Film Quarterly Research Articles

Carceral Feminism on Repeat

Film Quarterly contributing editor Laurie Ouellette examines the inconsistencies at the core of Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit status as a feminist phenomenon. Since its debut in 1999, the program has been praised for promoting understandings of rape and domestic violence as introduced by the women’s movement, earning a reputation as a key popular culture home for feminist opinions. In this column, Ouellette examines the elephant in the room—SVU’s staunch support of the criminal justice system—in light of the cultural reckoning prompted by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. She concludes that SVU’s incorporation of feminist sensibilities, including solidarity with victims, covers up the persistent violence of policing but may also explain why female audiences horrified by this reality have not quit SVU.

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

An Introduction

Michael Boyce Gillespie introduces the Film Quarterly dossier, Black Infinite: New Directions in Black Film and Media Studies. The five essays that comprise the dossier reflect the vitality and richness of black film and media as objects of study and compel deeper inquiry into the art of blackness.

Changing Times

Changing Times

Review: Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit, by Kaveh Askari

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit, by Kaveh Askari Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit by Kaveh Askari Babak Tabarraee Babak Tabarraee BABAK TABARRAEE is an assistant professor of instruction and the coordinator of the Persian program at the University of Texas at Austin. His writings in English have appeared in Mashriq and Mahjar, Dibur, Iranian Studies, The Soundtrack, Cinephile, The Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, and The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Kaveh Askari, Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper. 260 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 104–106. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.104 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Babak Tabarraee; Review: Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit, by Kaveh Askari. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 104–106. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.104 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Kaveh Askari, Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper. 260 pages. Until about a decade ago, Iranian film histories limited themselves to a double dichotomy. First, they represented Iranian cinema prior to the 1979 revolution as a constant battlefield between the highbrow art cinema—namely, the New Wave of the late sixties—and the lowbrow popular films collectively known as Filmfārsi. Second, they focused on the postrevolutionary Islamization of the cinema, which led to the emergence of an oppositional cinema in the form of both politically poignant films and a new mode of poetic realism in the works of several festival-favorite auteurs. This dominant historiographic approach underwent a considerable change in the 2010s, led by Hamid Naficy’s four-volume Social History of Iranian Cinema, along with a few other valuable monographs and edited collections: Pedram Partovi’s Popular... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China by Chenshu Zhou Amir Khan Amir Khan AMIR KHAN is an associate professor of English in the Foreign Studies College at Hunan Normal University. His books include Comedies of Nihilism (2017) and Shakespeare in Hindsight (2016). He is managing editor of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. He lives and works in China. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. 282 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 102–104. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.102 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Amir Khan; Review: Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, by Chenshu Zhou. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 102–104. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.102 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Chenshu Zhou, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. 282 pages. Chenshu Zhou has written an extremely reader-friendly account of moviegoing in socialist China. Though she attempts to anchor her discussion in empirical data (taken from the testimony and film remembrances of sixty participants), this is an attempt to put forward a type of film history that engages with where and how a film is shown and consumed. Because her approach ignores “intent” of any kind, whether by a director, a producer, or an actor, it is a type of film criticism without films. Zhou’s study of moviegoing in socialist China from 1949 through the end of the Cold War in 1992 has two fundamental takeaways: (1) that moviegoing in China under Mao created new possibilities for human liberation; and (2) that the conditions of... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation, by Myles McNutt

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation, by Myles McNutt Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation by Myles McNutt Dana Alston Dana Alston DANA ALSTON is a PhD student in film studies at the University of Iowa. His research currently focuses on adaptation and authorship across film, television, and new media. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Myles McNutt, Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation. New York: Routledge, 2021. $160.00 cloth. 200 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 109–111. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.109 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Dana Alston; Review: Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation, by Myles McNutt. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 109–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.109 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Myles McNutt, Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation. New York: Routledge, 2021. $160.00 cloth. 200 pages. AMC’s Breaking Bad (2008–13), one of the most critically lauded TV shows of the last decade, built much of its neo-Western aesthetic and political relevance upon its Albuquerque setting. The orange blood-soaked deserts and the proximity to cartel wars gave its viewers a heightened sense of the American Southwest. But behind the scenes, the show came close to looking, sounding, and feeling different: the original plan was for the series to take place in Riverside, California, before it moved to Albuquerque for tax purposes. To consider the choice Breaking Bad’s producers made (and its result) is to consider the economic and political pressures within a changing American media-production landscape in which modes of production, distribution, and consumption are in constant flux. The adage “location, location, location” matters more than ever... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary, by Jihoon Kim

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary, by Jihoon Kim Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary by Jihoon Kim Nora Stone Nora Stone NORA STONE teaches media production and film studies at Birmingham-Southern College. Her monograph, How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960–2022, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Jihoon Kim, Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. $125.00 cloth, $39.95 paper. 320 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.111 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nora Stone; Review: Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary, by Jihoon Kim. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 111–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.111 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Jihoon Kim, Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. $125.00 cloth, $39.95 paper. 320 pages. What is a documentary? Film theorists have mulled this question for decades, but Jihoon Kim takes a capacious view in an effort to draw together the various kinds of media labeled “documentary.” In his new book, Documentary’s Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary, Kim decenters traditional documentary film, focusing instead on gallery installations, activist videos, interactive projects, virtual-reality environments, and experimental cinema. All combine the aims of documentary film with novel uses of digital technology and the affordances of networked communication. While his jumps from i-doc to multiscreen art installation to protest witness video can be dizzying—and lead to questions about milieu and intended audience—Documentary’s Expanded Fields is an ambitious and worthwhile attempt to map the wide array of documentary... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Latino TV: A History, by Mary Beltrán

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: Latino TV: A History, by Mary Beltrán Latino TV: A History by Mary Beltrán Richard Mwakasege-Minaya Richard Mwakasege-Minaya RICHARD MWAKASEGE-MINAYA is an assistant professor of Latina/o/x studies at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He is currently working on a book-length manuscript on Cuban diaspora and its impact on the US film and television industry, US Spanish-language media, and Hispanic conservativism. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Mary Beltrán, Latino TV: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2021. $89.00 cloth, $30.00 paper. 251 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 108–109. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.108 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Richard Mwakasege-Minaya; Review: Latino TV: A History, by Mary Beltrán. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 108–109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.108 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Mary Beltrán, Latino TV: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2021. $89.00 cloth, $30.00 paper. 251 pages. Credited as the first English-language television program with an entirely Latina/o/x production, The Brothers García (2000–2004) and its pilot surprisingly pay homage to a predominantly white show: The Wonder Years (1988–93). Its twelve-year-old Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and his adult-self narrator (Daniel Stern) were reimagined as an eleven-year-old Latino boy, Larry García (Alvin Alvarez), narrated by his future self (John Leguizamo). Placing García at the center of a white-centric show set in the 1960s–1970s (and produced and made famous in the 1980s–1990s) is an invitation to reimagine Latinas/os/xs at the center of a largely exclusionary television industry and its history. Mary Beltrán’s Latino TV: A History brings this reimagining into realization. The modest-sized book excavates the history of the Latinas/os/x relationship with US television by focusing on English-language... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, by Daniel Morgan

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, by Daniel Morgan The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera by Daniel Morgan Pardis Dabashi Pardis Dabashi PARDIS DABASHI is an assistant professor of literatures in English and film studies at Bryn Mawr College; her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such venues as Modernism/modernity, PMLA, Textual Practice, and Early Popular Visual Culture. Her first book, Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press), studies plot, ambivalence, and the image of the star in the classical Hollywood cinema and the modernist novel. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Daniel Morgan, The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. 306 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 101–102. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.101 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Pardis Dabashi; Review: The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, by Daniel Morgan. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 101–102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.101 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Daniel Morgan, The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021. $85.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. 306 pages. When the camera moves, the spectator moves with it. The camera-eye is an extension of the spectator’s vision, allowing them to see and move through the world of the film, isn’t it? Not quite, Daniel Morgan insists. The aim of Morgan’s excellent new book, The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera, is to interrogate “one of the most persistent and intuitive ways of thinking about the moving camera: that spectators identify with the position and movement of the camera within the world of the film, that it serves as a surrogate for the spectator” (4). In directing sustained attention to camera movement, Morgan shows how this oft-noticed but undertheorized facet of film style accomplishes far more... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age, by Mónica García Blizzard

Book Review| September 01 2022 Review: The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age, by Mónica García Blizzard The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age by Mónica García Blizzard Ana Almeyda-Cohen Ana Almeyda-Cohen ANA ALMEYDA-COHEN is an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Colby College, where her research focuses on gender, visual studies, and popular culture in Mexican cinema and culture. She is currently at work on a book about the mediation of sex, drugs, magic, and the border in Mexican cinema. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Mónica García Blizzard, The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022. $95.00 cloth. 326 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 106–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.106 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ana Almeyda-Cohen; Review: The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age, by Mónica García Blizzard. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 106–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.106 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Mónica García Blizzard, The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022. $95.00 cloth. 326 pages. Mónica García Blizzard’s first book is a rich and revelatory project that contends with a question that US and European spectators often ask when first encountering mainstream Mexican films and telenovelas: “Why is everyone so White?” (1). Offering an in-depth analysis that examines a “pervasive racialized visual logic in Mexico” (38) that privileges whiteness, The White Indians of Mexican Cinema answers this spectatorial question by unraveling how Mexico’s audiovisual landscape operates under the legacy of colonialism. García Blizzard postulates that the coloniality of power, as suggested by Aníbal Quijano, pervades the films of the early, mid, and late periods of Mexico’s golden age of cinema, which glorify whiteness by casting white Mexicans as Indigenous leads, thus valorizing “whiteness-as-indigeneity” (5). With a decolonial perspective... You do not currently have access to this content.

TV Snapshots

Discussion| September 01 2022 TV Snapshots: A Conversation with Lynn Spigel Bruno Guaraná Bruno Guaraná Bruno Guaraná is Master Lecturer of Film Studies in the Department of Film & Television at Boston University. Originally from Recife, Brazil, he received his PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University and his MA in Film from Columbia University. His current research explores negotiations of cultural citizenship in contemporary Brazilian media. He currently serves as the Page Views Editor for Film Quarterly. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Lynn Spigel, TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $104.95 cloth, $27.95 paper. 328 pages. A Companion website and interactive archive of TV snapshots can be found at https://tvalbum.com. Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 93–100. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.93 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Bruno Guaraná; TV Snapshots: A Conversation with Lynn Spigel. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 93–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.93 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Lynn Spigel, TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $104.95 cloth, $27.95 paper. 328 pages. A Companion website and interactive archive of TV snapshots can be found at https://tvalbum.com. Early in Todd Haynes’s melodrama Far from Heaven (2002), Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) welcomes a reporter and a photographer to her home for a profile in the local Weekly Gazette. Cathy guides the reporter to her living room, where she sits down on the sofa next to a television set, as though posing for a candid shot. Haynes’s balanced composition, framed at eye level, lends equal attention to the protagonist and to the material objects surrounding her: colorful curtains, a vase, the TV set doubling as a stand for a bird sculpture, and, hanging on a wall, a framed advertisement partially cut off from the shot. As is later revealed,... You do not currently have access to this content.

Cannes at Seventy-Five

Film Quarterly’s editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich offers her take on the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. After two years of pandemic-related disruption, the storied festival was in a celebratory mood despite the proximity of the war in Ukraine, which lent a sense of significance to proceedings that resonated with its anti-fascist origins. The official competition, however, emphasized traditional (male) auteurs over selections that broke new ground aesthetically. Instead, it was in the festival’s other sections —the parallel Un Certain Regard, the once-oppositional Directors’ Fortnight, and the Semaine de la Critique—that Rich discovered works that renewed her sense of cinema as both consequential and urgently necessary.

Shakespeare, Casablanca, and Screen Responsibility

Editorial| September 01 2022 Shakespeare, Casablanca, and Screen Responsibility B. Ruby Rich B. Ruby Rich Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (2022) 76 (1): 5–10. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.5 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation B. Ruby Rich; Shakespeare, Casablanca, and Screen Responsibility. Film Quarterly 1 September 2022; 76 (1): 5–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.76.1.5 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search It is impossible to write about the state of the Image Industry in 2022—film, television, or streamers—without reference to the signal event of summer: the hearings conducted by the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, watched more broadly than anyone ever expected. The select committee, which convened those hearings and presented the evidence through in-person testimony with expertly edited digital audio and video materials, delivered the ratings hit of the summer. It was so popular—such dominant water-cooler chat, as they used to say, back when people went to offices—that even channels that had not planned to carry the proceedings abruptly signed on. And the clips and links were everywhere. The hearings, still ongoing at this writing, marked a pivotal moment in US politics as well as a signal event in the US television production annals. When has CSPAN ever drawn record numbers before, or been joined by networks spontaneously... You do not currently have access to this content.

Queer African Cinemas

Discussion| June 01 2022 Queer African Cinemas: A Conversation with Lindsey B. Green-Simms Bruno Guaraná Bruno Guaraná Bruno Guaraná is Master Lecturer of Film Studies in the Department of Film & Television at Boston University. Originally from Recife, Brazil, he received his PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University and his MA in Film from Columbia University. His current research explores negotiations of cultural citizenship in contemporary Brazilian media. He currently serves as the Page Views Editor for Film Quarterly. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA: Lindsey B. Green-Simms, Queer African Cinemas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $99.95 cloth; $26.95 paper. 264 pages. Film Quarterly (2022) 75 (4): 83–88. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.83 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Bruno Guaraná; Queer African Cinemas: A Conversation with Lindsey B. Green-Simms. Film Quarterly 1 June 2022; 75 (4): 83–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.83 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA: Lindsey B. Green-Simms, Queer African Cinemas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. $99.95 cloth; $26.95 paper. 264 pages. 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. The cut introduces a nondiegetic love song that slowly drowns away the bustling sounds of the city as the girls go on a carnival ride, pedal a boat, and dance at a club. Diegetic sound only returns during a... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury

Book Review| June 01 2022 Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics by Jacob Gaboury Kyle Stine Kyle Stine KYLE STINE teaches film and media studies at Johns Hopkins University. His writings on cinema and technology have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Discourse, Grey Room, October, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. He is coeditor with Axel Volmar of Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time: Essays on Hardwired Temporalities (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. $35.00 hardcover; 312 pages, 133 b&w photos, 20 color plates. Film Quarterly (2022) 75 (4): 97–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.97 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kyle Stine; Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury. Film Quarterly 1 June 2022; 75 (4): 97–99. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.97 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. $35.00 hardcover; 312 pages, 133 b&w photos, 20 color plates. Computer graphics, to paraphrase an insight from Jacob Gaboury’s Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, are commonly understood to be at their best when they are least apparent. If audiences notice an effect work, it is likely to its detriment—just witness animadversions against films like The Mummy Returns. Histories of computer graphics have for this reason tended to focus on the inexorable march toward improved realism. Gaboury takes a different tack, eschewing almost entirely the direct concerns of film and television for a perspective at once more focused and more expansive, a prehistory that redefines both graphics and computers. Image Objects comes amid a period of industry self-reflection on the history of digital animation, as its prominent innovators—Ed Catmull and... You do not currently have access to this content.

The Radio of Cinema

Film Quarterly columnist Bilal Qureshi explores the radio origins of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee, the first film to ever be nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, best animated feature, and best international feature film. Trained as a radio journalist who aspired to use sound to immerse the listener in images, Qureshi finds inspiration in Flee’s unique and extraordinary merging of radio and film. Relating the true story of an Afghan refugee’s arrival in Denmark after his escape from the Taliban’s first siege of Kabul in 1989, Flee began as a radio documentary compiled from conversations between Rasmussen and “Amin,” the alias chosen by his childhood friend to protect his privacy. Animators only began visualizing the story once the radio cut was locked. While there is a topical urgency that undoubtedly makes this film of migration, loss, and war “important,” there’s more: Flee is a master class in intimacy and immersion in the form of a radio film.

Sundance 2022

Film Quarterly editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich offers her reflections on attending her second virtual Sundance Film Festival. Rich’s disappointment at the festival’s last-minute decision to shift to a virtual format soon gave way to the familiar aura of film festival excitement: the thrill of just-hatched movies, some of which spoke to the present moment in pulse-racing fashion.

Review: The Japanese Cinema Book, edited by Hideaki Fujiki and Alastair Phillips; Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema, edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa; A Companion to Japanese Cinema, edited by David Desser

Review: <i>The Japanese Cinema Book</i>, edited by Hideaki Fujiki and Alastair Phillips; <i>Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema</i>, edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa; <i>A Companion to Japanese Cinema</i>, edited by David Desser

Don’t Look Down

Don’t Look Down