This paper considers the use of Boym’s formulations of reflective and restorative nostalgia as a productive lens for viewing the tensions within folk horror texts and their appeals. Considering folk horror texts such as The Wicker Man, Midsommar and The Living and the Dead, the paper will demonstrate that Boym’s two conceptions help to draw out…[Read more]

I will mainly focus on a collection of films made between 1972 and 1985 by the Staatliche Filmdokumentation (SFD)—the State Film
Documentation unit—which survived as part of the collection of the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR (SFA), the former national film archive
of the GDR.

Spanish abstract: ‘Lone Star’ (John Sayles, 1996) es una película sobre la etnicidad y sobre el peso del pasado tratado aquí de manera reflexiva. Es un tema inevitablemente presente en las películas norteamericanas (o en muchas de ellas) pero a menudo sólo como parte del trasfondo, o evitado en el desarrollo de la historia principal. Aquí está…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Dos hombres en lados opuestos de la ley están infiltrados —en la Policía y en la mafia— pero hierven la violencia y la sangre derramada cuando la información sale a la luz, y se envía a cada topo a averiguar quién es el enemigo interior. ‘Infiltrados’ es una película de Martin Scorsese que explora la ‘paradoja del espía’, a…[Read more]

Review of Mike Wayne’s “Marxism Goes to the Movies”.

Un esquema utilizado en mis clases de Comentario de Textos Literarios Ingleses para explicar las diversas dimensiones o parámetros de análisis funcional del discurso: la relación entre interlocutores o ‘tenor’, el canal comunicativo, medio o ‘modo’, y la función interactivo-comunicativa o ‘dominio’. ___…[Read more]

Abstract: Insofar as Walter identifies with this myth, his rational imperative is profoundly interrupted. However, this representational interruption also operates on a larger level. Since the film opens and closes with the western actor Sam Elliott (The Stranger) and is shot through with western stylistic motifs, it can be seen as striving toward…[Read more]

This chapter examines the portrayal of Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes in Stephen Frear’s film Philomena (2013) and the biography on which the film is based, the British journalist Martin Sixsmith’s account of Philomena Lee’s life and search for her son, who was given up to an American couple for adoption under coercive circumstances. Enforced a…[Read more]

As with many of the Kinoks’ films trains often appear in Dziga Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece, ‘Man with a Movie Camera’. Used to create dynamism, criss-crossing the screen, often at dramatic angles, and acting as a counterpoint to previous and following scenes. Train sequences also signpost a journey to Odesa by the eponymous cameraman. The paper…[Read more]

Dziga Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ is a staple of film studies courses and academic papers but there has been no research until now into the important ‘co-stars’ of the film, the movie cameras. This paper discusses in detail the Debrie Parvo and other cameras used by the film’s cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman.