Beyond Summerisle: Comparing Folk Horror in The Wicker Man and Get Out

Ryan Pham

How the terrain of folk horror expands into considerations of race

“Tender is the Ghost”: (In)visible, Reciprocal Breath and the Realm of Memory in Aftersun

Sean Sabye

How the motif of breathing in film ignites an atmospheric play of memories

Complete lineup of essays for the new volume coming soon!

Intervening Hands: Building Discoursal Legacies of Film Sound with Apocalypse Now and A Man Escaped

Liam Bradford

How these films compel us to rethink ingrained approaches to sound in cinema

An Examination of Time, Medium, and the Moving Image in Chris Marker’s La Jetée

Campbell Mah

How Marker’s film reflects on the means of its own creation

Phenomenology and Its Creation and Exploration of Environment in Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy

Ana Hoppert Flores

How this film constructs an environmental world and makes mood primary

The Final Girl and Final Boy: Reframing Gender Identities in Alien and Get Out

Matthew Gebbia

How respective films by Scott and Peele rewrite gendered conventions of genre

Horror as a Vehicle: The Terror of Technology in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse

Jack Ashby

How this classic of J-horror explores universal fears of loneliness

Turning the Camera Around to You: The Passenger and Objectivity vs. Subjectivity

Charlie Brownlee

How Antonioni’s camera movements implicate the observer

Unconventional Space: Queering and Liberation of Spaces in Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Hold Me While I’m Naked

Brian Rosenzweig

How two queer films open up spaces for melancholy, joy, and transience

What Makes an Auteur? An Analysis of Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up

Andrew Tomei

How Kiarostami’s self-reflexive film lends itself to an exploration of authorship

What Is Outside Is Also Inside: The (Un)familiar World of Zama

Abigail Burns

How sensuous forms lend themselves to phenomenological film theory

Sound Builds Its Own World: Auditory Montage in Lucrecia Martel’s Zama

Theo Holt

How the complex layering of sound imparts a feeling of entrapment in Martel’s anticolonial masterpiece

goin thru it.

Carly Peck

A short film exploring “photogenic” processes of memory, trauma, and working-through

It’s Your Move

Noah Maynard

A short film as a chess board somewhere between dream and reality

This second volume celebrates 225 years of Rhetoric, Writing, Film, and Literature at UNC Chapel Hill. Visit ecl225.unc.edu for further details.

The Portrait Looks Back: Revising Hitchcockian Tradition in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Halynna Snyder

How Céline Sciamma’s film redefines romance and subverts the myth of the muse

Vertiginous Memories: Traces of Hitchcock in La Jetée and Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Lexi Baird

How Chris Marker and Céline Sciamma respectively rework motifs from Vertigo

Matriarchy in The Birds: A Feminine Power Struggle between Melanie and Lydia 

Reanna Brooks

How Hitchcock’s horror-melodrama thematically explores a crisis within a makeshift family

Gender Performance as Sacrifice in Stella Dallas

Barbara Blaschke

How Barbara Stanwyck’s heroine navigates society’s loopholes through her sacrificial acts

Masculine Hierarchies, Voice, and the Clown-Cuckold Figure in The Blue Angel

Liam Bradford

How Sternberg’s melodrama spotlights emasculation vis-à-vis the rise of the “New Woman”

Jia Zhangke’s Emotional Questioning of Contemporary China

Tyler Kwok

How one of the world’s most resourceful independent directors meditates on mainland China’s social, economic, and political transformations

Hanging Out at the Movies: Nostalgia, Spectatorship, and Slowness in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Josh Martin

How Tsai’s emblematic slow film stages a hangout session with its nostalgic audience

Infectious Atmospheres: The Horror of Japanese New Media in Ring

Ben Van Welzen

How this J-horror classic envelops the spectator with virally contagious forces

Political Monstrosity Framed as Normality: Romero’s Horror Aesthetics in The Crazies

Ben Newport-Foster

How Romero’s underseen horror film exposes the incompetence of state power

Homegrown: Short Horror Film

Evan Davison

A cinematic journey into houseplant horror and the gothic uncanny

Funneling Out: The Ever-Present Constriction on Black Filmmakers in Hollywood

Veronica Chandler

How Black creatives are striving to change how we discuss Black media

From Hurdanos to Hauka Cults: On Ethnographic Surrealism in Buñuel and Rouch Films

Macy Meyer

How two controversial documentaries use surrealism to enact ethical provocations

Couples Lost in Time: Hiroshima, mon amour and L’Eclisse

Dylan Caskie

How modern cinematic experiments by Resnais and Antonioni reconfigure the romantic couple

Affective Mood as a Narrative Tool in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood 

Julia Stamey

How Marielle Heller’s take on Mr. Rogers uses mood to teach and soothe its adult audience

Drama in the Dull: Journalistic Process and Moral Ambiguity in All the President’s Men

Ryan Wilcox

How Pakula’s cinematic treatment of investigative journalism negotiates between tiny details and infinitely large corruption

Our inaugural volume presents twelve critical essays, all written by current or former students in UNC-Chapel Hill film studies courses. While the authors collectively cover a wide range of topics and take different approaches, they each pay meticulous attention to formal detail, investigating the larger cultural and political stakes that bear on certain styles and genres, from horror to the essay film. By bridging the avant-garde and mainstream, putting theory in the service of close analysis, and approaching the moving image on a global stage, these essays together provide a solid foundation for the critical work that will be featured in Aspect going forward.