Volume 2 Essays
The Portrait Looks Back: Revising Hitchcockian Tradition in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Halynna Snyder
How Celine 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: Horror Short 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 Hakua 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