According to the Kantian theory of Enlightenment, the essay "What is Enlightenment" defines it as "man's release from his self-incurred tutelage." In Faust, Mephistopheles makes the argument to G-d that humans are "brutish," "live in dismay," and will never change [their] ways. He argues that humans would be happier without the gift of reason. Still, if we were to do away with higher reasoning and logic, our schooling would not be from other people that we incur, but from th

Dorothy and Manny’s scene starting at 14:28 and running until 20:02 minutes into the film showcases the importance of this seminal character in Cassavetes’ Opening Night. Dorothy plays in contingency to the relation of the film’s duration, particularly the ending and the scene in the front lobby of the theater, which echoes an earlier film, All About Eve, which heavily inspired Cassavetes’ filmmaking during this production. The scene starts with a close-up shot of Manny at

Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica and Germany, Year Zero by Roberto Rossellini present themselves similarly. These films are studies in Neopopualism, regionalism, dialect, components of revolutionary and Christian socialism, naturalism, positivistic verism, and humanitarianism. The movies are the products of the immediate postwar period by Italian neorealist directors who focus on corruption and scarcity, portraying children street urchins in leading roles. Both c

Kafka stands apart from most writers. His style is haunting and, to some, obtuse. Kafka was not a political writer, but he sympathized...

The past month I must have listened more actively and concretely than I have before, hoping to find the ideal forms of sound to speak of during this paper. Almost all that I have heard speaks to me in different ways, but the topic of today’s writing is all about acousmatics and reduced listening of Pierre Schaffer’s Etude aux Chemins de Fer and Luc Ferrari’s Presque Rien no. 1. I chose Pierre Schaffer because I wanted to understand his process of reduced listening and how it

Doris Wishman was the infamous prolific sexploitation filmmaker from 1960s through the early 2000s completing thirty independent films and being one of the only women filmmakers in the industry, giving the “sexploitation” a unique feminist lens. Wishman is considered an anarchical filmmaker. Wishman was born in 1912 in New York City and a graduate of Hunter College’s acting department. Originally having high hopes of becoming an actress but could only land roles where she was

Ackerman asserts that Jeanne Dielman is a feminist film for two important reasons. The first being that It is a woman’s viewpoint on the discourse of women’s’ looks because we do not know exactly what an “unalienated feminine language” would look like Jeanne Dielman helps us figure this out. It is in the permissive way and framing of the film that helps us see this more precisely. We allow Jeanne the language of women’s work in full view without editing. Akerman is quoted as

Gorfinkel's essay, "On Wanda's Slowness," looks to "reframe and reposition the film concerning a genealogy of women's filmmaking, discourses of 'slow cinema,' and the specificity of performance. Gorfinkle asks, "How might we reframe the connotations of slow cinema's import if we retraced some of its aesthetic preoccupations vis-à-vis histories of women's cinema?" She states that Wanda must be contended with as an overlooked minor cinema of fatigue, seen in an aesthetic and po

The theme of doubling is ancient and can be found in primitive rituals and superstition’s such as twins being killed out of fear of embodying evil spirits. The myth of Narcissus is another example. Another word for a double is doppelganger. It is shown as an ethereal being, a shadow, a reflection, or an animated portrait. In general, the concept of doubling has been read as “a symbolic discourse of expressing psychic conflicts wherein dual characters represent facets of the

On June 29th, 2021, I headed to Lincoln Center on my way to watch Christian Petzold’s new film Undine. I chose this as my cultural project topic because Petzold is a German filmmaker who has touched my heart for his previous film and adaption of the book by the same name by Anna Seghers’ called Transit. Transit, a story about a World War II love affair happening in Marseille between a concentration camp victim and a woman waiting for her husband to return (“Transit by Anna S

Whose Afraid of Virgina Woolfe meets the Virgin Suicides meets A Doll's House. Decker, Josephine. "Shirley." Hulu, LAMF, 2020, USA. This...

Episodes 1 & 2 are available and online HERE! My experience with the American Book of the Dead is something I'm not sure I am able to...

Book chon bang hyang 2011 (South Korea) Ene's Ó Mo Chroí, Nicola plays over deeply saturated red titles giving a feeling of post...

Twelve minutes in and I'm already stopping so I can start writing about how much this movie encapsulates the modern 21st century female...

(2009) France Gaspar Noé 2009 was the year I graduated high-school and the year where I got the independence I had been seeking and all...

On a lazy Saturday afternoon I picked up on two films mostly by instinct (who else choose films like that on Netflix/Hulu/Other) on my...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead! (1990) USA Tom Stoppard Can any of us change our fate when we cannot even remember it? The action starts almost immediately. Here we have two men on horses riding through a steppe of a mountain. The two companions find an ordinary gold coin on the road. Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) stop to pick up their good fortune. Rosencrantz quickly realizes that although the coin they have found is seemingly ordinary…. the e

News From Home Chantal Akerman (1977) USA Akerman’s early work, News From Home, is an experiment in homesickness and alienation while...

Ugetsu or Ugetsu Monogatari (雨月物語 Tales of Moonlight and Rain) (1953) Kenji Mizoguchi Early Japanese horror meets Post WWII anti-war...

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Sidney Lumet Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik challenges societal definitions of deviancy and becomes a...