Author Archives: Charles Brownlee

Aspect Covers the 2025 Cosmic Rays Film Festival April 24th, 2025     Introduction by Charlie Brownlee Popcorn and wine flows, tote bags swing, and the Cosmic Rays Film Festival has returned once again to the Triangle Area. This past … Read more

“Not Made For Human Eyes”: On History and Art in La Chimera and Dahomey Charlie Brownlee    Mati Diop’s Dahomey and Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera explore our relationship to the past, present, and future through ancient works of art.   A … Read more

Apologize to the Pork A Video Essay by Yasmin Shemer & Lorene Wang Artist Statement Yasmin Shemer & Lorene Wang Inspired by the split-cutting style of the dissected material at play, “Apologize to the Pork” uses films Tampopo (1985), Daisies … Read more

Exposing the Interior Through Sound in Uncut Gems and Punch-Drunk Love Melissa Luna   In both Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, the interior of the character is expressed through sound design and score.   In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Adam … Read more

Christiane, Liberated Doll: Surrealism and the Female Gothic in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face Cassidy Englund    Christiane’s mask reflects the surrealist exploration of the “uncanny” and the animate/inanimate binary in Eyes Without a Face.   Until the final five … Read more

“See You in My Dreams”: The Oneiric in Twin Peaks Noemi Walton    Agent Cooper’s “deductive reasoning” scene is an example of Twin Peak‘s dreamlike red herrings, misdirecting the audience.   In his 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism,” André Breton “once and … Read more

Stalker: A New Soviet Avant-Garde  Landen Fulton    In a moment which subverts the film/spectator relationship, the Stalker, the film’s protagonist, gazes at the audience.   At the intersection of cinema and poetry lies a film whose expression yields an … Read more

Winner, Best Undergraduate Essay in Film Studies, 2023-24 The Gastronomic Grotesque and Feminist Defiance in Daisies Adriana Kirk    Chytilová uses the characters of the doll-like Maries to subvert traditional ideas of femininity and the grotesque.   “I love eating,” … Read more

The Final Girl and Final Boy: Reframing Gender Identities in Alien and Get Out Matthew Gebbia   Ripley’s eyes flash with terror as she alone is hunted by the deadly Xenomorph set loose on the Nostromo   Genres provide filmmakers … Read more