Film Matters Magazine

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

Nolan Crawford: My article is a comparative analysis of three films, two of which are classic screwball comedies from the 1930s and the third of which is a film from the 1980s whose surrealist plot relies and comments on the screwball comedy genre.  My original hope was to focus solely on the brilliant subversion of the genre and its voyeuristic tendencies which Woody Allen brings to his 1980s film, The Purple Rose of Cairo.  But, in actually writing the essay, the article got to a bigger message.  This bigger message was one on class and the predatory nature of Hollywood studios in the Great Depression, coopting working-class desires through film.  It was a huge pleasure to see this article evolve as I wrote it.

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

Vanessa Zarm: My article centers around Matt Spicer’s 2017 dark comedy Ingrid Goes West and discusses its contemporary representation of social media, which shares a rare, behind-the-scenes insight into the world of influencers and their famed lifestyle in Los Angeles. In particular, my article focuses on the journey of the film’s protagonist, Ingrid Thorburn, whose obsession with Instagram, alongside her mental instability, dives into the psychological ramifications of using such apps on a day-to-day basis and how heavily it influences today’s generation. 

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

Qingyang Zhou: My article uses the theory of flâneur, developed by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, to analyze the relationship between poetry, the urban landscape, and driving in American independent film director Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson (2016).

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

Arta Barzanji: The article is, for the most part, a close reading of Saless’s Still Life, generally considered to be one of his two masterpieces. It’s also an effort to give context on Saless and introduce him through one of his seminal works, while addressing the deficiencies of what has been written about him and this film so far.

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

George Turner: This article explores, from various angles, the ethical questions concerning the representation of judicial systems in three documentary films. More specifically, I examine three documentaries’ publicizing of private matters, and the dilemmas that arise as a result. Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans (2003), Kim Longinotto’s Sisters in Law (2005) and Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (1967), inter alia, all document judicial processes to some degree and can accordingly be said to be publicizing private affairs. The article, upon analyzing each film’s representation of these affairs with regard to certain psychological phenomena, concludes that the dubious nature of legality in nonfiction film is too seldom acknowledged and is thus too often tactlessly represented. Ultimately, I argue for a revision of the discourses surrounding documentary, contending that an apolitical discourse on the medium’s ability to elicit social change can promise a more productive appreciation of its aesthetic and sociopolitical potential.