The film Awakenings (adapted from Oliver Sacks' book with the same title) introduced the audience to a ravaging epidemic that left patients in an unresponsive, sleep-like, and helpless state. Awakenings, now marking its 35th anniversary, had a significant historical impact because it presented a stunning reversal after treatment in a neurologic disease. The feature film received 3 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor (Robert De Niro). A 1974 British documentary that formed inspiration for the fictional film has never aired on US television. The documentary introduced Oliver Sacks to the public and showed his patients before and after l-dopa treatment. In the fictional film, the patients are a mix of chronically ill psychiatric patients and those in a frozen, immobile catatonic state. However, much to the surprise of the staff, Dr. Sayer (Robin Williams) shows that they can catch objects and respond to their favorite music. The protagonist is the afflicted Leonard, played by Robert De Niro, who initially shows dramatic improvement in his condition but finally regresses. Awakenings was the first film featuring a neurologist as a leading character. The film also cements the image of the neurologist as a sleuthing, relentless optimist with a trick up his sleeve. This article reviews the British documentary and the subsequent fictional film to judge the historical impact of the neurologic representation in film.

ABSTRACT This paper offers a critical analysis of Antz, Dreamworks Animation’s first feature film. In many respects, Antz is faithful to what is known about ant colonies. Yet the film departs significantly from ecological reality in its representations of hierarchical leadership and gender. The paper offers a re-evaluation of the manner in which leadership is represented in Antz, drawing upon Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT). Exploring the taken-for-granted assumptions that frame Antz, we offer, in contrast, two subsequent ‘re-presentations’ of the film, located firstly in an account of ant ecology and secondly within an account of organizing that lacks gendered leaders and social hierarchy. We use these re-presentations to illuminate the implicit theorization that frames Antz and which in so doing prepares children for organizational membership. In addition, we suggest the need to refine ILT to take fuller account of the manner in which context is rendered and incorporated within this framework.

Critical events frequently occur in hospital settings. Cinematic portrayals of medicine and medical environments can illuminate historical developments and perspectives on healthcare, medical professions, and specialisations. This article aimed to explore the interplay between structural framework, professional, and relational factors when facing critical events and their management in a hospital environment. Based on the Danish feature film Second Victims, a thematic analysis was conducted, methodically inspired by Braun and Clarke, theoretically inspired by Goffman. The findings were presented in three final themes: Notions of knowledge and power hierarchies in motion, Tensions between the medical and legal logics, and The moral dance around professionals' suffering. The findings showed how the patient appeared as 'the primary victim,' while the professionals and relatives became 'the second victims'. In this fictive film, the hospital culture was informed by an ideal of medical flawlessness that created vulnerable conditions for professionals, infused with guilt and shame. Furthermore, the professionals' emotional reactions intensified critical situations and acted yet another critical event. The findings also showed tension areas between medical and legal prerequisites and consequences related to medical decisions, illuminating how medical care fits in a wider societal context and structure governed by context specific rules and regulations. In conclusion, the study demonstrated how structural, professional, and relational factors shape the management of critical hospital events, highlighting hierarchies, roles, competing logics, and emotional responses. Although fictional, the film presented realistic representations of 'real-life' practice, offering a valuable tool for reflecting on healthcare practices and shared human vulnerability.

This article introduces the modular model of feature film plotting as one solution to a central problem of early feature filmmaking: how to sustain a long-form narrative before stable conventions of feature construction had fully crystallized. In this model, the feature is constructed not as a seamless causal chain, but as an assemblage of relatively autonomous blocks linked by parallels, contrasts, or thematic echoes. Its organizing principle is not classical organic unity, but unity in diversity. Based on a detailed analysis of all available surviving films produced by a small filmmaking collective in early 1920s Czechoslovakia, the article examines the model’s systematic adoption in response to postwar distribution pressures, limited production infrastructure and the practical need to make commercially viable feature films. It identifies key principles of this poetics, including porosity, cyclicality, and four recurrent types of linkage between blocks: juxtaposition, transposition, potentiation, and causality. It also shows how the model supported two different production dramaturgies across the collective’s two generations. More broadly, the article proposes modular plotting as a comparative analytical tool for understanding analogous narrative solutions in other historical contexts, from omnibus and slapstick films to early sound revues, musicals, fairy-tale films, and epics.

The rise in reality television docusoaps featuring affluent Asian Americans builds from longstanding assumptions of Asian American economic prosperity, capitalizing on the success of the 2018 feature film Crazy Rich Asians . Yet the genre of docusoaps emphasizes melodramatic and messy emotional scenarios, allowing Asian American casts to reveal an array of new narratives—including around personal and familial failures. Through a textual analysis of Bling Empire and House of Ho as exemplars of this format, this article explores how narratives of failure within Asian American affluence media can disrupt conventional views of the Asian immigrant family and undermine the logics of racial capitalism.

ABSTRACT Much of the existing body of work on cultural exchange in cinema focuses on feature films as manifestations of cinematic transnationalisms, and less on short films. Starting from two Clermont-Ferrand competition titles, Tonia Mishiali’s Daphne (2022) and Savvas Stavrou’s Buffer Zone (2023), we look at how specific examples of directors and their short films reflect recent observations that Greek Cypriot cinema is entering a phase in which filmmakers actively seek international collaborations and opportunities to further their art-making. The article focuses on the short films of Mishiali, Stavrou, Myrsini Aristidou and Alexandra Matheou, providing an overview of the work of each filmmaker leading to a close analysis of their short(s). The aim of our analysis is to identify the films’ transnational qualities, as well as how these may echo current practices in European filmmaking. We argue that even though these shorts form part of the transnational orientation of Greek Cypriot cinema, they simultaneously contribute to the development of a diverse local cinema that radically departs from dominant on-screen representations of Cyprus, or revisit them by way of social critique.

Through the combined lenses of ecofeminism, masculinity studies, and critical animal studies, this article examines the cultural functions of animal metamorphosis in two Walt Disney animated feature films, Beauty and the Beast and The Princess and the Frog. It argues that animality operates as a narrative and symbolic space in which dominant gender norms and human-animal hierarchies are temporarily destabilized and reconfigured. Drawing on film analysis, this study shows how the animal figure enables the emergence of alternative masculinities-sensitive, relational, and ecologically attuned-while simultaneously exposing the structural limits of this apparent subversion. Although these films challenge toxic masculinity and propose more egalitarian interspecific relationships, their narrative resolutions ultimately reinstate anthropocentric and heteronormative frameworks by reasserting human centrality and normative romantic closure. By situating Disney's representations within broader Western dualistic logics of domination (culture/nature, masculine/feminine, human/animal), I demonstrate that animality functions less as an autonomous mode of existence than as a transitional narrative device facilitating human self-transformation. In doing so, this article contributes to current discussions on how culturally mediated representations of animals shape human social imaginaries, ethical frameworks, and understandings of interspecies relationships.

Generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) is rapidly transforming film production by introducing new modes of media innovation and aesthetic experimentation. Rather than functioning merely as a technical substitute, AIGC reconfigures creative workflows through diverse forms of human–AI co-creation. This paper examines how aesthetic decision-making, creative control, and cultural meaning are negotiated within AIGC-supported film production. Drawing on a comparative case study of the Chinese AI-assisted short film The Cipher in the Notes and the Singapore–Malaysia co-produced feature film Madame Ching, the study analyzes two contrasting production pathways: constraint-based generation for historical reconstruction and prompt-driven generation for stylized visual innovation. Using textual analysis and production documentation, the paper compares the cases across four dimensions: stages of technological intervention, human–AI division of labor, configuration of aesthetic control, and cultural–semantic calibration. The findings reveal that AIGC enables novel forms of visual experimentation and accelerates aesthetic iteration, while simultaneously shifting the director’s role toward the governance of generative aesthetics. However, both cases expose shared challenges related to realism, cultural specificity, and ethical governance. By foregrounding media innovation and aesthetic processes, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on creative authorship, visual culture, and responsible AI adoption in contemporary media production.

The purpose of the study is to theoretically substantiate and experimentally verify the effectiveness of using animated and multimedia films in the professional training of future specialists in physical education and sport. Research methods: theoretical analysis of scientific literature; questionnaire survey; pedagogical observation; and statistical methods. Research organization: multimedia learning elements were integrated into the educational process of fourth-year students of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport at H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. The educational content included video instructions, animated films, digital simulators, educational videos, animated clips, and feature films with pedagogical value. The viewing process was accompanied by discussions, analysis of pedagogical situations, and practical tasks. Results: the experiment demonstrated that the use of animated and multimedia films increased students’ learning motivation, improved their understanding of technical movement elements, promoted the development of communicative and creative competencies, and enhanced pedagogical thinking and emotional engagement in the educational process. A comparative analysis of the responses of education seekers to the questionnaire questions before and after the experiment was carried out using the chi-square criterion, which showed that no statistically significant changes were found for any individual question, but a significant increase in the share of positive responses to a number of key questions was recorded. Conclusions: classes incorporating a multimedia component were more dynamic and emotionally engaging, encouraged active participation in discussions and independent information seeking, and contributed to a positive psychological climate within the group.

Distributed by epf media, 324 S. Beverly Drive, PMB 437, Beverly Hills, CA 90212; 310-839-1500Produced by Pía Quintana EncisoDirected by Gabriela Dominguez Ruvalcaba2024, Streaming, 72 mins In her second feature-length documentary, Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba crafts a meditative portrait of Indigenous Tsotsil women living in the mountainous highlands of southern Mexico. Rooted in observation and visual lyricism, the film quietly chronicles a community whose daily rhythms revolve around shepherding, natural dye-making, and the intricate craft of weaving—practices that serve as both cultural inheritance and economic lifeline. Set against the lush terrain of Chiapas, the documentary immerses viewers in the tactile processes that define women’s labor. Sheep are raised and shorn, wool is dyed with plant-based pigments, and textiles emerge through patient, generational craftsmanship. Ruvalcaba’s camera lingers on these cycles of work and care, capturing both the intimacy of the process and the striking beauty of the surrounding landscape. Particularly notable are sequences highlighting the region’s botanical richness—archival images of plantas de Chiapas that blanket the mountainsides and provide the natural materials essential to the dyeing process. Yet the film’s commitment to near-wordless observation proves to be a double-edged sword. While the absence of explanatory narration reinforces its contemplative tone, it occasionally leaves viewers without sufficient context to fully grasp the ecological and cultural importance of the plants and natural resources depicted onscreen. Greater narrative framing might have deepened the film’s environmental and anthropological resonance. Where the documentary is most compelling is in its quiet tension between tradition and modernity. Scenes of ritual gratitude to the earth and communal labor stand in stark contrast to glimpses of nearby San Cristóbal, where construction, machinery, and commercial expansion signal the steady encroachment of urban development. In this juxtaposition, the film subtly raises pressing issues—deforestation, limited access to clean water, and the broader pressures faced by Indigenous communities navigating economic change. The film has drawn considerable international attention, earning selections at the Latin American Studies Association Film Festival, FICUNAM (International Film Festival of the National Autonomous University of Mexico), the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, and the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). The film’s pacing, however, occasionally tests patience. Extended passages of sheep grazing or moving across the hillsides, though thematically consistent with the film’s unhurried ethos, sometimes linger beyond their narrative usefulness. A more disciplined edit could have preserved the contemplative atmosphere while maintaining stronger momentum. Still, Ruvalcaba’s work remains a visually arresting and culturally attentive documentary—one that foregrounds the artistry, resilience, and ecological knowledge embedded in the lives of Tsotsil women. Spoken in Tsotsil and Spanish with English subtitles, Ruvalcaba’s documentary ultimately functions as a layered cultural portrait of a semi-isolated community whose traditions endure in delicate balance with an evolving world. It is less explanatory ethnography than an experiential meditation on labor, landscape, and resilience. I highly recommend this film with reservations. Awards:Best of Fests Selection at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA); Best Feature Film Award at the Portland EcoFilm Festival

Sachin Kundalkar’s 2022 Indian Hindi-language feature film Cobalt Blue, which streamed on Netflix, is an adaptation of his 2006 Marathi novel of the same name, which Jerry Pinto translated into English. While the novel is set in Pune in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Kundalkar deliberately set the film in Kochi in India’s southern state of Kerala. This article problematizes this mislocation of the film’s setting, arguing that it creates a dialectical tension. On the one hand, the narration embodies a continuum between colonial discourse on tropicality (which codified tropical spaces as exotic, erotic, and perilous) and the capitalist spectacle of the tourist gaze (and Netflix gaze); on the other hand, it reduces the city of Kochi to a consumable place devoid of the logic of affective geography. This article traces the genealogy of colonial tropicality in relation to Kochi and examines how it is reproduced in the film as a continuum, with the city being showcased as a consumable place within the circuits of film tourism. It also demonstrates how the film’s narrative subverts this very continuum by engendering an affective geography. A comparative reading of the novel and the film is furthermore conducted to establish how the paying guest (whose grammar in the narrative enables him to navigate the tropes of being a tourist, alongside subcategories such as ‘drifter’ and ‘post-tourist’) acts as a catalyst affecting the protagonists—the brother Tanay and sister Anuja—when the guest becomes their romantic and sexual interest and thus engenders the affective geography. The article draws on the theories of Dean MacCannell, John Urry, Sara Ahmed, and select philosophical frameworks of Alain Badiou.

He was born in 1958 in the capital of Montenegro, Podgorica. He studied Ancient Greek at Charles University in Prague (founded in 1348) and graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. His teachers were the best Czech pedagogues, and he was influenced by his “teacher and friend”, the world-renowned storyteller Bohumil Hrabal, as well as the anti-communist dissidents among whom he was formed. He has published 80 books, plays and screenplays and has tried his hand at all genres. He is a novelist (13 novels) and a storyteller (15 collections of short stories) by vocation, but he has also published dozens of books of essays, scientific prose, poetry and theoretical, or literary-historical works. In his stage work, he is dedicated to theater and film (he is the author of seven feature films). He was the Minister of Culture of Montenegro (1993-97) and later an ambassador, or high-ranking diplomat, in ten countries, where he represented first the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then the common state of Serbia and Montenegro, and finally his native Montenegro. He translates literary and theatrical works from six foreign languages. He lives in Montenegro and Prague. In recent years, he has been working on the anthology Poetry of Brazil 1525-2025, with 87 Brazilian poets from all eras that he has selected, translated into Serbian and wrote a critical apparatus for this anthology, which will soon be published in 700 pages in large format. Two of his books have been translated into Portuguese: Writers of Jewish Prague (a comprehensive 432-page study on Jewish writers in Prague such as Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Franz Werfel and others), and the prose Novel about Paris, thanks to the efforts of a professor at the University of São Paulo and translator Ana Maria Haddad. His last seven books, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have been published under the pseudonym Ben Golosovker. Full interview, access

ABSTRACT The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in screenwriting and film development has intensified debates around creativity, authorship, and the role of algorithmic systems in creative processes. AI-driven analytics systems now evaluate screenplays to forecast box-office performance, model audience demographics, and inform casting choices. While scholarship on AI tools in the creative industries has expanded rapidly in recent years, studies focusing on the screen industries – particularly on AI-driven analytics systems used in screenplay evaluation – especially from a practice-led perspective, are still scarce. This study contributes to this area by presenting a practice-led case study that observed the use of a Swiss-based AI-driven analytics system in the development of a German – New Zealand feature film, Come Together. Drawing on academic literature, industry reports, and the author’s involvement in the script development of Come Together, this article discusses the ontological tensions between human creatives and algorithmic evaluation. By examining these tensions, the article develops three interconnected conceptual insights – creative flattening, risk of formulaic feedback, and blind spots – as a framework for understanding the negotiation of creative agency when algorithmic evaluation enters the early stages of film development.

ABSTRACT This article recognises the notable absence of queerness in narrative cinema made in Colombia, while surveying how feature films have offered types of LGBTIQ+ representations that have been entangled with debatable, inconsistent or, more recently, with exceptional discourses. Informed by multidisciplinary approaches from queer/ cuir studies, film studies and decolonial thought, this text seeks to provide the readership with a useful state of affairs as of today on how queerness is addressed through narrative cinema in Colombia, and to continually problematise and rethink what ‘queer’ means within the Colombian and Latin American contexts. By tracing the available corpus, the article exposes what we have chosen to name ‘queer/ cuir moments,’ acknowledging there is still much to be done within the film industry to be able to suggest a robust queer/cuir strand. Nonetheless, the article also acknowledges how those moments have preceded a more recent era of self‐aware filmmakers that put forward LGBTIQ+ questions on the big screen in the Colombian context. The 21st‐century initiatives the article considers have paved the way for ‘que(e)rencias’—political acts of affection, enunciation and intervention—where queerness seemingly activates an unexplored prism via narrative films made in Colombia.

This article analyses traces of patriarchal violence in other-than-human relations in three works produced in Latin America at different times: “El vértigo” (Bolivia, 1916), a short story by Adela Zamudio; La nave de los monstruos (Mexico, 1960), a feature film by Rogelio A. González; and Altamira 2042 (Brazil, 2019), a performance installation by Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha and Rio Xingu. While these works elaborate a science fiction about other-than-human relationships – with a cricket, a robot, and a river, respectively – the article explores some key issues related to other-than-human entanglements: anthropomorphism, transhumanism and posthumanism, and “relational indigenous environmental justice” (Ulloa 2017, 179). It shows ways in which science fiction, in different formats and from different times, communicates social, cultural, and other-than-human complexities. Through sharing the notes of a fictional group from the future that researches across time and space, the article seeks to engage the spectres of patriarchal violence and its protracted aftermath in other-than-human engagements.

ان التشكيل البصري هو تلك الظاهرة الجمالية والفنية التي يفرزها النص التصميمي من خلال تعالق واشتباك ثنائية البصر والتفكير الابداعي الذي يقوم اساسا على عنصرين مهمين هما الرؤية المجردة والرؤية الابداعية وعلى ذلك نرى ان التشكيل البصري عمل ديناميكي يتحول الى شكل ابداعي حين يخضع للتحليل البصري الذي يتماهى في الابداع حين يتحول بصيرورته الى شكل جمالي تنبثق عنه رؤية لونية تتفجر خلال عملية التصوير الابداعي الذي يسعى اليه المصمم، لذا تركزت مشكلة البحث في موضوع التشكيل البصري في تصميم الاقمشة والازياء السينمائية لأنه موضوع يستحق الاهتمام والبحث ؟ فيما تضمنت أهمية البحث حول الدواعي الفكرية التي تمهد السبيل أمام الطلبة والباحثين لمعرفة المضامين التي تتيح لهم إدراك الممكنات الحية في تطور تصميم الاقمشة والازياء السينمائية، وصولا الى هدف البحث الذي تمثل في التعرف على التشكيل البصري في تصميم الاقمشة والازياء السينمائية الروائي، وقد تضمن البحث مبحثين تناول الاول منها مفهوم التشكيل البصري بينما تضمن المبحث الثاني التشكيل البصري في الفلم السينمائي الروائي، وفي الفصل الثالث تم اختيار الفلم الروائي الامريكي (The School for Good and Evil) كأنموذج من الافلام التي يرتدي ممثليها الازياء ونوعية الاقمشة المصممة، كونها تحمل المواصفات التي تبحث عنها في بحثها تحقيقاً للهدف الذي وضع لأجل قياس متطلبات البحث، وصولا الى الفصل الرابع الذي تضمن النتائج والاستنتاجات.

The representation of imaging modalities in film.

Streamers have become central to the production, circulation, and consumption of audiovisual content, reshaping how cultural industries manage creative risk and exploit intellectual property (IP). I argue that, within this platformized environment, content recycling – including (re-)adaptations, remakes, sequels, spin-offs, and prequels – has emerged not as a residual practice, but as a core operational logic. The article interrogates how recycling practices are structurally embedded within the economic and infrastructural design of global video-on-demand (VOD) services. Building on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, the study draws on a comparative, cross-platform dataset covering all ‘Original’ fictional feature films released by Netflix (2015–2024), Amazon Prime Video (2018–2024), and Disney+ (2019–2024). Through this dataset, the article identifies both convergence and variation in how major streamers operationalize recycled content as a form of ‘IP extractivism’ – that is, the systematic transformation of existing IP into modular, extensible, and data-optimized content assets. The analysis indicates that, while all three streamers rely heavily on recycled content, the forms this recycling takes vary in ways that align with their different corporate configurations. In the dataset, Netflix’s Original film slate is dominated by speculative, adaptation-driven recycling, Amazon Prime Video’s by a mix of acquisitions and selective franchise extensions, and Disney + by patterns consistent with an integrated, conglomerate IP portfolio. The article argues that, under conditions of platformization, recycled IP functions as a privileged asset class: its modularity, data legibility, and retention potential align closely with logics of algorithmic governance and assetization. Conceptualizing recycling as IP extractivism, the article reconsiders originality as controlled variation within pre-enclosed worlds and highlights the implications of this shift for cultural diversity, rights ownership, and the sustainability of smaller production ecosystems.

Multichannel audio is a sound field reproduction technology that uses multiple loudspeakers. Object-based audio is a playback method for multichannel audio that enables the construction of sound images at specified positions using coordinates within the playback space. However, the sound image positions must be manually specified by audio content creators, which increases the production workload, especially for works containing many sound images or feature films. We have previously proposed a method to reduce the workload of content creators by constructing sound images based on object positions in visual images. However, a significant challenge remains since depth localization of the sound image is not accurate enough. This paper aims to improve localization accuracy by changing the range of sound image movement along the depth direction. To confirm the localization accuracy of sound images constructed using the proposed method, we conducted a subjective evaluation experiment. The experiment identified the optimal movement range by presenting participants with visual images synchronized with sound images moving across varying spatial scales. Consequently, we were able to identify the range of sound image movement in the depth direction necessary for presenting sound images with high consistency with the visual images.

This systematic literature review examines subtitling strategies employed in the translation of documentary videos from English into Indonesian. Based on an analysis of scholarly articles published from 2020 to 2025, this review synthesizes findings on the primary translation strategies, the reasoning behind their application, and their resulting impact on the target audience. The data sources for the reviewed studies include documentaries from TV programs, feature films, and streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix. The findings indicate a prevalence of strategies aiming for equivalence and cultural adaptation, driven by the need to bridge linguistic gaps and ensure viewer comprehension while navigating the technical constraints of subtitling. The impact of these strategies generally points towards enhanced accessibility and understanding, although challenges in translating cultural nuances remain.