Page 125 – Establishing Shot

Sonja Henie: A Singular Star

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Michaela Owens

Sonja Henie in Thin Ice (1937) — Sonja Henie in *Thin Ice* (1937)

Imagine this: after winning gold at the Olympics, an athlete like Michael Phelps or Chloe Kim goes to Hollywood, films a movie for six weeks, and then a few months later that movie is released and they become one of the biggest stars in the world. Seems crazy, right? However, this is precisely what happened to Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie. In Hollywood’s history, there have been plenty of athletes-turned-actors, but few rose to such dazzling heights as ice queen Henie, a woman who carved out her own unique genre and became one of the wealthiest people in the world. (more…)

Score Keeping: The Empathy of Language and Jóhann Jóhannsson

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Aja Essex

Arrival soundtrack — *Arrival* soundtrack

Welcome to Score Keeping, a feature where I dive into overlooked and highly praised songs, scores and soundtracks that accompany great films.

The First Contact series arranged by associate director Brittany Friesner has proven itself to be a vital one for 2018. All the stories told in the series seem to be about finding common ground with someone or something so outwardly different from us, whether it be finding the compassion within the messy patchwork that is humanity (The Day the Earth Stood Still), finding humanity in your fellow man (Attack the Block) or even relating to and succumbing to the more unsavory parts of the human experience (The Man Who Fell to Earth). In all cases the characters find that common ground through the act of communication. As easy and simple as that sounds you only need to look at Twitter dot com or the discourse in the comments under your weird cousin’s Facebook rants to find out that it can already be difficult to communicate with someone who speaks the same language as yourself. (more…)

The Latino Film Festival

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Establishing Shot

Guest post by Dr. Alberto Varon.

The Latino Film Festival sponsored by the Latino Studies Program has become a premier programming event for the IU and Bloomington communities since 2012. As in previous years, the two-day event will convene local scholars and film directors on the Bloomington campus to showcase and discuss recent trends in Latino film. This year’s theme, “Latinx Spaces,” makes visible the current state of Latino communities in the U.S., but it is also a provocation, asking viewers to consider their assumptions about who and what is Latino. (more…)

Revolutions of an Art(ist): La Chinoise, Changing Politics, Changing Film, and a Changing Godard

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Nathaniel Sexton

By the time Godard began making La Chinoise in 1967, the radicalism of his previous cinematic experiments, constituting a front-line of the popular thrust of the French New Wave, had begun to lag behind the leftism of the elite French intelligentsia and its growing student army. Godard, fearful of being out of step at the young age of thirty-six, requested that his then-girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife, actress Anne Wiazesmky, a student at the new Paris Nanteere University, introduce him to her Marxist-Leninist friends. Through Wiazemsky’s acquaintances Godard met future artistic collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin. Wiazemsky knew students who studied Marx but Gorin was friends with self-described Maoists. (more…)

Sweet Dreams

Posted on February 13, 2018 by Establishing Shot

Guest post by Abbey Stemler and Karen E. Woody.

Sweet Dreams is a documentary film set in Rwanda that follows the efforts of Rwandan women to pursue an entrepreneurial dream of opening an ice cream shop. The significance of the film is that the women featured come from different backgrounds, yet are able to instill democratic ideals in running their business.

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Why Don’t We Talk More About Anthony Mann Westerns?

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Katherine Johnson

For anyone who has seen an Anthony Mann western and/or had the chance to see MAN OF THE WEST (1958) at the IU Cinema on Thursday, January 18, 2018, it’s clear Anthony Mann had a unique style. And while it probably wouldn’t matter to the director himself, his Westerns aren’t often thoroughly discussed—at least not in many of the classic studies on film genre. (Jim Kitses’ HORIZONS WEST is an exception.) His films weren’t always known as canonical westerns, but if you watch enough Mann films it becomes obvious he had a fascination with genre films (the western and film noir especially), was a true artist, and made some pretty spectacular westerns! (more…)