Page 98 – Establishing Shot

Anguished Portraiture: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Jack Miller

Still from Ivan the Terrible — *Ivan the Terrible* (1944-46)

Due to the intensity of its anguished and baroque surfaces, its radical reconstruction of spatial dimensions, and its cartoonish, sometimes grotesque approach to performance and film dramaturgy, Sergei Eisenstein’s unfinished trilogy Ivan the Terrible (1944-46) – the Soviet master’s final work, one of the prime glories of the cinema – may be plausibly considered one of the most idiosyncratic and extreme examples of film style. This cinematic diptych, a kind of demented freak-out which scholar Joan Neuberger has aptly called “a key event in the history of Soviet art,” represents an ultimate rejection on the part of its author of a montage-based aesthetic principle which Eisenstein himself helped to formulate – a kind of theoretical approach to editing which reaches its logical culmination in the extended battle passages of Eisenstein’s first sound feature, Alexander Nevsky (1938). With Ivan, Eisenstein seems to be communicating to the viewer primarily through the formal excesses and ornate visual textures of his images, rather than through an ideological friction between two or more images, a heady technique that he deployed with aplomb in his silent work. (more…)

Reclaiming Her Narrative: Non-Fiction Storytelling in Stories We Tell and Shirkers

Posted on September 23, 2019 by Jesse Pasternack

The last few years have seen more attention being paid to female directors. Whether it’s multiple theaters having retrospectives honoring Dorothy Arzner, the latest triumph from Ava DuVernay, or exciting debuts from artists such as Nia DaCosta and Mati Diop, women in the film industry are slowly but surely getting some of the recognition they should have always received for telling their stories.

Most of the directors I named are narrative filmmakers. But there is just as exciting work being done by women in the field of documentary films. This mode of filmmaking gives female directors a unique opportunity. If they choose, they can use the documentary genre to tell stories from their lives in a manner that lets the audience know what they are seeing is a true story in a way that a narrative film cannot. They can use this method of filmmaking to reclaim control of their stories from men who seek to control them and discover their own strength in the process. (more…)

Hustlers: Finding Sympathy and Empathy in Post-Recession Cinema

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Aja Essex

The 2008 financial crisis is certainly a watershed moment in not only American history but one that fundamentally shifted the psyche of the global stage as we know it. Once multiple economies crashed, leaving swaths of people with sobering and uncertain financial futures, it’s no surprise that film and culture would respond accordingly and shift deeper into the escapist fantasy that had begun to dominate the box office in the earlier part of the ’00s, i.e. superhero films, remakes and adaptations of beloved franchises of movie-goers’ youths, and giant worlds built with black-and-white morality in mind. However, there was of course something else emerging from the scars the recession left behind. As the dust settled on the crisis, banks were bailed out and the economy began to find an equilibrium, filmmakers began tapping into the zeitgeist and psyche of an America that had just been scammed out of a stable future and the fascinating purveyor and products of such a colossal scam. (more…)

Female Ambition and Friendship in Dance, Girl, Dance

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Michaela Owens

Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara in Dance, Girl, Dance — Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara in *Dance, Girl, Dance*

An underappreciated pioneer with a knack for crafting wonderfully feminist fare, Dorothy Arzner is a filmmaker all cinephiles should know. A successful woman director and openly gay, Arzner was, in many ways, a rarity in classic Hollywood. She became the first woman to direct a sound film, as well as the first to be in the Directors Guild of America. In 1927, she directed her debut studio film, Fashions for Women; her last would be First Comes Courage in 1943. For sixteen years, Arzner worked with other powerful, prolific women, such as screenwriter Zoë Akins and actresses Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Clara Bow, and Rosalind Russell. These collaborations were about women who didn’t fit the traditional 20th-century mold and thus experienced the pleasures and pain of female rebellion. (more…)

Seeing Between Worlds

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Establishing Shot

Still from Ana Yurdu — Still from *Ana Yurdu*

Guest post by Noah Arjomand.

In an age in which political and cultural boundaries are both being constantly crossed and fiercely policed, an age of polarization into seemingly unreconcilable camps, the idea of living or moving between worlds can seem at once utopian and essential. The “between worlds” idea seems to have captured imaginations—my own included—to such an extent that IU Cinema has elected to feature two film series on the general theme in as many years. In 2018, IU Cinema’s Mira Nair: Living Between Worlds presented her work spanning India, America, and Uganda. Now, I am helping to organize an IU Cinema Creative Collaboration that we are calling Between Worlds: Cultural Hybridity in Turkish Film. (more…)

Germaine Dulac’s Rebel Girls

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Laura Ivins

woman drinking a cocktail, looking up with desire — Invitation to a Voyage (1928)

My introduction to Germaine Dulac many years ago in film school revolved around the surrealists. I learned about her fraught collaboration with Antonin Artaud, which resulted in a group of surrealists rioting at the premiere of The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928).

However, Germaine Dulac was so much more than an object of surrealist ire and mythology. She was a pioneer of artistry in early cinema. A prolific writer, educator, and filmmaker, she deserves as prominent a place in film history as her French impressionist and visual music peers. (more…)