Film Matters Magazine

Sophia Fuller: Tell us a little bit about yourself; how did you get started in filmmaking?

Ryan Cudahy: This is actually a story I have told quite a bit. I have been passionate about film my entire life. It really started when I was four years old and my dad got a camcorder. I was already really into movies at the time. I had also gotten a reptar wagon toy from Rugrats for Christmas, and I was convinced that if I held the camera in the right way and made the angles just right, it would look exactly like the cartoon. Obviously, it didn’t work but it was a good start. It was around middle school where I realized I really wanted to be a director. I enrolled in a filmmaking course my freshman year of high school and it was really exciting. I decided to make a short film about cows taking their revenge on humans for eating them. It was just a comedy short film but it was significantly worse than other people’s films in the class. I realized if I actually want to do this, I really need to step it up. Instead of just making a bunch of other stuff, I took a break and watched about three hundred movies. I made a list of the movies I had heard of that were the best of all time and then when I was ready to start making short films again, I was able to make some stuff that I was moderately proud of. Then I went on to study at James Madison University for video production for media arts and design. I was struggling with my mental health, which truly plays into what this movie is about, and I decided to take a leave of absence. I always wanted to stick with film and I ended up in a career working as a producer for a very long time with a production company. During COVID, I worked on the TV series called Swagger. Once we came out of quarantine, I worked on the locations team for that. I always wanted to make this film that we just made. It was a very personal project to me and I am really glad we were able to make it and with how it turned out The film is mainly shot in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I recently just founded the Fredericksburg Film Festival. We just had the first year of that, which was fantastic. That’s kind of my way of sticking with everything.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Paige Hartenburg: My article, “See No Evil: Audio Identification with the Monstrous in Under the Skin,” focuses on the relationship between identity and body as seen in horror. Commenting on Carol Clover’s Final Girl and Kara Silverman’s female authorial voice, my essay argues that audio provides audiences an opportunity to choose how they identify the film’s protagonist: as a monster or as the Final Girl. Through audio, Under the Skin (2013) provides alternative modes of reading that allow the film to take on subjective meaning.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Mary Beth Bauermann: This article takes a deep dive into three of Spike Lee’s films that feature significant compilation soundtracks of American popular music: Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), and BlacKkKlansman (2018). The music that fills these soundtracks recalls historic eras and specific sociocultural events, grounding audiences in two coexisting worlds: Lee’s diegesis and our American society. Ultimately, the soundtracks facilitate audiences’ understanding that the stories conveyed in each film narrative exist in our own history, past and present.

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Leandra Djomo: My article “Daydreaming” focuses on the distortion of identity caused by VR technology in Satoshi Kon’s 2006 film Paprika and how that distortion serves as a way to escape reality. What attracted me to this film were the fun colors and the ultimate confusion that came with trying to understand where reality began and where fiction ended. I found this confusion to be horrific, and as a horror fanatic, I wanted to explore this sentiment further. Although, Paprika is certainly not considered a horror film.

Station MVP explores the behind-the-scenes world of a public radio station and the characters who work there. The protagonist Jamie is in over her head—she must navigate a demanding new job, her zany colleagues, and ongoing threats from her estranged husband.  She’s a no-nonsense woman who battles the highs and lows of dealing with a position of power while trying to forget the time when she had hers taken away. Despite it all, she still has her sense of humor, and the fictional Maggie Valley Public Radio—WMVP—is lucky to have her!