Film Scholars Research Articles

A daydream and a nightmare in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar: Formulas, fantasies and 1970s action Hindi cinema

1970s Hindi formula films have been described within Hindi film scholarship as melodramatic, and masochistic fantasies, the latter in terms of the hero’s desire to return to a pre-Oedipal state. In my analysis of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), the biggest hit of the year, I focus on its staging of scenes of fantasy and dream-like episodes and its foregrounding of childhood episodes involving father substitutes, primary figures I argue in the staging. By examining the film’s psychical–spatial terrain, I also consider the figure of the rival and villain, played by Amjad Khan, and I argue that Khan’s villainy reworks scenes of staged enmity with the hero into reconciliation. I conclude with some observations on the contemporary circulation of formula films on YouTube, where the films and their songs remain remarkably popular and generate a large archive of likes, views and comments, and user-generated content.

The Cultural Dialogue of Fidelity and Rendering in the Music of Googoosh in Hamsafar (1975)

This study examines the role of sound and the cultural dialogue of “transnational status” in pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, and more specifically, in the film-Farsi period. This study contributes to the literature because it mainly investigates how gender consciousness was promoted through the music soundscape in film-Farsi. The case study used to analyze and dissect the relationship—or rather, the borders and boundaries between the cultural dialogue of sound and music in film-Farsi—is the 1975 film Hamsafar (Fellow Traveler), directed by Masoud Asadollah. This paper will be of interest to film scholars and enthusiasts because Islamic feminism was infused in the “westoxification” and modernity of the powerful technique shaped by the soundtracks of films made before the Islamic revolution in 1979, especially by the voice and sound of Googoosh in the film Hamsafar.

‘Tis Pity She’s (Still) a Whore: Mary Magdalene in The Chosen

Abstract Early Jesus films reveled in the traditional, historically inaccurate interpretation of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. While films produced since the 1980s are less heavy-handed in explicitly sexualizing or shaming Mary, promiscuity remains her most persistent trait. Traces of the penitent prostitute are detectable in The Chosen, a crowd-funded evangelical series on the life of Jesus which foregrounds Mary as a disciple. Her story arc in The Chosen mirrors that of the prostitute protagonist in Redeeming Love (2022), another evangelical film based on Francine River’s fictional adaptation of the Hosea/Gomer story. Both works adhere closely to what film scholar, Russell Campbell, identifies as the ‘martyr’ character type and ‘love story’ narrative structure commonly found in cinematic depictions of sex work. Ultimately, these films reinscribe patriarchal ideology when the woman is rescued and reformed by a virtuous man at risk of his own reputation.

The Cinema in Flux: The Evolution of Motion Picture Technology from the Magic Lantern to the Digital Era by Lenny Lipton (review).

Reviewed by: The Cinema in Flux: The Evolution of Motion Picture Technology from the Magic Lantern to the Digital Era by Lenny Lipton Sabrina Negri (bio) The Cinema in Flux: The Evolution of Motion Picture Technology from the Magic Lantern to the Digital Era By Lenny Lipton. New York: Springer, 2021. Pp. 817. What's the best way to describe the nature of cinema? An old joke circulating among film archivists captures it very well: Outside of a movie theater, a group of people discusses the show they have just seen. One person asks, "What did you think of the film?" "Awesome, beautifully written and masterfully directed," says a regular patron. "Awful, all scratched and full of splices," says the projectionist. This imaginary conversation reflects the twofold nature of film as narrative text and physical artifact, and consequently of cinema as art form and technology. This dichotomy is apparent in most cinema scholarship, where the material aspect of the medium is usually subordinated to the aesthetic one. Lenny Lipton, on the contrary, takes the opposite route by writing a monumental history of motion picture technology from the magic lantern to the digital era. The choice of the magic lantern as point of departure for his 800-page journey through the evolution of cinema technology needs some explanation, which Lipton himself provides in his preface: he favors the idea that "the magic lantern is not pre-cinema but cinema itself," a notion that, he argues, is "based on the [End Page 1219] most fundamental definition of cinema technology, which in my view is the projection of motion" (p. xi). Lipton's premise is revelatory of his approach to the medium, which mostly favors a technological perspective rather than a cultural or aesthetic reading of history. While this angle may be perceived as limiting, it is certainly welcome given the absence of a comprehensive and detailed account of the different (and sometimes obscure) technologies that have competed against each other in the four centuries covered by the book. The history of the medium's technology is also a history of the people who made this technology possible, and one of the praiseworthy aspects of The Cinema in Flux is the tribute it pays to many inventors and innovators whose names and contributions are often unknown even to the most devoted cinema lover. Lipton's approach is reflected in the way he organizes cinema history according to the material carrier of moving image information: the Glass Era, the Celluloid Era, and the Digital Era, which also serve as markers for the three main sections of the book, each divided into smaller subsections (like "The 35mm Medium," "Small Formats," and "The Big Wide Screen") and chapters dedicated to individual technologies. Unsurprisingly, the Celluloid Era constitutes the bulk of the book, spanning over 400 pages; still, the other two sections do not just bookend the age of flexible film, but rather expand the notion of cinema before and after the hegemony of celluloid. Overlaps are of course unavoidable and indeed reflective of the nonlinear evolution of cinema technology: each subsection follows a chronological order, so that, for example, the "Sound" part in the Celluloid cinema section begins with live sound for magic lantern shows (Chapter 25) and ends with a discussion of multichannel, magnetic, and digital sound (Chapter 39). This structure confirms the theoretical idea at the core of the book—namely, the continuity between the three major eras into which Lipton divides cinema history—while making the intimidating size of the book more manageable, as the different topics can be approached separately depending on the reader's interests. In fact, the book itself invites this approach, as it functions more as a detailed, chronologically organized encyclopedia than as a traditional academic book engaging new theories or new archival materials (the sources used, though numerous, are almost exclusively secondary). Its strength is in the way in which it encompasses the entirety of moving image projection's technological history rather than in the newness of its theses, which is consistent with Lipton's background as inventor and scientist as opposed to academic or traditional scholar—which is reflected also in his writing style, straightforward and clear...

Film in the Workplace: Exploring the Film Holdings of the Marks and Spencer Company Archive

This article explores the possibilities offered to researchers by the film holdings which can be found in archives that exist outside of the more conventional, subject-specific film archives in the UK such as those held by the British Film Institute. The Marks and Spencer Company Archive exists principally to hold the company records and related materials illustrating the history of one of the UK’s most successful and long-established high-street retailers. Although their film holdings are extensive, these materials are somewhat tangential to the main collection and might not be a source that has been recognised to date by film scholars. Such collections also exist in a number of other commercial organisations, as well as public sector ones. The article details the holdings, arranging them into significant groupings, and analyses their style and content with particular attention to their potential status as both history on film and as film form. In doing so, it posits the opportunity to consider further exploration of film holdings normally thought of as outside film scholarship, and the value of more utilitarian forms of film-making than those usually found in entertainment or art cinema.

The Availability of Jim Jarmusch’s Film-Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Derrida and Private Language in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

To date, film scholars have found the films of Jim Jarmusch to be tantamount to works of postmodern philosophy. For as intriguing and productive as such interpretations of Jarmusch’s films have been, I submit that the postmodern framework occludes a crucial aspect of Jarmusch’s film-philosophy, namely, his investment in the ordinary. From this perspective, I intend to show the availability of Jarmusch’s films to Wittgensteinian interpretation. More specifically, I plan to situate Jarmusch’s arthouse action film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida in order to demonstrate the profound affinities between Jarmusch’s film-philosophy and Wittgenstein’s conception of ordinary language. Through a consideration of character dialogue, I will demonstrate the extent to which Jarmusch rejects the private language argument – which, by extension, amounts to a rejection of linguistic relativism as an instance, or species, of skepticism – in favor of ordinary conceptions of language, expressiveness, knowledge, and responsibility.

Movie Minorities: Transnational Rights Advocacy and South Korean Cinema

Movie Minorities: Transnational Rights Advocacy and South Korean Cinema

Techniques of Videographic Thought

Film scholar and video essayist Johannes Binotto analyzes several of what he calls "practices of viewing." We might also call them techniques of videographic thought. As performers and practitioners who work with our own bodies in audiovisual form… What can we learn from these developments in videographic scholarship? When we cut our own audiovisual bodies, it can sometimes hurt. We should look for ways to care for these bodies — our bodies — with every cut.

The transnational tales of an Indian creative producer: the case of Guneet Monga

ABSTRACT Studies of Indian cinema have traditionally placed more emphasis on directors, stars, aesthetics and issues of ideology than on the practices of creative producers. Although these are important concerns, the role of Indian producers deserves careful scholarly attention, especially in the context of transnational film projects, where producers are often involved from the pre-development stage through production and distribution. To address this problem, this article examines the production stories of an Indian creative producer, Guneet Monga (1983-), who is well-known for setting up Indian-European co-productions that deviate from contemporaneous spectacle-driven mainstream Bollywood productions. Through an in-depth personal interview with the producer herself and insights from film and media production studies, this article demonstrates how Monga’s micro-production stories reveal larger creative and collaborative practices that are transforming India’s independent film production culture and making it more transnational. This article shows that producers––the least researched figure in Indian film scholarship––gain several navigational tactics through transnational co-productions such as telling tales of tenacity, hustling and interpersonal networking, among others. These tactics, in turn, challenge the precarious conditions of working in the Bollywood-dominated film culture of India.

Walking through the discourse: In praise of Hyginus Ekwuazi and his contribution to African cinema

Hyginus Ekwuazi is one of the pioneer scholars of film studies in Nigeria. He completed his undergraduate education in the Department of English at the University of Ibadan, an MA and later a Ph.D. in the Department of Theatre Arts of the same university. His Ph.D. thesis, which investigated the context of film production in Nigeria, developed into the pioneer book Film in Nigeria. Ekwuazi’s scholarship spans a period of about forty years, which has interestingly contributed to and influenced the careers of a much younger generation of students and scholars in the field. This article is a tribute to the intellectual labour and accomplishment of Hyginus Ekwuazi, as an administrator, film scholar, theorist, writer, laureate and intellectual of a remarkable reputation.

Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy

Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy

The silent Il’inskii: mask and its affects

ABSTRACT Igor’ Il’inskii (1901–1987) was a celebrated Soviet comic actor, whose work in silent-era cinema has often been underestimated. Even in defining the specific features of his character acting and his screen mask/s, no single view has been formulated among film scholars. This article aims to reveal the main principles of Il’inskii’s acting in Soviet films of the silent period in order to define the relationship between his screen image and masks. To this end, I first explore the perspective of scholars who have written about Il’inskii as well as biographical details of his creative life; moreover, I analyse the character design in the films in which he appeared from 1924 to 1930. The article reveals the particularities of his screen existence and formulates them in the style of an actor’s portrait; the features of Il’inskii’s acting and the affect that it generated emerge in this process. In addition, the article proposes an explanation for the missing consensus in defining Il’inskii’s character acting and screen image through a study of the complexity and inconsistency of character acting and ‘naturalness’ in Il’inskii’s anthropology. Finally, the concept of a childlike playfulness is suggested to describe his mask.

An Affinity for Wagner, Michelangelo, and Sadistic Torture: The Implicit Homosexuality of Captain Munsey in Jules Dassin's Brute Force

Known for its transgressive narratives and anti-hero characters, film noir is an American film cycle that dominated the box office in the 1940's and 50's. At the time, homosexuality was banned from American cinema under the Production Code, yet film noir still managed to offer subtle and implicit representations of homosexuality. The sadistic prison guard in Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947), Captain Munsey, is one such example and the film uses many signifiers to suggest his homosexuality. The implications that such a reading has on the narrative of the film are immense, and this paper merely scratches the surface of possible interpretations.
 Despite film noir's offering of some of the earliest portrayals of homosexuality in American cinema, scholarship on representations of homosexuality in film noir is few and far between. By revisiting Brute Force and examining how it manages to queercode Captain Munsey under the restraints of the Production Code, this paper seeks to spark new conversation among film scholars regarding homosexuality in film noir, and more broadly, films made under the Production Code. Moreover, the discourse surrounding representations of LGBTQ characters in American cinema has become increasingly mainstream, and by revisiting films from the past and analyzing them from a modern perspective, scholars can seek to gain new insight on the history of LGBTQ representation in cinema.

Adrian Martin, Mise en Scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art. Adrian Martin, Mysteries of Cinema: Reflections on Film Theory, History and Culture

Most film scholars and cinephiles will have encountered Adrian Martin at some point in their pursuits. His audio commentaries, audiovisual essays, social media presence and editorship of journals have made him a somewhat ubiquitous figure, and his published reviews and articles run into the thousands. But this prodigious activity is also what makes it hard to pin him down, to know who he is and what he is after. Such is the fate of critics who write for many audiences – those, in other words, who write for a living. Their thoughts are dispersed like leaves in the wind, and just raking these up is not the same as giving them order. Some further organization is probably necessary to bring out the principal themes and concerns. We are lucky that Martin has done this himself in his two most recent volumes; it is good to catch up with him. One...

There is no such thing as one realism: systematising André Bazin’s film theory

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, film scholarship has experienced a renewed interest in the theory of André Bazin. This French film critic is most commonly quoted regarding the ontological basis of realism, prompting some highly varied – and sometimes unexpected – readings of his most renowned essay, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’. Of course, it is no mere accident that he chose this ontological study as the opening text for Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? However, as I will argue, what Bazin classified as ‘true realism’ relates to aesthetics and encompasses different elements present in film: (1) the ontology of the image; (2) the style of film language; and (3) the veritative level (aesthetic truth or ‘deep meaning’). The aim of this paper is to provide a definition of these three levels of realism. Special attention will be given to the third and least explored of the three, the veritative, which, as this level has hitherto received little scholarly attention, constitutes the most original contribution of this article to studies of Bazinian theory.

Editor’s Introduction

Editorial| July 01 2022 Editor’s Introduction: Acts of Speculation Allyson Nadia Field Allyson Nadia Field Allyson Nadia Field is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and The Possibility of Black Modernity (Duke University Press, 2015). She is also co-editor with Marsha Gordon of Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film (Duke University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Jan-Christopher Horak and Jacqueline Stewart of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (University of California Press, 2015). Field was named a 2019 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a 2020–2021 ACLS/Burkhardt Fellow. She is currently writing a book on the archival rediscovery and afterlives of Something Good—Negro Kiss (Selig, 1898) and another project tentatively titled The Speculative Archive. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Feminist Media Histories (2022) 8 (3): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2022.8.3.1 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 Allyson Nadia Field; Editor’s Introduction: Acts of Speculation. Feminist Media Histories 1 July 2022; 8 (3): 1–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2022.8.3.1 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 ContentFeminist Media Histories Search What if the implications for scholarship of the longstanding, ongoing, and pervasive misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, colonialist, and racist environment are not solely a problem of the archive but also of how we discern evidence and produce history? What if we research and write media history differently? What if we engage in scholarship that recuperates the private musings of our research and makes them the instigating questions? This special issue of Feminist Media Histories, building from the companion issue that preceded it in spring 2022, brings together essays that do just that. Loosening our commitments to what was to ask what might have been? and what might be? allows for repressed narratives to surface and alternative possibilities to emerge. This is especially vital for people and subjects excluded from or denigrated by the historical record and thereby the act of writing history. Indeed, an emphasis on the question, “what if?,”... You do not currently have access to this content.

The Kiss

The Kiss (1896) is among the most iconic artifacts of American cinema; yet, the film has long puzzled film scholars. At the advent of cinema, why did audiences respond to this seemingly simple kiss with extreme visceral reactions such as hysterical laughter or condemnation of the film as pornography? This paper reconsiders The Kiss in light of the recently rediscovered Something Good—Negro Kiss (1898) placing both these films in relation to actor-director Olga Nethersole’s queer influence on turn-of-the-twentieth-century popular culture. Leaning on foundational texts by Charles Musser, Linda Williams, and Siobhan Somerville and drawing on recent work by Susan Potter, Allyson Nadia Field, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, this paper intervenes in the “presumed innocent” discourse of sexuality during the novelty film period. I argue that The Kiss was so controversial because the sex act it stood in for was a queer act, a lesbian kiss.

Whiplash, Buddy Rich, and Visual Virtuosity in Drum Kit Performance

AbstractThe 2014 film Whiplash depicts successful jazz drumming as an athletic exhibition of speed and endurance, in a manner that reflects its protagonist's idolization of Buddy Rich (1917–87). The crowd-pleasing virtuosity of Rich and Whiplash has drawn critics’ ire, but this article interrogates the ideas of musical authenticity that underpin their complaints, and offers a more productive analysis of the film's drum kit performances and their inspiration, informed by a range of jazz, film, and performance scholarship. Specific attention is drawn to the performances’ visual attractions. Whiplash's fast editing style and shots of exertion – grimacing, sweat, blood – give non-expert viewers a sense of drumming's physical and mental demands, and much the same is true of Rich's exaggerated movements and expressions, whether seen live or (as is commonly the case) amplified by a screen's mediation.

After the A-rating mo(ve)ment: The Bechdel test in Swedish screen culture and beyond

This article traces the Bechdel test in Swedish journalistic discourse, showing how the A-rating campaign – sometimes described as a movement – popularized the concept in Sweden in 2013. In addition, criticism of the Bechdel test and A-rating is linked to criticism of recent Swedish cultural policy on film through the common denominator of contrasting quantification with quality. Finally, the article shows how the Bechdel test has inspired computer-based analytical approaches to gender on-screen that would merit further explorations in feminist film scholarship.

World Film Locations: Florence

World Film Locations: Florence offers a unique, insightful examination of Florence as both backdrop and protagonist in a selection of international films. Joining the already forty-two volumes in the World Film Locations series, this edited collection is the third Italian city to be highlighted after Venice (2013) and Rome (2014), and conforms to the series’ organization: forty to fifty brief scene reviews, including six to eight individual frames, along with a time sequence, director's name, a one-line description, and a contemporary image of the area portrayed. User-friendly in presentation, each film is presented in two-page segments, the left and right side of the book, for the reader to experience the representation of the film in a complete unit.Edited by Alberto Zambenedetti, this volume is divided into six thematic sections. The first section begins with Eleanor Andrews “Views from the Grand Tour(ist): Florence and Foreign Consumption,” which examines films that represent the conceptualization, and at times adaptation, of the Grand Tour through Florence, starting as early as 1924 with Romola (Henry King) and ending with Carlo Lizzani's Cronache di poveri amanti (1954). In the second contribution, “Florentine Artists on Film: Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,” Nathaniel J. Donahue explores films in which Florence influences the artist on screen. Although the essay is rich, the title is misleading, as Donahue considers films which represent both fictional artists and historical ones, including but not limited to Ottone Rosai. Dom Holdaway's “Florence after Dark: Cops, Crime and Serial Killers” successfully studies “giallo-like” classics revolving around the city. His brief introduction is well written and mentions Hannibal among others, but surprisingly chooses to omit it from his analysis despite its notoriety (Hannibal appears instead in Hennessey's section on food later). The fourth piece by Pasquale Iannone explores “Rolling Hills, Scorching Sun: Filming the Tuscan Countryside,” highlighting the mysticism that the Tuscan countryside offers. Although Iannone considers these films Tuscan, most of the scenes analyzed are actually shot in Florence proper. Next, Brenden Hennessey's “Bread, Wine and Celluloid: Tuscan Cuisine at the Movies” delves into the way Tuscan foodways function in seven memorable films. In this section, the movie choices are compelling, but it is unfortunate that there is no mention of Carole Counihan's anthropological research of Tuscan foodways, either in the introduction or the analysis. In the final piece, “From Dante to Machiavelli: Canonical Florentine Literature on Film,” Barbara Garbin investigates what the author deems to be canonical literature on screen through a variety of works, but the author's definition of “canonical” is debatable.The editor of the volume, Zambenedetti, collaborated with many contemporary film scholars on this publication. Most of the photo credits belong to the editor himself, and the collection works well together as a unified piece. The introductions are all insightful, well written, and provide a complete overview of each theme.Zambenedetti's “Introduction” makes it clear that the volume is not exhaustive due to its size and approach, and as such it is always a difficult task to select which movies to feature. The collection presents a balanced range of films that represent Florence's cinematic ingenuity, yet placement of a few films may have fit stronger in alternative categories. In revised editions, it may be interesting to include an essay dedicated to Florence in other media, particularly television with the new productions about the Medici and Borgia families.To conclude, one of the most appealing components of the volume is its very rich visual aspect, from contemporary images and maps to the individual cinematic frames, which will be useful to a wide array of readers, from undergraduates in a monograph course or study abroad experience, to film students and cultured travelers alike. Additionally, the individual authors often reference and cross-cite films throughout the work, intertwining nicely the six themes.