ENG 282
2000
Billy Elliot (UK/France: Stephen Daldry, 2000: 110 mins)
Turner, Pauline. "Images of the Family." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 33-50. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Blackboards (Iran/Italy/Japan: Samira Makhmalbaf, 2000: 85 mins)
Ashbury, Roy. "Schools and Teachers." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 51-74. [Available in BCTC library PN1995 U4977 2005]
Stone, Judy. "Iranian Cinema Now." International Film Guide: 2004 Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004: 40-54.
Code Unknown (France/Germany/Romania: Michael Haneke, 2000: 118 mins)
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
---. "On the Films of Michael Haneke." The Marketplace of Ideas (April 15, 2010)
"Code Unknown: An Auto Dialogue." Girish [This is a blog-a-thon--links at the bottom will direct you to more essays on the film] (February 13, 2006)
Cozzalio, Dennis. "Code Unknown and Crash: Collisions, Connections and Catharsis." Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly (February 13, 2006)
Falcon, Richard. Code Unknown Sight and Sound (May 2001)
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of
Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan/Hong Kong/USA/China: Ang Lee, 2000: 120 mins)
Atchley, J. Heath. "When The Master Is Not Master: The Critique of Enlightenment in Ang Lee's 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'" Journal of Religion and Film 7.2 (October 2003)
Baker, Geoff. "Portraying the Quest for Buddhist Wisdom?: A Comparative Study of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Journal of Religion and Film 10.1 (April 2006)
Dancer in the Dark (Denmark: Lars Von Trier, 2000: 140 mins)
"May TOERIFIC: Dancer in the Dark Doodad Kind of Town (May 18, 2009)
The Day I Became a Woman (Iran: Marzieh Makhmalbaf, 2000: 78 mins)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Women as Spectacle: Theological Perspectives on Women and Film." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 85-113.
Stone, Judy. "Iranian Cinema Now." International Film Guide: 2004 Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004: 40-54.
Divided We Fall (Czech Republic: Jan Hrebek, 2000: 117 mins)
Cockrell, Eddie. "Directors of the Year: Jan Hrebek." International Film Guide: 2004. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2004: 19-24.
The Gleaners & I (France: Agnes Varda, 2000: 82 mins)
Darke, Chris. "The Directors of the Year: Agnes Varda." International Film Guide. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 38-45. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]
In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong/France: Wong Kar-Wai, 2000: 98 mins)
Elley, Derek. "Great Directors: Wong Kar-Wai." International Film Guide 2002. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2002: 42-48. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1993.3 1544 2002]
Merrick, Amy. "Living In: In the Mood for Love." Design Sponge (March 2010)
Memento (USA: Christopher Nolan, 2000: 113 mins)
Cassey, Joe. "Mental Illness." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 99-114. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Dawson, Mike. "Memento in Relation to Reception Theory." Left Field Cinema (March 3, 2009)
Kemp, Philip. "Directors of the Year: Christopher Nolan." International Film Guide: 2004 Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004: 35-39.
Quills (USA/Germany/UK: Philip Kaufman, 2000: 124 mins)
Cassey, Joe. "Mental Illness." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 99-114. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Requeim for a Dream (USA: Darren Aronofsky, 2000: 102 mins)
Cassey, Joe. "Mental Illness." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 99-114. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Snatch (UK/USA: Guy Ritchie, 2000: 102 mins)
Helsby, Wendy. "Roughs and Respectables: Representing the 'Other.'" Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 143-164. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Suzhou River
(Germany/China: Ye Lou, 2000: 83 mins)
Feng, Yunda Eddie. "Revitalizing the Thriller Genre: Lou Ye's Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 187-202. [BCTC Library: PN1995 P89 2009]
Together (Sweden/Denmark/Italy: Lukas Moodysson, 2000: 106 mins)
Forslund, Bengt. "Directors of the Year: Lukas Moodysson." International Film Guide: 2004. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2004: 30-34.
Unbreakable (USA: M. Night Shyamalan, 2000: 106 mins)
Totaro, Donato. "Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 1: The Long Take." Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
---. "Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 2: Mise en Scène." Offscreen (November 30, 2003)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Hungary/Italy/Germany/France: Bela Tarr, 2000: 145 mins
Flanagan, Matthew. "Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema." 16:9 (November 2008)
North, Dan. "“All a Man Can Do is Look Upon it”: What’s With the Werckmeister Whale?" Spectacular Attractions (December 3, 2009)
Romney, Jonathan. "Bela Tarr." Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood ed. Michael Atkinson. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008: 73-78. [Professor has copy]
2001
Amelie (France/Germany: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001: 121 mins)
Gaggi, Silvio. "Navigating Chaos." New Punk Cinema. Edinburgh University Press, 2006: 113-125.
Ortiz, Gaye. "Women as Spectacle: Theological Perspectives on Women and Film." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 85-113.
Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (USA: Steven Spielberg, 2001: 146 mins)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Baran (Iran: Majid Majidi, 2001: 94 mins)
Stone, Judy. "Iranian Cinema Now." International Film Guide: 2004 Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004: 40-54.
Wilson, Brian. "Woman as the Object of Desire: Notes Toward a Reading of Baran." The Film Journal (January 2006)
A Beautiful Mind (USA: Ron Howard, 2000: 135 mins)
Cassey, Joe. "Mental Illness." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 99-114. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Hansen, Per Krogh. " Unreliable Narration in Cinema: Facing the Cognitive Challenge Arising from Literary Studies." Amsterdam International Electronic Journal of Narratology #5 (Autumn 2009)
The Devil's Backbone (Spain/Mexico: Guillermo del Toro, 2001: 106 mins)
Lázaro-Reboll, Antonio. "The Transnational Reception of The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro 2001)." Hispanic Research Journal 8.1 (February 2007): 39–51
Donnie Darko (USA: Richard Kelly, 2001: 113/133 mins)
Tobias, Scott. "The New Cult Canon: Donnie Darko The A.V. Club (February 21, 2008)
Gosford Park (UK/USA/Italy: Robert Altman, 2001: 132 min)
Helsby, Wendy. "Beyond Britishness: Identity and Difference." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 189-204. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (USA: John Cameron Mitchell, 2001: 95 mins)
Mitchell, John Cameron. "Interview: Filmmaker, Actor and Writer." Big Think (June 2, 2010)
Mulholland Dr. (France/USA: David Lynch, 2001: 147 mins)
"Film Studies: Dreams, Memories, Chaos." Dialogic (December 2, 2009)
Eig, Jonathan. "A Beautiful Mind(fuck) -- Hollywood Structures of Identity." Jump Cut #46 (2003)
Elsaesser, Thomas. "The Mind-Game Films." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema ed. Warren Buckland. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009: 13-41.
Toles, George. "Auditioning Betty in Mulholland Dr.." Film Quarterly (Fall 2004): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 191-198 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Wyman, Bill, et al. "Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About Mulholland Dr.. Salon (October 23, 2010)
The Piano Player (Austria/France/Germany: Michael Haneke, 2001: 131 mins)
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of
Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
Read My Lips (France: Jacques Audiard, 2001: 115 mins)
Caplan, Nina. "Directors of the Year: Jacques Audiard." International Film Guide 2010. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower P, 2010: 11-16.
The Royal Tenenbaums (USA: Wes Anderson, 2001: 110 mins)
MacDowell, James. "The 'Quirky' New Wave." Alternate Takes (July 21, 2005)
Piechota, Carole Lyn. "Give Me a Second Grace: Music as Absolution in The Royal Tenenbaums." Senses of Cinema (2005)
Seitz, Matt Zoller. "The Substance of Style, Pts. 1 - 5." Moving Image Source (March 30 - April 13, 2009)
Spirited Away (Japan: Hayao Miyazaki, 2001: 125 mins)
"Imaginary and Fantastic: Hayao Miyazaki Studies." Film Studies for Free (November 25, 2009)
Boyd, James W. and Tetsuya Nishimura. "Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film 'Spirited Away.'" Journal of Religion and Film 8.2 (October 2004)
Odell, Colin and Michelle Le Blanc. "Directors of the Year: Miyazaki Hayao." International Film Guide: 2009. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 16-22. [Available in BCTC Library: PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Suzuki, Ayumi. "A nightmare of capitalist Japan: Spirited Away." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Trouble Every Day (France/Germany/Japan: Claire Denis, 2001: 101 mins)
Chapman, Mark. "Reconceptualizing the Uncanny Vampire: Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day Bright Lights Film Journal #68 (May 2010)
Heath, Roderick. "Trouble Every Day (2001)." Ferdy on Films (October 25, 2010)
Y tu mamá también (Mexico: Alfonso Cuarón, 2001: 105 mins)
Benson-Allott, Caetin. "Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
"Major censorship: MPAA and the demotion of foreign films in the home video era." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
2002
11 09 01--September 11 (UK/France/Egypt/Japan/Mexico/USA/Iran: Various Directors, 2002: 134 mins)
Pramaggiore, Maria. "The global repositioning of the city symphony: sound, space, and trauma in 11’09”01—September 11 Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
28 Days Later (UK: Danny Boyle, 2002: 113 mins)
Bloom, Michael. "Reanimating the Living Dead: Uncovering the Zombie Archetype in the Works of George A. Romero." Offscreen (April 30, 2009)
Froula, Anna. "Prolepsis and the 'War on Terror': Zombie Pathology and the Culture of Fear in 28 Days Later...." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 195-2008. [Your professor has a copy]
Read, Jason. "Zombie as Critic." Unemployed Negativity (June 11, 2007)
"Understanding the Zombie Mentality, Pt. 3." Dialogic (July 29, 2005)
Adaptation (USA: Spike Jonze, 2002: 114 mins)
Dzialo, Chris. "'Frustrated Time' Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 107-128. [BCTC Library: PN1995 P89 2009]
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously." London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Bend It Like Beckham (UK/Germany/US: Gurinder Chadha, 2002: 112 mins)
Ramey, Mark. "Football and Film: Representing Nationality." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 169-188. [Warning to Americans--this is about what you call soccer. Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Bloody Sunday (UK/Ireland: Paul Greengrass, 2002: 107 mins)
Penney, Renée. "Bloody Sunday: Classically Unified Trauma?." Cinephile #1 (2005)
City of God (Brazil/France: Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002: 130 mins)
Carlsten, Jennie. "Violence in the City of God: The Fantasy of the Omniscient Spectator." Cinephile #1 (2005)
The Cuckoo (Russia: Alexsandr Rogozhkin, 2002: 99 minutes)
Wild, Daniel H. Review of The Cuckoo." KinoKultura (2004)
Dark Water (Japan: Hideo Nakata, 2002: 101 mins)
Kermode, Mark. "Spirit Levels." Sight and Sound (August 2005): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 89-91 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Nelson, Lindsay. "Ghosts of the Past, Ghosts of the Future: Monsters, Children, and Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema." Cinemascope #13 (July-December 2009)
Dirty Pretty Things (UK: Stephen Frears, 2002: 97 mins)
Kemp, Stephen. "Directors of the Year: Stephen Frears." International Film Guide 2002. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2002: 13-20. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1993.3 1544 2002]
Gangs of New York (USA/Italy: Martin Scorsese, 2002: 167 mins)
Burgoyne, Robert. "Homeland or Promised Land?: The Ethnic Construction of Nation in Gangs of New York." Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History Revised Edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010: 143-163. [BCTC Library: PN1995.9 H5 B87 2010]
Hero (Hong Kong/China: Zhang Yimou, 2002: 99 mins)
Lu, Sheldon. "Dialect and modernity in 21st century Sinophone cinema." Jump Cut #49 (Spring 2007)
Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. "Hero: China’s response to Hollywood globalization." Jump Cut #49 (Spring 2007)
Infernal Affairs (Hong Kong: Wai-keung Lau and Alan Mak, 2002: 101 mins)
Cameron, Allan and Sean Cubitt. "Infernal Affairs and the Ethics of Complex Narrative." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. ed. Warren Buckland. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 151-167. [BCTC Library: PN1995 P89 2009]
Irreversible (France: Gaspar Noé, 2002: 97 mins)
Britt, Thomas R. "Lower Depths and Higher Aims: Death, Excess and Discontinuity in Irreversible and Visitor Q." Cinephile 5.1 (2009)
Krautheim, Graeme. "Aspiring to the Void: The Collapse of Genre and Erasure of Body in Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible." Cinephile #4 (Summer 2008)
Lilya 4-Ever (Sweden/Denmark: Lukas Moodysson, 2002: 1-4 mins)
Forslund, Bengt. "Directors of the Year: Lukas Moodysson." International Film Guide: 2004. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2004: 30-34.
The Man Without a Past (Finland: Aki Kaurismäki, 2002: 97 mins)
Wilson, Lana. "Great Directors: Aki Kaurismäki." Senses of Cinema
Rabbit-Proof Fence (Australia: Phillip Noyce, 2002: 94 mins)
Martin, Adrian. "Bouquet of Barbed Wire." Sight and Sound (November 2002)
The Ring (USA/Japan: Gore Verbinski, 2002: 115 mins) [Remake of Ringu (Japan: Hideo Nakata, 1998: 96 mins)]
Jarvis, Brian. "Anamorphic allegory in The Ring, or, seven ways of looking at a horror video." Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies #3 (November 2007)
Ozawa, Eimi. "Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films." 49th Parallel (Autumn 2006)
Xu, Gang Gary. "Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood." Senses of Cinema (November 2004)
Twilight Samurai (Japan: Yôji Yamada, 2002: 129 mins)
Silver, Alain. The Samurai Film. Expand and Revised Edition. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 2004.
2003
The Corporation (Canada: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, 2003: 145 mins) To watch the film online; BCTC Library also has a copy.
McChesney, Robert and John Bellamy Foster. "Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States." Monthly Review 62.2 (June 2010)
The Dreamers (France/UK/Italy: Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003: 115 mins)
Buchanan, Ian. "Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers; Kristin Ross' May 68 & Its Afterlives; Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus." excerpt from Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. NY: Continuum, 2008: 13-19.
Fletcher, Stephen Q. "The Dreamers: Revolution as a Gala Dinner and a Game." Metaphilm (May 4, 2008)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Taiwan: Tsai Ming-liang, 2003: 82 mins)
Villiers, Nicholas de. "Leaving the Cinema: Metacinematic Cruising in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn." Jump Cut #50 (Spring 2008)
Memories of Murder (South Korea: Bong Joon-Ho, 2003: 132 mins)
Park, Ed. "The Bong Show: Bong Joon-Ho." Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood ed. Michael Atkinson. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008: 49-54. [Professor has copy]
Sungchan, Byun. "Save the Green Planet!, Memories of Murder, and the 80s in Cinema." Mediascape (Spring 2005)
Oldboy (South Korea: Chan-Wook Park, 2003: 120 mins
Benton, Michael. "ENG 282: Chan-Wook Park's Revenge Trilogy." Bluegrass Film Society (October 8, 2008)
---. "Violence and Film; Audience-Experience as a Factor in Our Reception of a Film." Dialogic (January 7, 2007)
Eig, Jonathan. "A Beautiful Mind(fuck) -- Hollywood Structures of Identity." Jump Cut #46 (2003)
Elsaesser, Thomas. "The Mind-Game Films." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema ed. Warren Buckland. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009: 13-41.
Kaklamanidou, Betty. "Genre: Oldboy and the Suspense Thriller." Offscreen (July 31, 2007)
Lee, Hwanhee. "What is Morality? On Oldboy." Offscreen (July 31, 2008)
Thanouli, Eleftheria. "Looking for Access in Narrative Complexity: The New and the Old in Oldboy." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. ed. Warren Buckland. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 217-232. [BCTC Library: PN1995 P89 2009]
Save the Green Planet (South Korea: Joon-Hwan Jang, 2003: 118 mins)
Sungchan, Byun. "Save the Green Planet!, Memories of Murder, and the 80s in Cinema." Mediascape (Spring 2005)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (South Korea: Kim Ki-Duk, 2003: 103 mins)
Conroy, Melissa. "Seeing with Buddha's Eyes: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring." Journal of Religion and Film 11.2 (October 2007)
Gombeaud, Adrien. "Directors of the Year: Kim Ki-Duk." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 11-16.
Time of the Wolf (France/Austria/Germany: Michael Haneke, 2003: 113 mins)
Bingham, Adam. "Long Night's Journey Into Day." Kinoeye 4.1 (March 2004)
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of
Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
Travellers and Magicians (Bhutan/Australia: Khyentse Norbu, 2003: 108 mins)
Bloom, Alexis and Tsewang Dandup. "Bhutan: The Last Place." Frontline (PBS: May 2002) [Tsewang Dandup plays the protagonist in Travellers and Magicians]
Sasaki, David. "Bhutan, TV, and the Internet." El Oso (August 8. 2010)
2004
3-Iron (South Korea/Japan: Kim Ki-Duk, 2004: 88 mins)
Gombeaud, Adrien. "Directors of the Year: Kim Ki-Duk." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 11-16.
2046 (China/France/Germany/Hong Kong: Wong Kar Wai, 2004: 129 mins)
Teo, Stephen. "2046: A Matter of time, A Labour of Love." Senses of Cinema (April/June 2005): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 160-161 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Anatomy of Hell (France: Catherine Breillat, 2004: 77 mins)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Women as Spectacle: Theological Perspectives on Women and Film." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 85-113.
The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algeria: Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966/2004: 121 mins)
"Battle of Algiers/Battaglia di Algeri, La (Algeria/Italy: Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)." Dialogic (Archive of sources/essays on the film and its themes: February 18, 2009)
Matthews, Peter. "The Battle of Algiers: Bombs and Boomerangs." Criterion (October 11, 2004)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Dark Beauty: Theological Perspectives on War as Cinematic Mythology." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 160-177.
Downfall (Germany: Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004: 156 mins)
Hantke, Steffen. "Hitler as Actor, Actors as Hitler: High Concept, Casting, and Star Performance in Der Untergang and Mein Führer." Cinephile 5.1 (2010)
Hoffgen, Maggie. "Representing a Dictator: Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004)." Studying German Cinema. London: Auteur, 2009: 175-188. [Book available in BCTC library]
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (USA: Michel Gondry, 2004: 108 mins)
Dzialo, Chris. "'Frustrated Time' Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman." Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009: 107-128. [BCTC Library: PN1995 P89 2009]
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously. NY: Wallflower, 2008.
Seitz, Matt Zoller. "REWATCH: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Film in Focus (May 2007)
Zacharek, Stephanie. "Brilliant Mistake." Salon (March 19, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (USA: Michael Moore, 2004: 122 mins)
"Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism." Democracy Now (July 5, 2010)
Head-On (Germany/Turkey: Fatih Akin, 2004: 121 mins)
Hoffgen, Maggie. "Crossing Boundaries: Gegen Die Wand (Head-On, 2004). Studying German Cinema. London: Auteur, 2009: 201-213.
Tobias, Scott. The New Cult Canon: Head-On." The A.V. Club (October 1, 2009)
I Heart Huckabees (USA/Germany: David O' Russell, 2004: 107 minutes)
Kirby, Matt. "I Heart Huckabees: Premodern Help for Postmodern Times." Metaphilm (November 12, 2004)
MacDowell, James. "The 'Quirky' New Wave." Alternate Takes (July 21, 2005)
Ng, Edwin. "The (Zen) Buddhist Heart of I ♥ Huckabees." Journal of Religion & Film 14.1 (April 2010)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously. NY: Wallflower, 2008.
Tait, R. Colin. "'Jesus is never mad at us if we live with him in our hearts': The Dialectical View of America in David O' Russell's I Heart Huckabees." Cinephile (March 2006)
Kinsey (USA/Germany: Bill Condon, 2004: 118 mins)
Porton, Richard. "Kinsey." Cinema Scope #21 (2004)
Kung Fu Hustle (China/Hong Kong: Stephen Chow, 2004: 95 mins)
Szeto, Kin-Yan. "The Politics of Historiography in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Moolaadé (Senegal: Ousmane Sembene, 2004: 124 mins)
Bartlet, Olivier. "Adventures and Misadventures of African Cinema." Cinemas of the South (2006)
Bug Girl. Is My Vuvulzela Too Big?" Skepchick (June 20, 2010)
Coventry, Martha. "Making the Cut: It's a Girl! ... Or is it? When in doubt, why are surgeons calling the shots?" Ms. (Oct/Nov 2000)
Diop, Baba. "Ousmane Sembene: The Elder of Elders." Cinemas of the South (February 15, 2009)
Finney, Nikki. "The Greatest Show On Earth." (Read the poem/read an analysis of the poem/and listen to Nikki read it)
Halpern, Sue. "Breaking a Conspiracy of Silence." The New York Times Book Review 56.18 (November 19, 2009)
Marzana, Nicola. "The Art of Hunger: Re-Defining Third Cinema." 16:9 (November 2009)
Pride, Ray. "Woman is the Future of Man: Ousmane Sembene on Moolaade." Cinema Scope #21 (2004)
The Passion of the Christ (USA: Mel Gibson, 2004: 127 mins)
Deacy, Chris. "A Time to Kill?: Theological Perspectives on Violence and Film." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy & Gaye Williams Oritz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 123-142. [Professor has copy]
Hauka, David. "'Christ That Hurts': Rewriting the Jesus Narrative -- Violence and the Language of Action Cinema in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Cinephile #2 (March 2006)
The Syrian Bride (Israel/France/Germany: Eran Riklis, 2004: 97 mins)
Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Tropical Malady (Thailand/France/Germany/Italy: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004: 118 mins)
"Tropical Malady: The Transformation of Memory." Filmsick (October 5, 2010)
Uncovered: The War on Iraq (USA: Robert Greenwald, 2004: 83 mins)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Dark Beauty: Theological Perspectives on War as Cinematic Mythology." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 160-177.
Vera Drake (UK/France: Mike Leigh, 2004: 125 mins)
Kemp, Philip. "Directors of the Year: Mike Leigh." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 17-23.
Yes (UK: Sally Potter, 2004: 100 mins)
"Angelism and Rage: Sally Potter Links." Film Studies for Free (September 21, 2009)
Mayer, Sophie. "The Films of Sally Potter." Electric Sheep Magazine (October 1, 2009)
Oppenheimer, Jean. "Production Slate: Yes - A Cross Cultural Romance." American Cinematographer (July 2005)
"Please go in two by two! Sally Potter's Fabulous Ark." Film Studies for Free (November 4, 2008)
2005
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (France: Jacques Audiard, 2005: 108 mins)
Caplan, Nina. "Directors of the Year: Jacques Audiard." International Film Guide 2010. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower P, 2010: 11-16.
Border Cafe (Iran/France: Kambuzia Partovi, 2005: 105 mins)
Mahani, Najmeh Khalili. "Food for Thought: Sensorium of the Iranian Cinema." Offscreen (January 31, 2009)
Brokeback Mountain (Canada/USA: Ang Lee, 2005)
Benshoff, Harry M. "Brokering Brokeback Mountain — a local reception study." Jump Cut (2008)
Garrett, Daniel. "You Don't Know What Love Is." Film International #21 (2006)
Koziak, Barbara. "Shepherding Romance: Reviving the Politics of Romantic Love in Brokeback Mountain." Genders #50 (2009)
"Queer Cowboys: Alternative Space in "Brokeback Mountain." Film International (2006)
Schneider, Richard, Jr., et al. "Not Quitting Brokeback/Lost in Adaptation/The Hate Crime/Beyond the Mountain." Gay & Lesbian Review (May/June 2006): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 170-174 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Sharrett, Christopher. "Death of the Strong, Silent Type: The Achievement of Brokeback Mountain." Film International 7.1 (February 2009)
Stamatopoulos, Irini. "Ang Lee's Cowboys: Fallen from Brokeback’s Paradise Lost." Offscreen (February 28, 2007)
Vicari, Justin. "Discovering America: Reflections on Brokeback Mountain." Jump Cut #49 (Spring 2007)
Caché (France/Austria/Germany/Italy/USA: Michael Haneke, 2005: 117 mins)
Arthur, Paul. "Endgame." Film Comment (November/December 2005)
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
---. "On the Films of Michael Haneke." The Marketplace of Ideas (April 15, 2010)
Ebert, Roger. "Cache." Chicago Sun-Times (January 13, 2010)
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
Grundman, Roy, Edward Nersessian, Brigitte Peucker, Brian Price, and Garrett Stewart. "Caché - Videoed roundtable discussion of Michael Haneke's film." Philoctetes Center (2008)
Jeong, Seung-hoon. "Gaze, Suture, Interface: The Suicide Scene in Michael Haneke’s Caché." Cinephile 5.1 (2009)
"Michael Haneke: A Ribbon of Links." Film Studies for Free (October 6, 2009)
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Articles." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
Ogrodnik, Benjamin. "Deep Cuts." Film International 7.1 (February 2009)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Sammond, Nicholas. "'Hidden,' or Fear of a Black Planet." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of
Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)
Sternagel, Joerg. "From Inside Us: Experiencing the Film Actor in Michael Haneke's "Caché." Film International #39 (2009)
Tobias, Scott. "Gateway to Geekery: Michael Haneke." The A.V. Club (June 3, 2010)
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
The Constant Gardener (UK/Germany: Fernando Meirelles, 2005: 129 mins)
"The Temporality of the Real: The Path to Politics in The Constant Gardener." Film-Philosophy 11.3 (October 2007)
The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Romania: Cristi Puiu, 2005: 150 mins)
Roddick, Nick. "Eastern Promise." Sight and Sound (October 2007)
The Dreams of Sparrows (Iraqi/USA: Haydar Daffar, 2005: 74 mins)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Dark Beauty: Theological Perspectives on War as Cinematic Mythology." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 160-177.
Election (Hong Kong: Johnnie To, 2005: 101 mins)
Heath, Roderick. "Election. Ferdy on Film (July 13, 2010)
Grizzly Man (USA: Werner Herzog, 2005: 103 mins)
Geller, Conrad. "Grizzly Man." Cineaste (Winter 2005): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 158-159 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Noys, Benjamin. "Antiphusis: Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man." Film-Philosophy 11.3 (November 2007)
Odorico, Stefano. Werner Herzog Between Documentary and Fiction Offscreen (March 31, 2010)
"Werner Herzog Links inc Youtube Fest." Film Studies for Free (April 20, 2009)
Hostel (USA: Eli Roth, 2005: 94 mins)
Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010) [Available from your teacher]
Cromb, Brenda. "Gorno: Violence, Shock and Comedy." Cinephile #4 (Summer 2008)
Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)
Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)
Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)
Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)
Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Torture (Archive on Dialogic: The culture and politics of "torture.")
The House of Sand (Brazil: Andrucha Waddington, 2005: 115 mins)
Khoo, Guan-Soon. The House of Sand: Western Brazilian Style." Offscreen (April 30, 2008)
Lady Vengeance (South Korea: Chan-Wook Park, 2005: 112 mins)
Benton, Michael. "ENG 282: Chan-Wook Park's Revenge Trilogy." Bluegrass Film Society (October 8, 2008)
Erickson, Steve. "Lady Vengeance and Its Critics." Undercurrent #2 (2006)
Kehr, Dave. "De-finger the Piano Player." The New York Times (October 30, 2005)
Land of the Dead (Canada/France/USA: George Romero, 2005: 93 mins)
Bloom, Michael. "Reanimating the Living Dead: Uncovering the Zombie Archetype in the Works of George A. Romero." Offscreen (April 30, 2009)
McSweeney, Terence. "The Land of the Dead and the Home of the Brave: Romero's Vision of a Post-9/11 America." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 107-116. [Professor has a copy]
Read, Jason. "Zombie as Critic." Unemployed Negativity (June 11, 2007)
"Understanding the Zombie Mentality, Pt. 3." Dialogic (July 29, 2005)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Japan: Hayao Miyazaki, 1984/2005: 116 min)
Monroe, William. "The Tao of Nausicaa." Foundation #103 (Summer 2008): 38-52.
Odell, Colin and Michelle Le Blanc. "Directors of the Year: Miyazaki Hayao." International Film Guide: 2009. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 16-22. [Available in BCTC Library: PN1993.3 I544 2009]
The New World (USA/UK: Terrence Malick, 2005: 150 mins)
Burgoyne, Robert. "The Columbian Exchange: Pocahontas and The New World." Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010: 120-142. [BCTC Library: PN1995.9 H5 B87 2010]
Paradise Now (Occupied Palestinian Territory/France/Germany/Netherlands/Israel: Hany Abu-Assad, 2005: 90 mins)
Bronstein, Phoebe. "Man-Made Martyrs in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Disturbing Manufactured Martyrdom in Paradise Now Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Jafaar, Ali. Paradise Now Sight and Sound (May 2006)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Dark Beauty: Theological Perspectives on War as Cinematic Mythology." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 160-177.
Rich, B. Ruby. "Bomb Culture." Sight and Sound (April 2006)
The Proposition (Australia: John Hillcoat, 2005: 104 mins)
Collins, Felicity. "HISTORY, MYTH AND ALLEGORY IN AUSTRALIAN CINEMA." Trames (2008)
Hillcoat, John, et al. "Ballad of the Wild Boys." Sight and Sound (March 2006)
Rose, James. "The Good Son: John Hillcoat's The Proposition." Offscreen (April 30, 2008)
Stein, Erica. "“A Hell of a Place”: The Everyday as Revisionist Content in Contemporary Westerns." Mediascape (Fall 2009)
Water (Canada/India: Deepa Mehta, 2005: 117 mins)
Mayer, Andre. "Digging Deepa: Canadian Filmmaker Shines with Water." CBC (November 2005): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 2007/2008: 183-184 [Available in BCTC Library: PN 1993 A6285]
Why We Fight (USA/France/UK/Canada/Denmark: Eugene Jarecki, 2005: 98 mins)
Ortiz, Gaye. "Dark Beauty: Theological Perspectives on War as Cinematic Mythology." Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008: 160-177.
2006
After the Wedding (Denmark/Sweden: Susanne Biers, 2006: 120 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
Army of Shadows (France/Italy: Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969/2006: 140 mins)
Taubin, Amy. "Army of Shadows: Out of the Shadows." Criterion (May 14, 2007)
Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven, 2006: 145 mins)
Howard, Ed. "TOERIFIC: Black Book." Only the Cinema (July 20, 2009)
Brand Upon the Brain (Canada: Guy Maddin, 2006: 95 mins)
Baker, Nicholson, et al. "Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self." Philoctetes (December 13, 2008)
Children of Men (Japan/UK/USA: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006: 109 mins)
Byle, Kirk. "Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
"Children of Men: The Repetition of the Ringing." Film International (2007)
Gessen, Keith. "Dystopia." Bookforum (June - August, 2010)
Nixon, Bryan. "The Long Take: Finding Hope Amongst the Chaos." Film International (2007)
Price, David H. "Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam's Brazil Through the 9/11 Looking Glass." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 167-182.
Schwartzman, Sarah. "Children of Men and a Plural Messianism." Journal of Religion & Film 13.1 (April 2009)
The Fall (USA/India: Tarsem Singh, 2006: 117 mins)
Garrett, Daniel. "Liberations of Mind, Spirit, and Vision: The Fall ~ Intimacy is possible within grandeur." Offscreen (September 30, 2008)
Fast Food Nation (UK/USA: Richard Linklater, 2006: 116 mins)
Koresky, Michael. "Raw Meat: Fast Food Nation Reverse Shot #26 (2010)
Stephens, Gregory. "Corn-Fed Culture: Living Large and "Eating Shit" in King Corn and Fast Food Nation." Bright Lights Film Journal #6(May 2010)
Flags of Our Fathers (USA: Clint Eastwood, 2006: 132 mins)
Burgoyne, Robert. "Hauntings in the War Film: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima." Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010: 164-189. [BCTC Library: PN1995.9 H5 B87 2010]
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Austria/Germany/Croatia: Jasmila Zbanic, 2006: 107 mins)
Koebel, Caroline. "Torture, maternity, and truth in Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica: Land of My Dreams." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
The Host (South Korea: Bong Joon-Ho, 2006: 119 mins)
Hsu, Hsuan L. "The dangers of biosecurity: The Host and the geopolitics of outbreak." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
An Inconvenient Truth (USA: Davis Guggenheim, 2006: 100 mins)
Mieszkowski, Katharine. "Did Al Get the Science Right." Salon (June 10, 2006): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 89-91 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
Letters from Iwo Jima (USA: Clint Eastwood, 2006: 141 mins)
Burgoyne, Robert. "Hauntings in the War Film: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima." Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010: 164-189. [BCTC Library: PN1995.9 H5 B87 2010]
Hariman, Robert and John Louis Lucaites. "Performing Civic Identity: Flag Raisings at Iwo Jima and Ground Zero." No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007: 93-136.
The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006: 137 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
Hansen, Per Krogh. " Unreliable Narration in Cinema: Facing the Cognitive Challenge Arising from Literary Studies." Amsterdam International Electronic Journal of Narratology #5 (Autumn 2009)
Hoffgen, Maggie. "The Other Germany: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006). Studying German Cinema. London: Auteur, 2009: 201-213. [Available in BCTC library]
Offside (Iran: Jafar Panahi, 2006: 93 mins)
Ferdinand, Marilyn. Offside Ferdy on Films (May 23, 2010)
Hudson, David. "Jafar Panahi Sentenced to 6 Years in Jail, 20 Years of Silence." MUBI (December 20, 2010)
"Studies of Censorship and Cinema: In Solidarity with Jafar Panahi." Film Studies for Free (April 6, 2010)
Pan's Labyrinth (Spain/Mexico: Guillermo Del Toro, 2006: 119 mins)
Balthaser, Benjamin. "Fantasies of Empire." DarkMatters (September 11, 2008)
Calhoun, John. "Fear and Fantasy." American Cinematographer (January 2007)
Cattaneo, Ann, et al. "Transformations: How Fairy Tales Cast Their Spell." Philoctetes (November 30, 2007)
Tanvir, Kuhu. "Pan's Labyrinth of History." Edit Room (February 26, 2008)
The Science of Sleep (France/UK/Italy: Michel Gondry, 2006: 105 mins)
Gondry, Michel and Robert Stickgold. "Dreams, Filmmaking, and the Scientific Method." Seed Salon (2007)
"La Science de Michel Gondry: online scholarship on his films & videos." Film Studies for Free (April 13, 2010)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously." London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Shortbus (USA: John Cameron Mitchell, 2006: 101 mins)
Browning, Barbara, et al. "The Lure and the Blur of the Real." Philoctetes (March 13, 2010)
Jhally, Sut. "Codes of Gender: Identity and Performance in Popular Culture." (Media Education Foundation, 2009) [documentary--available online]
Lewis, Jon. "Real sex: aesthetics and economics of art-house porn." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Macio. "Redefining Our Relationships: An Interview with Wendy-O Matik." Revolution By the Book (February 19, 2010)
Shaw, Richard. "Are the U.S.A.'s Independent Films a Distinct National Cinema?" The Film Journal (2002)
Wypijewski, JoAnn. "Sexual Healing: Carnal Knowledge." The Nation (September 9, 2009)
This Film Is Not Yet Rated (UK/USA: Kirby Dick, 2006: 97 mins)
Roth, Chris. "Three Decades of Film Censorship ... Right Before Your Eyes." The Humanist (January/February 2000): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 89-91 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]
This Is England (UK: Shane Meadows, 2006: 101 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
Volver (Spain: Pedro Almodóvar, 2006: 121 mins)
Sullivan, Moira. "Women in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar." Film International (2009)
2007
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania: Cristian Mungiu, 2007: 113 mins)
Mungiu, Cristian. "Oppression and Abortion in Mungiu's '4 Months'." Fresh Air (February 7, 2008)
Parvulescu, Consantin. "The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Ratner, Megan. "Stunted Lives: Unsettling and Unmissable. Bright Lights Film Journal #59 (February 2008)
Roddick, Nick. "Eastern Promise." Sight and Sound (October 2007)
Roman, Denise. "Film Notes: Three Romanian Movies (On Belonging and Corporeality in the New Wave of Romanian Cinema)." UC Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. (April 1, 2008)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (USA/Canada: Andrew Dominick, 2007: 160 mins)
Totaro, Donato. "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Study in Melancholia." Offscreen (April 30, 2008)
Atonement (UK/France: Joe Wright, 2007: 123 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
The Band's Visit (Israel/France/USA: Eran Kolirin, 2007: 87 mins)
Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Beaufort (Israel: Joseph Cedar, 2007: 131 mins)
Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Blade Runner (USA/Hong Kong: Ridley Scott, 1982/1991/2007: 117 mins)
Clute, Shannon and John Edwards. Blade Runner." Out of the Past (September 1, 2005)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Sims, Christopher A. "The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Science Fiction Studies 36.1 (March 2009)
Control (UK/USA/Australia/Japan: Anton Corbin, 2007: 122 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
Eastern Promises (UK/Canada/USA: David Cronenberg, 2007: 100 mins)
Hughes, Jessica. "In the Bathhouse: Collective Violence and Eastern Promises." Cinephile 5.2 (Fall 2009)
The Edge of Heaven (Germany/Turkey/Italy: Fatih Akin, 2007: 116 mins)
Elsaesser, Thomas. "Ethical Calculus: The cross-cultural dilemmas and moral burdens of Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven." Film Comment (May/June 2008)
Redmon, Allen H. "Locating Heaven: Fatih Akin’s Meditation on the Outcome of Tolerance and Hospitality." Journal of Religion and Film #14 (April 2010)
Funny Games (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2007: 111 mins) [Remake of Funny Games (Austria: Michael Haneke, 1997: 108 mins)]
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
Hui, Daniel. "Fun and Games: On Michael Haneke's 2007 Remake of His 1997 Funny Games." Bright Lights Film Journal #61 (August 2008)
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
North, Dan. "Funny Games Funny Games." Spectacular Attractions (October 15, 2009)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of
Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
The Grocer's Son (France: Eric Guirado, 2007: 96 mins)
Garrett, Daniel. "On Character, Family, Nature and Love: The Grocer’s Son ~ Families Are Like Civilizations." Offscreen (July 31, 2008)
Hot Fuzz (UK/France: Edgar Wright, 2007: 121 mins)
Helsby, Wendy. "Constables, Coppers, Rozzers, the Old Bill--The Police." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 75-92. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
My Winnipeg (Canada: Guy Maddin, 2007: 80 mins)
Baker, Nicholson, et al. "Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self." Philoctetes (December 13, 2008)
Persepolis (France/USA: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007: 96 mins.
Toit, Andries Du. "The Heart in Exile: Persepolis. A Subtle Knife (July 9, 2009)
Sicko (USA: Michael Moore, 2007: 123 mins)
"Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism." Democracy Now (July 5, 2010)
Sunshine (UK/USA: Danny Boyle, 2007: 107 mins)
Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)
Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007: 106 mins)
Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)
Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010)
Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]
Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)
Gosztola, Kevin. "Obama Employs Bush Administration Tactic, Blocks Photos." Open Salon (May 14, 2009)
Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)
Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)
Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)
Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Torture (Archive on Dialogic: The culture and politics of "torture.")
The Visitor (USA: Thomas McCarthy, 2007: 104 mins)
Garrett, Daniel. "Strangers and Friends, Immigration and Power: The Visitor." Offscreen (June 30, 2008)
XXY (Argentina: Lucía Puenzo, 2007: 86 mins)
"Discussion Questions: XXY." Film Movement (2009)
"Press Kit: XXY. Film Movement (2008)
Zodiac (USA: David Fincher, 2007: 157 mins)
Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz. "Grand Openings, Pt 4: Analyzing David Fincher's credit sequences -- Zodiac." Moving Image Source (October 15, 2010)
2008
The Baader-Meinhoff Complex (Germany: Uli Edel, 2008: 150 mins)
Hope-Jones, Mark. "Anarchy in the BRD." American Cinematographer (September 2009)
Katsiaficas, George. "Sources of Autonomous Politics in Germany"/"European Autonomous Movements in Europe" (Ch. 3/4) The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. AK Press, 2009.
Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul (Tunisia: Nacer Khemir, 2008: 98 mins)
Brussat, Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat. "Bab'Aziz - The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul." Spirituality & Practice (2009)
Che: Part One and/or Che: Part Two (France/Spain/USA: Steven Soderbergh, 2008: 134/135 mins)
Clover, Joshua. "CINEMA FOR A NEW GRAND GAME." Film Quarterly 62.4 (Summer 2009)
Heath, Roderick. "Che: Part One/Part Two." Ferdy on Film (May 25, 2010)
McDougall, Dave. History Lessons (Pt. 1): Notes on Steven Soderbergh's "Che" MUBI (November 24, 2010)
Taubin, Amy. "GUERRILLA FILMMAKING ON A EPIC SCALE: Che comandante Steven Soderbergh talks strategy and tactics." Film Comment (September/October 2008)
Wallis, Victor. "Interpreting revolution -- Che: Part I and Part II." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
The Class (France: Laurent Cantent, 2008: 128 mins)
Ashbury, Roy. "Schools and Teachers." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 51-74. [Available in BCTC library PN1995 U4977 2005]
Chen, Lu. "I Hate Mathematics and Racists." The Brooklyn Rail (March 2009)
The Drummer (Hong Kong/Taiwan/Germany: Kenneth Bi, 2008: 115 mins)
"Discussion Questions: The Drummer Film Movement (2008)
Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008: 137 mins)
Covino, Michael. "LA MALAVITA: GOMORRAH AND NAPLES." Film Quarterly 62.4 (Summer 2009)
Curti, Roberto. "File Under Fire: A brief history of Italian crime films." Offscreen (November 30, 2007)
Garrone, Matteo and Maurizio Brauccio. "Gomorrah Q & A." Creative Screenwriting Magazine (March 6, 2009)
Gilman, Nils. "The Global Illicit Economy." (Google Video: 2009)
Ming, Wu. "The New Italian Epic." Opening talk @ the conference "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic." Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK. (October 2, 2008)
Radovic, Radjo. "McMafia Rising." Film International 7.1 (Feb 2009)
Stephens, Chuck. "Gomorrah: Terminal Beach." Criterion (November 23, 2009)
Hunger (UK/Ireland: Steve McQueen, 2008: 96 mins)
Hoberman, J. "The Excruciating Details of Death-by-Starvation in Hunger." The Village Voice (March 18, 2009)
The Hurt Locker (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008: 131 mins)
Kemp, Philip. "Directors of the Year: Kathryn Bigelow." International Film Guide:2010 ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. NY: Wallflower Press, 2010: 17-24. [Professor has copy]
Il Divo (Italy/France: Paolo Sorrentino, 2008: 110 mins)
Codelli, Lorenzo. "Directors of the Year: Paolo Sorrentino." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009. [Available in BCTC Library: PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Let the Right One In (Sweden: Tomas Alfredson, 2008: 115 mins)
Benton, Michael Dean. "Be Me for Awhile": Ideological Becoming and Future Objectivity in Let the Right One. Dialogic (August 1, 2009)
Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In, Sweden 2008) The Case for Global Film (April 30, 2009)
Rapold, Nicholas and Matt Zoller Seitz. "A History of Creepy Kids on Film." The L Magazine (August 3, 2009)
Wright, Rochelle. "Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity." Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 1.1 (2010)
Martyrs (France/Canada: Pascal Lougier, 2008: 99 mins)
Totaro, Donato. "Martyrs: Evoking France’s Cinematic and Historical Past." Offscreen (May 31, 2009)
Ponyo (Japan: Hayao Miyazaki, 2008: 101 mins)
Odell, Colin and Michelle Le Blanc. "Directors of the Year: Miyazaki Hayao." International Film Guide: 2009. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 16-22. [Available in BCTC Library: PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Revanche (Austria: Götz Spielmann, 2008: 121 mins)
Ashbury, Roy. "Prostitution." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 115-142. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]
Spielman, Götz. "DVD OF THE WEEK & PODCAST: Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)." Green Cine Daily (February 18, 2009)
Totaro, Donato. "Revanche (2008, Götz Spielman)-- A Matter of Stillness." Offscreen (February 28, 2010)
White, Armond. "Revanche:
Revival of the Fittest." The Criterion Collection (February 11, 2010)
Sleep Dealer (USA/Mexico: Alex Rivera, 2008: 90 mins)
Engler, Mark. "Science Fiction From Below." Z-Net (May 16, 2009)
Slumdog Millionaire (UK: Danny Boyle, 2008: 120 mins)
Anselmi, William and Sheena Wilson. "Slumdogging It: Rebranding the American Dream, New World Orders, and Neo-Colonialism." Film International (2008)
Banaji, Shakuntala. "Seduced ‘Outsiders’ versus Sceptical ‘Insiders’?: Slumdog Millionaire through its Re/Viewers." Participations 7.1 (May 2010)
"In Bombay [Mumbai] with Slumdog Millionaire." The Business (November 17, 2008)
Khair, Tabish. "The Ironies of Bollywood." 16:9 (April 2009)
Llosa, Alvaro Vargas. "A Bollywood Ending: What the overly PC critics of 'Slumdog Millionare' still don't understand." The New Republic (March 3, 2009)
Narain, Atticus. "Rethinking post-colonial representation after Slumdog Millionaire." Dark Matter (March 9, 2009)
Oh Danny Boyle Film Studies for Free (March 2, 2009)
Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008: 116 mins)
Andrews, David. "Reframing Standard Operating Procedure: Errol Morris and the creative treatment of Abu Ghraib." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)
Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010)
Butler, Judith. "Torture and the Ethics of Photography." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space #25 (2007): 951 - 966.
Cockrell, Eddie. "Directors of the Year: Errol Morris." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 24-31.
Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]
Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)
Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)
Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)
Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)
Nichols, Bill. "Feelings of revulsion and the limits of academic discourse." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)
Torture (Archive on Dialogic: The culture and politics of "torture.")
Williams, Linda. "“Cluster Fuck”: The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Summer Hours (France: Olivier Assayas, 2008: 103 mins)
Jones, Kent. "Summer Hours: A Time to Live and a Time to Die. Criterion (2010)
Troubled Water (Norway: Erik Poppe, 2008: 120 mins)
"Troubled Water: Discussion Guide." Film Movement (2009)
Waltz With Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008: 90 Mins)
Baker, Nicholson, et al. "Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self." Philoctetes (December 13, 2008)
Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]
Folman, Ari. "Waltz with Bashir." Worldview (January 23, 2009)
Hallinan, Chris. "The Lebanon Border: "Uniquely" Dangerous." Foreign Policy in Focus (September 1, 2010)
Kamiya, Gary. "What Waltz With Bashir can teach us about Gaza: The stunning new Israeli film reveals painful parallels between one of Israel's darkest moments and the current conflict." Salon (January 13, 2009)
Polonsky, David, et al. Waltz with Bashir: The Art Director’s Cut at War. Open Source (April 17, 2009)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
2009
Antichrist (Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland: Lars von Triers, 2009: 108 mins)
Geller, Dorothy. "•Lars Von Trier's Antichrist: Executioner at the Alter of the Other, Part 1."/"•Lars Von Trier's Antichrist: Executioner at the Alter of the Other, Part 2." Offscreen 14.11 (November 2010)
Bright Star (UK/Australia/France: Jane Campion, 2009: 119 mins)
Campion, Jane interviewed by Nick James. "Romantic Setting." Sight and Sound (December 2009)
Capitalism: A Love Story (USA: Michael Moore, 2009: 127 mins)
McChesney, Robert and John Bellamy Foster. "Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States." Monthly Review 62.2 (June 2010)
"Michael Moore on His Life, His Films and His Activism." Democracy Now (July 5, 2010)
Coraline (USA: Henry Selick, 2009: 100 mins)
Bordwell, David. "Coraline, Considered." Observations on Film Art (February 23, 2009)
Kozachik, Pete. "Pete Kozachik, ASC details his approach to the 3-D digital stop-motion feature Coraline, whose heroine discovers a sinister world behind the walls of her new home." American Cinematographer (February 2009)
District 9 (USA/New Zealand: Neill Blomkamp, 2009: 112 mins)
Blomkamp, Neil, Sharlto Copley and Peter Jackson. "District 9 -- Comic Com Q & A Creative Screenwriting Magazine (August 21, 2009)
Gunkel, Henriette and Christiane König. "‘You are not welcome here’: post-apartheid negrophobia and real aliens in Blomkamp’s District 9." Dark Matters (February 7, 2010)
McEnteer, James. "Living in District 9 Truth-Out (June 12, 2010)
Toit, Andries Du. "Becoming the Alien: Apartheid, Racism and District 9." A Subtle Knife (September 4, 2009)
---. "The Alienation Effect: Further Thoughts on D9." A Subtle Knife (September 12, 2009)
Zborowski, James. "District 9 and Its World." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)
Dogtooth (Greece: Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009: 94 mins)
Booth, Steven. "Essential Filmmaking: The Perverse Cuts of Dogtooth." Fandor (May 20, 2011)
Murphy, Bernice M. Dogtooth Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (June 2010)
Williamson, Ben. "On Parenting, Media, Education and Phobias." DML Central (February 14, 2011)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (USA/UK: Wes Anderson, 2009: 87 mins)
Sabo, Lee Weston. "Inimitable Charm: Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox Bright Lights Film Journal #67 (February 2010)
Sicinski, Michael. "25 Songs of Innocence & Experience: Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and the Post-Boomer." Cinema Scope #41 (2009)
Fish Tank (UK/Netherlands: Andrea Arnold, 2009: 123 mins)
Emerson, Jim. "The otherworldly terrain of Fish Tank." Scanners (February 2, 2011)
Gamer (USA: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2009: 95 mins)
Shaviro, Steven. "Gamer. Pinocchio Theory (December 15, 2009)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Norway: Niels Arden Oplev, 2009: 152 mins)/The Girl Who Played with Fire (Sweden/Denmark/Germany: Daniel Alfredson, 2009: 129 mins)/The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Sweden/Denmark/Germany: Daniel Alfredson, 2009: 147 mins)
"Girls, Violence and Dragon Tattoos." Skepchick (January 14, 2011)
In the Loop (United Kingdom: Armando Iannucci, 2009: 106 mins)
"“In the Loop”: Oscar-Nominated Comedy Satirizes Lead-Up to US-UK Invasion of Iraq." Democracy Now (February 17, 2010)
The Limits of Control (USA/Japan: Jim Jarmusch, 2009: 116 mins)
Overstreet, Jeffrey. "Jarmusch 101." and "Jarmusch 102: The Limits of Control." Image (April 19-20, 2010)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Moon (UK: Duncan Jones, 2009: 97 mins)
Jones, Duncan. "Moon." Film School (June 9, 2009)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
A Prophet (France/Italy: Jacques Audiard, 2009: 150 mins)
Caplan, Nina. "Directors of the Year: Jacques Audiard." International Film Guide 2010. ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. London: Wallflower P, 2010: 11-16.
The Secret In Their Eyes (Argentina/Spain: Juan José Campanella, 2009: 127 mins)
Carnevale, Alex. "The Dirty War." In This Recording (July 9, 2010)
Samson and Delilah (Australia: Warwick Thornton, 2009: 101 mins)
Mayer, Sophie. "Not in Kansas anymore: Warwick Thornton on Samson and Delilah Sight and Sound (April 2010)
Storm (Germany: Hans-Christian Schmid, 2009: 103 mins)
"Storm: Discussion Guide." Film Movement (2010)
The Time That Remains (Palestine/UK/Italy/Belgium/France: Elia Suleiman, 2009: 109 mins)
Jafaar, Ali. "Elia Suleiman: the strong silent type." Sight and Sound (June 2010)
Where the Wild Things Are (USA/Germany: Spike Jonze, 2009: 101 mins)
Accord, Lance. "In Conversation with Rodney Taylor about Where the Wild Things Are." Converations on Cinematography (February 2, 2010)
Shaw, Daniel. Film and Philosophy: Taking Films Seriously. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
Sicinski, Michael. "25 Songs of Innocence & Experience: Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and the Post-Boomer." Cinema Scope #41 (2009)
White Material (France/Cameroon: Claire Denis, 2009: 106 mins)
Dinning, Samantha. "Great Directors: Claire Denis." Senses of Cinema (2009)
The White Ribbon (Austria/Germany/France/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2009: 144 mins)
Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.
Grant, Catherine. "Michael Haneke: A Ribbon of Links." Film Studies for Free (October 6, 2009)
Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
Horwath, Alexander. "Michael Haneke Uncut: Talking shop, theory, and practice with the director of The White Ribbon." Film Comment (November/December 2009)
"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)
Ogrodnik, Benjamin. "Deep Cuts." Film International 7.1 (Feb 2009)
Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]
Wild Grass (France/Italy: Alain Resnais, 2009: 104 minutes)
Atkinson, Michael. "Storytelling: Why Alain Resnais's Wild Grass is the secret key to his sensibility." Moving Image Source (July 2010)
Martin, Adrian. "Where the wild things grow: Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass." Sight and Sound (June 2010)
2010:
Exit Through the Gift Shop (UK/USA: Banksy, 2010: 87 mins)
Benton, Michael. "Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop." North of Center (March 2, 2011)
"Steve Martin, Famous Artists Appraise Stephen Colbert's Portrait (VIDEO) Huffington Post (December 12, 2010)
Haden-Guest, Anthony. "The Art of Mr. Brainwash." The Daily Beast (February 18, 2010)
The Social Network (USA: David Fincher, 2010: 120 mins)
Smith, Zadie. "Generation Why?" The New York Review of Books (November 25, 2010)
Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand/Germany/Spain/France/United Kingdom: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010: 114 mins)
Goldberg, Max. "Something wild
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's shape-shifting Palme d'Or winner, arrives." San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 1, 2011)
Kasman, Daniel. "Cinematic Transformation: A Talk with Apichatpong Weerasethakul." MUBI (September 10, 2010)
Winter's Bone (USA: Debra Granik, 2010: 100 mins)
Winter’s Bone (US 2010) The Case for Global Film (October 6, 2010)
Zuckerman, Alex. "The Hills: Winter's Bone The Chances We Take (July 24, 2010)
2011:
The Tree of Life (USA: Terence Malick, 2011: 138 mins)
Koresky, Michael. The Tree of Life: Design for Living." Reverse Shot #29 (2011)
Wisniewski, Chris. "Known Unknowns: Tree of Life." Reverse Shot #29 (2011)
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Caetlin Benson-Allott: Sex versus the small screen -- home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también
Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también
by Caetlin Benson-Allott
Jump Cut
Seventeen years ago, video critic Charles Tashiro warned that “you can wait for it on video, but ‘it,’ like Godot, will never arrive,” and today his aesthetic lament carries political implications as well (16). Video-tapes and -discs have changed our experience of motion picture exhibition significantly over the past thirty-odd years, due in part to the unprecedented proliferation of adaptation techniques like letterboxing, Pan & Scan editing, and color correction. However, some movies also lose footage during their transfer to video, particularly sexually and politically charged footage. In these cases, you see less of the movie on video than the full theatrical release. Motion pictures do go through many editing processes over the course of their production and distribution, of course, but these just-for-video elisions cut their movies’ narratives, tenor, and arguments, often without acknowledging the loss.[1] [open endnotes in new window] Furthermore, these video excisions almost exclusively affect international productions. The result is that this video editing effectively determines who gets to see which international releases and what parts of them, given that most U.S. viewers noe choose to or must “wait for it on video” (Klinger 4). This media-specific censorship suggests that video faces different moral standards than the cinema, standards that are enforced by the MPAA’s self-interested nationalist application of its rating system. However, it would be inaccurate to characterize either the MPAA or its member studios as specifically xenophobic. Rather they self-censor in order to appease video rental and sell-through outlets' conservative economic clout.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también is only one of the many victims of the U.S. video industry’s commercial adversity to foreignness and sexuality. However, the changes made for U.S. video distribution of Cuarón’s film are not only egregious but also exemplary, because they highlight the political ramifications of the MPAA and U.S. studios’ new economic dependence on video distribution. Specifically, MGM cut five minutes from Y tu’s film version in order to produce an R-rated video acceptable to the major video outlets’ standards for family friendly commercial viability. Although the studio also distributed an unrated “special edition” of Cuarón’s movie as it appeared in theaters, the R-rated standard edition the director put together at MGM’s behest led Cuarón to lament,
“I castrated my movie” (Hirschberg 15).
As I will show, Cuarón had to cede to MGM’s demand for a family-friendly video version of Y tu in order to secure any U.S. distribution for his film. However, this more marketable Y tu is missing more than a few penises and pelvic thrusts. Cuarón also had to cut the sexual mestizaje that completes his film’s narrative arc and political allegory.[2] This climax, the homosexual union of the movie’s teenage male protagonists, carries both dramatic and political significance in the film because Cuarón uses Mexico’s national tradition of allegorical filmmaking to condemn the neoliberal turn in Mexican politics.[3] Losing the culmination of the boys’ sexual narrative garbles Cuarón’s critique of government corruption and economic exploitation in Mexico. In this way, the editing sanitizes the film for some of the same multinational corporations that benefit most from recent trade liberalizations in Mexico, of which NAFTA is one (notorious) example.[4]
Y tu’s U.S. video distribution thus made it the subject of the same transnational neoliberal forces that it seeks to critique. For that reason, in this article I will employ both textual analysis and industry history to demonstrate how the giant video retailers have rendered video an even more fiscally—as so politically—conservative format than film. The first section of the essay details what gets censored from the R-rated Y tu, while the second section explores how those losses undermines the film’s larger political critique. My conclusion then situates Y tu mamá también within the recent upheaval in U.S. film and video distribution that made these changes seem fiscally necessary to its distributors. In this manner, I hope to communicate the political significance of Hollywood’s economic dependence on video distribution.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Caetlin Benson-Allott
Jump Cut
Seventeen years ago, video critic Charles Tashiro warned that “you can wait for it on video, but ‘it,’ like Godot, will never arrive,” and today his aesthetic lament carries political implications as well (16). Video-tapes and -discs have changed our experience of motion picture exhibition significantly over the past thirty-odd years, due in part to the unprecedented proliferation of adaptation techniques like letterboxing, Pan & Scan editing, and color correction. However, some movies also lose footage during their transfer to video, particularly sexually and politically charged footage. In these cases, you see less of the movie on video than the full theatrical release. Motion pictures do go through many editing processes over the course of their production and distribution, of course, but these just-for-video elisions cut their movies’ narratives, tenor, and arguments, often without acknowledging the loss.[1] [open endnotes in new window] Furthermore, these video excisions almost exclusively affect international productions. The result is that this video editing effectively determines who gets to see which international releases and what parts of them, given that most U.S. viewers noe choose to or must “wait for it on video” (Klinger 4). This media-specific censorship suggests that video faces different moral standards than the cinema, standards that are enforced by the MPAA’s self-interested nationalist application of its rating system. However, it would be inaccurate to characterize either the MPAA or its member studios as specifically xenophobic. Rather they self-censor in order to appease video rental and sell-through outlets' conservative economic clout.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también is only one of the many victims of the U.S. video industry’s commercial adversity to foreignness and sexuality. However, the changes made for U.S. video distribution of Cuarón’s film are not only egregious but also exemplary, because they highlight the political ramifications of the MPAA and U.S. studios’ new economic dependence on video distribution. Specifically, MGM cut five minutes from Y tu’s film version in order to produce an R-rated video acceptable to the major video outlets’ standards for family friendly commercial viability. Although the studio also distributed an unrated “special edition” of Cuarón’s movie as it appeared in theaters, the R-rated standard edition the director put together at MGM’s behest led Cuarón to lament,
“I castrated my movie” (Hirschberg 15).
As I will show, Cuarón had to cede to MGM’s demand for a family-friendly video version of Y tu in order to secure any U.S. distribution for his film. However, this more marketable Y tu is missing more than a few penises and pelvic thrusts. Cuarón also had to cut the sexual mestizaje that completes his film’s narrative arc and political allegory.[2] This climax, the homosexual union of the movie’s teenage male protagonists, carries both dramatic and political significance in the film because Cuarón uses Mexico’s national tradition of allegorical filmmaking to condemn the neoliberal turn in Mexican politics.[3] Losing the culmination of the boys’ sexual narrative garbles Cuarón’s critique of government corruption and economic exploitation in Mexico. In this way, the editing sanitizes the film for some of the same multinational corporations that benefit most from recent trade liberalizations in Mexico, of which NAFTA is one (notorious) example.[4]
Y tu’s U.S. video distribution thus made it the subject of the same transnational neoliberal forces that it seeks to critique. For that reason, in this article I will employ both textual analysis and industry history to demonstrate how the giant video retailers have rendered video an even more fiscally—as so politically—conservative format than film. The first section of the essay details what gets censored from the R-rated Y tu, while the second section explores how those losses undermines the film’s larger political critique. My conclusion then situates Y tu mamá también within the recent upheaval in U.S. film and video distribution that made these changes seem fiscally necessary to its distributors. In this manner, I hope to communicate the political significance of Hollywood’s economic dependence on video distribution.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Lisa Sullivan: Elections in Honduras -- Whitewashing the Path to a Past of Horrors
Elections in Honduras: Whitewashing the Path to a Past of Horrors
by Lisa Sullivan
School of Americas Watch
I came to Honduras to participate as a human rights observer of the electoral climate in a delegation organized by the Quixote Center. Several delegations converged, connecting some 30 U.S. citizens with dozens more from Canada, Europe and Latin America. In the days prior to the elections we scattered to different cities, towns and villages, meeting with fishermen, farmers, maquila workers, labor leaders, teachers and lawyers, as well as those who were jailed for carrying spray paint, hospitalized for being shot in the head by the military, and detained for reporting on the repression. It was, most likely, a bit off the 5-star, air-conditioned path of most of the mainstream journalists who are filling your morning papers with the wonders of today´s elections.
But by the evening of the day of the elections, what we had witnessed in previous days pushed those of us from the U.S. directly to the doors of our embassy in Tegucigalpa. We realized that this place, not the polling stations, was where this horrific destiny of Honduras, and perhaps all of Latin America, was being determined. And so the U.S. citizens among us took our statements and signs and determination there.
We were, indeed, greeted by many: dozens of guards with cameras, some 30 journalists, Honduran police with guns and also cameras, as well as a low flying helicopter that at least made us feel important. While the journalists let us read our entire statement of why these elections should be not be recognized by our government because of the egregious repression, the embassy guards wouldn´t even let us leave our slip of paper. That, in spite of the fact that the embassy´s human rights officer, Nate Macklin, told our delegation leader to make sure to let him know if there were any human rights abuses.
Any? In each of the many corners of the country visited by the 70-plus international observers, we witnessed the fear, repression, intimidation, bribery and outright brutality of the government security forces (note: we were there to observe the electoral climate, not electoral observers, since we consider the elections to be illegal. Likewise, the UN, OAS, and Carter Center and other bedrock electoral groups boycotted "the event" as many Hondurans called the day.)
As elections were in full swing in the morning, our delegate and nurse practitioner, Silvia Metzler visited Angel Salgado and Maria Elena Hernandez who were languishing in the intensive care unit of the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa . Both had been shot in the head at one of the many military checkpoints, no questions asked. Doctors give Angel a zero possibility of survival and he leaves behind a 6 year old son. Maria Elena has a better chance of recovery, but it will be a long road. She was selling snacks on the side of the road to support her teenage children when caught by military bullet.
Tom Loudon was on the streets of San Pedro Sula when police tanks and water trucks and tear gas canisters attacked a peaceful march of the resistance movement. It took him a long time to find other members of his delegation who had scattered in the frenzy, but they were luckier than two observers from the Latin America Council of Churches who were detained or a Reuters photographer who was injured in the massive display of repression. Dozens of cells phones captured the police beating anyone they could catch with their billy clubs.
The first person I thought of as I awoke on election day was Wlmer Rivero, a fisherman in a small town with the big name of Puerto Grande. I kept thinking of the fear in his eyes as he relayed how the police have been visiting his house and asking for him, ever since he trekked 6 days on foot to greet a returning President Zelaya. Each local mayor has been asked to put together a list of resistance leaders, and his name was one of 22 from his town. We suggested to Wilmer that he not sleep at home during the electoral days. He called the next day to thank us for our advise. The police had ransacked his home, and that of many of his neighbors, the night before elections, threatening his life. But, he wondered, what will he do now.
I also thought of Merly Eguigure who I had visited 2 days earlier in a cold and crumbling jail cell, reeking of human waste. She had been captured for having a can of spray paint in her car. Though she was released shortly before elections, she will face trial and probably prison for defacing government property. Merly claims that the spray paint was to be used in an activity to raise awareness of violence towards women. Perhaps authorities worried that the paint was destined to add a new message to the city walls. Every square inch of blank wall space in the city is covered with powerful graffiti against the coup. In spite of government to whitewash over it, the blank spaces are filled in again within hours.
To Read the Rest of the Report
by Lisa Sullivan
School of Americas Watch
I came to Honduras to participate as a human rights observer of the electoral climate in a delegation organized by the Quixote Center. Several delegations converged, connecting some 30 U.S. citizens with dozens more from Canada, Europe and Latin America. In the days prior to the elections we scattered to different cities, towns and villages, meeting with fishermen, farmers, maquila workers, labor leaders, teachers and lawyers, as well as those who were jailed for carrying spray paint, hospitalized for being shot in the head by the military, and detained for reporting on the repression. It was, most likely, a bit off the 5-star, air-conditioned path of most of the mainstream journalists who are filling your morning papers with the wonders of today´s elections.
But by the evening of the day of the elections, what we had witnessed in previous days pushed those of us from the U.S. directly to the doors of our embassy in Tegucigalpa. We realized that this place, not the polling stations, was where this horrific destiny of Honduras, and perhaps all of Latin America, was being determined. And so the U.S. citizens among us took our statements and signs and determination there.
We were, indeed, greeted by many: dozens of guards with cameras, some 30 journalists, Honduran police with guns and also cameras, as well as a low flying helicopter that at least made us feel important. While the journalists let us read our entire statement of why these elections should be not be recognized by our government because of the egregious repression, the embassy guards wouldn´t even let us leave our slip of paper. That, in spite of the fact that the embassy´s human rights officer, Nate Macklin, told our delegation leader to make sure to let him know if there were any human rights abuses.
Any? In each of the many corners of the country visited by the 70-plus international observers, we witnessed the fear, repression, intimidation, bribery and outright brutality of the government security forces (note: we were there to observe the electoral climate, not electoral observers, since we consider the elections to be illegal. Likewise, the UN, OAS, and Carter Center and other bedrock electoral groups boycotted "the event" as many Hondurans called the day.)
As elections were in full swing in the morning, our delegate and nurse practitioner, Silvia Metzler visited Angel Salgado and Maria Elena Hernandez who were languishing in the intensive care unit of the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa . Both had been shot in the head at one of the many military checkpoints, no questions asked. Doctors give Angel a zero possibility of survival and he leaves behind a 6 year old son. Maria Elena has a better chance of recovery, but it will be a long road. She was selling snacks on the side of the road to support her teenage children when caught by military bullet.
Tom Loudon was on the streets of San Pedro Sula when police tanks and water trucks and tear gas canisters attacked a peaceful march of the resistance movement. It took him a long time to find other members of his delegation who had scattered in the frenzy, but they were luckier than two observers from the Latin America Council of Churches who were detained or a Reuters photographer who was injured in the massive display of repression. Dozens of cells phones captured the police beating anyone they could catch with their billy clubs.
The first person I thought of as I awoke on election day was Wlmer Rivero, a fisherman in a small town with the big name of Puerto Grande. I kept thinking of the fear in his eyes as he relayed how the police have been visiting his house and asking for him, ever since he trekked 6 days on foot to greet a returning President Zelaya. Each local mayor has been asked to put together a list of resistance leaders, and his name was one of 22 from his town. We suggested to Wilmer that he not sleep at home during the electoral days. He called the next day to thank us for our advise. The police had ransacked his home, and that of many of his neighbors, the night before elections, threatening his life. But, he wondered, what will he do now.
I also thought of Merly Eguigure who I had visited 2 days earlier in a cold and crumbling jail cell, reeking of human waste. She had been captured for having a can of spray paint in her car. Though she was released shortly before elections, she will face trial and probably prison for defacing government property. Merly claims that the spray paint was to be used in an activity to raise awareness of violence towards women. Perhaps authorities worried that the paint was destined to add a new message to the city walls. Every square inch of blank wall space in the city is covered with powerful graffiti against the coup. In spite of government to whitewash over it, the blank spaces are filled in again within hours.
To Read the Rest of the Report
Gil Scott-Heron: The New Deal
The New Deal
by Gil Scott-Heron
I have believed in my convictions
And have been convicted for my beliefs
Conned by the Constitution
And harassed by the police.
I have been billed for the Bill of Rights And treated like I was wrong.
I have become a special amendment
For what included me all along.
Like: “All men are created equal.”
(No amendment need there).
I’ve contributed in every field including cotton From Sunset Strip to Washington Square.
Back during the non-violent era,
Hell, I was the only non-violent one.
As a matter of fact there was no non-violence ‘cause too many rednecks had guns.
There seems to have been this pattern
That a lot of folks failed to pick up on But all black leaders who dared to stand up Wuz in jail, in the courtroom, or gone.
Picked up indiscriminately
By the shocktroops of discrimination
To end up in jails or tied up in trials
While dirty tricks soured the nation.
I’ve been hoodwinked by professional hoods.
My ego has happened to me.
“It’ll be alright, just keep things cool!
And take the people off the street.
We’ll settle this all at the conference table.
You just leave everything to me.”
Which gets me back to my convictions
And being convicted for my beliefs
‘cause I believe these smiles
in three-piece suits
with gracious, liberal demeanor
took our movement off the streets
and took us to the cleaners.
In other words, we let up the pressure
And that was all part of their plan
And everyday we allow to slip through our fingers Is playing right into their hands.
by Gil Scott-Heron
I have believed in my convictions
And have been convicted for my beliefs
Conned by the Constitution
And harassed by the police.
I have been billed for the Bill of Rights And treated like I was wrong.
I have become a special amendment
For what included me all along.
Like: “All men are created equal.”
(No amendment need there).
I’ve contributed in every field including cotton From Sunset Strip to Washington Square.
Back during the non-violent era,
Hell, I was the only non-violent one.
As a matter of fact there was no non-violence ‘cause too many rednecks had guns.
There seems to have been this pattern
That a lot of folks failed to pick up on But all black leaders who dared to stand up Wuz in jail, in the courtroom, or gone.
Picked up indiscriminately
By the shocktroops of discrimination
To end up in jails or tied up in trials
While dirty tricks soured the nation.
I’ve been hoodwinked by professional hoods.
My ego has happened to me.
“It’ll be alright, just keep things cool!
And take the people off the street.
We’ll settle this all at the conference table.
You just leave everything to me.”
Which gets me back to my convictions
And being convicted for my beliefs
‘cause I believe these smiles
in three-piece suits
with gracious, liberal demeanor
took our movement off the streets
and took us to the cleaners.
In other words, we let up the pressure
And that was all part of their plan
And everyday we allow to slip through our fingers Is playing right into their hands.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Juan Cole: Student Protests Erupt in Over a Dozen Iranian Cities
Student Protests Erupt in Over a Dozen Iranian Cities
Juan Cole
The protests against the regime in Iran on Monday were remarkable in several ways, I conclude on reading Borzou Daragahi's account in LAT. One is the sheer number of cities where students came out for rallies: "Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht on the Caspian Sea."
Another is that Iranian Kurds joined in the protests in Sanandaj and other cities, throwing a scare into the regime, which is said to be sending armored vehicles to help restore order. Iranian Kurdish dissidents have been targeted by the regime for harsh treatment in recent months. The rise of a semi-independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq has increased worries in Tehran about Kurdish separatism. It is alleged that PEJAK, the Iranian-Kurdish guerrilla group, has carried operations against the regime with US encouragement.
Protesters chanted 'Death to the Dictator,' attacked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for destroying the country, and burned photos of Khamenei. AP says, 'Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi declared the clerical establishment was losing legitimacy in the eyes of Iranians. "A great nation would not stay silent when some confiscate its vote," said Mousavi, who claims to be the real winner of the June 12 election. . . '
Monday's rallies were bigger than the ones of November 4 and these protests are the largest since last summer.
Basij paramilitary intervened on motorcycles with batons. The regime used tear gas to dispersed the crowds, and some protesters were beaten. Reports of killings by the police have not been verified.
To Read the Continuing Updated Post and to access videos of the protests
Juan Cole
The protests against the regime in Iran on Monday were remarkable in several ways, I conclude on reading Borzou Daragahi's account in LAT. One is the sheer number of cities where students came out for rallies: "Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht on the Caspian Sea."
Another is that Iranian Kurds joined in the protests in Sanandaj and other cities, throwing a scare into the regime, which is said to be sending armored vehicles to help restore order. Iranian Kurdish dissidents have been targeted by the regime for harsh treatment in recent months. The rise of a semi-independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq has increased worries in Tehran about Kurdish separatism. It is alleged that PEJAK, the Iranian-Kurdish guerrilla group, has carried operations against the regime with US encouragement.
Protesters chanted 'Death to the Dictator,' attacked Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for destroying the country, and burned photos of Khamenei. AP says, 'Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi declared the clerical establishment was losing legitimacy in the eyes of Iranians. "A great nation would not stay silent when some confiscate its vote," said Mousavi, who claims to be the real winner of the June 12 election. . . '
Monday's rallies were bigger than the ones of November 4 and these protests are the largest since last summer.
Basij paramilitary intervened on motorcycles with batons. The regime used tear gas to dispersed the crowds, and some protesters were beaten. Reports of killings by the police have not been verified.
To Read the Continuing Updated Post and to access videos of the protests
We Want Everything: Communiqué from an Absent Future
Communiqué from an Absent Future
We Want Everything
I
Like the society to which it has played the faithful servant, the university is bankrupt. This bankruptcy is not only financial. It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has been a long time in the making. No one knows what the university is for anymore. We feel this intuitively. Gone is the old project of creating a cultured and educated citizenry; gone, too, the special advantage the degree-holder once held on the job market. These are now fantasies, spectral residues that cling to the poorly maintained halls.
Incongruous architecture, the ghosts of vanished ideals, the vista of a dead future: these are the remains of the university. Among these remains, most of us are little more than a collection of querulous habits and duties. We go through the motions of our tests and assignments with a kind of thoughtless and immutable obedience propped up by subvocalized resentments. Nothing is interesting, nothing can make itself felt. The world-historical with its pageant of catastrophe is no more real than the windows in which it appears.
For those whose adolescence was poisoned by the nationalist hysteria following September 11th, public speech is nothing but a series of lies and public space a place where things might explode (though they never do). Afflicted by the vague desire for something to happen—without ever imagining we could make it happen ourselves—we were rescued by the bland homogeneity of the internet, finding refuge among friends we never see, whose entire existence is a series of exclamations and silly pictures, whose only discourse is the gossip of commodities. Safety, then, and comfort have been our watchwords. We slide through the flesh world without being touched or moved. We shepherd our emptiness from place to place.
But we can be grateful for our destitution: demystification is now a condition, not a project. University life finally appears as just what it has always been: a machine for producing compliant producers and consumers. Even leisure is a form of job training. The idiot crew of the frat houses drink themselves into a stupor with all the dedication of lawyers working late at the office. Kids who smoked weed and cut class in high-school now pop Adderall and get to work. We power the diploma factory on the treadmills in the gym. We run tirelessly in elliptical circles.
It makes little sense, then, to think of the university as an ivory tower in Arcadia, as either idyllic or idle. “Work hard, play hard” has been the over-eager motto of a generation in training for…what?—drawing hearts in cappuccino foam or plugging names and numbers into databases. The gleaming techno-future of American capitalism was long ago packed up and sold to China for a few more years of borrowed junk. A university diploma is now worth no more than a share in General Motors.
We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have. Close to three quarters of students work while in school, many full-time; for most, the level of employment we obtain while students is the same that awaits after graduation. Meanwhile, what we acquire isn’t education; it’s debt. We work to make money we have already spent, and our future labor has already been sold on the worst market around. Average student loan debt rose 20 percent in the first five years of the twenty-first century—80-100 percent for students of color. Student loan volume—a figure inversely proportional to state funding for education—rose by nearly 800 percent from 1977 to 2003. What our borrowed tuition buys is the privilege of making monthly payments for the rest of our lives. What we learn is the choreography of credit: you can’t walk to class without being offered another piece of plastic charging 20 percent interest. Yesterday’s finance majors buy their summer homes with the bleak futures of today’s humanities majors.
This is the prospect for which we have been preparing since grade-school. Those of us who came here to have our privilege notarized surrendered our youth to a barrage of tutors, a battery of psychological tests, obligatory public service ops—the cynical compilation of half-truths toward a well-rounded application profile. No wonder we set about destroying ourselves the second we escape the cattle prod of parental admonition. On the other hand, those of us who came here to transcend the economic and social disadvantages of our families know that for every one of us who “makes it,” ten more take our place—that the logic here is zero-sum. And anyway, socioeconomic status remains the best predictor of student achievement. Those of us the demographics call “immigrants,” “minorities,” and “people of color” have been told to believe in the aristocracy of merit. But we know we are hated not despite our achievements, but precisely because of them. And we know that the circuits through which we might free ourselves from the violence of our origins only reproduce the misery of the past in the present for others, elsewhere.
If the university teaches us primarily how to be in debt, how to waste our labor power, how to fall prey to petty anxieties, it thereby teaches us how to be consumers. Education is a commodity like everything else that we want without caring for. It is a thing, and it makes its purchasers into things. One’s future position in the system, one’s relation to others, is purchased first with money and then with the demonstration of obedience. First we pay, then we “work hard.” And there is the split: one is both the commander and the commanded, consumer and consumed. It is the system itself which one obeys, the cold buildings that enforce subservience. Those who teach are treated with all the respect of an automated messaging system. Only the logic of customer satisfaction obtains here: was the course easy? Was the teacher hot? Could any stupid asshole get an A? What’s the point of acquiring knowledge when it can be called up with a few keystokes? Who needs memory when we have the internet? A training in thought? You can’t be serious. A moral preparation? There are anti-depressants for that.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
We Want Everything
I
Like the society to which it has played the faithful servant, the university is bankrupt. This bankruptcy is not only financial. It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has been a long time in the making. No one knows what the university is for anymore. We feel this intuitively. Gone is the old project of creating a cultured and educated citizenry; gone, too, the special advantage the degree-holder once held on the job market. These are now fantasies, spectral residues that cling to the poorly maintained halls.
Incongruous architecture, the ghosts of vanished ideals, the vista of a dead future: these are the remains of the university. Among these remains, most of us are little more than a collection of querulous habits and duties. We go through the motions of our tests and assignments with a kind of thoughtless and immutable obedience propped up by subvocalized resentments. Nothing is interesting, nothing can make itself felt. The world-historical with its pageant of catastrophe is no more real than the windows in which it appears.
For those whose adolescence was poisoned by the nationalist hysteria following September 11th, public speech is nothing but a series of lies and public space a place where things might explode (though they never do). Afflicted by the vague desire for something to happen—without ever imagining we could make it happen ourselves—we were rescued by the bland homogeneity of the internet, finding refuge among friends we never see, whose entire existence is a series of exclamations and silly pictures, whose only discourse is the gossip of commodities. Safety, then, and comfort have been our watchwords. We slide through the flesh world without being touched or moved. We shepherd our emptiness from place to place.
But we can be grateful for our destitution: demystification is now a condition, not a project. University life finally appears as just what it has always been: a machine for producing compliant producers and consumers. Even leisure is a form of job training. The idiot crew of the frat houses drink themselves into a stupor with all the dedication of lawyers working late at the office. Kids who smoked weed and cut class in high-school now pop Adderall and get to work. We power the diploma factory on the treadmills in the gym. We run tirelessly in elliptical circles.
It makes little sense, then, to think of the university as an ivory tower in Arcadia, as either idyllic or idle. “Work hard, play hard” has been the over-eager motto of a generation in training for…what?—drawing hearts in cappuccino foam or plugging names and numbers into databases. The gleaming techno-future of American capitalism was long ago packed up and sold to China for a few more years of borrowed junk. A university diploma is now worth no more than a share in General Motors.
We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have. Close to three quarters of students work while in school, many full-time; for most, the level of employment we obtain while students is the same that awaits after graduation. Meanwhile, what we acquire isn’t education; it’s debt. We work to make money we have already spent, and our future labor has already been sold on the worst market around. Average student loan debt rose 20 percent in the first five years of the twenty-first century—80-100 percent for students of color. Student loan volume—a figure inversely proportional to state funding for education—rose by nearly 800 percent from 1977 to 2003. What our borrowed tuition buys is the privilege of making monthly payments for the rest of our lives. What we learn is the choreography of credit: you can’t walk to class without being offered another piece of plastic charging 20 percent interest. Yesterday’s finance majors buy their summer homes with the bleak futures of today’s humanities majors.
This is the prospect for which we have been preparing since grade-school. Those of us who came here to have our privilege notarized surrendered our youth to a barrage of tutors, a battery of psychological tests, obligatory public service ops—the cynical compilation of half-truths toward a well-rounded application profile. No wonder we set about destroying ourselves the second we escape the cattle prod of parental admonition. On the other hand, those of us who came here to transcend the economic and social disadvantages of our families know that for every one of us who “makes it,” ten more take our place—that the logic here is zero-sum. And anyway, socioeconomic status remains the best predictor of student achievement. Those of us the demographics call “immigrants,” “minorities,” and “people of color” have been told to believe in the aristocracy of merit. But we know we are hated not despite our achievements, but precisely because of them. And we know that the circuits through which we might free ourselves from the violence of our origins only reproduce the misery of the past in the present for others, elsewhere.
If the university teaches us primarily how to be in debt, how to waste our labor power, how to fall prey to petty anxieties, it thereby teaches us how to be consumers. Education is a commodity like everything else that we want without caring for. It is a thing, and it makes its purchasers into things. One’s future position in the system, one’s relation to others, is purchased first with money and then with the demonstration of obedience. First we pay, then we “work hard.” And there is the split: one is both the commander and the commanded, consumer and consumed. It is the system itself which one obeys, the cold buildings that enforce subservience. Those who teach are treated with all the respect of an automated messaging system. Only the logic of customer satisfaction obtains here: was the course easy? Was the teacher hot? Could any stupid asshole get an A? What’s the point of acquiring knowledge when it can be called up with a few keystokes? Who needs memory when we have the internet? A training in thought? You can’t be serious. A moral preparation? There are anti-depressants for that.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Democracy Now: The Assassination of Fred Hampton-- How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther
“The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther”
Democracy Now
Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just twenty-one years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. We speak with attorney Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.
To Read/Listen/Watch
Democracy Now
Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just twenty-one years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. We speak with attorney Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.
To Read/Listen/Watch
David Korten: When Our Leaders Fail to Lead
When Our Leaders Fail to Lead
by David Korten
Yes!
On Tuesday night, President Obama announced his decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. It was a tragic error. He specifically said that to compare Afghanistan with Vietnam is a misreading of history. In a way, I would have to agree. We ultimately left Vietnam in humiliation. Afghanistan is not comparable, because our prospects for success there are even worse.
I am neither a military strategist nor a student of military history, but I recall well the U.S. experience during the Vietnam War. I was serving at the time as a U.S. Air Force Captain. My first assignment was as an instructor at the Special Air Warfare School in Florida, where we instructed Air Force pilots heading for Vietnam to be part of the Air Force's role in counterinsurgency operations. I later served in the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as military aide to the civilian responsible for monitoring all Defense Department-sponsored behavior and social sciences research.
These assignments brought me into contact with the most advanced thinking of the time about unconventional, asymmetric warfare—in which a conventional military force seeks to defeat an enemy who cannot be distinguished from a civilian noncombatant unless he is firing on you. This was the case in Vietnam and it is the case in Afghanistan.
I recall clearly one of the lectures I gave to Air Force pilots on the substantial body of social science research demonstrating that dropping bombs on civilian populations increases their will to resist. It isn’t a particularly startling finding, and I’m sure it holds up as well for any military operation in which seemingly indiscriminate fire causes significant civilian casualties.
So why are our prospects in Afghanistan even less hopeful than they were in Vietnam? As in Afghanistan, the enemy in Vietnam blended in with the people. In Vietnam, however, it operated as a coherent body with an allegiance to a command structure. Vietnam had experience functioning as a nation with a central government; it also had more physical infrastructure and a more educated population.
Afghanistan has never functioned as a nation under the central rule of either foreigners or Afghanis. It is a land fragmented physically and politically into feudal fiefdoms ruled by local warlords united only by a fierce commitment to resisting any form of foreign occupation. What passes for a central government has less legitimacy than did the government of South Vietnam, is even more corrupt, and is arguably not even fully in control of Kabul, the capital city. The idea that we or any other group of outsiders can pacify Afghanistan and bring it under some semblance of central democratic rule with a legitimate and reasonably competent government is beyond ludicrous.
It is difficult to convince civilians that you are there to help them when you are maiming and killing their loved ones for no evident purpose. Yet when you cannot identify the enemy, you will almost inevitably kill more civilians than combatants. I know how I would respond if a foreign army inflicted such harm on my family. The more troops we put into Afghanistan, the greater the resistance.
On November 20, 2009, Bill Moyers PBS Journal presented an episode on President Lyndon Johnson’s path to war. It is a piece of history that Moyers knows well, having served as a top-ranking member of President Johnson’s staff from 1964-1967. Drawing on the archive of White House tapes, Moyers tells the story, in Johnson’s own words, of how the political dynamics of the time drew him into an ever more costly escalation in a war that he knew from the beginning we could not win.
To Read the Rest
by David Korten
Yes!
On Tuesday night, President Obama announced his decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. It was a tragic error. He specifically said that to compare Afghanistan with Vietnam is a misreading of history. In a way, I would have to agree. We ultimately left Vietnam in humiliation. Afghanistan is not comparable, because our prospects for success there are even worse.
I am neither a military strategist nor a student of military history, but I recall well the U.S. experience during the Vietnam War. I was serving at the time as a U.S. Air Force Captain. My first assignment was as an instructor at the Special Air Warfare School in Florida, where we instructed Air Force pilots heading for Vietnam to be part of the Air Force's role in counterinsurgency operations. I later served in the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as military aide to the civilian responsible for monitoring all Defense Department-sponsored behavior and social sciences research.
These assignments brought me into contact with the most advanced thinking of the time about unconventional, asymmetric warfare—in which a conventional military force seeks to defeat an enemy who cannot be distinguished from a civilian noncombatant unless he is firing on you. This was the case in Vietnam and it is the case in Afghanistan.
I recall clearly one of the lectures I gave to Air Force pilots on the substantial body of social science research demonstrating that dropping bombs on civilian populations increases their will to resist. It isn’t a particularly startling finding, and I’m sure it holds up as well for any military operation in which seemingly indiscriminate fire causes significant civilian casualties.
So why are our prospects in Afghanistan even less hopeful than they were in Vietnam? As in Afghanistan, the enemy in Vietnam blended in with the people. In Vietnam, however, it operated as a coherent body with an allegiance to a command structure. Vietnam had experience functioning as a nation with a central government; it also had more physical infrastructure and a more educated population.
Afghanistan has never functioned as a nation under the central rule of either foreigners or Afghanis. It is a land fragmented physically and politically into feudal fiefdoms ruled by local warlords united only by a fierce commitment to resisting any form of foreign occupation. What passes for a central government has less legitimacy than did the government of South Vietnam, is even more corrupt, and is arguably not even fully in control of Kabul, the capital city. The idea that we or any other group of outsiders can pacify Afghanistan and bring it under some semblance of central democratic rule with a legitimate and reasonably competent government is beyond ludicrous.
It is difficult to convince civilians that you are there to help them when you are maiming and killing their loved ones for no evident purpose. Yet when you cannot identify the enemy, you will almost inevitably kill more civilians than combatants. I know how I would respond if a foreign army inflicted such harm on my family. The more troops we put into Afghanistan, the greater the resistance.
On November 20, 2009, Bill Moyers PBS Journal presented an episode on President Lyndon Johnson’s path to war. It is a piece of history that Moyers knows well, having served as a top-ranking member of President Johnson’s staff from 1964-1967. Drawing on the archive of White House tapes, Moyers tells the story, in Johnson’s own words, of how the political dynamics of the time drew him into an ever more costly escalation in a war that he knew from the beginning we could not win.
To Read the Rest
CFP: Inventions of Activism (Reconstruction 10.3: Deadline 02/01/10)
Call For Papers
Reconstruction
Issue 10.3
Michael Benton, Alan Clinton, Wes Houp and Danny Mayer
Inventions of Activism
"Creative acts of social justice fulfill every function that can be asked of a work of art.
They inspire us, make us think in new ways, and birth new beauty and dignity in our world."
--Rebecca Alban Hofberger, "True Visions"
"Screw Hope; Let's Act"
--Walker Lane "Nope to Hope: False Capital and the Spectacle Triumphant"
This issue of _Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture_ solicits a variety of work which looks to activism as a broad array of creative practices yet to be defined. We seek not to revisit debates between theory and practice, but to view activism as a form of invention which may lead to new cultural formations.
What challenges do activists face as practicing utopians? What more or less local examples of activism can be looked to as models for further practice? How can activism as performance, as technology, as art lead to the production of new political and social theory? How is activism the art of the possible?
We would like this issue itself to be a form of activism inasmuch as it brings together a set of theorized practices in the form of case studies from the present and the past, a community of minds in both its contributors and subsequent readers. We also encourage contributors to look to problem areas that have not yet been addressed or not addressed sufficiently, and to propose new models of cultural intervention.
Some areas of particular interest expressed by editors should serve as a starting point:
1. Testimonials of individuals and/or groups that document the structures of collective action and resistances (both external and internal) to these movements.
2. Activism as a form of social and political creativity. Considerations of how theory can promote or become activism, or how theories of political and social invention derive, post facto, from such activities.
3. The rhetoric of activism in its statements and endeavors.
4. Narration and development of (potential) actions with respect to labor (broadly defined).
5. Activism as a form of education, as supplement to or alternative for traditional educational theories. Educating activists. Activating educators. Theoretical and practical issues within "the academy."
6. Resistance to resistance: fatigue, Bruce Robbins' "sweatshop sublime," institutional reprisals from the most oppressive (violence, termination) to the most frustrating (hypocrisy and lip service from those in power, mainstream media misinformation, public indifference), mythologies (of the American dream, of freedom of choice, of the free market, etc.)
7. Reform from within the institution vs. revolution from without.
8. What is (non)violence and what roles do violence or nonviolence play in activism?
9. Issues of activism in different social and historical contexts, what can we learn (from Obama's vision of service to the most dangerous underground resistance movements)?
10. Psychologies of activism. For instance, do activists and/or organizers of activism benefit more from an openness to depaysement (the process by which the ethnographer/observer becomes altered and/or mediated by the culture under investigation) or dissociation/dispassion (the idea of "objective" or "critical" distance from the subject under study as providing a "better" vantage point).
11. What are the benefits or disadvantages of "traditions" in activism? Marx notoriously stated that he was not a Marxist, with that in mind, what kind of problems derive from the institution of founders and followers in activism? Even more fundamental, what is the problem of what Eric Hobsbawm called the "inner conflict of traditions," the inevitable conflict between universal rules and specific, ever-changing circumstances/situations.
12. J.K. Gibson Graham asks in Postcapitalist Politics "If we want other worlds and other economies, how do we make ourselves a condition of possibility for their emergence (7)?"
We hope that activists of all kinds will view this issue as a form of potlatch that may lead to new practice and theory, new activist communities. While we encourage the use of anecdote as example and extended narratives as models for inventing activism, we do not want this issue to be primarily about smoking guns and personal beefs. In the light of the sensitive nature of this endeavor we will consider a variety of approaches to publication---including anonymity and/or "fictocritical" accounts which do not name names or present a situation with altered details.
Please send completed papers and abstracts to the editors at inventionsofactivism@gmail.com no later than February 1, 2010. Earlier submissions and queries are welcome as we may be able to collaborate with authors in order to produce work that not only fits with the intent of the issue but with the standards of Reconstruction. Also, we encourage you to forward this CFP to interested parties and lists.
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative online cultural studies journal dedicated to fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions on the most important and influential work in contemporary interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction publishes three themed issues and one open issue per year. Send open submissions (year round) to reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com and submissions for themed issues to the appropriate editors listed on the site at Reconstruction
Reconstruction also accepts proposal for special issue editors and topics. Reconstruction is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.
Reconstruction
Issue 10.3
Michael Benton, Alan Clinton, Wes Houp and Danny Mayer
Inventions of Activism
"Creative acts of social justice fulfill every function that can be asked of a work of art.
They inspire us, make us think in new ways, and birth new beauty and dignity in our world."
--Rebecca Alban Hofberger, "True Visions"
"Screw Hope; Let's Act"
--Walker Lane "Nope to Hope: False Capital and the Spectacle Triumphant"
This issue of _Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture_ solicits a variety of work which looks to activism as a broad array of creative practices yet to be defined. We seek not to revisit debates between theory and practice, but to view activism as a form of invention which may lead to new cultural formations.
What challenges do activists face as practicing utopians? What more or less local examples of activism can be looked to as models for further practice? How can activism as performance, as technology, as art lead to the production of new political and social theory? How is activism the art of the possible?
We would like this issue itself to be a form of activism inasmuch as it brings together a set of theorized practices in the form of case studies from the present and the past, a community of minds in both its contributors and subsequent readers. We also encourage contributors to look to problem areas that have not yet been addressed or not addressed sufficiently, and to propose new models of cultural intervention.
Some areas of particular interest expressed by editors should serve as a starting point:
1. Testimonials of individuals and/or groups that document the structures of collective action and resistances (both external and internal) to these movements.
2. Activism as a form of social and political creativity. Considerations of how theory can promote or become activism, or how theories of political and social invention derive, post facto, from such activities.
3. The rhetoric of activism in its statements and endeavors.
4. Narration and development of (potential) actions with respect to labor (broadly defined).
5. Activism as a form of education, as supplement to or alternative for traditional educational theories. Educating activists. Activating educators. Theoretical and practical issues within "the academy."
6. Resistance to resistance: fatigue, Bruce Robbins' "sweatshop sublime," institutional reprisals from the most oppressive (violence, termination) to the most frustrating (hypocrisy and lip service from those in power, mainstream media misinformation, public indifference), mythologies (of the American dream, of freedom of choice, of the free market, etc.)
7. Reform from within the institution vs. revolution from without.
8. What is (non)violence and what roles do violence or nonviolence play in activism?
9. Issues of activism in different social and historical contexts, what can we learn (from Obama's vision of service to the most dangerous underground resistance movements)?
10. Psychologies of activism. For instance, do activists and/or organizers of activism benefit more from an openness to depaysement (the process by which the ethnographer/observer becomes altered and/or mediated by the culture under investigation) or dissociation/dispassion (the idea of "objective" or "critical" distance from the subject under study as providing a "better" vantage point).
11. What are the benefits or disadvantages of "traditions" in activism? Marx notoriously stated that he was not a Marxist, with that in mind, what kind of problems derive from the institution of founders and followers in activism? Even more fundamental, what is the problem of what Eric Hobsbawm called the "inner conflict of traditions," the inevitable conflict between universal rules and specific, ever-changing circumstances/situations.
12. J.K. Gibson Graham asks in Postcapitalist Politics "If we want other worlds and other economies, how do we make ourselves a condition of possibility for their emergence (7)?"
We hope that activists of all kinds will view this issue as a form of potlatch that may lead to new practice and theory, new activist communities. While we encourage the use of anecdote as example and extended narratives as models for inventing activism, we do not want this issue to be primarily about smoking guns and personal beefs. In the light of the sensitive nature of this endeavor we will consider a variety of approaches to publication---including anonymity and/or "fictocritical" accounts which do not name names or present a situation with altered details.
Please send completed papers and abstracts to the editors at inventionsofactivism@gmail.com no later than February 1, 2010. Earlier submissions and queries are welcome as we may be able to collaborate with authors in order to produce work that not only fits with the intent of the issue but with the standards of Reconstruction. Also, we encourage you to forward this CFP to interested parties and lists.
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative online cultural studies journal dedicated to fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions on the most important and influential work in contemporary interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction publishes three themed issues and one open issue per year. Send open submissions (year round) to reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com and submissions for themed issues to the appropriate editors listed on the site at Reconstruction
Reconstruction also accepts proposal for special issue editors and topics. Reconstruction is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.
Chris Hedges: Liberals are Useless
Liberals Are Useless
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig
Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.
“You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. “The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a ‘least-worst’ voter you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.”
I save my anger for our bankrupt liberal intelligentsia of which, sadly, I guess I am a member. Liberals are the defeated, self-absorbed Mouse Man in Dostoevsky’s “Notes From Underground.” They embrace cynicism, a cloak for their cowardice and impotence. They, like Dostoevsky’s depraved character, have come to believe that the “conscious inertia” of the underground surpasses all other forms of existence. They too use inaction and empty moral posturing, not to affect change but to engage in an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity. They too refuse to act or engage with anyone not cowering in the underground. This choice does not satisfy the Mouse Man, as it does not satisfy our liberal class, but neither has the strength to change. The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig
Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.
“You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. “The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a ‘least-worst’ voter you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.”
I save my anger for our bankrupt liberal intelligentsia of which, sadly, I guess I am a member. Liberals are the defeated, self-absorbed Mouse Man in Dostoevsky’s “Notes From Underground.” They embrace cynicism, a cloak for their cowardice and impotence. They, like Dostoevsky’s depraved character, have come to believe that the “conscious inertia” of the underground surpasses all other forms of existence. They too use inaction and empty moral posturing, not to affect change but to engage in an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity. They too refuse to act or engage with anyone not cowering in the underground. This choice does not satisfy the Mouse Man, as it does not satisfy our liberal class, but neither has the strength to change. The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Andrew Gilligan: Copenhagen climate summit -- 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges
Copenhagen climate summit -- 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges: Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.
by Andrew Gilligan
Telegraph
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.
At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".
The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.
And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.
At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.
The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Andrew Gilligan
Telegraph
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.
At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".
The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.
And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.
At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.
The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Monday, December 07, 2009
Bertolt Brecht: A Worker Reads History
A Worker Reads History
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
--Bertold Brecht, 1928
The People Speak (Al's Bar: December 13th)
Friends, colleagues, comrades!
Join us for the premier of Howard Zinn's new film:
The People Speak
@ Al's Bar (6th & Lime) on Sunday, Dec 13. 8-10pm
Free!
The People Speak is a documentary inspired by Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States and from the book he co-authored with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History. These are the voices of resistance in U.S. history – resistance to injustice, to war. Voices that can inspire viewers to recognize the power ordinary people have to change the course of history. These are also the voices that are excluded from traditional histories. Some voices are obscure, some famous and you will hear them express ideas that are excluded from the orthodox histories.
The film brings together accomplished performers like Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh and Eddie Vedder, to re-create the emotional impact of these moments in history. These slices of life are woven together with historical footage, music and narrations from Ben Affleck and Howard Zinn and together, become a film record of what makes our democracy come alive and why civil disobedience needs to be a defining characteristic of Americans. By presenting these amazing people from our past, we will inspire a new generation to act.
The People Speak website
Join us for the premier of Howard Zinn's new film:
The People Speak
@ Al's Bar (6th & Lime) on Sunday, Dec 13. 8-10pm
Free!
The People Speak is a documentary inspired by Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States and from the book he co-authored with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History. These are the voices of resistance in U.S. history – resistance to injustice, to war. Voices that can inspire viewers to recognize the power ordinary people have to change the course of history. These are also the voices that are excluded from traditional histories. Some voices are obscure, some famous and you will hear them express ideas that are excluded from the orthodox histories.
The film brings together accomplished performers like Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Sandra Oh and Eddie Vedder, to re-create the emotional impact of these moments in history. These slices of life are woven together with historical footage, music and narrations from Ben Affleck and Howard Zinn and together, become a film record of what makes our democracy come alive and why civil disobedience needs to be a defining characteristic of Americans. By presenting these amazing people from our past, we will inspire a new generation to act.
The People Speak website
BCTC Filmmaking Certificate Program: Fall 2009 Graduating Class Premiere Celebration (Dec 8)
On behalf of Arthur Rouse, BCTC Film Program…
BCTC Filmmaking Certificate Program
Fall 2009 Graduating Class
Premiere Celebration
Join us for the release of our 7 short works, taking you on a journey
from irony to suspense to bittersweet love and comedy.
Tuesday, December 8th, 6-8pm
NATASHA'S - downtown on Esplanade
5:30pm if you want to order dinner
6:00pm - Greeting
6:30pm - Showtime
7:30pm - Afterglow
Our 6th graduating class has created some fine work, and we look forward to seeing them soon in the emerging Cinematic Arts community in Kentucky.
Special thanks to our master class instructors from Hollywood,
New York, and the Midwest who graciously gave their time,
knowledge, and passion to mentor our students.
Best regards,
Arthur Rouse, BCTC Film Program
BCTC Filmmaking Certificate Program
Fall 2009 Graduating Class
Premiere Celebration
Join us for the release of our 7 short works, taking you on a journey
from irony to suspense to bittersweet love and comedy.
Tuesday, December 8th, 6-8pm
NATASHA'S - downtown on Esplanade
5:30pm if you want to order dinner
6:00pm - Greeting
6:30pm - Showtime
7:30pm - Afterglow
Our 6th graduating class has created some fine work, and we look forward to seeing them soon in the emerging Cinematic Arts community in Kentucky.
Special thanks to our master class instructors from Hollywood,
New York, and the Midwest who graciously gave their time,
knowledge, and passion to mentor our students.
Best regards,
Arthur Rouse, BCTC Film Program
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Film Studies: Dreams, Memory and Chaos
(Migrating some things from my film studies course--please feel free to provide comments about more films or articles/essays/bibliographies that fit this category)
Dreams, Memory and Chaos
General Readings:
Eig, Jonathan. “A Beautiful Mind(Fuck): Hollywood Structures of Identity.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Gaggi, Silvio. “Navigating Chaos.” New Punk Cinema. Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005: 113-125.
Isaacs, Bruce. "Non-Linear Narrative." New Punk Cinema Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005: 126-138.
Plate, S. Brent. “Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culturemaking.” Representing Religion in World Cinema. Ed. S. Brent Plate. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003: 1-15.
Readings of Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Dr. (France/USA: David Lynch, 2001)
Cain, Maximillian Le. “In Dreams: A Review of Mulholland Drive.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Ebert, Roger. “Review of Mulholland Drive.” Chicago Sun Times (October 12, 2001)
Falsetto, Mario. “There is No Band at Club Silencio: Thoughts on David Lynch and Mulholland Drive.” Synoptique 6 (Dec 6, 2004)
Frazer, Bryant. “Fast Friends: Mulholland Drive.” (2001)
Gessler, Nicholas. “Mulholland Drive: An Independent Analysis.” (September 29, 2002)
Koresky, Michael. “Altered Beast: Tropical Malady Meets Mulholland Drive.” Reverse Shot (Summer 2005)
Macaulay, Scott. “The Dream Factory.” Filmmaker Magazine (Fall 2001)
McGinn, Colin. "Dreams on Film."; "Reviewing the Dream Theory."; "How To Make a Dream." The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact NY: Pantheon Books, 2005": 100-157; 158-177; and 178-191. {For those that want to investigate more the theory of film and dreams.--the book is in our library.}
Ostherr, Kirsten and Arash Abizadeh. “Amnesia, Obsession, Cinematic U-Turns: On Mulholland Drive.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Rapfogel, Jared. “David Lynch.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Ruch, Allen B. “’No Hay Banda’: A Long, Strange Trip Down David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” The Modern Word (April 23, 2002)
Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Cinematic Ideas: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” Film Philosophy 9.34 (July 2005)
Thill, Scott. “The Not-So-Straight Story: It’s Just Lynch Being Lynch. And That’s a Good Thing.” Bright Lights Film Journal 34 (October 2001)
Wyman, Bill, Max Garrone and Andy Klein. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Mulholland Drive.” Salon (October 23, 2001)
Zacharek, Stephanie. “David Lynch’s Latest Tour de Force.” Salon (October 12, 2001)
More Films:
Being John Malkovich (USA: Spike Jonze, 1999)
A completely unique story announced Spike Jonze (director) and Charlie Kaufman (screenwriter) as bold filmmakers. It is great to walk away from a film that you enjoyed and were provoked by and to think, I have never seen anything like this.... A great film.
The Big Lebowski (USA/UK: The Coen Brothers, 1998: 117 mins)
"The dude abides." A classic by the Coen Bros, that while not as mystifying as some of these films, still explores along the same lines who and what we are... has developed a cult following that has led to an annual conference/party in Louisville bowling alleys.
Blade Runner (USA/Hong Kong: Ridley Scott, 1982/1991)
Landmark, visionary science fiction film that at its essence is about what it means to be human. Hugely influential in the field of science fiction and has roots in the tradition of film noir. I would also consider it to be a profound (drawing from the root questions of its source author Philip K. Dick) meditation on human consciousness. Through the struggle of the rebel androids we are reminded of human hubris in believing that only they are self-reflectively conscious (a preposterous and arrogant assumption).
The Company Of Wolves (United Kingdom: Neil Jordan, 1984)
Neil Jordan's cinematic adaptation of Angela Carter's feminist reworking of traditional patriarchal fairy tales in the werewolf stories in the collection The Bloody Chamber (1979: "The Company of Wolves", "Wolf-Alice" and "The Werewolf") is structured through the symbolic dreams of a young girl. Rich, vivid, surreal film.
Dead Man (USA/Germany/Japan: Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Johnny Depp plays the lead character in this acid-western dipped in the American (and European) Myth of the West filtered (or juxtaposed) through Native-American counter mythos.
Donnie Darko (USA: Richard Kelley, 2001: director’s cut)
Ignored when originally released in the theaters this film picked-up an audience through rentals and was later re-released with a new director's cut. Jake Gyllenhal and a stellar cast (one of my favorite on-screen families) plumb some philosophical/scientific concepts, while exposing a range of social hypocrisies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (USA: Michel Gondry, 2004: 108 mins)
As always Charlie Kaufman writes about memory and identity. Great production design, the stunning Kate Winslet accompanying Jim Carrey in a tale of lost love and memories. What would you do to forget the pain of a lost love. Is it better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all?
Human Nature (France/USA: Michel Gondry, 2001: 91 mins)
Rowdy/Bawdy comedy that delves into and around some deep human/identity issues.
I Heart Huckabees (USA/Germany: David O. Russell, 2004: 106 mins)
One of my all-time favorite philosophical comedies with a great cast and intelligent writing. One of the few films that I went and watched a second time while it was in the theaters.
Jacob’s Ladder (USA: Adrian Lyne, 1990: 115 mins)
After-effects of war on the returned, damaged soldier. What is reality? What isn't? Who can you trust?
Kontrol (Hungary: Nimrod Antal, 2003)
Filmed entirely in the Budapest underground railway system. What could have been a typical workplace comedy, slowly builds through absurd events and surreal atmosphere into something much more complex. Alternating between slapstick, mystery and romance, but never falling into simplicity.
Lost Highway (France/USA: David Lynch, 1997)
If you thought Mulholland Drive was confusing, try this earlier effort. I've seen it four times and each time I came up with a different interpretation.
Memento (USA: Christopher Nolan, 2000)
A man searching for his wife's murderer deals with daily memory loss--a bold, memorable film.
Pi (USA: Darren Aronofsky, 1998)
An amazing blend of science, philosophy, math, religion and conspiracy theories--set to a unique visual style. Aronofsky's (Requiem for a Dream) first feature film. A startling, mind-blowing original look into the mystifying patterns of life (as viewed by the skewed person who is recognizing them)--should be studied by all beginning filmmakers to give them an idea of how an excellent screenplay and unique visual style can overcome a low budget. Minimalistic, yet complex. On my DVD copy there is a featurette on the making of the film--check it out if you watch it, great depiction of collective filmmaking and the independent spirit (of course always much more uplifting when it turns out a film like this).
Pulse (Japan: Kiyoshi Kurasowa: 2001: 118 mins)
What effect does our increasing relationship to technology and media have on us? A dark, foreboding, haunting, mysterious film.
Run, Lola, Run (Germany: Tom Tykwer, 1998)
How do the smallest choices change the direction of our lives? Chaos theory inflected thriller.
Save the Green Planet (South Korea: Joon-Hwan Jang, 2003)
Like Being John Malkovich and Pi, unlike any film I have seen before--I can't give anything away and would like to hear what others have to say about it.
The Science of Sleep (France/Italy: Michel Gondry, 2006)
Told through the protagonist Stephane's creative dreams and distorted reality this is a creative film that explores the nature of love, friendship, and relationships.
The Usual Suspects (USA/Germany: Bryan Singer, 1995)
Nothing like a good mystery with a surprise ending--a favorite of many. A must for detective/mystery/crime buffs.
Videodrome (Canada: David Cronenberg, 1983)
I first saw this in the theater as a teen and it literally freaked me out! It repulsed me and attracted me at the same time. Despite its low budget, it is a stunning meditation on the power of media to influence our memories and inform our dreams. In an increasingly media(tized) reality this film is even more important today.
Dreams, Memory and Chaos
General Readings:
Eig, Jonathan. “A Beautiful Mind(Fuck): Hollywood Structures of Identity.” Jump Cut 46 (Summer 2003)
Gaggi, Silvio. “Navigating Chaos.” New Punk Cinema. Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005: 113-125.
Isaacs, Bruce. "Non-Linear Narrative." New Punk Cinema Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005: 126-138.
Plate, S. Brent. “Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culturemaking.” Representing Religion in World Cinema. Ed. S. Brent Plate. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003: 1-15.
Readings of Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Dr. (France/USA: David Lynch, 2001)
Cain, Maximillian Le. “In Dreams: A Review of Mulholland Drive.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Ebert, Roger. “Review of Mulholland Drive.” Chicago Sun Times (October 12, 2001)
Falsetto, Mario. “There is No Band at Club Silencio: Thoughts on David Lynch and Mulholland Drive.” Synoptique 6 (Dec 6, 2004)
Frazer, Bryant. “Fast Friends: Mulholland Drive.” (2001)
Gessler, Nicholas. “Mulholland Drive: An Independent Analysis.” (September 29, 2002)
Koresky, Michael. “Altered Beast: Tropical Malady Meets Mulholland Drive.” Reverse Shot (Summer 2005)
Macaulay, Scott. “The Dream Factory.” Filmmaker Magazine (Fall 2001)
McGinn, Colin. "Dreams on Film."; "Reviewing the Dream Theory."; "How To Make a Dream." The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact NY: Pantheon Books, 2005": 100-157; 158-177; and 178-191. {For those that want to investigate more the theory of film and dreams.--the book is in our library.}
Ostherr, Kirsten and Arash Abizadeh. “Amnesia, Obsession, Cinematic U-Turns: On Mulholland Drive.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Rapfogel, Jared. “David Lynch.” Senses of Cinema 19 (March-April 2002)
Ruch, Allen B. “’No Hay Banda’: A Long, Strange Trip Down David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” The Modern Word (April 23, 2002)
Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Cinematic Ideas: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” Film Philosophy 9.34 (July 2005)
Thill, Scott. “The Not-So-Straight Story: It’s Just Lynch Being Lynch. And That’s a Good Thing.” Bright Lights Film Journal 34 (October 2001)
Wyman, Bill, Max Garrone and Andy Klein. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Mulholland Drive.” Salon (October 23, 2001)
Zacharek, Stephanie. “David Lynch’s Latest Tour de Force.” Salon (October 12, 2001)
More Films:
Being John Malkovich (USA: Spike Jonze, 1999)
A completely unique story announced Spike Jonze (director) and Charlie Kaufman (screenwriter) as bold filmmakers. It is great to walk away from a film that you enjoyed and were provoked by and to think, I have never seen anything like this.... A great film.
The Big Lebowski (USA/UK: The Coen Brothers, 1998: 117 mins)
"The dude abides." A classic by the Coen Bros, that while not as mystifying as some of these films, still explores along the same lines who and what we are... has developed a cult following that has led to an annual conference/party in Louisville bowling alleys.
Blade Runner (USA/Hong Kong: Ridley Scott, 1982/1991)
Landmark, visionary science fiction film that at its essence is about what it means to be human. Hugely influential in the field of science fiction and has roots in the tradition of film noir. I would also consider it to be a profound (drawing from the root questions of its source author Philip K. Dick) meditation on human consciousness. Through the struggle of the rebel androids we are reminded of human hubris in believing that only they are self-reflectively conscious (a preposterous and arrogant assumption).
The Company Of Wolves (United Kingdom: Neil Jordan, 1984)
Neil Jordan's cinematic adaptation of Angela Carter's feminist reworking of traditional patriarchal fairy tales in the werewolf stories in the collection The Bloody Chamber (1979: "The Company of Wolves", "Wolf-Alice" and "The Werewolf") is structured through the symbolic dreams of a young girl. Rich, vivid, surreal film.
Dead Man (USA/Germany/Japan: Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Johnny Depp plays the lead character in this acid-western dipped in the American (and European) Myth of the West filtered (or juxtaposed) through Native-American counter mythos.
Donnie Darko (USA: Richard Kelley, 2001: director’s cut)
Ignored when originally released in the theaters this film picked-up an audience through rentals and was later re-released with a new director's cut. Jake Gyllenhal and a stellar cast (one of my favorite on-screen families) plumb some philosophical/scientific concepts, while exposing a range of social hypocrisies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (USA: Michel Gondry, 2004: 108 mins)
As always Charlie Kaufman writes about memory and identity. Great production design, the stunning Kate Winslet accompanying Jim Carrey in a tale of lost love and memories. What would you do to forget the pain of a lost love. Is it better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all?
Human Nature (France/USA: Michel Gondry, 2001: 91 mins)
Rowdy/Bawdy comedy that delves into and around some deep human/identity issues.
I Heart Huckabees (USA/Germany: David O. Russell, 2004: 106 mins)
One of my all-time favorite philosophical comedies with a great cast and intelligent writing. One of the few films that I went and watched a second time while it was in the theaters.
Jacob’s Ladder (USA: Adrian Lyne, 1990: 115 mins)
After-effects of war on the returned, damaged soldier. What is reality? What isn't? Who can you trust?
Kontrol (Hungary: Nimrod Antal, 2003)
Filmed entirely in the Budapest underground railway system. What could have been a typical workplace comedy, slowly builds through absurd events and surreal atmosphere into something much more complex. Alternating between slapstick, mystery and romance, but never falling into simplicity.
Lost Highway (France/USA: David Lynch, 1997)
If you thought Mulholland Drive was confusing, try this earlier effort. I've seen it four times and each time I came up with a different interpretation.
Memento (USA: Christopher Nolan, 2000)
A man searching for his wife's murderer deals with daily memory loss--a bold, memorable film.
Pi (USA: Darren Aronofsky, 1998)
An amazing blend of science, philosophy, math, religion and conspiracy theories--set to a unique visual style. Aronofsky's (Requiem for a Dream) first feature film. A startling, mind-blowing original look into the mystifying patterns of life (as viewed by the skewed person who is recognizing them)--should be studied by all beginning filmmakers to give them an idea of how an excellent screenplay and unique visual style can overcome a low budget. Minimalistic, yet complex. On my DVD copy there is a featurette on the making of the film--check it out if you watch it, great depiction of collective filmmaking and the independent spirit (of course always much more uplifting when it turns out a film like this).
Pulse (Japan: Kiyoshi Kurasowa: 2001: 118 mins)
What effect does our increasing relationship to technology and media have on us? A dark, foreboding, haunting, mysterious film.
Run, Lola, Run (Germany: Tom Tykwer, 1998)
How do the smallest choices change the direction of our lives? Chaos theory inflected thriller.
Save the Green Planet (South Korea: Joon-Hwan Jang, 2003)
Like Being John Malkovich and Pi, unlike any film I have seen before--I can't give anything away and would like to hear what others have to say about it.
The Science of Sleep (France/Italy: Michel Gondry, 2006)
Told through the protagonist Stephane's creative dreams and distorted reality this is a creative film that explores the nature of love, friendship, and relationships.
The Usual Suspects (USA/Germany: Bryan Singer, 1995)
Nothing like a good mystery with a surprise ending--a favorite of many. A must for detective/mystery/crime buffs.
Videodrome (Canada: David Cronenberg, 1983)
I first saw this in the theater as a teen and it literally freaked me out! It repulsed me and attracted me at the same time. Despite its low budget, it is a stunning meditation on the power of media to influence our memories and inform our dreams. In an increasingly media(tized) reality this film is even more important today.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Zinn Education Project
I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don’t BELIEVE in it. It’s not simply a matter of faith, but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don’t need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.
Howard Zinn, quoted on the Zinn Education Project
Howard Zinn, quoted on the Zinn Education Project
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (Canada: Brett Harvey, 2007)
This article covers one point that is featured in the documentary:
Paul Armentano: The Feds Are Addicted to Pot-- Even If You Aren't
World March for Peace and Nonviolence (Lexington, KY:
Lexington Celebrates: World March for Peace and Nonviolence
Wednesday, December 2
4:30 Gather at Triangle Park for Peacewalk, Broadway & Main
5:00 Reception at Central Public Library, 140 East Main
5:30 Celebrating Cultures with dance, poetry, and music in Library Theatre
Why the World March for Peace and Nonviolence ….
“Because we can end world hunger with 10% of what is spent on arms. Imagine how life would be if 30-50% of the arms budget went toward improving people’s lives instead of being used for destruction. Because eliminating wars and violence means leaving human pre-history behind and taking a giant step forward in the evolution of our species. Because in this aspiration we are accompanied by the strength of the voices of hundreds of prior generations who suffered the consequences of war, and whose echo continues to be heard today in all those places where it continues to leave its sinister trail of dead, disappeared, disabled, refugees and displaced. Because a 'world without wars' is an image that opens the future and seeks to become reality in every corner of the planet, as violence gives way to dialogue. The moment has come for the voiceless to be heard! Out of agonizing and urgent need, millions of human beings are crying out for an end to wars and violence. We can make that happen by uniting all the forces of pacifism and active non-violence worldwide.”
The World March for Peace and Nonviolence
Kentucky contact for World March for Peace and Nonviolence: USA
Susmita Barua
info@seek2know.net
Susmita Barusa's Weblog
Sponsors: Lexington Shambhala Center, Central Kentucky Council for Peace & Justice, BCTC Students for Peace and Earth Justice, Franciscan Peace Center, Unitarian Universalist Church
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