Film Matters Magazine

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

Emma Hughes: “The New Global West: Redefining the Borders of Genre in the Post-Revisionist Western” is a revised version of a longer paper that I wrote for my senior comprehensive exercise at Carleton College in 2016. I fell in love with genre studies and the western genre at the same time, during my first year of college, and I wanted to write an analytical paper that would best represent my specific love for film studies, as well as my skills learned as a Cinema and Media Studies major. This article analyzes recent western genre films, with focus on Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and The Revenant (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2015), and explores the ways in which this genre–which is a staple of American cinema and American national identity–has changed and been reborn in the past several years. I propose that a new era of the “post-revisionist western” works to shift both classical and revisionist definitions of the genre in its boundaries of time, space, and identity to signal a new, more global and universal identity of both the genre and of society itself.

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

Alexandria R. Moore: This piece was really the culmination of my undergraduate intellectual development. It was, to me, a way of dovetailing my humanities education in a way that felt intersectional, representative, probing, and honoring of great female scholars.

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

Adam Herron: My article discusses how A Serbian Film demonstrates the commercial context of snuff fiction through its marketing and distribution, as well as its textual content. Whereas the film was largely condemned by critics, I aim to contextualize the film within prior developments in horror. Examining how sensationalism and excess have already been deployed in the promotional campaigns and narrative themes of other films, I contend that the marketing and distribution of A Serbian Film actually aimed to mitigate its shocking content, while its textual content mounts a critique of economic inequalities perpetuated by global capitalism and occidental consumerism.

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

Florian Zitzelsberger: The article focuses on aspects of domesticity and gender in the film Julie & Julia by director Nora Ephron. I have loved this film ever since its release in 2009, mainly because I am a huge fan of Julia Child’s work and was very happy to see her come to life again on the big screen. Her enthusiasm for cooking became a huge inspiration for people all around the globe, women in particular. I therefore ask in my article: how does the film engage with women? One of the most intriguing aspects, for me, lies in the ways in which the film plays with “traditional” views on gender because Julia Child surely was a woman who knew how to cook—which, however, didn’t reduce her to the status of an exclusively domestic women.

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

Zachary Goldstein: This article utilizes Stephen Gaghin’s film Syriana as a lens through which to analyze larger trends of Islamophobia and Orientalism in Hollywood film.

Love triangles are never easy – especially when there’s a murder involved. The Perfect Murder (Chandirramani, 2019) tells the story of Kabir (Rohan Gandotra), his wife Neha (Samvedna Suwalka), and his lover Carol (Niharica Raizada).  I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the writer, director, producer, and editor of The Perfect Murder, Vikkramm Chandirramani.

Miranda Sprouse: Tell us about your short film, The Perfect Murder.

Vikkramm Chandirramani: The Perfect Murder is an eighteen-minute urban crime drama. It crossed 1.5 million views on YouTube earlier this week. It has been very well received. I was awarded Best Director of a Short Foreign Language Film at the South Europe International Film Festival, held in Valencia, Spain, on May 12. I had attended the festival to receive the award. It was also awarded Best Dramatic Film at the NCCC Film and Animation Festival, held in Buffalo, NY, by the Niagara County Community College. Additionally, it was screened at the Ninth Ridgewood Guild International Film Festival, New Jersey, and the Sixth Firenze FilmCorti Film Festival held in Florence, Italy.

I was in Valencia, Spain, for the South Europe International Film Festival and it was a fantastic experience. There were filmmakers from all over – from the US, Bulgaria, London, Japan, and so many countries. They had an eclectic pick of films and the energy was amazing. What makes it even more delightful is when people who do not understand Hindi or who have never seen a Bollywood film connect to my films. They screened my film twice because some people who had not seen it the first time requested it. The festival’s director Steve Grossmith is a film connoisseur. It was overall a very memorable trip.

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

James Doyle: My article is a study of the precise image of masculinity that is portrayed in Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011), and of how this image is presented to the audience through the visual design of the film. Drive questions what it means to be a “real” man in a distinctly American context, using the archetype of the outlaw hero to explore the idea of identity, and of masculinity, as something that is never fully occupied, and always subject to changes in meaning. My article focuses on how this idea is explored through the visual design of the film–the cinematography, production design, and costume design.

Halwa (Bhakta, Bajpai, 2018) is the story of Sujata (played by Vee Kumari) as she reaches out to an old friend over social media following the death of her friend’s spouse. I had the chance to interview the co-directors, -editors, and -writers of the film: Nirav Bhakta and Gayatri Bajpai.

Miranda Sprouse: Tell us about your short film, Halwa.

Nirav Bhakta and Gayatri Bajpai: Halwa is the story of an older Indian immigrant woman re-discovering love and her sense of self. On the eve of her wedding anniversary, empty-nester Sujata Chopra attempts to find some joy in her broken marriage, until she learns about the passing of her childhood companion’s spouse over Facebook. Having been disconnected from this woman for over thirty years over a misunderstanding, Sujata finds the courage to reach out to send her condolences. They reconnect, sparking friction when Sujata’s controlling husband, Dr. Chopra, finds out.