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

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

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

The Motorcycle Diaries

The first monograph to examine Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, this book explains the significance of Salles’ film with respect to the specific category of ‘youth culture’ as a historically and culturally situated concept. The Motorcycle Diaries looks at the film’s engagement with ‘emerging adulthood’, the importance of travel as a source of self-discovery, and the film’s impact on the iconicity of Che Guevara, the international emblem of a restless, rebellious youth. Combining insights from transnational film studies, tourism studies and affect theory, as well as drawing on extensive historical materials, this book provides not only a necessary addition to existing scholarship on this popular movie, but also an inspiring model for the analysis of film in relation to youth culture - a burgeoning field of interest in Latin American scholarship. It will interest any scholar in film studies, specifically transnational cinemas, global cinema, Latin American cinema, Latin American history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, tourism studies and global politics

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

Native Americans on Film: Conversations, Teaching, and Theory

The film industry and mainstream popular culture are notorious for promoting stereotypical images of Native Americans: the noble and ignoble savage, the pronoun-challenged sidekick, the ruthless warrior, the female drudge, the princess, the sexualized maiden, the drunk, and others. Over the years, Indigenous filmmakers have both challenged these representations and moved past them, offering their own distinct forms of cinematic expression. Native Americans on Film draws inspiration from the Indigenous film movement, bringing filmmakers into an intertextual conversation with academics from a variety of disciplines. The resulting dialogue opens a myriad of possibilities for engaging students with ongoing debates: What is Indigenous film? Who is an Indigenous filmmaker? What are Native filmmakers saying about Indigenous film and their own work? This thought-provoking text offers theoretical approaches to understanding Native cinema, includes pedagogical strategies for teaching particular films, and validates the different voices, approaches, and worldviews that emerge across the movement. M. Elise Marubbio is associate professor of American Indian studies at Augsburg College and director of the Augsburg Native American Film Series. She is the author of Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film, winner of the Peter C. Rollins Book Award. Eric L. Buffalohead, an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of White Eagle, Oklahoma, is associate professor and Chair of the American Indian studies department at Augsburg College. “Without a doubt, this volume represents a major contribution to the literature on Native film. Because of its wealth of insightful articles and fresh interviews with Native filmmakers, it should be an essential book for courses on Native film, indigenous media, not to mention more general courses on Native American Studies and Media Studies where these topics are too often neglected. A very impressive and useful collection.”—Randolph Lewis, author of Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground Accomplished scholars in the emerging field of Native film studies, Marubbio and Buffalohead... focus clearly on the needs of this field. They do scholars and students of Native film a great service by reprinting four seminal and provocative essays. -- J. Ruppert, University of Alaska Fairbanks -- J. Rupper M. Elise Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead have succeeded in depicting the complexities in study, teaching, and creating Native film....Regardless of an individual\u27s level of knowledge and expertise in Native film, Native Americans on Film is a valuable read for anyone interested in this topic. -- Studies in American Indian Literatures Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Titlehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_american_popular_culture/1011/thumbnail.jp

A Peek Behind the Curtain: Asian Americans on Screen and Behind the Scenes

The Hollywood film industry prominently consists of white actors, and critically acclaimed films are centered around white storylines. When Hollywood makes an adaptation based on people of color, specifically Asian Americans, they will whitewash the film to make it appear more socially acceptable. Scholars in Asian American studies, film studies, and other academic fields have analyzed Hollywood’s lack of diversity with actors, producers, directors, and even storylines. My study aims to analyze the connection between Asian American actors, directors, and producers from smaller to larger projects. Additionally, what did they do once they gained recognition and changed how Hollywood operates. Research has shown that this network among American actors, directors, and producers helps them stand against Hollywood’s barriers and change the industry from the inside

Black and White Propaganda Triggering the War in Afghanistan

Lone Survivor Film highlights on the American propaganda in Afghanistan war. In analyzing the topic, the writer has two objectives of the research. They are to analyze the American propaganda in Afghanistan war and to describe the situation of Afghanistan war as reflected in Lone Survivor film. This research is done under an interdisciplinary approach, as it applies American multidisciplinary studies. The writer uses descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data adopted from the scenes and dialogues of the film Lone Survivor. The result of this research is that propaganda in the film Lone Survivor can be classified into black and white propaganda. The black propaganda is shown as American pretends to have noble heart in some scenes in the film, in contrast with the truth that they have hidden agenda. Those are to change the audience’s view about America. The white propaganda in the film is shown when American tries showing to the world that there is some bad fact about Ahmad Shah group. Also there are some interesting situation between American soldiers and Taliban rebels which are found in Lone Survivor film

The Motorcycle Diaries

The first monograph to examine Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, this book explains the significance of Salles’ film with respect to the specific category of ‘youth culture’ as a historically and culturally situated concept. The Motorcycle Diaries looks at the film’s engagement with ‘emerging adulthood’, the importance of travel as a source of self-discovery, and the film’s impact on the iconicity of Che Guevara, the international emblem of a restless, rebellious youth. Combining insights from transnational film studies, tourism studies and affect theory, as well as drawing on extensive historical materials, this book provides not only a necessary addition to existing scholarship on this popular movie, but also an inspiring model for the analysis of film in relation to youth culture - a burgeoning field of interest in Latin American scholarship. It will interest any scholar in film studies, specifically transnational cinemas, global cinema, Latin American cinema, Latin American history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, tourism studies and global politics

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