amateur theories, the therapeutic set becomes a media environment where the formative encounter, both technical and pragmatic, finally ethical, between the self and the world, the action and the awareness takes place. My purpose is to explore the theoretical pillars of the therapeutic set as transformative interplay between profaned cinematic dispositive and psychotherapy setting, dwelling on bodily involvement, audiovisual gestures and amateur self representation to which active participants, storytellers of their own illness and treatment, are called in the making of therapy and narrative. The paper finally intends to illustrate selected interdisciplinary case studies in order to discuss the healing potential of creative participatory processes and self-representations, occurring thanks to the relocation and amateurization of the contemporary cinematic experience.

Experiencing cinematic architecture: the impact of architecture on the audience emotional engagement

PurposeThe goal of the study is to underline “Cinematic Architecture” as another source of architectural thinking and research. This study is also a response to the shortage in empirical research on architecture in the cinema. Moreover, the study introduces the architectural components that qualify the cinematic spaces to be influential cinematic experience. This is in addition to investigating the impact of these components on the viewers' cognitive and emotional experience of films.Design/methodology/approachIn the reported study, an empirical experiment examined scenes from three different movies as experienced by a selected group of audience of movies fans (architects and laypersons). The audience was asked to report feelings the audience had about each scene using a questionnaire that was designed for this purpose, and the audience was asked to write down the aspects that affected the audience's emotions. The experiment evaluated selected emotional states and could specify the architectural features and/or objects that significantly contributed in inducing these emotions.FindingsThis study's findings concluded that emotions, which exist in the positive margin of the emotions “circumplex model,” were influenced by architectural components that were different from those that influenced emotions which lie in the negative margin of the model.Research limitations/implicationsAs for filmmakers, the study contributes in developing filmmakers' knowledge about the role of architecture in scenic creation and thus how that knowledge enhances filmmakers' film narrative and the narrative's spatial imagery. As for academia, this study contributes in developing the knowledge about film cognition as related to architectural semiotics. In the context of behavioral approach to architectural design, a behavior setting which is the basic element in environmental design can be dramatized by applying a cinematic narrative to a human activity system within a milieu of architectural design elements.Practical implicationsThis study is important for architects, as the study provides architects with an alternative tool for fictional experience and for testing architectural ideas through cinematic architecture. This study also helps in developing new venues for the practice of architecture into the world of fiction. This study also contributes in developing the trend that architectural design thinking can learn from cinematic thinking and practice.Originality/valueThis study introduces an empirical approach to evaluate architectural entities as part of cinematic experience. This study also comes as a response to the shortage in empirical research on architecture in the cinema.

Pierwszy raz w ciemnym kinie - filmowe reminiscencje w twórczości Krystyny Kofty

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The article is an attempt to interpret the cinema experience from the perspective of contemporary theories of somatic reception. Attention is drawn to the formal aspect of two examples of cinema experiences by a contemporary Polish writer (Krystyna Kofta). An important element of her work is sharing impressions, especially in relation to the description of everyday life. The analysis includes the comparison of two cinema episodes – a girl fascinated by the first encounter with this medium and an adult woman terrifed by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cinema.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

The spectator thinks: cinema, education and film reception in the classroom

What are the external repercussions of a representation that is diegetically constructed? How a film can be understood by the audience? What a cinema experience is able to mobilize? By means of a research-action method and from the perspective of Hermeneutics, Cultural Studies and theories of perception, which places the spectator as an active agent in the understanding and communication process, this article seeks to reflect on cinema spectatorship in its educational dimension, taken as object the reception of Through the Olive Trees (1994), by the iranian film-maker, Abbas Kirostami, from the classroom experience, in a postgraduate course at a public university. After an introductory and conceptual discussion on the relation between reality and fiction, and between cinema and education, the students’ interpretations were analyzed, revealing the active, imaginative, educational and formative character of the cinema experience.

The analytic gaze through the prism of childhood

Translated into English for the first time by Madeline Whittle, Emmanuel Siety’s article draws extensively on Jean Louis Schefer’s The Ordinary Man of Cinema to explore the connection between the films we encounter in childhood and a lifelong relationship with cinema. Siety asks what is the role of film education in the moving-image saturated contemporary era for preserving something of the special bond formed by our first encounters with films in cinemas, and our self-development. The article further considers the limits of an analytical approach to film, as opposed to a phenomenological approach which privileges the direct experiences of cinema, going beyond the ‘scholarly’ interpretation of films.

A comparative study of Macbeth, adapted as Maqbool by Vishal Bharadwaj

William Shakespeare's theatrical works have long been a fertile ground for reinterpretation and transformation. Within his plays, he explored fundamental themes such as love, marriage, family dynamics, issues of race and class, humour, betrayal, malevolence, vengeance, murder, and mortality. Through his masterful storytelling, Shakespeare crafted enduring characters, spanning from common criminals to noble monarchs, who have transcended time to become enduring archetypes in modern drama, while still retaining their relatable human essence. These timeless themes and iconic characters provide filmmakers with a rich reservoir of raw material to create visually captivating cinematic experiences. Renowned director Vishal Bhardwaj garnered substantial critical acclaim for his trilogy, with "Maqbool" drawing inspiration from "Macbeth," "Omkara" from "Othello," and "Haider" adapted from Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Nevertheless, Bhardwaj exercised creative liberties in moulding these narratives to suit his cinematic vision. This article embarks on an exploration of the comparative analysis between Vishal Bhardwaj's "Maqbool" and Shakespeare's "Macbeth." The discussion commences with a succinct overview of comparative literature, progressing to a detailed examination of the opening scenes, the art of characterization, the diverse dramatic techniques employed, the setting, and the denouement. Moreover, it delves into the points of convergence and divergence between the adaptation ("Maqbool") and the original source text ("Macbeth").

ИГРОВЫЕ ПРАКТИКИ РУССКИХ СИМВОЛИСТОВ КАК РЕФЛЕКСИЯ НАД КИНЕМАТОГРАФИЧЕСКИМ ЯЗЫКОМ

The era of Russian Symbolism coincides with the period of cinematography penetration into urban everyday life. The new phenomenon needed to be comprehended. The verbally expressed layer of symbolists’ reflection on the nature of cinematography, expressed in fiction texts, articles and essays, was studied by N.M. Zorkaya, J.G. Tsivian and R. Bird. This article makes an attempt to analyze a nonverbalized type of reflection – symbolists’ mimetic game practices, where players bodily reproduced features of the cinematic experience. The sources of the research were the models of such game practices constructed by memoirists (A. Bely, L. Ivanova, V. Verigina, L. Ilyashenko). With the help of structuralist and semiotic methods, game gestures are analyzed as signifying game structures. It is established that their signified are disclosed as the problematization of 1) formal, structural and genre borders of film, 2) the phenomenon of voyeurism and the formative gaze of The Other, 3) the alienation of the actor’s body. The conclusion is made that at the time of the first decade of the 20th century the symbolists’ ideas about the nature of cinematic language were not yet clearly expressed, but existed in the form of a semantic conflict.

Türk Korku Filmlerinde Kadının Sunumu: “Ötekilik” Kavramı Bağlamında Göstergebilimsel Bir Analiz

Cinema is a field of struggle that focuses on individual and mass experiences as a branch of art at the center of social memory. Thus, almost every cultural, economic, and social change and transformation are naturally evaluated within the spectrum of cinematic experience. At this point, the change of gender, that is, the roles of men and women have also been added to the film culture as a part of the complex cinematic experience and has even turned into codes repeated for years through some genres. In this context, horror cinema can be indicated as one of the strongest carriers of these ongoing cinematic experiences in the context of gender as it is often the result of a heteronormative perspective created in the accompaniment of male-dominated codes. Accordingly, it can be asserted that this cinematic point of view forms its own victims. In line with this argument, the main concern of this study is to discuss 4 different Turkish horror movie posters released in 2021 in the context of the marginalization of women's identity. In this direction, the movie posters have been analyzed with semiotics, and as a result, it has been observed that despite all feminist struggles in cinema and the art world, the mentality about women is still portrayed with a negative approach.

Gazing or glancing? Mapping student engagement when film studies moves online

This article presents the findings of a study undertaken by a team of three film studies teacher-researchers working with undergraduate students in a course titled ‘Histories of Film Theory’. In the context of the transition from face-to-face to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors observed that students’ approaches to understanding relevant film theories became increasingly inflected by their experiences of contrasting methods of course delivery, such as that between the cinema theatre or home viewing environment. To investigate this effect, the authors conducted a study of student experience across the 2020 and 2021 cohorts; the purpose was to understand how the shift to online learning shaped students’ engagement with set film texts, by analysing the behaviour exhibited when accessing film texts remotely. The study is grounded in the observation that there is an existing body of film theory on screen spectatorship that has potential significance to a scholarly understanding of the pedagogical complexity of online learning and multimodal literacies. This scholarship ranges from analyses of ‘traditional’ reception environments (Baudry 1974), to accounts of the differentiation in modes of attention introduced by new media (Ellis 1992, Cavell 1982), to analyses of the multiplying second screen practices of the digital era (Casetti 2011). A governing distinction highlighted in the results is between ‘gazing’, the mode of spectatorship associated with the traditional cinema experience, and ‘glancing’, the mode associated with home viewing and second screen use. Were the students in the course gazing or glancing, and how did this affect their encounters with films and characterize their remote learning experience more broadly? In asking these questions, the article demonstrates how the intellectual resources of film studies might be applied to contemporary digital pedagogy scholarship to reveal a complex scenario in which remote learning practices both hinder and enhance learning experiences, sometimes simultaneously.

Matrilineality and the portrayal of women in Meghalaya cinema

Films from Northeast India, a region that exemplifies diversity in language as well as culture, have gained global recognition over the years and are thriving artistically, yet they remain largely unexplored. Although a lot of studies have been done on gender inequality in Indian mainstream films, regional films, especially films from the northeast, have received very little attention. The current study investigates the representation of women in films from Meghalaya, a region known for its unique matrilineal social structure. The top ten most viewed films from each of the three tribal languages of Meghalaya were selected to examine women’s on-screen presence and the nature of the portrayal. Results indicate that despite Meghalaya society being matrilineal, women are underrepresented and are portrayed more in stereotypical character types. It is indicated that women in Meghalaya’s cinema experience symbolic annihilation through representational absence, condemnation, and trivialization.