Hollywood Image Research Articles

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

“Humor Is My Communion”

Abstract In this interview Gordon Lee Johnson discusses his understanding and views of the complex figure known as the trickster. He also describes growing up Cahuilla and Cupeño in the Pala Reservation in southern California, explaining how humor is not monolithic on the Rez and rejecting the Hollywood images of the stoic Indian.

Review: Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941–1960, by Liza Black

Review: <i>Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941–1960</i>, by Liza Black

Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. By Eric Kurlander

As Eric Kurlander points out in the opening pages of this book, the image of Nazis engaged in forbidden occult research has become almost a cliché in popular culture, appearing everywhere from the Indiana Jones franchise to such films as Hellboy (2004) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). But with the rare exception of scholars such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, historians have tended to downplay Nazi interest in the occult, ceding this topic to conspiracy theorists and sensationalist cable documentaries. This is not just a lacuna in historical literature: left unanalyzed, the popular myth of Nazi occultism can suggest that the Nazis were totally other and that fascism arises only among extraordinary individuals preoccupied with highly deviant ideas. This is a comforting idea, but there is little evidence to support it. In this ambitious book, Kurlander seeks to neither dismiss nor overemphasize the significance of supernatural ideas in the rise and fall of the Third Reich, but rather to provide a “comprehensive study of the relationship between Nazism and the supernatural” (xiv). Kurlander also moves beyond the language of “the occult” to emphasize Nazi engagement with “the supernatural imaginary.” The “occult” implies secrets known only to an initiated elite, but Kurlander notes that the Nazis invoked supernatural ideas that were “eminently public and widely popular” (xiv). Much like the terms “cultic milieu” and “occulture” used in the sociology of religion, Kurlander’s supernatural imaginary is broad and includes practices such as dowsing and astrology, “Ariosophy,” attempts to reconstruct Germanic paganism, “border science” (including the bizarre “world ice theory” of Hanns Hörbiger), and even horror movies such as Der Golem (1915) and Nosferatu (1922). Far from the Hollywood image of Nazi elites engaged in secret rituals, Kurlander portrays Nazi engagement with the supernatural as a secret in plain sight.

Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski

Reviewed by: Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski Georgina Torello (bio) Translated by Laura Isabel Serna Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski. Duke University Press, 2017. $104.95 hardcover. $27.95 paper. Also available in e-book. 344 pages. Even before opening the pages of Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil the reader is met with an image of violence on the cover: in front of a wall, three uniformed men stand, rifles in hand pointed downward. A mass execution seems to have just taken place. A palpable sense of immediacy heightens the drama and impact of the image and is augmented by the men's silhouetted repetition, the regular distance between them, and the notable oblique angle. They resemble a deadly assembly line. This still, from the serial film based on real events and Mexican cinema's first box-office hit, El automóvil gris (The gray automobile; Enrique Rosas, 1919), effectively synthesizes the primary objective of the book, as it alludes to the intricate relationship between the documentary representation of violence and its fictional construction in cinema. And, of [End Page 166] course, it gestures toward the reception or consumption of this violence as a problem contemporary to the film's release but also, undoubtedly, a problem today. In effect, the multiple representations of crime that the Mexican and Brazilian press and cinema produced during the first three decades of the twentieth century interpellated their audiences and continue to interpellate the reader and contemporary viewers in various ways. Navitski presents an extremely provocative hypothesis: the everyday violence perpetrated in the principal cities of Mexico and Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century was thought about, represented, and reelaborated through new cultural forms (yellow journalism, illustrated newspapers and magazines, theater, and film) as an unequivocal mark of the increasing participation of those countries in global modernity. Ironically, as Navitski suggests, in the cultural imaginary of the time, the risky robbery or ferocious crime tied Mexico City, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro to London, Berlin, and Paris with an indelible red thread. One of the most intriguing points, developed by the author via a careful analysis of police blotters and general discussions of crime in the press, is the idea that the progressive sophistication of the crimes functioned as an index of increasing modernization. Positivism and its logic of progress appear in this way, inverted and distorted. On the basis of a thorough examination of historical sources including the press, images, and film, Navitski explores representations of violence as different forms of "popular sensationalism," a term she uses to describe widely circulating cultural representations constructed to generate a heightened sensual or moral reception in the public.1 These representations, she argues, were based principally on widely disseminated imported models like the serialized novel (or folletín) and the film serial. For the author, the use of primarily American or French models implies not servile imitation (a point on which she challenges the existing scholarship) but rather a conscious and specific appropriation on the part of receiving countries. This process can be seen, for example, in the fusion of Hollywood's image of the bandido with that of the Mexican charro (cattle wrangler) in adventure films such as El Zarco (Miguel Contreras Torres, 1920) and El caporal (The foreman; Miguel Contreras Torres and Rafael Bermúdez Zatarain, 1921) or in the influence of French crime serials on Os mistérios de Rio de Janeiro (The mysteries of Rio de Janeiro; Henrique Coelho Neto and Alfredo Musso, 1917), which made film a platform for exhibiting the city's sensational, ultramodern crimes. In this sense Navitski takes up Ben Singer's modernity thesis, which proposes that cinema in general, and especially sensational cinema, not only demonstrated but also shaped the profound transformation of social lives and perception.2 Navitski argues that it is imperative to consider precarious industrialization as a significant variable when thinking about the modernity thesis in relationship to Latin America. Navitski suggests that the...

From the jungle to the sugar love. Hollywood images of Brazil: local uses and relationships between cinema, cultural diplomacy and tourism in the thirties of indigenous communities in Colombia

La aparición del cine sonoro tuvo como resultado una serie de transformaciones que llevaron a Hollywood a ensayar diversas fórmulas de empatía con los mercados extranjeros. Para el caso latinoamericano, las películas con actores y locaciones de la región reforzaron un modelo transmedial continental, al mismo tiempo que se convirtieron en herramientas de un aparato diplomático cultural en tiempos de la buena vecindad. Este trabajo se centra en los usos locales de las imágenes urbanas y modernas de lo brasileño con el advenimiento del sonoro por parte del Estado y de los actores del sector, fortaleciéndose, así, un entramado comercial y cultural entre el cine, el turismo y la diplomacia.

Islam in the Digital Films Expose the Good Sides of Muslims

Film studies mostly show Islam in negative representation. From streaming film website, we can easily find many films that show Muslims stories. For example, Children of Heaven, Le Grand Voyage, My Name is Khan, etc. Those films do not seem to show Muslims as terrorist. They show Muslims life in various cultures and stories. The problem is what good sides of Muslims in the films can counter the negative stereotypes of Muslims in Hollywood images. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this research exposes the good sides of Muslims in films. There is an Islamic world view in Children of Heaven. Some things may seem bad but then turn out to be good in the long run. My Name is Khan has a very important message about Islam. That is Islam is a peace and love religion. Le Grand Voyage shows a signification generation gap of Muslims. They are secular and devout Muslims. But they can communicate moderately.

American Glamour 2.0: architecture, spectacle, and social media

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that the layered notion of glamour, a term familiar from mid-twentieth-century film, architecture and popular culture, has increasing relevance in today’s hyperpublic world of social media, internet image-construction, and market segmentation. The creation and consumption of Hollywood images and slick advertising copy has long involved processes of narrative construction, projection, performance, and self-assessment that hold significant parallels for our culture of customized Instagram feeds, “Facebook envy” and other forms of digital communication, reception, and surveillance. Increasingly, contemporary public space is being shaped as a platform for the production and consumption of such data; a concomitant increase both in the development of techniques for surveillance and in the creation of defensible private spaces – both domestic and spiritual – creates new challenges for designers of both physical and online environments.

Remembering the Forgotten War: Origins of the Korean War Film and Its Development during Hallyu

As the Cold War proxy conflict that provided a happy ending for the Western alliance that fought for the South Korean side, the Korean War became a recurrent and idealized subject for American film productions. A generally overlooked trend, however, is the fact that Korea itself subsequently embarked on a reflective series of cinematic discourses on the war and its aftermath, during the period when the country’s popular culture (eventually dubbed hallyu) began to attract foreign interest. The contrast between post-war Hollywood images and fairly contemporary Korean output regarding the topic provides a starting point for studying issues pertaining to trauma, history, power, knowledge, and difference.

My impossible dream

Lined up with my new classmates at the barre we stand in silence in first position, waiting for the music to begin. I catch a quick glance of myself in the mirror. “Look at you!” I think to myself harshly, “you still don’t belong here even after all those years trying to fit into the ballet world.” To my right stands 13-year-old Katie, shorter than me and thin as a stick. To my left is 12-year-old Stephanie with a normal body for her age and still not developed. As I look around the room it is the same: 14, 15 and 16-year-olds, all thin, all perfect ballet bodies and then me. Twenty-eight years old, slightly overweight and still trying to fit in where I don’t belong. The music starts and I temporarily forget the mirror, concentrating on the exercise. I bend into a plie but I can’t forget my body totally. I feel my knees ache as they strain under the weight of my body and the tips of my fingers tingle as I stretch out my arm. It is a good kind of ache as I put my body through the barre exercises, the kind that makes me feel good about exercising. “Come on girls, you are dancers so please look like dancers,” the teacher instructs as we move into second position as a synchronised group. ‘Look like dancers.’ The phrase repeats in my head as I again gaze into the mirror and see myself as anything but. I have always thought of myself as different. Different in the sense that while growing up I never, in my mind, seemed to fit into what society deemed ‘normal’. For me this society was Southern California, home to movie stars and the latest fashion trends; the so-called ‘beautiful people’. In the 1980s and 1990s, this society demanded a certain look that was anything but normal, and growing up in this shadow of influence, if you did not fit in – you knew it. It is still much the same today. Anywhere you go, advertisements and media coverage about beauty, diet and how to live bombard you. People who stand out are often targeted and made fun of for being and looking different from the ideal. During my early years and even before I was born, my grandmother had small parts in movies, acted in the regional theatre and did some modelling. My aunt too was a fashion model and did some commercial work in television. They both were heavily influenced by the Hollywood image of thin, beautiful bodies. I remember how both my grandmother and my aunt looked during their moment in the spotlight – thin. My aunt was always so thin you could see her bones. This fascinated me for some strange reason. Yet the terms anorexia or bulimia were never discussed. She was never thought of as too thin, from what I heard. Beauty and thinness were held over my head like a prize, a symbol of success in a hard town like Los Angeles. The message I got was, ‘achieve success in the movies, television or media and your troubles will be taken care of’. The only problem was that in order to do that you had to fit their image. As a child, I thought everyone in my family looked ‘normal sized’ except me. From the moment I could understand words, I was judged as being too pudgy or chubby. My family would comment that I had the body structure of my father who

Tropical Imaginings and Romantic Nostalgia: 75 Years of Giliw Ko and the Colonial Gaze

In 1998, Australia restored the 1939 film musical, Giliw Ko, the earliest extant film ever produced in the Philippines. Through its National Film and Sound Archive, Australia presented the film as a gift to the Filipino people to mark 100 years of independence. Celebrating its 75th year of production next year, the film as gift is ironical as it can be argued that the Philippines never gained independence, at least not from the strong colonizing effects of over 50 years of US rule. Giliw Ko tackles themes of a people’s infatuation and confusion over Hollywood images and what it means to be cultured and Westernized. In this essay, I explore American cinema’s historical and cultural constructs as a natural continuation of the colonialist project that is based on binary oppositions of West/East, civilized and uncivilized, conqueror and conquered. Utilising the film Giliw ko, I examine these constructs that are carried to the present day in Philippine cinema.

The Body Politic, 1982

Feminist Studies 42, no. 2. © 2016 by Stephanie Han 469 Stephanie Han The Body Politic, 1982 I am not your Oriental sex object! “We will not accept our position in an imperialistic construct!” I yelled through a megaphone. “Capitalism equals colonialism plus sexism!” For seventeen years in Watertown, Wisconsin, my existence as a Korean, American, Korean-American (hyphen; no hyphen), Asian, Asian American (hyphen; no hyphen), and even Oriental, had been a source of unremarkable familiarity, but after entering university in New York, my ethnicity became my raison d’être. My parents greeted this political and intellectual awakening with confusion: what else could you be? They tolerated my identity politics in the hope that socializing with other Asian students would ensure the performance of filial piety’s sacred rites, modernly defined as pursuing a lucrative career in medicine (second choice, law) and marrying a Korean man from a good family. I was a member of ASA (Asian Sisters for Action), but participated in the new tri-college offshoot AFCAC (Asian Feminists for Central American Change) rally on the suggestion of Donna Chong, ASA’s president. She had told me I demonstrated potential as a political leader: “You have a loud voice. It’s great for rallies.” Weekend pamphleteering, volunteering, and organizing offered the potential of meeting a cool boyfriend—anyone “political or artistic ”—and the marching and sign waving burned calories. I built my biceps and lost five pounds in the first month of joining ASA, which I privately thought was a decent payoff. The more activism took over my life, the further I drifted from my deli-owning parents’ dreams of medical school, but then again, what did they understand about the Movement? 470 Stephanie Han I pledged mind and body to the Revolution, and joined every Asian student organization on campus, with a few exceptions: CBS (Chinese Bible Study) and KCH (Korean Christians for Hope). The former was Taiwanese only, specifically four students who knew each other from high school in Taiwan, and KCH, known for their excellent post-Sunday service lunch (I attended twice under the premise of joining in order to satisfy a craving for oxtail soup and kimchi) were adamant that members be fire-and-brimstone-screaming, Hallelujah-jumping Christians. Despite their proclivity to tolerate deviants in the name of good works, my self-described status as an agnostic-socialist-Taoist at that particular juncture made even the most Hopeful Korean Christian wince. I was a card-carrying member of KSA (Korean Students Association), MRGS (Mao’s Red Guard Squadron), and AMW (Asian Media Watch), which led boycotts against any item that carried an “Oriental” label. AWG (Asian Women’s Group), an organization dominated by overseas F.O.B. (fresh-off-the-boat) students from mainland China and Korea and a few Tokyo-pop Hello Kitty babes (the latter armed with melon flavored gum to ward off bad breath), was apolitical, and its primary focus was food. AWG was the only group I mentioned to my parents. I chaired the poster committee for AWG bake sales. “Maybe you’ll finally learn to cook,” said my mother approvingly. “Do you need me to send you another box of ramen?” Donna’s rousing battle calls to unchain ourselves from the sexist shackles of the beauty and fashion industries prompted a wardrobe overhaul and a medicine cabinet purge. I donned my nondescript black turtleneck and blue jeans with defiance and clarity. My single concession to capitalistic vanity was Dark n’ Foxy brand black eyeliner No. 2 Cleopatra Kohl. Would anyone notice a trace of eyeliner? I publicly applauded Donna’s talks on the hegemony of white beauty standards, but balked when she advocated that all ASA members cut their hair. She got a crew cut; it looked terrible. “Hollywood images have led the people to associate long-haired Asian women with bargirls. Long hair is a racial stereotype,” said Donna solemnly gazing at my waist-length hair. I’m not cutting it. Donna can fuck off. Rebelling from Rebellion? I had neither the desire, nor the will, to break away from Asian Sisters for Action. I’d had waist-length hair since I was eight years old, and...

On &lt;em&gt;Epstein’s American Jewish Films&lt;/em&gt;: The Search for Identity

On Epstein's American Jewish Films: The Search for Identity American Jewish Films: The Search for Identity. By Lawrence J. Epstein. London: McFarland, 2013. xii + 210 pp., ISBN 978-0-7864-6962-8 (pbk). US $40.00.Anyone seeking to survey the depiction of Jews in American movies faces a crucial choice of how to arrange them for purposes of analysis. Adherence to the dictates of chronology is one option (and historical obligation). Prime examples of this strategy are Lester D. Friedman's Hollywood's Image of the Jew (1982) and Patricia Erens's The Jew in American Cinema (1984), both of which are pioneering and still useful overviews. They seek to be comprehensive in coverage (at the expense of depth of diagnosis), and tend to be encyclopedic more than interpretive. Highlighting the fate of common representations of Jews onscreen, Nathan Abrams has recently updated the works of Friedman and Erens in The New Jew in Film (2012). Eric A. Goldman's recent book, The American Jewish Story through Cinema (2013), seeks to make a handful of films reflective of particular phases of the communal experience, and covers roughly nine decades to illumine the animating impulses of this minority group. David Desser and Lester Friedman made an odd choice by organizing American Jewish Filmmakers (1993) around four noteworthy directors (Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and Paul Mazursky). Much that is relevant in imagining American Jews is therefore neglected. Moreover the co-authors are forced to consider works that have not survived the test of timeless value, as well as those that betray only the slightest interest in the singularity of Jewish experience. Nor have all important films about Jews been directed by Jews; think of D. W. Griffith's Romance of a Jewess (1908), Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971).Lawrence J. Epstein has sensibly opted for a different approach. He has elected to arrange movies by certain common themes-whether by locale (the Catskills, the Lower East Side, the Near East), by the variety of communal types (the pious, the gangsters), or by social problem (assimilation, anti-Semitism). The topics are neither arbitrary nor surprising. The focus on issues, as well as on the sites of the struggle to reconcile citizenship and ethnicity, is promising. But the execution is quite disappointing.American Jewish Films suffers primarily from an absence of energetic research. The endnotes are extended over a mere two pages; by contrast, far more of a scholarly apparatus is expected of a typical undergraduate paper. Epstein's bibliography is more useful, and runs four pages-but the volumes and articles that he lists do not seem to have been confronted or even implicitly criticized in his text as a way of moving the study of the subject into fresh or illuminating directions. As a work of serious engagement with his subject, Epstein's foray into cinematic history does not pass muster, and is much inferior to his previous work, a charming study of American Jewish comedians, The Haunted Smile (2001). That book, like American Jewish Films, constitutes an effort to answer the question of what happens to religious faith and collective memory when America intervenes.Thus Epstein's primary concern, it can be inferred, is neither aesthetic nor primarily historical. He regards film not as an art form that must obey (or invent) formal rules to get its emotional effects, nor movies even as specimens of sociological evidence that reveal over time the vicissitudes of Jewish life in the United States. …

On Bernardi et al.'s &lt;em&gt;Hollywood's Chosen People&lt;/em&gt;

On Bernardi et al.'s Hollywood's Chosen People Hollywood's Chosen People: The Experience in American Cinema. Edited by Daniel Bernardi, Murray Pomerance, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2013. 270 pp., ISBN 978-08143-9 (pbk). US $31.95.This collection aims highlight ways in which the experience is essential both to the history of Jews in and to the history of film and media in America (12). The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary approaches to examine the role of prominent actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters in reflecting and shaping American attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. In the introduction the editors decry the small number of significant volumes on these topics and list Lester Friedman's Hollywood's Image of the Jew (1982), Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own (1988), and David Desser and Lester Friedman's American Filmmakers (2004) in this select group. They also should have mentioned Patricia Erens's The Jew in American Cinema (1984), Joel Rosenberg's Jewish Experience on Film: An American Overview (American Year Book, 1996), Jon Stratton's Coming Out (2000), Steven Carr's Hollywood and Anti-Semitism (2001), Henry Bial's Acting (2005), and Donald Weber's Haunted in the World (2005).Several articles cover familiar ground in Hollywood's history. Lester Friedman situates Edward Sloman's His People (1925) in the context of the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States and the transformation of the film industry from a plebian form of entertainment into a mainstream one. Projecting their vision of the American dream onto the screen, most movie moguls celebrated the assimilation, intermarriage, and upward mobility of the children of immigrants. While His People depicts a Jewish-Irish romance and money as the great equalizer, it disapproves of the unbridled quest for social acceptance which severs ethnic and filial bonds. Wheeler Winston Dixon's article on the anti-Semitic, legal, and political pressures that culminated in the reign of Joseph Breen as the strict enforcer of the Motion Picture Production Code cogently and concisely synthesizes material from Gregory Black's Hollywood Censored (1996), Thomas Doherty's Hollywood's Censor (2009), and Gabler's An Empire of Their Own. Catherine Portuges profiles filmmakers who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 1940s and injected a transnational sense of their displacement and vulnerability into Hollywood films. Acknowledging related books by Vincent Brook, John Russell Taylor, and Anthony Heilbut, she also contends that the Austrian and Hungarian origins of many of these emigres influenced the acting, directorial, musical, and writing styles they brought to American films. Sarah Kozloffcites Susan Sontag's concept of Jewish moral seriousness to account for the considerable number of social problem films directed, produced, or written by Jews like Elmer Rice, Robert Rossen, Stanley Kramer, and Sidney Lumet.Another group of articles focuses on actors and directors. William Rothman discerns traces of George Cukor's background in the (ac)cultured civility of his lead characters and the Emersonian moral outlook that enables them to attain dignity by discovering their true selves. That the latter is a product of a sensibility seems strained when applied to Katharine Hepburn's emotional growth as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story (1940), but proves more convincing when accounting for Judy Holliday's evolution as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950). Cukor nurtured Holliday's New York voice to elicit a performance in which her linguistic inflections and personal mannerisms initially camouflaged the intelligence Billie eventually reveals.Lucy Fischer interprets David Mamet's Homicide (1991) as a stage in the development of his current identity. …

Tramps vs. Sweethearts: Changing Images of Arab and American Women in Hollywood Films

AbstractThe portrayal of Arab women in Hollywood from the silent movies to today stands in sharp contrast to the portrayal of American women over the same time period and can be defined by off screen politics. By examining important American films over nearly 100 years, this article describes Arab and American women characters through five political-historical phases of US international relations that define their Hollywood images: 1) pre-World War II, 2) from World War II to the 1960s, 3) the 1970s, 4) the 1980s to 11 September 2001 and 5) post-9/11. The analysis reveals a variety of archetypes for both Arab and American women, but the main finding suggests a limited role for American women and the near absence of Arab women in Hollywood movies. Independent filmmakers and upcoming Arab-American movie makers may yet be able to fill this void.

Still Facing John Wayne After All These Years: Bringing New Western History to Larger Audiences

Abstract Inspired by new western history, public history projects have for thirty years presented larger audiences with a sense of Western history that addresses issues of race, class, and gender. The legacy of these efforts is mixed. Public knowledge of Western history is considerably more sophisticated than it once was, although the Hollywood image of the West has proven hard to unseat. No longer youthful challengers to an educational and institutional establishment, the founders of public history and new western history entered the twenty-first century with a nuanced maturity that faces a society whose own demographics and attitudes are changing rapidly as well.

A Model for Exploring Anyville

Transnational art trends bring diverse compass points into dialogue through international exhibitions and the internet; some artists are examining the aesthetic norms and values of their own locales to identify questions of global significance. At the University of Calgary, Canada, two art professors, with a writer from London, UK, are examining what defines regional place as a catalyst for contemporary art making. Our model derives from Western Canadian landscape, experienced through Hollywood movies such as Superman, Assassination of Jesse James, and Doctor Zhivago but identified as other than its actual location. The Canadian prairies are an enormous stage-set on which Hollywood tells its stories. Western Canadian identity is buried under celluloid; our work is to uncover what is authentic. The purpose of this paper is to build a model for the analysis of place that can be applied by artists from anyville searching for authentic regional identity. Our model is dialogical and collaborative; we work with twelve other visual artists to create thematic artworks led by questions about place and landscape. These include: What forces separate/connect us to place? How do we recreate place to meet our needs? What are the cyclical patterns that shape the region? Who are we, beyond Hollywood's image? What forms our boundaries; how do they affect us? and What role does our unique geography play? The work will be published in an artist book, Art- Book, and exhibited in a touring exhibition, creating a lexicon for the Western Canadian landscape genre. This model can be applied to artist collectives addressing landscape in far-flung locations across the globe. Just as with ArtBook, the dialogue that builds the work is enriched by the diversity of the artists' contexts. Through telematics, artists from anywhere in the world can collaborate, allowing a regional investigation to become a global inquiry.

Karlovy Vary 2008

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2008 A Festival for Independents One glance at the line-ups of the top A-category competition film festivals, and you can rate and measure – even criticize – them for their respective portfolios carried proudly on their backs. Cannes is honoured as an authentic "auteur festival," respected each May for discovering new directorial talent while furthering the careers of past auteur directors even when they are evidently over the hill. Venice, praised as a "director's haven," scores among veteran festivaliers as a laid-back September rendezvous for cult directors at the end of summer, a must for cineastes. Berlin likes to promote its "Hollywood image," using its February dates to book as many box-office hits of the previous Christmas season as slots will allow, knowing full well that LA producers easily benefit from a Berlinale festival launch before their films hit the lucrative German screens....

Covert investigations in the workplace

AbstractMention a covert investigation and Hollywood images of James Bond or cloak‐and‐dagger operations come to mind. In reality, covert investigations are far less glamorous—and have become routine in many large business organizations.But you still must proceed carefully. A slipshod investigation can result in major lawsuits, serious injury, or even death. The author discusses covert investigations, explains when you need a professional investigator, and offers some general guidelines. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Images of Women and Power

This article discusses iconic visual images of three powerful women: the Virgin of the Apocalypse, as painted by eighteenth-century indigenous Mexican artist Manuel Cabrera; Marlene Dietrich; and Dolores del Río. In Cabrera's work, the Virgin Mary is depicted with wings, actively protecting her child and her people with great energy—almost the opposite of better-known images of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Artfully controlling her own image, Dietrich quietly flaunted her sexual power over the young John Wayne. Finally, del Río used her image and extraordinary beauty to change the way American audiences perceived Latina women. Although she violated most of the gender-based expectations for Mexican women in her personal life, del Río maintained her image as a great lady (not the typical Hollywood image of a Mexican “spitfire”). Catholic filmmaker John Ford even chose to portray her as the Virgin Mary. These images made, and still make, a difference.