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When Women Become Directors: The 20th Century (Film Program)

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In the Fall of 2020, students of FILM 3313: Documentary, Animated, and Experimental Film at Dalhousie University were assigned to curate a program of films on a theme of their choice. Each program had to include at least one documentary, one animation, and one experimental film. The results were really exciting, so we’re sharing some of our programs with you. All of the films in this program are available online, so you can enjoy it fully.

Program Curated by NADIA ZEIN

When Women Become Directors: The 20th Century

According to Martha Lauzen’s The Celluloid Ceiling, movie directing has generally been a male-dominated industry. Even though history documents the work of very talented and unique female directors, it is still very common for the public to shift all the praise and admiration towards male directors, as the Oscar nomination for Best Director does. Despite the fact that two women have been nominated for Best Director in 2021, in the previous nine decades, only five women have previously been nominated, and only one woman has won this Oscar (Jones). The aim of this program is not to discredit the work of male directors, but to claim credit for the female directors who have created several historically important moments in the movie industry but were not credited nearly as much as they deserve.

Discontented by this gender inequality and prompted by a vision to showcase the historical contributions of female directors, I decided to look into the work of outstanding female directors from the first half of the 20th century.  I choose this time period to emphasize the presence and significant contributions of female directors parallel to male directors since the early moments of film history. My program, “When Women Become Directors: the 20th Century,” showcases the work of three female directors who created masterpieces in the early 1940s. The three directors, Mary Ellen Bute, Maya Deren, and Ida Lupino, were multi-talented artists who made exquisite productions by combining the art of film directing with an additional talent in another art form.

 

Tarantella (Mary Ellen Bute, 1940) 5 minutes

We will start with Mary Ellen Bute’s best work, Tarantella (1940). Bute herself animated most of the imagery in this piece, creatively using jagged lines as means to capture the jarring musical choreography (Mortiz). She was a pioneer of “visual music” which is a type of animation that visually represents the different music notes and timbres. Between 1934 and 1959, Bute made 11 abstract movies and was one of the first people in the world to work on experimental film (Roe). Today, Bute is hardly known, and that is because her work is not easily available to the public, especially in good prints (Mortiz). Despite this, she remains one of the most important and original directors of abstract animation.

 

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) 15 minutes

Next, we are going to take a look at Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren (1943). This is Deren’s first low, self-budgeted experimental film that included only two actors: Deren herself and her husband. It was also entirely made with money she made herself. In this film, Deren is trying to capture the feeling of a dream. Meshes of the Afternoon is a fascinating piece of experimental cinema and an incredibly complex dream sequence full of unusual images. Emanuel Levy phrases it nicely: “Deren (using Meshes) led the radical formalist movement as an oppositional force with a new set of economic and aesthetic standards that rebelled against a patriarchal society in which women were denied a voice.” Even though this movie was not made to be shown in conventional cinemas, it was shown in art festivals and still captures a lot of attention. Many other experimental films have adopted Deren’s techniques and imagery throughout the years. [Note: this link is to the original, silent version of the film.]

 

Ida Lupino: Through the Lens (Torrie Rosenzweig, 2013) 44 minutes

Lastly, we are going to watch the documentary about Ida Lupino. Lupino was a major female director from the classical era, a very powerful and fierce women who created exquisite art. This film shows us the context for this important director’s film work. This documentary narrates in detail her journey from when she started acting at the age of 13 until she died at 77, along with the challenges she faced as a worthy director because some felt intimidated by a woman leader. She made a number of movies distributed through the independent movie outlet and, for some time, was the only women in that union.

 

Bibliography

Jones, Isabel. “The History of Women Nominated for the Best Director Oscar,” InStyle, January 23, 2018, The History of Women Nominated for the Best Director Oscar | InStyle.

“Ida Lupino – Through The Lense – Documentary.” Youtube, uploaded by Shane91, 5 Oct. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RApabc49C0.

Lauzen, Martha. “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 100, 250, and 500 Films of 2017,” Women in TV Film, 2018, 2017_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf (sdsu.edu).

Levy, Emanuel. “Meshes of the Afternoon (1943): Maya Deren’s Experimental Film,” EmanuelLevy, May 1, 2006, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943): Maya Deren’s Experimental Film | Emanuel Levy.

“Mary Ellen Bute – Taranatella (1940).” Youtube, uploaded by Vanesa Pagani, 23 Jul. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihQurg4xGcI.

“Meshes of the Afternoon – Maya Deren (1943) An Original Score by Two Whole Quails.” Youtube, uploaded by Two Whole Quails, 18 Dec. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihQurg4xGcI

Mortiz, William. “Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound,” Animation World Network, 1996, https://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.2/articles1.2/moritz1.2.html.

“Review,” TV Guide, 2020, https://www.tvguide.com/movies/meshes-of-the-afternoon/review/132181/.

Roe, Annabelle Honess. “10 Great Animated Films Directed by Women.” British Film Institute, 5 June 2018, https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-animated-films-directed-women#:~:text=%2010%20great%20animated%20films%20directed%20by%20women,female%20sexuality%20and%20identity.%20Asparagus%20is…%20More%20.

Realism and Immersion: The Audiovisual Elements in DUNKIRK that Put Viewers in the Characters’ Shoes

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BY ALEX AFFONSO

Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017) is widely considered an “anxiety-inducing” (Brown), “heart pounding” (Sharf), “edge-of-your-seat” (Chitwood) experience. This fear and tension shared by many viewers is a result of how Nolan constructed his film to be both realistic and immersive, to feel like “a window to a world that thrusts viewers into the middle of the combat” (Brown). This is achieved through the careful application and interplay of the cinematic elements of the movie—narrative structure, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound—which are all geared towards giving viewers a glimpse of what it would feel like to be a part of the real events that took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940 at the beaches of Dunkirk.

Nolan offers this glimpse through four different perspectives: soldiers attempting to leave the beach, officers planning the evacuation, pilots protecting those on land and sea from enemy bombers, and civilians coming for the rescue. The film opens with the soldiers and the officers on the beach waiting to be evacuated, the pilots flying towards Dunkirk, and the civilians leaving England with their boats towards the French shores. We see the side of the soldiers through Tommy’s (Fionn Whitehead) perspective, who attempts to leave the beach through multiple ways. In the end, their salvation comes at the hands of the civilians who come to their rescue on their own private boats, which we see through Mr. Dawson’s (Mark Rylance) plotline. The officers, such as Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh), are either giving orders or coming up with plans, and they all share a feeling of hopelessness until the civilians arrive. The pilots in the air, seen mostly through Farrier’s (Tom Hardy) point of view, are trying to protect first the military ships then the civilian boats from the aerial bombers. Out of the original three planes, two are brought down throughout the movie; only Farrier stays in the air until the end. The civilian boat, driven by Mr. Dawson, picks up two survivors on their way to the beach—a shivering soldier (Cillian Murphy) and Collins (Jack Lowden), one of the fallen pilots—until they come across a large, sinking ship during the climax of the movie and rescue dozens of soldiers. In short, through multiple storylines, Dunkirk traces the story of the English soldiers as they struggle to survive and return home, and the film ends with their return to England.

How Audiovisual Elements Furthers Realism and Immersion

Through these different storylines, Nolan allows viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the character—or characters—with whom they identify with the most. For instance, someone who is used to having to follow orders and is often at the mercy of others might identify more with Tommy, while someone who is familiar with positions of power and being responsible for others would feel more immersed in Commander Bolton’s character. Also, because there is a lack of backstory for these characters, viewers can more easily identify with them without being restricted by their specific experiences. Murphy’s character, for example, is never even given a name, making him a stand in for soldiers traumatized by the Dunkirk evacuation in general. Because of this, he becomes more of a lens through which we can experience the evacuation. The only exception is Mr. Dawson, but even in this case, all we know is that he lost a son in the war—a broad experience that can be shared by anyone who has either lost a child or fears losing one. Instead of offering characters with complex personalities and backstories, Nolan gives his viewers—in a way—empty human frames inside of which viewers can enter and watch as the events of the movie unfold before that character’s eyes.

That is why the mise-en-scene of this movie is crucial in making that experience seem as realistic as possible. One of the main ways Nolan does this is through on-location shooting; Dunkirk was “filmed in the exact spots where Operation Dynamo took place” (Burns). (Operation Dynamo is the code-name for the Dunkirk evacuation.) Similarly, “Nolan used real navy destroyers for the battle sequences instead of CGI” (Van Evra). Both these choices allow for a more accurate representation of the actual events that transpired in the beginning of World War II, thus making the viewers’ experience more similar to that of someone in Dunkirk during the evacuation of 1940. Another aspect of mise-en-scene that adds realism is the costumes and make-up, which varies from extra to extra. We can see differences in the helmets they wear, their clothes, their accessories, even their bruises and bandages; as a result, each soldier becomes an individual. This convinces viewers that what they are seeing is an accurate representation of reality, which in turn allows for greater immersion. The use of “over 6,000 extras” (Van Evra) also adds to that feeling of accurate representation; even though there were about 400,000 men on that beach during the evacuation, in a single scene, “1,500 extras” can create the illusion of “338,000 allied soldiers” (Van Evra). All these aspects of mise-en-scene (most of them present in Fig. 1) are intended to make the movie seem both realistic and historically accurate.

 

Fig 1. Soldiers at the Dunkirk beach rising after being bombed (00:07:25).

This sense of realism adds to the immersive experience of Dunkirk when combined with its cinematographic style, which mostly aims at making the camera mimic the eyes of someone who experienced these events. The constant use of subjective shots, for instance, allows viewers to see most of the action through the point of view of characters. Sometimes, that feeling of subjectivity is enhanced by how the camera movement replicates that of the character. An example would be when Mr. Dawson’s boat drives by a military ship, and the shot from his point of view tracks right to mirror the movement of the boat. Also, the camera is usually placed in a way that matches the position of most characters’ heads—usually at eye level and at a straight angle—which makes most shots possibly subjective. In some cases, such as when Tommy and the other soldiers are inside a boat they find, waiting for the tide to come in, the camera is placed at a lower level to match the characters’ sitting position (see Fig. 2). This gives the audience the impression of watching through the eyes of the soldiers, alternating between different perspectives to allow for greater immersion. Another aspect that adds to this feeling is the use of “handheld IMAX cameras” (Van Evra)—allowing for the kind of camera movement that most closely matches the human perspective (and an amazing picture quality). Lastly, this film mostly relies on natural lighting (see Figs. 2 and 4), making the setting more realistic. These cinematographic choices are meant to put the audience inside the movie’s diegesis, to make them feel as though they are in Dunkirk during the evacuation of 1940.

 

Fig 2. Soldiers inside abandoned boat (01:03:45-04:20)

At certain times, the cinematography works together with the editing to achieve that same goal. The main way it does this is through eyeline matches. There are multiple scenes in this movie in which we see a shot of a character looking at something followed by a shot of where they are looking at from their general position. Sometimes, the camera captures the back of their heads in the second shot, and so their perspective is represented but not their exact point of view. Most of the time, however, the camera works as the characters’ eyes, thus helping to put the audience in their shoes. Another element of editing in this film that helps with immersion is the use of long takes. By minimizing cuts, viewers can share the characters’ temporality more often. Also, since most transitions are straight cuts and sometimes fades, the movie draws less attention to the way it is made, making it feel less artificial and more like a representation of reality. Like all other cinematic elements, the editing of this film is focused on creating a feeling of realism and immersion.

The sound element is no different. As Gray points out in his article, “[Richard] King’s team made sure the sounds in ‘Dunkirk’ are authentic.” The meticulous way in which sound perspective is used in this movie, for instance, gives the audience a strong three-dimensional sense of space. Sometimes he creates the perception of distance through changes in volume and pitch, such as when enemy bombers approach; we can gradually hear the planes’ engine growing louder as they come closer to the camera. Similarly, working against the unrealistic way in which, “when a bomb falls in most battle films, the sounds get fainter before impact,” King’s team “reversed all incoming shell sounds so they rose in pitch” (Gray).  Another interesting aspect of sound in this film is the non-diegetic ticking of a clock, which follows a similar tempo as a nervous heartbeat, thus giving viewers a sense of the tension felt by the soldiers. Lastly, to “convey [the] physical sensation of being in the plane,” King’s team used “20-25 microphones scattered throughout the plane” (Gray). As we can see, King’s goal was to create an accurate and immersive sound experience for Dunkirk.

Close Readings

We can this being achieved in the first ten minutes of the movie, in the scene in which Tommy arrives at the beach and enemy airplanes drop bombs on the soldiers. Starting after he helps Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) bury a dead Englishman, we can hear that clock ticking in the background until a few seconds before the bombers arrive. That conveys the tension felt by the character at that moment. Then, the use of three different eyeline matches in less than a minute—Tommy looking at the line of soldiers, at the medics carrying the wounded, and at the mole—allows viewers to share his point of view. In the first eyeline match, in which he is walking, the camera slowly tracks to the left to match his motion; in the other two, when he is standing still but moving his head, the camera pans right. Once the bombers arrive, sound perspective becomes increasingly important in creating a sense of space. The volume of the airplanes’ engines gradually rises, allowing the audience to hear with the characters. At this point, we get a few shots from the general perspective of different soldiers. Then, as they lay on the ground, the camera is placed at an extreme low level to match the position of their heads. As the bombs start to fall, the sound of the explosions grows increasingly louder as they near Tommy, which approximates what he would have heard. On a similar note, the sand that is poured on his head after the last explosion seems to hit the camera as well—the audience’s eyes and ears. Afterwards, there is a constant beat in the background, symbolizing the character’s nervous heartbeat. All these audiovisual elements aim at making the viewing experience of this scene a mimesis of Tommy’s experience.

 

Fig 3. Tommy laying on the sand as the last bomb explodes (00:07:10)

   Similar techniques are used in the sequence in which Tommy and Alex (Harry Styles) are inside the military ship—and they serve similar goals. For instance, the mise-en-scene aims at creating a sense of realism through the individualization of extras: the crowd of soldiers wear diverse clothes, some have distinct wounds, and most of them are holding mugs and pieces of bread. As Tommy and Alex go inside the ship, there is a shot filmed with a handheld camera and at eye-level that stays focused on the two characters as they go down the stairs and move through the crowd below. Although not apparent, this shot seems almost like the point of view of someone watching from above, making it possible for the audience to imagine themselves inside the ship and having that perspective. To add realism, this scene is illuminated by the lamps inside the ship, as opposed to a three-point lighting system that has an artificial feeling. Also, most shots are filmed at eye level and on a straight angle, making each also seem like a possible point of view of a character (or close to it; see Fig. 4). On top of that, this scene has five eyeline matches—four as Tommy looks around inside the ship, and one showing Gibson’s perspective outside on the deck—which serves to give viewers a sense of what it would look like to be on that character’s place. The ambient sound, on the other hand, which features multiple indistinct conversations, gives them a notion of what it would sound like to be on that ship in general. The cinematic elements of this sequence, like the previous one analysed, are all focused on building a sense of realism and immersion.

 

Fig 4. Tommy and Alex inside the military ship (00:31:30)

   Shifting from the soldiers on land and sea to the pilots in the air, we can see that the audiovisual elements serve a similar purpose. In the scene in which Collins’ plane goes down, there are three eyeline matches of Farrier’s point of view in a span of about thirty seconds: one showing us his panel as he writes down his fuel count with chalk, and two showing Collins’ plane losing altitude. Because of this, the audience is given a good sense of what it would look like to be inside Farrier’s plane. The camera is also shaky during these shots, and we can hear the constant noise of the engine in the background. As Collins’ plane hits the water, we see it through a subjective shot that approximates Farrier’s perspective, again putting the viewers in his position. That immersion is accentuated by the blended movement of the camera tracking left and panning to the right, which matches the motion of the plane and of the pilot’s head turning. This kind of immersive shot is repeated six times throughout this sequence, including seven additional eyeline matches showing Farrier’s point of view inside his plane (some visible in Fig. 5). Since a good part of the scene is watched through the pilot’s perspective, viewers feel more immersed in the events unfolding before their eyes. Additionally, this sequence is also accompanied by the non-diegetic sound of the ticking clock, which gives the audience a sense of the tension felt by Farrier as he fights the enemy planes. Like in the other two scenes examined, the cinematic elements in this one are mostly geared towards placing the viewer inside the character’s shoes—in this case, Farrier’s.

 

 Fig 5. Four different shots of Farrier’s point of view inside his plane (00:43:10 – 48:55)

 

Conclusion

Nolan achieves a similar goal throughout the whole movie—to make his audience feel inside Dunkirk’s diegesis—through his use of audiovisual elements intent on creating a sense of realism and immersion. As Nolan says in an interview, he wanted to give his audience “different perspectives on the event so they had an understanding of the bigger events without ever leaving a subjective mode of storytelling” (Thompson). Although these techniques are neither original nor unique to this film, the interplay between them enhances the effects of any one individually. For instance, the choice of an unrestricted style of narration would not be enough to achieve that desired feeling of immersion by itself, only when integrated with other elements that serve a similar purpose, such as sound perspective, realistic mise-en-scene, eyeline matches, and others mentioned above. Nolan masterfully turned most cinematic aspects of this movie towards a single goal: realism and immersion. That is why viewers experience anxiety and tension when watching this feature-length film. Since Dunkirk is based on real events, this choice allows viewers to have a better understanding of what British and French soldiers went through in the middle of 1940; but we will never be able to fully grasp the despair they must have felt as they struggled to survive what became known as Operation Dynamo.

 

 

Works Cited

Brown, Philips. “’Dunkirk’ Review: Anxiety-Inducing Action.” The Bonus View, 21 July 2017, https://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/dunkirk-2017-movie-review/.

Burns, Catriona. “Discover the real locations from the film Dunkirk.” Complete France, 9 Feb. 2018, https://www.completefrance.com/travel/holiday-ideas/locations-from-the-dunkirk-film-that-you-can-visit-1-5389383.

Chitwood, Adam. “First ‘Dunkirk’ Reactions Praise Craft and Tension in Christopher Nolan’s WWII Action-Thriller.” Collider, 10 July 2017, https://collider.com/dunkirk-reviews/.

Dunkirk, directed by Christopher Nolan. 2017. Warner Bros., 2017. Blu-Ray.

Gray, Tim. “How Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ Team Captured the Sounds of Battle.” Variety, 15 Dec 2017, https://variety.com/2017/film/awards/christopher-nolan-dunkirk-sound-war-1202641690/.

Sharf, Zack. “’Dunkirk’ First Reactions Are Overwhelmingly Positive, Praise Chistopher Nolan’s ‘Masterclass’ WWII Movie.” IndieWire, 10 July 2017, https://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/dunkirk-first-reactions-christopher-nolan-reviews-1201853488/.

Thompson, Anne. “Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ Broke the Rules by Ignoring Spielberg and Hiding Tom Hardy.”IndieWire, 9 Feb. 2018, https://www.indiewire.com/2018/02/christopher-nolan-dunkirk-broke-the-rules-oscars-hoyte-van-hoytema-1201926487/.

Van Evra, Jennifer. “Dunkirk: 11 things about what some are calling the greatest war film ever made.” CBC, 19 July 2017, www.cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/dunkirk-11-things-about-what-some-are-calling-the-greatest-war-film-ever-made-1.4210704.

Sound, Silence, and Ecosperimental Film

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Screening and Panel Discussion streamed live November 3, 6:30 PM AST

Click here to go to the live event. The link and password for the films is in the description of the page, along with contact info if you’d like to ask questions of the panelists during the panel.

 

This event starts with the undeniable fact that filmmaking is usually not great for the environment. On larger productions, there can be enormous waste from catering and from the building of sets, costumes, and props, and there are carbon emissions from extensive travel. Even smaller productions produce some of this waste. In addition, the manufacture and processing of celluloid film involves extremely harsh chemicals. Although the shift from celluloid to digital video has cleaned up some of these last problems, hard drives and other parts of digital infrastructure aren’t carbon neutral, either.

But film can also be a powerful medium that changes people’s hearts and minds and inspires activism for the environment and other important causes. And let’s not forget that it can be beautiful. Celluloid, especially, has a special kind of charm and fascination today.

The filmmakers we’ll speak with at this event celebrate celluloid in their creative, beautiful, experimental work, but in ways that respond to some of the environmental challenges that film presents. And it’s not just the images that are creative, beautiful, and experimental. Sound brings images alive, so we’ll look at the whole package: sound, silence, and stunning celluloid images.

The first film up is j., which is co-directed by Solomon Nagler (with Alexandre Larose) and features an exceptional score by Lukas Pearse. We’ll speak to both Sol and Lukas after the screening. This film uses the “reduce, reuse, recycle” approach, mining film archives to reframe and reinterpret old images, and breathing new life into them with music. The haunting result shows us how we can transform the past without forgetting or absolving ourselves of it. (7 mins)

The next film is Rena Thomas’s Emerge. Entirely silent, it leaves us to compose our own soundscapes in our heads or to dwell in the absence of sound. It is the first of our two examples of eco-processing, a technique which uses low-toxicity chemicals – some of which you can drink! – to process celluloid. Inspired by ground-breaking experiments in the 1990s that used coffee as a developer, Rena uses eucalyptus tea and hydrogen peroxide to create magical image qualities. (3 mins)

Finally, Dawn George’s Anthology for Fruits and Vegetables is a playful and celebratory concoction of sound and image. Using teas from the plants featured in the film itself, this talented gardener gives us an utterly unique perspective on green and growing things. If you’d like to join the eco-processing revolution, your first stop is Dawn’s blog, which has recipes, how-tos, and inspiring stories. (15 mins)

As we consider environmental issues, let’s not forget that environmental destruction is not racially or ethnically neutral. This screening and panel takes place in K’jipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki, a territory that has been and still is deeply structured by environmental racism. Mi’kma’ki is the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq and is governed by the Peace and Friendship Treaties (see this resource and this). There are provisions in these treaties that would do a great deal for both social and environmental justice if we all honoured them. We are all Treaty people – let’s put that into action.

PLANET OF THE HUMANS (Jeff Gibbs, 2019): Controversy and Education

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Michael Moore is an old hand at navigating – and causing – controversy, so it’s no wonder that Jeff Gibbs’s feature documentary on climate change and green technologies, Executive Produced by Moore, has been a hot button topic. But the debate is more than a matter of publicity: the controversy reminds us – as the film itself argues – that we need to educate ourselves, evaluate our information sources, and reflect. This is not always easy to do in this era of information overload, but well worth it when it comes to crucial topics like the environment.

So the online, ticketed Q&As with Gibbs and Producer Ozzie Zehner will offer a great chance for audiences to dig deeper into these issues.

The film is available for through the official site, so you can jump into the Q&A well prepared. It’s also worth checking out the debate. Read all you can: responses from people represented in the film such as this one; defences on the film’s website offering evidence and responses to criticisms; and third-party evaluations of it such as this and this. Just never assume that anyone is “objective.”

Read, listen, watch, and make up your own mind. The stakes are high.

FIN Atlantic International Film Festival Picks

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FIN Atlantic International Film Festival brings us another electrifying program of films!

 

It’s always a thrill when you leaf through the program for the festival and see worlds open up before you. Then reality sets in: what to choose? How to choose? Maybe I should quit my job and just watch movies all day long? How can I see everything?

 

In case you’re feeling paralyzed by choice, here are some picks to get you started and inspire you to find your own path through the festival.

 

First up are the programs of short films. Perhaps the greatest value of film festivals around the world is their curation of short films, which don’t get the same kind of distribution, either in cinemas or online streaming services, as feature-length fiction and documentary. Some of them may be released online by their makers in a couple of years, but this may be your only chance to see others. And even if they’re released online down the road, it’s hard to find them in the vast ocean of the Internet.

 

The Reel East Coast Shorts Gala is a great place to start, with a strong mix of documentary and fiction and a wonderful tapestry of voices from the Atlantic provinces. Note that the window for the Gala is limited: it’s available for only 24 hours, starting at 7PM on Wednesday, September 23. The other shorts programs are available throughout the festival; as with other non-Gala presentations, ticket holders can start watching a program between September 17 and 24, and have 24 hours to finish once they’ve started. It’s tough to choose between the programs, so see them all if you can. There’s a great selection of documentary, animation, and fiction in genres from sci-fi to historical drama – something for all tastes. If you have to make a choice between shorts programs, save the line-ups FIN has curated, and look online for them others in a couple of years. Remember that the festival is more than just the event itself; the program guide is an enduring resource.

 

I can’t do full justice to the feature film line-up, but here are a few films that catch my eye.

 

Sonia Bonspille Boileau’s taut, incisive debut feature, Le Dep (2015), launched a clear talent, so her Rustic Oracle is a very welcome addition to FIN this year. It recounts the disappearance of a teenaged girl from her Indigenous community through the eyes of her 8-year-old sister as she and her mother become closer in the face of loss.

 

This is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s fiction feature debut, and it’s received accolades for both its visual beauty and its powerful reflection on the cost of industrial “progress” to the economically vulnerable. Revolving around the 80-year-old woman in Lesotho, the film has been described as mesmerizing, dazzling, and rigorous.

 

On a personal note, I’m really excited about The Taste of Pho. I lived in Warsaw, where the film is set, in the late 1990s, and the Vietnamese presence (and the tastiness of the local pho) was notable. The Japanese writer-director of the film, Mariko Bobrik, stayed in Poland after moving there to attend the famous National Film School in Łódź (pronounced woodge to rhyme with Scrooge, BTW – I bet you’ve been wondering); the school also produced the likes of directors Krzysztof Kieślowski and Andrzej Wajda and cinematographers Sławomir Idziak and Hoyte van Hoytema. Great pedigree.

 

On another personal note, I’m thrilled to have been invited to facilitate the Q&A after the gala presentation of Ruth Lawrence’s Little Orphans on September 18. The intrepid, majority female cast and crew shot this astute family drama in St. John’s in winter, and the filmmakers’ tight, longstanding relationships with one another are reflected in the depth of the relationships onscreen. This Gala presentation is also only available for 24 hours, so be sure not to miss it.

 

Anyone who’s been watching Taylor Olson’s prolific and admirable career as a maker of short films will be delighted to see his first feature, Bone Cage. Adapted from the Governor General’s Award-winning play by Nova Scotian Catherine Banks, this story addresses environmental destruction in rural communities and the emotional and interpersonal consequences of that destruction.

 

For an exploration of our environmental impact in documentary form, the Swedish doc about Greta Thunberg, I Am Greta, is sure to both inspire and inform. And Michèle Stephenson’s Stateless follows another young woman fighting a very just fight, in this case to reinstate citizenship for the 200 000 people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic who rendered stateless by an anti-black racist policy of 2013.

 

Finally, documentaries can open our eyes to topics we may never have considered carefully or in ways that surprise us. Darrell Varga’s previous doc, Fire, Ice & Sky (2015) imaginatively blended stunning images, philosophical inquiries, and entrancing characters; now Bread in the Bones puts the humble loaf at the centre of a web of politics, social justice, sex, death, art, and joy. Helgi Piccinin’s feel-good Champions documents the skills and training of intellectually different athletes aiming for the Special Olympics World Games through the eyes of his brother, who’s on the autism spectrum. And Our Time Machine, directed by S. Leo Chiang and Yang Sun, tells the story of the celebrated, Shanghai-based concept artist, Maleonn, struggling to create a visually stunning work of puppet theatre that responds to his father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and career in the Chinese Opera.

 

Whatever you choose, wherever the program takes you, enjoy!

Audience Sympathy in Film Noir, by Alex Retzer

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The essay won first prize in the Cinema and Media Studies competition in the winter of 2020. The jury hopes you enjoy it as much as we did.

Film Noir was a ground-breaking genre of film. With foundations in nihilism, film noir   it portrayed life events in a negative manner, incorporating the principles of cynicism, pessimism, and worthlessness. This was a paradigm shift from the tendency for films to dwell upon the more positive aspects of the personal. This shift in the depiction of people also introduced a new form of characters and character relationships. Kevin L. Stoehr states that the “value in the lives of most film noir characters are usually relativized in a negative manner: In terms of utilitarian power relations that derive solely from materialistic and egotistic ambitions” (Stoehr 28). This negativity was connected to the events that were taking place in the United States during the rise of film noir. Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin explain in their book, America on Film, that the origin of the nihilistic themes was connected to the devastating events of World War II and the complicated relationship of soldiers returning back to America after the war. They state that “men returning from war faced another, often more personal complication to their sense of masculinity: stronger, independent woman. (…) and while birth rates did soar after the war, so did divorce rates” (Benshoff and Griffin 262). This conflict was conveyed in the interactions between male and female characters on screen, leading to the creation of the femme fatale character. “Male characters experience a heightened state of masculinity in crisis. (…) noir films center on men who feel trapped by their social or economic situations” (Benshoff and Griffith 262). While the woman, as E. Anne Kaplan states “is now a femme fatale, exuding her seductive sexuality directly (…,) Marked as evil because of her open sexuality” (Kaplan 6). Benshoff and Griffin elaborate the definition with the statement that these “women tend to act helpless and needy at the beginning of these films, but they are in fact only performing that pose to hide their ruthless ambitions” (Benshoff and Griffith 264). Therefore, she becomes “the ultimate threat.” The seductive femme fatale, along with the lead male character who is struggling with his masculinity, introduces new interactions and power dynamics between male and female characters in cinema. No longer is the female character consistently weaker than the male but often, with the femme fatale, it is the other way around.

With this change of power comes a change in which characters the audience sympathizes with, and how. Although the characters on screen are constantly making morally wrong choices, the audience is still able to find similarities with themselves, and consequently to sympathize. In the films Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, The Maltese Falcon, and The Post Man Always Rings Twice, there is a prominent femme fatale character who interacts throughout the film with the lead male protagonist. Each of these interactions and characters differ greatly between the films. In analyzing the difference of power dynamics between these films as well as the changing power dynamics within the films themselves, I will show how important the display of power is to gain the sympathy of the viewer in these crime-filled films. In film noir, it is not the possession of power that gains the final vote of sympathy from the viewer but instead the display of weakness and loss.

Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) demonstrates a classic film noir power relationship between the lead male protagonist and the femme fatale. Walter Neff, an insurance salesman, falls for the seductive wife of his client, Mr. Dietrichson: Phyllis Dietrichson. Phyllis is a true femme fatale who uses seduction to develop her strength throughout the film. She experiences a noticeable change in her representation of power from the beginning of the film to the end. She begins the film weak and in desperate need of Walter to save her from a loveless marriage. She easily seduces Walter and convinces him to kill her husband. The audience discovers at the end of the film that she never truly loved Walter and that her only goal was financial gain. By the climax, the audience feels no sympathy with Phyllis when she is shot by Walter. Instead, the audience sympathies with Walter who is injured physically and emotionally by Phyllis. Even though the audience knows he committed and staged the murder of an innocent man, they are able to feel sympathy towards him. This is because he is portrayed as weaker victim who has been tricked and betrayed by Phyllis throughout the film. Even though “the ideal male: the virile adventurer, the potent, untrammeled man of action” (Wood 477) is usually presented as extremely masculine on screen, in Double Indemnity, instead, the male protagonist shifts from a powerful character to a weak one. This successfully allows the audience to sympathize with him and relate to him as the protagonist.

Elizabeth Cowie points out another tactic which is used for the audience to find sympathy with the male. In her essay “Film Noir and Women,” she states that

in film noir the use of voice over narration is associated with the male hero, often a detective or tough guy investigator whose dialogue is ‘hard boiled’ – clipped and cynical. It functions to place the spectator subjectively with the character, allowing us to enter his world through his words (Cowie 138).

Because the audience feels connected to the leading male by knowing his thoughts and feelings, they automatically become sympathetic towards him. This use of narration is extremely successful in gaining sympathy from the viewer in The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953). Because the audience hears and sees the story through Harry’s thoughts, the audience finds themselves continuously sympathizing with him despite the obvious fact that he cheated and lied to two innocent women, neither of whom were femme fatales.

The 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich) follows a similar form to Double Indemnity. The main differences between these two films come from the relationship between the femme fatale and the leading male. Mike Hammer is a PI who meets Lily Carver/Gabrielle after a chance interaction with a woman on the side of the road. Lily has the same characteristics as Phyllis, with the change from weakness and neediness at the start to a strong sexual energy by the end of the film. Where she differs from Phyllis is in her relationship with the lead male, Mike. Lily tricks Mike at the beginning of the film into helping her, but he is never seduced in the same ways that Walter is by Phyllis. Mike remains invested in the true safety of his friend Velda and therefore is not convinced to commit any malicious acts like Walter is. However, like Walter, he becomes represented as weaker as the film progresses. This begins with the death of his friend Nick and finishes with his physical injury at the beach house. The film ends with Velda and Mike barely getting away but still remaining together.  In this film, the audience feels sympathy towards Mike because he ends the film in a weaker position than before but also because he has remained morally good throughout the film. He was never fully tricked by a femme fatale and therefore there is no reason why the audience would not sympathize with him.  In contrast, Lily does not gain sympathy because she becomes a greedy, power-hungry femme fatale by the end of the film. The audience is left with the slight satisfaction of watching her get blown up in the boathouse.

The Maltese Falcon (1941), directed by John Huston, is different in its representation of power between the two leads. Throughout the film, the relationship between Sam and Bridget is slightly confusing. Sam is a private detective whom Bridget hires. The film follows a intricate mystery plot, which is only made more baffling by Bridget’s constant lies. Sam remains powerful and sure of himself throughout the film while Bridget remains distant and weak. Bridget is never shown as a seductive femme fatale, but instead consistently lies and states how wretched and bad she is. Sam also states in voiceover that although she appears good, he has a feeling that she isn’t. Despite this, he initiates each kiss. Bridget’s inconsistent dialogue and actions lead the audience to be confused about her motives and real thoughts throughout the film. This leads the audience to a puzzling sense of sympathy as well. When Bridget is arrested after the cold hard abandonment by Sam, the audience is left feeling sympathetic towards her, the consistently weak woman. Charles Scrug suggests that “In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) lists the reasons for sending Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) to jail, but the anguished look on his face (presented as a good guy) suggests that reason continues to conflict with desire” (Scrug 677). This is the only clue the audience receives that Sam is perhaps remorseful or feels any real emotion towards Bridget. Although Sam has a similar record to Mike in Kiss Me Deadly in not committing morally wrong acts, the audience does not sympathize with him as easily. Like Mike, Sam does not commit any real crimes, with or without the encouragement of a femme fatale. He returns the falcon and money at the end of the film and helps the police arrest all guilty parties. Therefore, why does it seem as if there is less sympathy felt towards is his character? The audience’s sympathy is connected to Bridget’s constant weakness throughout the film, as well as her lack of seductiveness. Because Bridget is never represented as more powerful than Sam, the audience never feels threatened by her as a femme fatale. She remains a weak female that Sam does not take pity on. This leads the audience to sympathize with a more classic depiction of a woman who made mistakes, rather than the cold hard detective who has no room for love or forgiveness.

The most interesting dynamic between a leading man and the femme fatale is in Tay Garnett’s The Post Man Always Rings Twice (1946). When Frank encounters Cora for the first time, he is immediately attracted to her. Unlike her sister femme fatales, Cora does not do go out of her way to seduce Frank but instead tries her hardest to make him leave her alone. She has a powerful energy throughout the entire film which she uses to discourage Frank. This is demonstrated when, after Frank is hired, she asks her husband to let him go. When he refuses, Cora constantly tells Frank to leave her alone and obviously shows discomfort whenever he tries to seduce her, saying “please don’t” before he forcefully kisses her. At the beginning of the film, Frank has more characteristics of a femme fatale than Cora does. After Frank finally manages to seduce Cora, he is the first person to suggest they kill her husband. At first, Cora is horrified, but after a while she thinks about his suggestion and realizes how much better her life would be without her husband, even if it is a morally wrong idea. When they decide to carry out the crime, it is revealed that it is Cora who must commit the physical murder of her husband. This differs considerably from the typical femme fatale, such as Phyllis in Double Indemnity, who usually convinces the gullible male to commit all the murderous acts. Although Cora tries, it becomes clear that she does not truly want to commit murder. This is shown when she is obviously relieved and happy to hear that her husband survives the first accident. Cora remains a strong woman throughout most of the film, illustrated by her independence and determination to fulfill her dream for a better life. She does not possess the normal femme fatale traits of deception and greediness. Elizabeth Cowie states that in The Postman Always Rings Twice, “it is not the woman’s duplicity that is the couples undoing” (Cowie 135); instead, “the desire (of the lead protagonist) may result in the hero being drawn into criminal or self-destructive activities without the woman herself being in any way duplicitous” (134). This is the case in Garnett’s film. It is not Cora’s active seductiveness that leads Frank to suggest and commit the morally wrong acts, but his own desire.

The only point in which Cora appears weaker or frightened is during the trial when Frank abandons and betrays her. At this moment the audience feels sympathy for the femme fatale and not the lead male protagonist. They also empathize when Cora is killed in the car crash. They do not feel the same sort of judicial satisfaction as they did when Lily Carver died in Kiss Me Deadly because Cora is not greedy in the same ways Lily is.

Another important element of the audience’s sympathy for Cora is that she is not portrayed as a true femme fatale. Since she did not try to seduce Nick to make him commit wrongful acts, she does not seem like a villain. Furthermore, Cora’s true goals and dreams in life are more connected to that of the ideal wife as defined by Robin Wood as a “mother, perfect companion, the endlessly dependable mainstay of hearth and home” (Wood 477). Cora’s dream is to stay and work in the restaurant. She wants love, a home, and most importantly, she wants a family. This is shown with the reveal of a pregnancy at the end of the film between Frank and Cora. Cora is at her least powerful and most domestic in her final scene. The suggestion that Cora is going to become an almost perfect female character makes it only more devastating when she is instead killed.

After Cora is killed, there is another interesting power change for Frank. He is upset that she has died and is devastated that his life is also going to end. The use of narration in this scene, as well as the rest of the film, like the use of narration in Double Indemnity and The Bigamist, re-connects the audience to the lead male character. The sympathetic connection towards Frank is also aided by his last words when he asks the minister to pray for him and Cora to be together after he is put to death. This romantic and remorseful line leads the audience to feel sympathetic towards Frank as well as Cora. There is a sort of Bonnie and Clyde aspect to The Postman Always Rings Twice, where neither is completely innocent but the audience still feels a connection towards them. Neither character truly betrayed or blindsided the other into committing the malicious acts and they were intending to live a happy life. Both are strong and powerful at the beginning of the film, and both end the film weak and dead. This leads the audience to sympathize again with two people who have committed a morally wrong act.

In the essay “Film Noir: A Modest Proposal,” James Damico describes the interrelationships in film. He states that film noir is a genre where

Either [the male lead] is fated to do so or by chance, or because he has been hired for a job specifically associated with [the femme fatale], a man whose experience of life has left him sanguine and often bitter, meets a not-innocent woman of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted. Through this attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it is the natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat, attempt to murder, or actually murder a second man to whom the woman is unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally he is her husband or lover), an act which often leads to the woman’s betrayal of the protagonist, but which in any event brings about the sometimes metaphoric, but usually literal destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and frequently the protagonist himself (Damico 103).

Although each of the films discussed in this paper include most of these incidents, they are not quite as simple as Damico describes. While all of the women discussed in these films are femme fatales, each has different motives and each uses differing tactics to achieve her goals. The only thing the women have in common is the desire for a better life. For most, it is the desire for financial stability, but that is not the only goal these women have in mind. Damico’s description of the male is also not consistently true. As explored in this paper, the male is not always destroyed by the femme fatale and often does not complete malicious acts for her. This difference in opinion on the aspects of film noir illustrates how the characters in film noir vary, making it a difficult genre to define. Each of the femme fatales in Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, The Maltese Falcon, and The Post Man Always Rings Twice display a different form of power and seduction.

The way in which these dynamics occur in the films is directly connected to how the audience sympathizes with the characters. The audience is able to sympathize with these characters even though most of the time they have very clearly committed morally wrongful acts such as murder. Influenced by the nihilistic thoughts surrounding the end of World War II, much of America had feelings of loss and nihilism. As Stoehr writes, “These dark movies taught the audiences about the brute reality of life’s contingencies and about our inevitable disappointment when looking ahead to a brighter future” (Stoehr 29). The feeling present in society during the rise of film noir was a sense of hopelessness. Many people most likely felt just as lost as the characters they saw on screen. Therefore, it became easy for the audience to sympathize with people who felt the same sort of hopelessness as they themselves were feeling. The American woman felt a connection to the femme fatale who wanted a better life for herself, while the American man felt a connection to the tough PI who wanted to protect the woman in his life.

Each of these film noirs shows a different form of a femme fatale and different power relationships between the femme fatale and the leading male protagonist. Although each of these films differ in the portrayal of women, men, and power, they all encourage sympathy towards the same display of weakness. Through analyzing Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, The Maltese Falcon, and The Post Man Always Rings Twice we have discovered that it is not a specific character that the audience always sympathizes with but instead a certain display of power. At the end of each of these films, the character who displays a weaker and injured state is the character in which the audience sympathizes with. In film noir, it is not the possession of power that gains the final vote of sympathy from the viewer but instead the display of weakness and loss.

 

Works Cited

Benshoff, M. Harry and Griffin, Sean. America on Film. Blackwell, 2004.

Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir, edited by Joan Copjec, Verso, 1993,

121-165.

Damico, James. “Film Noir: A Modest Proposal.” Film Noir Reader, edited by Alain Silver and

James Ursini, New York, 1999, 95-105.

Double Indemnity. Directed by Billy Wilder. Paramount Pictures, 1944. Putlocker.

http://www4.putlocker.fm/watch-72725-double-indemnity-1944-putlocker.html. April 2019.

Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. Routledge, 1991.

Kiss Me Deadly. Directed by Robert Aldrich, Parklane Pictures, 1955. DVD.

Scruggs, Charles. “‘The Power of Blackness’: Film Noir and Its Critics.” American Literary

History, vol. 16, no. 4, 2004, pp. 675–687. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3567983.

Stoehr, L. Kevin. Nihilism in Film and Television. McFarland, 2006.

The Bigamist. Directed by Ida Lupino. The Filmmakers, 1953. DVD.

The Maltese Falcon. Directed by John Huston, Warner Bros., 1941. Putlocker.

https://ww3.putlockers.co/movie/the-maltese-falcon/?watching=KlpVFToSSL. April 2019.

The Post Man Always Rings Twice. Directed by Tay Garnett, MGM, 1946.

https://ok.ru/video/267473848995. April 2019.

Wood, Robin. “Ideology, Genre, Auteur.” Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Mast, Cohen and

Braudy, Oxford University Press, 1992, 475-485.

Indigenous Representation in The TWILIGHT Saga Film NEW MOON, by Lily Coles

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The essay won second prize in the Cinema and Media Studies competition in the winter of 2020. The jury hopes you enjoy it as much as we did.

New Moon is the second film in the Twilight movie series and is based on the novels by Stephanie Meyer. This film concerns a love triangle between a vampire (Edward), a human (Bella), and a werewolf (Jacob) that was established in the first film of this series. The story that began in Twilight expands in New Moon, including a more in-depth look at the traditions and stories of the Indigenous Quileute tribe. In New Moon, the audience learns that the Quileute people possess the ability to transform into wolves, having superhuman powers in both human and wolf form (Weitz, 2009). There is a very prominent colonial gaze present in this film, as the Quileute men are oversexualized and perceived as dangerous to others. Furthermore, the representation of Indigenous people in this film is problematic: it leaves impressions in young minds about Indigenous culture and portrays Native Americans in tropes such as the “Magical Indian”, the “Romantic Savage”, and the “Ignoble Savage”. This paper will look at these three tropes, analyzing ways the author and director reinforce stereotypes of Indigenous people to create a story from a non-Indigenous perspective.

The majority of the Indigenous characters in New Moon are played by Indigenous actors and are not seen wearing beads, braids, or buckskin. Other stereotypes such as the four D’s are excluded from this film as the Quileute tribe is not depicted as dancing, drumming, drunk or dead. However, the trope of the magical Indian almost completely cancels out any progress made in the representation of Indigenous people in the Twilight film series. The werewolves in New Moon are fictional members of the real-life Quileute tribe in La Push, Washington. Although the Quileute tribe in New Moon is based on the real Native American tribe, this film’s depiction associates Quileute people’s current lives, history and traditions with wolves and magic. In this alternative reality created by author Stephanie Meyers, the members of the Quileute wolf-pack have the ability to transform into werewolves. In legends and stories, Indigenous people who turn into animals are referred to as “skin walkers”, which is a Navajo term for this ability (Little 2016). In human form, the Quileute wolf-pack are extremely fast and strong with elevated body heat, the ability to heal rapidly, and aging that is put on hold while they shapeshift. Additionally, in wolf form they possess telepathic abilities with the rest of their pack, as well as the capability to transform into a massive, fast, and strong animal. As Becky Little wrote in her article, Native Americans to J.K. Rowling: We’re Not Magical, “[Indigenous people] are … fighting every day for the protection of our sacred sites from being destroyed…if Indigenous spirituality becomes conflated with fantasy ‘magic’—how can we expect lawmakers and the public to be allies in the protection of these spaces?” (Little 2016). The genre of fiction and fantasy is extremely popular with younger readers, but fantasy goes hand in hand with fiction, and depicting an ethnicity, race, religion or gender as fictional is inappropriate (Little 2016). Therefore, the presence of the “Magical Indian” trope in New Moon does a significant amount of damage, creating the perception that Indigenous people only exist in modern society with secret Indigenous magical powers. While New Moon is said to portray an accurate image of Indigenous people, the depiction of the Quileute people as magical is hardly authentic or helpful to the Indigenous community. Whether intentional or not, this film promotes the othering of Indigenous people as mysterious outsiders in contemporary society.

Another stereotypical trope seen in New Moon is the “Romantic Savage” trope, embodied by Jacob Black. This trope is described in The Great American Love Affair: Indians in the Twilight Saga by Brianna Burke as a “lost soul, caught between the pressures of civilization and tradition. He is passionate, always attractive… at one with nature, and still – if threatened – capable of savage violence” (Burke 2011). Throughout New Moon, Jacob is lost in his passion for Bella and his feelings are torn between the civilization of a regular life and the tradition of being a werewolf. Furthermore, Jacob is extremely eye-catching, usually found in the forest, and capable of doing irreparable damage when he transforms into a werewolf. Jacob clearly fits into all of these categories of the “Romantic Savage”, which is a trope that goes hand-in-hand with scopophilia and the gaze (Mulvey 1989). In contrast to the male gaze, a concept in critical film theory developed by Laura Mulvey, there is an oversexualized female gaze in New Moon. While the Cullen vampires are all Caucasian and modestly clothed in this film, the Quileute werewolves are always half naked to show off their attractive bodies. Additionally, New Moon’s intended audience is teenagers, specifically teenaged girls. The female gaze is directed at Jacob and the wolfpack: multiple times in the film, Bella calls Jacob buff and beautiful. This gaze oversexualizes Indigenous men, which is extremely problematic, as it misrepresents Indigenous people as functioning in films to serve as the object of an audience’s gaze. In New Moon, the “Romantic Savage” trope is amplified by the female gaze as it objectifies the Indigenous characters and romanticizes them as beautiful lost souls that are one with nature.

The trope of the “Ignoble Savage” is seen in New Moon, and while the Quileute are not bloodthirsty or evil, they are portrayed as reckless beasts with anger issues. In New Moon, there is a general aura of fear and danger surrounding the town of Forks, with news of animal attacks and sightings of large creatures in the woods. Although these attacks have been carried out by vampires, not werewolves, the film does not make this distinction clear until about halfway through. Apart from being associated with mass animal attacks, the Quileute pack involuntarily transform into animals when they are overcome with anger and seen to have no control. For example, the alpha of the pack, Sam Uley, once lost control of his anger around his fiancé, Emily, and he transformed into a werewolf and injured her in the process. This trope exemplifies the misrepresentation of Indigenous people as perpetrators of domestic violence and makes them out to be uncivilized, which further alienates them from society. Furthermore, the love triangle between Edward, Bella and Jacob introduces a petty feud between Jacob and Edward. While Edward is diplomatic towards Jacob and very mature in his actions, Jacob harbours great bitterness and resentment towards Edward. This contrast between Bella’s two love interests can also be perceived as a symbolic representation of white settler and Native American conflict: the discriminatory narrative of the sophisticated white man versus the bloodthirsty Indian. The “Ignoble Savage” trope wrongly depicts Indigenous people as instinctively hostile and unreasonable. This perpetuates the racist stereotype that Indigenous people are unpredictable, violent, and therefore not fit for modern society.

Furthermore, the director and author fail to give the Indigenous characters aside from Jacob the individuality or narrative arc that they offer the vampire characters. While each of the members of the Cullen clan are distinct and unique with their personalities and wardrobe, the wolfpack are generally interchangeable, as they are not provided with any particular character traits and all wear identical clothes. This further amplifies the contrast between the Native characters and the Cullen vampires, and dehumanizes Indigenous characters just as much as the “Ignoble Savage” trope does. As mentioned in the blog, Bird Law, this depicts Native characters as less important in the minds of viewers because their characters are not as clearly drawn or integral to the story (Dragon 2012). Also, it further supports the dehumanization of Indigenous people by denying Indigenous characters individuality or character development.

The author of the Twilight Saga, Stephanie Meyer, established a foundation of racism that this saga is built on. It was not her original intention to include Native characters in her book, but she stumbled upon the Quileute tribe while researching a setting for her story to take place and decided to include them in her story to advance the aura of magic in her plot (Meyer), not to advance the representation of Indigenous people. New Moon has gained praise for its depiction and inclusion of Indigenous people. However, Indigenous representation in New Moon is laced with racism and only confirms the issues that arise when non-Indigenous people attempt to tell the stories of Indigenous people. The Twilight Saga, especially New Moon, use alienating tropes such as the “Magical Indian”, the “Romantic Savage”, and the “Ignoble Savage” to keep Indigenous people trapped in the outskirts of society, marginalized by the depictions of them in film, television and other media sources.

 

Works Cited:

Burke, Brianna. “The Great American Love Affair: Indians in the Twilight Saga.” Bringing Light to Twilight (2011): 208. Web.

Dragon. “Bad Reputations. Racism in the Twilight Series.” Bird Law, 8 May 2012, notgovernedbyreason.blogspot.com/2012/05/bad-reputations-racism-in-twilight.html.

Little, Becky. “Native Americans to J.K. Rowling: We’re Not Magical.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 11 Mar. 2016, news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160311-history-of-magic-in-north-america-jk-rowling-native-american-stereotypes/.

Meyer, Stephenie. “The Story of Twilight & Getting Published.” Stephenie Meyer, stepheniemeyer.com/the-story-of-twilight-getting-published/.

Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Indiana UP, 1989.

Weitz, Chris, director. The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Summit Entertainment, 2009. Netflix.

MONOS (Alejandro Landes, 2019) at FIN: AIFF 2019

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Student Festival Report from FIN: AIFF 2019

Based on Lord of The Flies by William Golding, set in modern war-torn Columbia, Monos is an exciting thriller that lives up to its category of ‘Extreme’ movies at the FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival. Sofia Buenaventura delivers an amazing performance as a child raised into guerrilla warfare, torn between her family and her morality. The children, known as ‘monos’ (Spanish for ‘monkeys’), have been raised in this violent world and it seems to be the only thing they understand, but Buenaventura plays a character too ‘soft’ for this lifestyle. Despite the way they were raised, he starts to question whether they are doing the right thing and is incapable of committing the atrocities that seem to come so easily to some of the other characters, like Moisés Arias’ character. Monos gives a very realistic view of what happens to children in war and the psychological effects of being raised in violence. In many ways they are a family, but they are also always turning on one another. They are a team, but they are also only really out to help themselves because that is what they have been taught to do. They are cruel, but they are also just teenagers who drink and dance and laugh, and they don’t know any better.

CUNNINGHAM 3D (Alla Kovgan, 2019) at FIN: AIFF 2019

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Festival Report by Aaron Chakraborty

Cunningham 3D was my pick of the movies I had the pleasure of seeing at the Atlantic International Film Festival. It’s a documentary about the late choreographer Merce Cunningham, and was a visual treat from start to finish. Watching the act of dance on film always highlights the dynamic nature of the medium, and the routines sprinkled throughout these understated 93 minutes were poetry in motion.

Unlike many documentaries, Cunningham 3D has no artificial narrative and does not attempt to contort the topic to fit a traditional story structure (think the concert movie which injects tension through the band rushing to write songs before the tour starts). Instead, we learn (in photos, interviews, footage, and letters), about the life and career of the enigmatic Merce Cunningham. The structure of the film itself is an ode to his creativity – the rhythm of presentation is always changing, and we jump even from contemporary dance to abstract poetry in a loose journey of his life from start to finish. I knew nothing of the man (or of dance itself) before watching this film. It successfully made me a fan of both subjects.

Cunningham 3D is a bright and unpredictable biopic that I recommend to all viewers. The film festival was a similarly joyous experience, marked by awesome volunteer work and a real sense of community, so I’m grateful to the Cinema and Media Studies program at Dal for providing me with tickets. Thanks!

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (Céline Sciamma) at FIN: AIFF 2019

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Festival Report by Jeffrey Weir

Portrait of a Lady on Fire takes you into a hypnotic trip where you find yourself locked to the screen, never able to look away. One of the most talked-about films currently in the festival circuit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire has been almost universally praised for an assortment of reasons, from its gorgeous and draw-dropping cinematography to some of the best performances of the year that transcend any language gap. Céline Sciamma manages the difficult task of making a film that feels very personal to her own life yet so universal to anybody who has ever been in love.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the story of a painter named Marianne (Noémie Merlant) who is sent to do a portrait of a young lady, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is about to be married to a man who she has no desire to be with. When Marianne arrives, however, she discovers why the last painter sent there did not do the portrait: because Héloïse refused to let him paint her. Marianne now must paint Héloïse without her knowledge.
The two leads of the film, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, are electric together. The amount of pain you feel from just them not being able to truly be together breaks your heart for the entire run time of the film and their chemistry can be compared to some of the best pairs in cinema such as Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in the Before Trilogy. The director chooses to focus far more on glances and looks the characters share rather than expressing through words; this choice makes every word they say to one another far more special and effective, yet the quiet moments the characters share remain more effective than any line of dialogue in the film.
The pacing is very slow. It’s a perfect slow burn. The film takes its time to slowly develop a relationship between our two lead characters and through this; it builds and builds upon its tension, and the audience understands where the story is going but the slow pace makes you feel so tense because you’re just wishing for the leads to find happiness in the end. The pace of the film makes it incredibly captivating, the audience gets to take in every bit of information and every small interaction, slowly coming closer and closer to the inevitability of the situation.
The cinematography is simply breathtaking, obviously due to the composition and framing of the camera, but also because the choice of locations puts you into a similar headspace to the lead character; our protagonist is sent into this unfamiliar setting that feels almost magical or otherworldly and the cinematography/locations make this feel like a different world for both the audience and lead. The colours pop throughout the entire film, focusing on mainly blues and oranges. The colours are bright and a fantastic juxtaposition to the quite depressing subject matter of the film, almost as if the filmmaker is trying to find the beauty in the sad experiences we face in life.
As soon as Portrait of a Lady on Fire ended, I knew I had witnessed something special. The film is tragic, depressing and genuinely heartbreaking but it also manages to find the beauty in the tragedies. Led by two of the best performances of the year, the film is surely to be looked back on as one of the greatest films of the 2010s.