Film Matters Magazine

Matthew Jones

Matthew Jones wrote the article “Metzger’s Women: Gender Representations and Visual Abstraction in ‘60s Sexploitation,” featured in issue 4.4 of Film Matters, soon after graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in film.  He has since gone on to work in various areas of production and is presently working on casting for an upcoming project.  Additionally, he is still researching about the visual representation of women and is currently writing an essay about the portrayal of lesbianism throughout film’s history.

Meredith Bryant: This article you wrote is specifically about Radley Metzger’s films.  Was this sexploitation that you speak about relevant for the majority of films in this era? 

Matthew Jones:  No, sexploitation was almost entirely relegated to independent, low-budget filmmakers, who used sex and nudity to attract audiences. Using sexual themes and nudity generally made up for the lack of production value and/or the filmmakers’ inability to market the films. However, with the changing times of the 1960s, even many mainstream films from Hollywood began incorporating sexual themes and imagery (such as many James Bond films, like Dr. No and Goldfinger). There were also many different directors (besides Radley Metzger) who specialized in making these kinds of films, including Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, and Armando Bó, among others.
Continue reading →

Filmmaker Evan Vetter during the production of Daylight Come

John Gelardi’s article, “Documentary Filmmaking: From Concept to Distribution,” was published in the spring 2014 issue of Film Matters. The article focused on Evan Vetter’s documentary Daylight Come: Life After Rape in Congo as it pertains to the conceptual creation, rigorous funding, spontaneous filming, and assorted distribution of documentary productions. Gelardi studied film and business at University of North Carolina Wilmington. The following interview with Gelardi brings attention to his personal views on documentary film as a genre and an art form.

Karsu Nalbantoglu: What made you interested in publishing your article in Film Matters magazine?

John Gelardi: To validate my writing ability was the main goal in getting published in Film Matters. I always enjoyed writing and the idea of becoming published was an appealing prospect. So it was pretty much that I was put into a position to be published by being in that class and I wanted to make it happen.
Continue reading →

Dustin Fleischmann

Dustin Fleischmann is a Film Studies and Creative Writing double major, the projection manager for Lumina Theater, and the vice president of membership for the Association of Campus Entertainment at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dustin has had two pieces published in Film Matters, one in issue 5.2 and the other in issue 5.3. The article I decided to interview Dustin on was his review of the movie Her (2013) in issue 5.3 of Film Matters.

Chance Saller: Have you listened to the Her soundtrack? If so, what did you think about it? When I was listening to it I got a sense of pain, but therein I felt hope, like when you are torn up inside yet you feel that someday you’ll be back to normal. Do you get that impression or is my interpretation of this soundtrack simply just “my own”?

Dustin Fleishmann: Interestingly enough, I’m listening to it right now—I like to listen to the score when I study and write. Arcade Fire did an outstanding job translating the tone of the film into an aural space, and I find myself revisiting the score for simple enjoyment from time to time. I think it’s interesting that you wonder if your interpretation is “your own,” because it seems to suggest that you’re unsure whether you’ve aligned the intention of the film’s score (or for that matter, the moral of the film itself) to the director’s vision—and you’re not alone in this skepticism. I remember listening to an interview on NPR in which Audie Cornish talks about her takeaways from the film and asks Jonze if her personal experience aligns with his intentions. He says something to the effect that the film is what you make of it and how it’s interesting that there’s a vast variety of reactions to the movie: Is it romantic? Sad? Cynical? Creepy? He says there’s no real, simple answer and that he likes hearing what it means to so many people. Speaking solely of the music’s score, I find the overall score self-reflective. Consider “Photograph” as the embodiment of this idea: when Samantha plays this song for Theodore on the beach, she says that the song is like a photo that captures that moment. Each song reminds me of little moments or “photographs” in my life: the good times (“Dimensions”; the latter half of “Morning Talk/Supersymmetry”), the somber times (“Loneliness #4”; “We’re All Leaving”), and the little in-betweens (I think “Milk & Honey” and “Sleepwalker” are good examples of this, but feel free to disagree). And it’s not just for the past moments: I sometimes think about how the songs may fit into my future.
Continue reading →

Silvio Carta completed his PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham. His articles and reviews have appeared in Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Review, Visual Studies, Visual Ethnography, and Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, among other publications. To find out more about his book Visual Anthropology in Sardinia, Film Matters conducted a Q & A with Carta via email correspondence (June-July 2015).

Kailyn Warpole: Please tell us a little more about your book.

Silvio Carta: Visual Anthropology in Sardinia is a book about the advantages of the medium of film over written academic texts. It focuses on the construction of different experiences and identities in Sardinian documentaries and ethnographic films, and includes a discussion of theoretical developments in the area of visual anthropology. The book offers a survey of the somewhat peculiar filmic ethnographic discourse established in relation to Sardinia, which has often been constructed as a repository of all sorts of stereotypes about the Italian South.
Continue reading →