Zhang Yimou's 'Blood simple':cannibalism, remaking and translation in world cinema

Zhang Yimou’s A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop (2009) remakes the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple (1984) in a way that re-imagines the earlier film in a Chinese setting, adapting and recreating the narrative, but the film cannot be regarded as being aimed solely at a Chinese audience, as it was also released in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing from translation studies and film studies, this article analyses how Zhang’s film adapts its source material, particularly its tendency to make explicit elements that were left implicit in the source text. The idea of cannibalization, from Brazilian modernist theory, helps explain the ambiguous orientation of the remake as both homage to and localization of the source text. This hybridity was not well received by American audiences and shows how the movie’s connection to both Zhang and the Coens leads to a dual voice in the film. The analysis demonstrates how translation and cross-cultural adaptation enrich ideas of world cinema

Whose Streets?: A film of screening & conversation with director Damon Davis

Join us, and other departments and initiatives across Boston University, for a screening of the film Whose Streets? followed by a panel discussion with filmmaker Damon Davis, Phillipe Copeland – School of Social Work, Ashley Farmer – History and African American Studies, CAS, and Pamela Lightsey – School of Theology, moderated by Jessica Simes – Sociology.Boston University Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, Department of Sociology, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Initiative on Cities, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Theology, School of Social Work, College of Communication, African American Studies, Arts, Initiativ

We Are Joined Together Temporarily The Tragic Mulatto, Fusion Monster in Lee Frost\u27s The Thing with Two Heads

In Lee Frost\u27s 1972 film The Thing with Two Heads, a white bigot unknowingly has his head surgically grafted onto the body of a black man. From that moment on, these two personalities compete for control of their shared body with ridiculous results. Somewhere between horror and comedy, this Blaxploitation film occupies a strange place in interracial discourse. Throughout American literature, the subgenre of tragic mulatto fiction has critiqued segregation by focusing on the melodramatic lives of those divided by the color line. Most tragic mulatto scholarship has analyzed overtly political novels written by African American writers from the Reconstruction Era or Harlem Renaissance, and examining these overtly political texts has produced valuable ways to understand American racism\u27s harsh reality. Beyond this focus on reality, however, The Thing with Two Heads is a valuable contribution to the field of tragic mulatto studies because its focus on the fantastic plot of a black/white conjoined twin provides opportunities to theorize race in ways that more reality-bound works cannot. This article explores how this horror-comedy articulates different discourses regarding interracialism, conjoined twins, and monstrosity in ways that reveal much about American ideas about race, selfhood, and identity

3D UK? 3D History and the Absent British Pioneers

The recent television ‘rediscovery’ of a small cohort of 1950s British 3D films (and the producers who made them) has offered a new route into considering how the historical stories told about 3D film have focused almost exclusively on the American experience, eliding other national contexts. This article challenges both the partiality of existing academic histories of 3D, and the specific popular media narratives that have been constructed around the British 3D pioneers. Offering a rebuttal of those narratives and an expansion of them based around primary archival research, the article considers how the British 3D company Stereo Techniques created a different business and production model based around non-fiction short 3D films that stand in contrast to the accepted view of 3D as an American feature film novelty. Through an exploration of the depiction (and absence) of these 3D pioneers from existing media histories, the article argues for a revision to both 3D studies and British cinema history

Indigenous Film Festivals as Eco-Testimonial Encounter: The 2011 Native Film + Video Festival

In struggles for political and cultural recognition many Indigenous groups employ visual media to make their concerns heard. Amongst these various channels for media activism are Indigenous film festivals which, in the words of festival coordinator Amalia Cόrdova, work to convey ‘a sense of solidarity with Indigenous struggles’. Cόrdova’s essay on Indigenous film festivals appears in the collection Film Festivals and Activism (2012). In the introduction to the collection co-editor Leshu Torchin writes about activist festivals as testimonial encounters or fields of witnessing where the films offer testimony and the audiences serve as witnessing publics, ‘viewers [who] take responsibility for what they have seen and become ready to respond’. To better understand how Indigenous film festivals embody these activist imperatives as eco-activism I consider the case of the 2011 Native American Film and Video Festival (NAFVF) with its special eco-themed focus Mother Earth in Crisis. In my analysis of NAFVF I consider both the testimonies of the films and the festival context in which they are placed; by doing so I add to the growing scholarship in ecocinema studies which within the last ten years has become a legitimate and crucial aspect of ecocriticism’s purview – though surprisingly, with little attention devoted to film festivals. Through this analysis, by articulating what I term the oblique testimony, I argue that Indigenous film festivals are often strongly reflective of the environmental concerns and hopes of Native peoples and suggest ecological engagements that place them in the terrain of environmental film festivals. [excerpt

[Review of] Jun Xing and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, eds. Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Through Film

The fourteen essays collected in Xing and Hirabayashi\u27s new volume make a strong argument for serious intellectual work involved not only in the college-level study of moving images for their messages about minority groups but also in pedagogical approaches that take film and video as their primary texts. Written by a collection of scholars who work in ethnic and racial studies and various allied fields, the essays share a concern with pedagogy and with showing how visual media can be used to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and communications, particularly with respect to the thorny topics of ethnicity and race (3). Indeed, despite the book\u27s title, film/video\u27s treatments of minority races and ethnicities are the collection\u27s main focus; gender and sexuality are broached in their intersection with ethnic and racial categories (Elisa Facio\u27s chapter on The Queering of Chicana Studies and Marilyn C. Alquizola and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi\u27s piece on teaching stereotypes of Asian American women, for example), and global/international identities are discussed when they can illuminate a United States context. An eclectic range of Hollywood, avant-garde, independent, and documentary film and video is examined in essays of a likewise broad range of rhetorical styles and methodologies-some firmly grounded in academic theory, others more accessible to the lay-people addressed in the introduction as potential readers

Aaron E. Bledsoe - The Man Behind the Mask: The Progression of Masculinity in African American Male Characters as seen in films Awarded the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Pictur

This qualitative study will examine the way in which the masculinity of African American men is portrayed in films through a textual analysis of the leading male character in movies that have been awarded the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture. I’ll be performing a textual analysis of the following movies: “Flight”, “Book of Eli”, and “The Great Debaters”. Through the analysis of the main character, I discuss the following: types of marginalization experienced in the film, interactions/relations with (African American) women, as well as the importance that his education and/or occupation will play in his identity as a man. Using these factors, I argue that these characters are able to preserve their masculinity as a means of escaping the emasculation created in a society that marginalizes men of color in film. Donald Bogle points out that in the past, Black men have been portrayed as either “childlike, docile or happy as the role of a servant,”, or as an extremely violent threat to society. Using the studies of Stuart Hall, I’ll be able examine the extent to which representation affects the portrayal of a cultural group and how organizations like the NAACP Image Awards help in providing more of a positive acknowledgement of people of color in the media.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1009/thumbnail.jp

“A malignant, seething hatework”: an introduction to U.S. 21st century hardcore horror

The proliferation of U.S. horror films in the 21 st century has engendered an increase in critical and academic response which has almost exclusively focused on the conventions of mainstream horror cinema. That is, films sanctioned by classificatory bodies, released through mid to large production companies and exhibited via selected to wide theatrical releases. While academic work, drawing from film and cultural studies, has provided a much needed engagement with the popularity and themes of contemporary U.S. horror they have tended to exclude marginal or ‘hidden’ hardcore horror film examples. Therefore, this article will provide an introductory account of the films that form part of this horror sub-genre, from Eric Stanze’s Scrapbook (2000) through Fred Vogel’s August Underground trilogy (2001 – 2007) to Stephen Biro’s American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (2014). The article will briefly map out the criteria for a definition of hardcore horror before discussing some of its key examples. It is not my intention to simply interpret the films but to look at their ‘archaeology’ to account for the production practices, marketing and distribution strategies, and film reception. The importance of looking at hardcore horror in terms of an archaeology is to reintegrate its marginal status and cultural practices so that a wider examination of the cultural field of U.S. horror in terms of how it is made and experienced can be advanced

In the Matter of Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies: Hearing Before the U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Cong., May 6, 2009 (Statement of Roger V. Skalbeck, Geo. U. L. Library, on behalf of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries Association)

The American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association submit the following comments on exemptions that should be granted pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 1201 (a)(1)(C). Our request for an exemption is specifically aimed at literary and audiovisual works, usually commercially-produced, lawfully-acquired DVDs, when circumvention is used to make compilations of brief portions of the works for educational use by faculty members in a classroom setting. Specifically, we request that the exemption granted to faculty in media and film studies programs after the 2006 rulemaking proceeding be broadened to faculty of law and the health sciences, and that the exemption be extended to include lawfully-acquired copies from any source permitted by 17 U.S.C. § 110 (1)