Nicole Baer is a first year M.A. student in the Cinema Studies Department. She is a restless spirit currently most interested in Japanese horror films.
- Mexican Cinema and NAFTA: The Representation and Exportation of National Identity.
- This paper discusses the relationship that NAFTA has had on Mexican Cinema. By examining three films--Amores perros, Y tu mama tambien, and El crimen del padre Amaro--the recent political and economic changes Mexico faces become apparent. In situating the films within this context, the shifting nature of Mexican National Identity, its representation, and its exportation is revealed.
Meredith A. Bak is a Master's candidate in Cinema Studies at NYU. Her interests include national cinemas, media pedagogy, postmodernism, and subaltern studies.
- A Study of Cinematic Tectonics: The Formation of a National Icelandic Style.
- Iceland's nascent film industry has been producing internationlly distributed feature films since the late 1970s. Examining a number of cultural and economic factors, my paper will explore questions of national identity and the formation of a national cinematic tradition by noting formal and thematic tendencies in contemporary Icelandic film.
Brad Campbell: May 12, 1971 - January 29, 1986 - January 16, 1990 - Februrary 28, 1991 - November 4, 2000 - January 2001 - September 11, 2001 - March 2004 - March 26, 2005
- Decasia Now: Towards a Heuristic for the Use and Abuse of Historic Footage.
- This paper attempts to create a heuristic to talk about the various uses of historic footage, in various contexts, examining how referentiality is built between footage to manifest or appeal to "truth" in creative or documentary moving image projects.
Zachary Campbell is an undergraduate in the Cinema Studies department. He will graduate in May.
- Capitalism, Humanity and Genre at the New Rose Hotel.
- This paper presents a textual analysis of Abel Ferrara's 1998 film New Rose Hotel, arguing that it is an important milestone in "postmodern" cinema. I examine the formal and philosophical underpinnings of the work as it relates to the capitalist system, generic conventions, and definitions and articulations of humanity.
Shi-Yan Chao is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema Studies at NYU, currently working on a dissertation on Chinese queer cinema.
- Rouge: From Queer Moments to Queer Subjectivity.
- Although there are no explicitly gay characters in Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1988, Hong Kong), I explore the film's queer significance in terms of deviant subjectivity, particularly the subject position deviant from two major discourses underlying contemporary Chinese subject formation (i.e., family system and what Judith Butler terms "heterosexual matrix").
Cindy Chen is currently a Ph.D. student in Cinema Studies at NYU. She received her M.A. from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and her B.A. from Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages.
- Cantonese Melodrama and Cultural Identity.
- My paper examines the specificity as well as the national in terms of narrative, codes and conventions, gesturality and morphology of select Cantonese films. It seeks to problematize the concept of national cinema and to argue that the national is an imagined yet fragmented community in which people stage out their lived history through a complicit, convoluted and contestory relation with official pedagogic history.
James Crawford, seeking refuge from the frozen tundra of his native Canada, spent the last five years at school in the US, and recently earned his MA in Cinema Studies from NYU.
- Orson Welles: Narrating The Lives of Harry Lime.
- The beloved rogue Harry Lime from Carol Reed's The Third Man found a second life in the syndicated radio drama, The Lives of Harry Lime, which aired in the United States from 1950 to 1951. This presentation explores issues of narrative discourse and narration of the program that was voiced, directed, and sometimes scripted by Orson Welles.
Sarah E. Deem earned her undergraduate film degree at the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently finishing her Masters in Cinema Studies at NYU and working at On the Scene Productions.
- Prosthetic Goddesses: Sexualization and Abstraction of Material Reality in the Modern Prosthesis.
- The figurative conception and literal embodiment of contemporary prosthesis often theoretically conflict and even transcend definitive sexual and psychical boundaries imposed by recent scholarship. Relying on the logistical material reality of her own prosthetic limb, Vivian Sobchack provides the critical backbone of this essay as she emphasizes the necessity for an all-inclusive corporeal interpretation of the prosthetic. This presentation engages several connotations of prosthesis with relevant onscreen prosthetic icons in order to engender, engage, and promote a multi-dimensional perception of the prosthetic in cinema through a cognizant and knowledgeable spectator.
Carrie Dodson received her BA in English in 2001 and is currently in her second semester of the MA Cinema Studies program. Her area of interest is contemporary American horror.
- Eat the Rich: Redneck Cannibalism in American Horror.
- In this paper, I will explore the depiction of rural monstrosities in contemporary horror. By observing the defining characteristics of backwoods villains, I will examine the importance of bourgeois urban fear of nature and poverty in the grotesque formation of these cannibals.
Jose Freire is a 2nd year PhD candidate in the Cinema Studies department at NYU and is writing a dissertation on Punk in the movies.
Peter Giannascoli is an MA student in the Cinema Studies Department. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Princeton University, and will never leave New Jersey.
- What Color Films Can Do That Black and White Films Can't (And Vice Versa): A Luchino Visconti Case Study.
- How did filmmakers decide whether to use color or black and white filmstock when either medium would have been acceptable to audiences? This presentation confronts this question through the 1950s and 1960s films of Luchino Visconti, a period during which Visconti alternated between the two media to achieve specific representational goals.
Matt Hauske graduated from UC Irvine with degrees in English and Film Studies, and is finishing his MA at NYU. He likes baseball and he dislikes being cold.
- Staging the Impossible: Orson Welles' Moby Dick-Rehearsed.
- Different theories of adaptation are used to examine the process by which Welles translated Herman Melville's sweeping novel to the stage. The play is then contextualized in the artist's greater oeuvre, in terms of what are considered specifically Wellesian themes. The presentation will conclude with a staged reading of the opening conceit of the play.
- The Uncanny and the Comic in THX 1138.
- Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud's theories of the uncanny and Henri Bergson's theory of laughter are used to examine similar scenes from George Lucas's first feature, THX 1138. Focalization and point of view prove to be the factors that determine the scenes' uncanny or comic effects.
Derek Kane-Meddock is a PhD student in Cinema Studies at NYU. He received his MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa.
- Never Touch a Black Man's Radio: Rush Hour and the New Cultural Politics of the Biracial Buddy Film.
- Although the 1980s biracial buddy film was dominated by the pairing of white and black male characters, this formula has been revised in recent years. The Rush Hour franchise, easily the most profitable iteration of the genre within the last decade, denies the importance of race, instead grounding its scenarios in cultural difference.
Pamela Lynn Kerpius received BAs in English (with a Film minor) and History from the University of Colorado, Denver in May 2002. She is a second year MA who will graduate this May. She also responds to the name "Pammy," and will bake you cookies if you're nice.
- Zero Percent Chance of Rain: The Watergate History and All The President's Men.
- There is an inherent bias and manipulation of fact in both written history and fictional narratives. This paper examines the use of narrative techniques in Woodward and Bernstein's rendering of the Watergate History for their book All The President's Men and its 1976 adaptation to film.
Karina Longworth will soon be crowned a Master of Cinema Studies. She's torn between a) looking for a job in her field, or b) dropping the whole racket to move to Napa to teach tourists how to eat cheese. We'll see.
- Those Who Screw and Those Who Don't: The Fake Orgasms of Meg Ryan.
- This paper looks at the construction of Meg Ryan's sexual identity, via When Harry Met Sally and her failed attempt to resurrect her star sign, In the Cut, along boundaries defined by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. These films hinge dramatically on Ryan's ability as an actress to fake orgasms, and to look at Ryan as a professional orgasm faker explodes the sexual dichotomy at play in her films.
Jeff Martin is an MA candidate in NYU's Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program. He has worked as a writer and producer of television documentaries, video editor, and film researcher.
- Live on Tape: The Introduction of Videotape and the Preservation of the Ephemeral.
- A technological and aesthetic look at the shift from kinescopes to videotape, and its implications for both study and preservation. Accompanied by comparative clips of kinescopes.
Juan Monroy is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Cinema Studies, writing his dissertation on network television documentaries on Latin America during the early 1960s.
- Capitalism for All: "Father Dan," Peru, and the Alliance for Progress.
- "Father Dan," an installment of Chet Huntley Reporting on NBC, chronicles the modernization initiatives of an American Catholic priest who establishes a credit union for indigenous Peruvians to teach them basic principles of capitalism. This paper considers the tensions between the government to government aid programs of the Alliance for Progress and the
Wyatt D. Phillips, after leaving rocket science in 1997, spent the next six years traveling (a little), cooking (a lot) and making no-budget films (several). He is currently a second-year MA student awaiting decision(s) on PhD work.
- Who Rides with Wyatt: The Fulfillment of Genre Requirements in John Ford's My Darling Clementine.
- Despite John Ford's claim of historical integrity in the depiction of the gunfight at the OK Corral, his retelling of the Wyatt Earp legend deviates significantly from any historical depiction. Yet almost without fail, the story decisions made by the filmmakers in My Darling Clementine fall squarely within the genre tropes of the classic American Western film.
Ryan Pierson received BAs in Philosophy and Film Studies from the University of Georgia. He is currently an MA student in Cinema Studies at NYU.
- Night and Fog and the Aesthetics of History (or, "I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust").
- Night and Fog as both a historical project and an aesthetic project, and where the general practices of writing history and making art intersect.
Stephen O. Rak is an MA student in Cinema Studies at NYU.
- Shadows of a Hidden Nation.
- My paper will address the following issues regarding Sergei Paradjanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964): first, Paradjanov's ethnicity (Georgian-born Armenian) and the importance of Eastern-European/Transcaucasian culture in his films; second, the film's depiction of Ukrainian culture, leading to an investigation of Ukrainian national identity under Soviet rule and the existence of a Ukrainian national cinema.
Matt Singer, a second year Master's Student, has been writing about film for five years. His work has been published at IFCtv.com, MoviePoopShoot.com, UGO.com, The New York Times, and Newsweek, though not actually at the last two.
- "I Married Rambo!": Schwarzenegger, Shriver, and Shifting Star Texts.
- Throughout his career, Arnold Schwarzenegger's marital status defined his selection of roles. When he was a bachelor, his characters had no families. When he married Maria Shriver, spouses became key figures in his work. Why, then, in his final films before ascending to the governorship of California, were Schwarzenegger's characters' wives all dead, dying, or encased in a block of ice? By comparing Schwarzenegger interviews with textual analysis, I will explore the motivations and manipulations of this unique star text.
Pamela Jean Smith is a second-year graduate student in the MIAP program at NYU. She has worked on various preservation projects with such organizations as San Francisco Cinematheque, Electronic Arts Intermix, Anthology Film Archives, Archives of Appalachia, Appalshop and Vidipax. Ms. Smith received a BS in Film and a BA in English from Boston University in 2001.
- Issues of Appraisal and Selection of Community Based Video: Assessing the Videofreex Collection.
- A thesis-in-progress, this paper discusses the challenges of assessing a video collection made by the Videofreex collective from 1969-1977. The foundation of the collection includes one thousand 1/2" reel-to-reel videotapes that now reside with Video Data Bank, Chicago. Challenges of the assessment include the ever-expanding size of the collection, the fragility of the material itself, and the diversity of the content. Due to these challenges, triage is necessary, but what tapes will be chosen for transfer, distribution and survival? Who decides?
Robert Sweeney wants a suit. A nicely tailored one. He hopes to wear it while squandering his energies in a PhD program.
- Authenticity, Deconstruction, and Joy in F For Fake.
- F For Fake works as a sustained magic act, hinting at truth, but then obscuring it with montage's sleight of hand. All is relative until Welles' grand summationi in the Chartres sequence.
Graig Uhlin is a first-year PhD student in Cinema Studies at New York University.
- Remembrance of Things Future: Cinema, Memory, Futurity.
- Through a reading of Chris Nolan's Memento and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this paper examines how queerness--represented by the traumatic breakdown of the heterosexual couple--disrupts a linear progression of time and with it, narrative causality.
Kara Van Malsen, Sean Savage, and Paula Felix-Didier are first year MA students in the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program.
- Television Pictures.
- A man appears on the screen and says, "You are now looking at the first motion picture of a television image that has ever been produced." This paper presents research gathered from an investigation into the legitimacy of this claim, and situates the footage in television history.
Ray Vichot is originally from Miami. He graduated from MIT in 2004 (SB Comparative Media Studies). He is interested in fan/producer relationships, global popular culture, fan production, comics, and animation.
- We Are Fighting Dreamers!: Anime Fan-Subtitling as an Agent for Fandom Growth.
- Since the mid-1980s, fans of anime have been subtitling comics, television shows, and films in small independent groups. This practice directly led to anime's presence in youth culture and the retail market. This has led to a unique relationship between fan and copyright holder based on cultural and historical reasons.
Brad Westcott is a second year MA student, a contributing writer to reverseshot.com, and an Editorial Intern at Film Comment Magazine. Alternately sensitive and forceful, Brad has a lot to offer the right woman, particularly brunettes fluent in French.
- Notes on the Heist Film: On the Prowl, or Strong.
- An examination of the heist/caper genre in its various forms with a particular emphasis on the distinction between concepts of "burglary" and "robbery" and the corresponding difference in the production of meaning and narrative pleasure within the film text.
David Wexler is a Cinema Studies Masters student at NYU, and has been a film lover as long as he can remember. He received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Tufts University.
- The Paradigmatic Stereotype: Filmic Stereotypes as Paradigms and their Removal as Paradigm Shifts.
- The propagation and eventual acknowledgement and removal of filmic stereotypes are almost perfectly congruent with paradigm shifts as described by Thomas Kuhn in his landmark socio-historic account of the development of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Using the Arab stereotype as an example, this paper explores how such stereotypes are made under a racist production paradigm that is addressed and conquered via the process of paradigm shift and revolution.
Christopher Wisniewski is a first year MA student in Cinema Studies. He received his BA in Social Studies from Harvard in 2001.
- All That History Allows: Far From Heaven and the Queering of Sirk.
- An interrogation of the historical and political implications of Far From Heaven's explicit representation of homosexulaity vis a vis the Sirkian narrative it appropriates from All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind.
Ying Xiao is currently a PhD student in Cinema Studies at New York University, with a concentration on transnational cinemas, media and youth culture, documentary and avant-garde modes in a Chinese cultural context, the international imperatives of Hollywood cinema and the interaction with East Asian countries.
- "To Be Different:" Exploring the Music, Culture and Identity of Hip Hop in Contemporary China.
- This paper seeks to critically examine different aspects and various components of hip hop culture in a global cultural context, with specific emphasis on its popularity and transformation in contemporary China. The story of Chinese hip hop culture, how it has developed, evolved, been articulated and interpreted, offers clues to the dynamic interactions between the global cultural flow and the local appropriation.
Alberto Zambenedetti was born in Venice, Italy, where he graduated. He has completed his MA degree at NYU and he is currently teaching Italian Through Cinema in the Department of Italian Studies.
- Bringing Back the Dead: The Animation of Cultural Systems in the Films of the Brothers Quay.
- Through cinema, and more precisely through the marriage of puppetry and the illusionistic practice of stop-motion animation, the Brothers Quay comment on niches of European culture, selecting the crepuscular visions of Bruno Schulz as privileged sites for their explorations of beauty, trickery, decay and artificiality.
- Introducing Shakespeare: The Incipit in Orson Welles' Adaptations.
- In his cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare, Orson Welles was able to recreate an actualized poetic language that retains the symbolic foundations of the art of Shakespeare through a conventional and symbolic writing. This Elizabethan correlative that results from an actualization of Shakespeare can be observed, and it is perhaps more evident, in the incipit of Welles' three films.
Melissa J. Zajk received a B.S. in French Language from Georgetown University in 1989, with a minor in Russian Studies/Russian Language. She is a contributor to the cultural newsletter Antimatters. Her interests include the work of Sam Peckinpah and Stanely Kubrick.
- Wine, Women and Song: Representations of Nationalism and National Identity in Casablanca.
- Why does Casablanca continue to strike a chord over sixty years after its release? Via various textual elements through which we identify with representations of national identity, the film is an example of how cinema draws upon history--even events happening in real time--to tell its stories.
Gregory Zinman is a first year MA student. He plans to pursue a PhD in Cinema Studies.
- Tying the Knot: Movies Anxious about Marriage, too.
- With the recent election having foregrounded the issue of gay marriage and the larger issue of how marriage should be defined, it is clear that America is in the midst of a cultural reevaluation of marriage as a social construct. This anxiety was reflected in a number of American films released in 2004.