I had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Balzer, a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture (now IU’s Media School), about his current research on movie trailers and the industry creating them. What was it about movie trailers that first peaked your interest as an area of research? It was simply how familiar… Read more »
Guest post by Noelle Ibrahim. Themester intern Noelle Ibrahim had a conversation with Jonathan Risner, a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at IU. They discussed the upcoming Themester film, Au hasard Balthazar. (This interview was edited and condensed.) What do you find compelling about this film? If I’m going to relate it to… Read more »
Guest post by Noelle Ibrahim. Themester intern Noelle Ibrahim had a conversation with Stephanie Kane, an International Studies professor at IU. They discussed the central tensions captured in the upcoming Themester film, Angry Inuk. Dr. Kane’s new course, INTL-I 302 Arctic Encounters: Animals, People and Ships, explores the ever-evolving Arctic sphere and competing interests within the… Read more »
Guest post by Piibi-Kai Kivik. The second film in the Nordic Privilege and Anxiety series is The Temptation of St. Tony by the Estonian director Veiko Õunpuu. The film shocks and disturbs, its black-and-white starkness and surreal images visually contrasting with the saturated colors of Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope.
Guest post by Elisa Räsänen. Are Nordic people really happy? Yes, they are, at least according to the most recent World Happiness Report (2017), in which Norway was declared the happiest country in the world, with Denmark, Iceland and Finland making it into the top 5. We decided to explore this “happiness,” which is arguably a… Read more »
IU Cinema’s Social Media Specialist Caitlyn Stevens had the chance to interview Ryan Norris, founder of experimental music organization Coupler, about the experience of composing and performing the commissioned original score for the 1925 silent film Our Heavenly Bodies. In this exchange, Norris talks about his love of movies, the juxtaposition of sound and image,… Read more »