Volume IV Essays
“This is the End”: Sound as an Atmospheric Force in Apocalypse Now and The Fog
Rebecca Kelley
How sound creates cyclical, psychologically blurred atmospheres
Reclaiming Black Autonomy in In the Heat of the Night
Samantha Thompson
How this trailblazing Poitier performance defiantly subverts racial dynamics
Beyond Summerisle: Comparing Folk Horror in The Wicker Man and Get Out
Ryan Pham
How the terrain of folk horror expands to consider race
Radicalization to Revenge: Exploring the Relationship Between Blaxploitation and the L.A. Rebellion Through Bush Mama and Coffy
Nyla Guilford
How two revolutionary Black film movements exist in dialogue
Rethinking Han in Contemporary Korean Cinema: Fiery Moods, Affects, and Atmospheres in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning
Campbell Mah
How thinking about film aesthetics sheds light onto a transnational cinema
The Gastronomic Grotesque and Feminist Defiance in Daisies
Adriana Kirk
How this rebellious Czech New Wave work uses food to undermine authority
There’s Something Wrong with Charlie: The Role of the Queer in Shadow of a Doubt
Wren Moody
How Hitchock objectifies power in a queer relationship
“It’s About Flowers!”: Photogénie as a Reflexive Tool in Adaptation
Ali Hardin
How this film reflexively ponders the nature of its own making and meaning
“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
Stalker: A New Soviet Avant-Garde
Landen Fulton
How Tarkovksy rethinks and reinvents the medium’s relationship to montage
Metal, Fire, and Flesh: Surrealist Body Horror in Julia Ducournau’s Titane
Charlie Brownlee
How this film leverages bodies as surreal sites of violence and transformation
The Wandering Eye: Slow Cinema, Spectatorship, and Surrealism in Memoria and 2001: A Space Odyssey
Alyssa Ho
How Apichatpong and Kubrick radically reorient our senses through slowness
Cinematic Attunement in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival
Rebecca Kelley
How films evoke and induce an embodied spectatorial experience
Exposing the Interior Through Sound in Uncut Gems and Punch-Drunk Love
Melissa Luna
How these two Sandler films blur sonic binaries and express chaotic interiority
Eclipsing the Visual: Sonic Immersion, Suggestion, and Blurring in Blade Runner
Peter Snyder
How this sci-fi classic builds a convincing cinematic world through sound
Christiane, Liberated Doll: Surrealism and the Female Gothic in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face
Cassidy Englund
How this French horror film reinvents surrealist motifs for feminist ends
“See You in My Dreams”: The Oneiric in Twin Peaks
Noemi Walton
How Lynch’s iconic television series lulls viewers into its bizarre dream world
Apologize to the Pork
Yasmin Shemer and Lorene Wang
A video essay exploring the use of food in film in relation to discussions of sex and gender.
Abuela
Layla Peykamian and Ana Hoppert Flores
A short film exploring the cross-generational relationship between a young woman and her grandmother.