Introducing the 2017 Masoud Yazdani Award Judges

Judging for the 2017 Masoud Yazdani Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Film Scholarship is now underway thanks to the hard work of the following volunteer judges:

Kelli Fuery is assistant professor of Film and Media Studies at Chapman University’s Lawrence and Kristina Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. She did her BA (Hons) at Macquarie University in Critical and Cultural Studies, graduating in 1995 with a First. Her first graduate teaching appointment was at Royal Holloway, University of London in the Media Arts department teaching Film Theory and Analysis, Film History, and Television Studies, where she enjoyed teaching with a focus that balanced practice and theory. Since then, Fuery has held posts in contemporary Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Monash University, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and in the (now) School of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London. She completed her PhD (2005) at Murdoch University in Critical Theory, Film and Visual Culture. She is the author of Visual Cultures and Critical Theory (2003), and New Media: Culture and Image (2009), and has published in such journals as The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Arts & Health: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice, and Conradiana.

Travis Merchant is an adjunct instructor of Writing, Film, and Communications at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, NC. He completed his BA degree at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in Film Studies and English, where he also produced an Honors thesis in Film Studies. He has published in Film Matters and presented at the 2016 and 2017 Visions Film Festival and Conference.

David Resha is assistant professor of Film Studies at Emory University’s Oxford College. He completed his PhD in Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2010). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Resha held a position at Birmingham-Southern College. Resha’s primary scholarly focus is documentary film history and aesthetics. He has authored the book, The Cinema of Errol Morris, and his articles have been published in a number of leading journals including Screening the Past and Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Film Matters is grateful for the service that our 2017 judges are providing! And we look forward to announcing the results at some point in 2017. So watch this space!

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Forbes Announces Second Annual Under 30 Short Film Festival

Forbes announced today its second annual Under 30 Short Film Festival, a short film competition for filmmakers, under the age of 30, who are innovating and using a variety of techniques to accomplish a range of missions, from entertainment to advocacy. Submissions will be accepted beginning today through August 18, 2017.

The next generation of great moviemakers will compete for the opportunity to show their short films at the 2017 Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston, October 1 – 4. The summit is expected to bring together more than 6,000 of the world’s top entrepreneurs and game changers who are leading the way in industries such as media, technology, entertainment, social good and more.

“Film is a notoriously tough industry to break into,” said Forbes’ media and entertainment reporter Madeline Berg. “But there are so many young filmmakers creating impressive and important—or just plain entertaining—content.  This is our opportunity to highlight some of those.”

Filmmakers can choose to submit their work in one of four categories: Animated, Live-Action/Theatrical, Documentary and Shot on Cellphone. Judges include industry insiders, as well as Forbes’ media and entertainment reporter Madeline Berg and associate editor Natalie Robehmed.

Winners Announced on September 15, 2017

The judges will select one winner from each of the four categories. These winners will be announced on September 15. All four category winners will receive complimentary attendance to the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston, which will feature 200 world-class speakers and include keynote addresses, panels, pitch competitions, a music festival, a food festival and opportunities to meet and network with mentors from the entertainment world and beyond. At the summit, the four winning films will be shown and the audience will vote for the grand prize winner.

Last year’s Forbes Under 30 Short Film Festival received over 1,500 submissions, with live-action/theatrical short film Rest of Your Life, by Melanie Ho, taking the grand prize. The animated Hum by Thomast Teller, the documentary Where Are We Now by Lucie Rachel and The Garbage, a cellphone filmed work by Kushtrim Aslanni, took the category prizes.

How to Apply for the Forbes Under 30 Short Film Competition:

Filmmakers must be under 30 years of age at the time of the film festival (October 1, 2017) and will be required to provide proof of age with their submissions. All submissions must be under 10 minutes long, completed in 2016 or 2017, created by a filmmaker based in the United States and have subtitles if not in English. Please specify the category the film falls into at the time of submission.

Films can be submitted through https://filmfreeway.com/festival/ForbesUnder30FilmFestival or sent to Madeline Berg and Natalie Robehmed at Forbes Media, 499 Washington Blvd., Jersey City, NJ 07310.

To learn more, please visit www.forbes.com/forbes-live/event/under-30-boston. On Twitter, follow #Under30Summit.

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An Interview with Jinkyu Ahn, Experimental Animator. By Emmett Williams

Contained (Jinkyu Ahn, 2017-)

Jinkyu Ahn is an experimental animator whose work has been featured and won awards around the world, from the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards to Animaze Daze at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Ahn participated in this Film Matters interview via email in summer 2017.

Emmett Williams: Your biography, as seen on your website, is a bit sparse. Could you tell us some more about yourself, and your background?

Jinkyu Ahn: I was born in Pohang, South Korea and spent my childhood there. After studying landscape architecture in college and completing military service, I came to the United States and began studying art in Los Angeles. I first studied drawing and painting. Afterward, I earned a BFA in Character Animation and an MFA in Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

It is typically considered a red flag to have such an eclectic academic background – going from landscape architecture to character animation to film and video may seem indicative of an unfocused mind. I saw it as strengthening my ability to express myself in a multifaceted way.

As a child, one of my favorite activities was writing poetry. However, I was limited by my youth to only written poetry – I neither had the technical know-how (and possibly the inspiration) to do more than that. However, with my studies, I can finally enjoy expressing the sensibilities of poetry in a visual, and often nonverbal, medium. Continue reading

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The Pulitzer at 100

First Run Features is proud to announce the theatrical premiere of The Pulitzer at 100, the latest documentary by Oscar- and Emmy-winning director Kirk Simon. The film opens at the prestigious Lincoln Plaza Cinema on July 21, with other cities to follow.

The Pulitzer at 100 celebrates the centenary of this revered and seminal national award for literary excellence in journalism and the arts. The totality of the Pulitzers has had an immeasurable impact on the American sensibility and beyond over the past 100 years. The riveting tales of the winning artists give an insider’s view of how these pinnacles of achievement are selected in the twenty-one categories and how the award has the power to change lives and communities. The diverse stories explored in the film relate to immigration, race, gender, and above all freedom of speech – all issues that are ever more relevant in America today.

Featuring interviews with several notable prize recipients, including authors, journalists, playwrights and musicians such as Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Ayad Akhtar, Carl Bernstein, Robert Caro, Martin Baron, Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman, David Remnick, Wynton Marsalis and John Adams, the film also brings Pulitzer-winning works to life through readings by Martin Scorsese, Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman, Liev Schreiber, John Lithgow and Yara Shahidi, all of whom bring their own talents to bear on the words of their favorite writers.

Interwoven with the stories of the journalists and artists and readings is the history of the man who created it. Joseph Pulitzer, who came to America to fight as a mercenary in the Civil War, left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912, not only to elevate the professionalism and to improve the craft but also to establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917. Today, both the iconic prizes and the prominence of the School of Journalism at Columbia represent the highest standards of integrity and excellence in writing.

A thoughtful and colorful tapestry of the last 100 years of journalistic and artistic life in America, The Pulitzer at 100 is an illuminating and thought-provoking work that will spark the imagination of viewers, marking the beginning of a re-exploration and revisiting of the astonishing power of literature, in all forms, that have enriched our lives, whilst containing a century-long social commentary on the human condition, wherein lie many answers to the problems manifested in the world today.

There are more than a thousand recipients of this prestigious award including journalists, novelists, poets, musicians and photographers and this film has been made from the most valuable of resources, the artists themselves, many of whom are featured in The Pulitzer at 100:

  • Carl Bernstein, The Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 1973
  • Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting & Affairs, 1983,1988 & 2002
  • Martin Baron, Editor of The Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, National Reporting and Explanatory Journalism, 2014, 2015 & 2016
  • Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize for Biography, 1975 & 2003
  • David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 1994
  • Sheri Fink, Pulitzer Winner for Investigative Reporting, 2010 & 2015
  • Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and Commentary, 1990 & 2006
  • Carol Leonnig, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and National Reporting, 2014 & 2015
  • Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2012
  • Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1999
  • Paula Vogel, writer of How I Learned To Drive, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1998
  • Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2008
  • Wynton Marsalis, Pulitzer Prize for Music, 1997
  • John Adams, Pulitzer Prize for Music, 2003
  • Nick Ut, Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, 1973

Continue reading

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From “Looking-Into” to “Living-Into”: Theorizing Existentialism in Cinema. By Karan Tripathi

Isabelle Huppert and Andre Marcon in L’avenir/Things to Come (Les Films du Losange, 2016)

In the early scenes of L’avenir (Things to Come, 2016) we see a French artist resting in peace at a place where he wanted to submerge himself in the music of winds and sea till the eternity. Commenting on the same, Heinz (Andre Marcon) tells Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) that music is not only felt, it is seen. As the movie progresses, we see Nathalie experiencing the same contradiction, a semiotic rather, in her own self. We see her exploring and experiencing the various interpretations of herself, a development of an empathy she creates with the space and circumstances. In a cinematic construction that enables it, we see Nathalie oscillating from a life which she “thinks” of being hers and the life she somehow indulges herself with. It is the fascinating movement of her identity from the past to the present to the future and the constant divergence of it all that made me question the idea of linearity and unity of life and identity. Continue reading

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Anna Kendrick: Acting Real in Tinseltown. By Luke Batten

 

Abstract

This first academic piece on Anna Kendrick examines her constructed and individualistic off-screen and on-screen persona, with particular emphasis on the prevailing issues of patriarchy within the film industry. This is achieved through a study of the representation of women within the melodrama, romantic comedy/chick flick, fantasy, and musical genres of film, whilst considering Kendrick’s own perspective on the subject from interviews and her observations in her memoir Scrappy Little Nobody. The aim of this article is to further discourse on the representation of women within the aforementioned genres, and interrogate the portrayal of the female performer more broadly, both on- and off-screen.

Chapter one of this dissertation analyzes Kendrick’s off-screen depiction in conjunction with her child star status, celebrity culture, and social media. The following chapter investigates her on-screen personality as Natalie Keener in Up in the Air and Beca Mitchell in Pitch Perfect, the films which brought her to international recognition as an actor. The final chapter of this work evaluates her more recent on-screen characterization as Cinderella in Into the Woods and Cathy Hiatt in The Last Five Years.

Author Biography

Luke Batten is a film and TV graduate from the UK. His approach to film criticism is focused on film’s sociological implications. His publications include: “(500) Days of Manipulation: Challenging the Romcom” (2015), Anna Kendrick: Acting Real in Tinseltown (2017), and “Groundhog Day: The Day Before Tomorrow” (2017).

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Exploring Film History: An Interview with Dr. Jon Cowans. By Emmett Williams

Jon Cowans is associate professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University–Newark and author of Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 1946–1959 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Dr. Cowans participated in this Film Matters interview via email in spring 2017.

Emmett Williams: You did your Master’s and your PhD at Stanford University, studying modern European history. What drew you to this field of study? What attracted you about Stanford’s graduate program?

Jon Cowans: I wanted to become a historian because I loved learning about history and I thought Americans needed to know more about it. It seemed like an enjoyable, stimulating field of work with positive social consequences. I actually went to Stanford to study Brazilian history, but when I was there I ended up changing my field to modern Europe. Long story. Continue reading

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Interview with As Good as You Star, Laura Heisler. By Kim Carr

Laura Heisler

Laura Heisler is a theater, film, and television actress. She has appeared in many Off-Broadway productions as well as television shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, The Americans, and Madame Secretary. In 2015, she was cast as the lead in the feature film As Good as You, where she portrays a woman who struggles with grief after the death of her wife. The film was released in LA theaters on June 9.

Kim Carr: Please tell us about yourself. 

Laura Heisler: I’m an actor, born in Chicago, and raised in Bethesda, MD, outside DC. I was a New York theater actor for many years, before moving to LA for a spell, doing more television work. My husband and I recently moved back to the East Coast. I’m also a mom to two wondrous little boys: a two-and-a-half-year-old and an eleven-month-old. I was actually pregnant with my first son while I was shooting As Good as YouContinue reading

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Interview with As Good as You Director, Heather de Michele. By Kim Carr

Heather de Michele

Heather de Michele, a former New Yorker, cofounded  Lesbian Pulp-o-rama, a sketch comedy troupe that performed live shows in New York.  She went on to produce and direct a variety of film genres including commercials, web series, and shorts before venturing into feature films.   Now based in Los Angeles, de Michele’s first feature, As Good as You, has won best LGBT feature at the Hollywood International Film Festival.  It was released in LA theaters and on iTunes on June 9.

Kim Carr: Please tell us about yourself.

Heather de Michele: Hey, Kim! Okay! I am a theater director and filmmaker living in Los Angeles with my wife (Lisa in As Good as You) and our two awesome daughters. Continue reading

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As Good as You (2015). Reviewed by Kim Carr

Jo (Laura Heisler) and Jamie (Bryan Dechart) during their interrogation by Dr. Berg (Annie Potts) in As Good as You (Off-Chance Productions and Tanky Productions, 2015)

In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare writes: “Everyone can master a grief but he who has it.”  This summarizes the plot of Heather de Michelle’s film As Good as You (2015).  The audience watches the protagonist Jo (Laura Heisler) attempt to master her grief after the death of her wife Amanda.  Her friends offer support, but she proceeds to alienate them, one by one, until she is forced to reconcile her past with her present. Continue reading

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