APCS 2019 Catalogue
Dossier in Moving-Image Media
Introduction
Laura U. Marks
Welcome to this dossier of the best essays from this year鈥檚 New Approaches in Moving-Image Media course. I invite you to admire these students鈥� cross-cultural theoretical syntheses, original argumentation, sensitive attention to the works they study, and passion for their chosen subject.
Katie Hyeseung Yeo carries out thorough and fascinating research on clandestine media consumption by North Koreans in 鈥�Power of Empowering: The Prevalence of K-media in North Korea.鈥� Yeo argues that media piracy in that country is fueling social change. Ashley Song鈥檚 鈥�The Framing of Eco-cinema: Time and Decay鈥� brings together Deleuze and Chinese landscape aesthetics to argue that an ecological cinema embraces aging and decay. Focused on the act of framing, Song鈥檚 analyses of Rub茅n Guzman鈥檚 Images of Nowhere and Agn猫s Varda鈥檚 The Gleaners and I are strikingly perceptive. Sophia Biedka鈥檚 鈥�Human Connectivity to the Screen鈥� is a manifesto for observational documentary, focusing on the relationship between humans and landscape. Biedka integrates Western film theory and Chinese landscape theory to examine Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash鈥檚 Sweetgrass, Simone Rapisarda Casanova鈥檚 The Strawberry Tree, and Nettie Wild鈥檚 Koneline. Sevil Baghban Karimi, in 鈥�Revolutionary Potentials of 鈥楽trange鈥� Films, and of the Cinematic Medium: Pasolini鈥檚 Teorema,鈥� sophisticatedly synthesizes Marx, Deleuze, and Sadra (partly inspired by an essay of mine) to argue that Pasolini鈥檚 seemingly alienated characters are undergoing a desire-sparked process of creative individuation, a necessary step for political action.
MA students present abstracts of papers intended for publication elsewhere, each of which celebrates a medium that has not received a lot of positive attention in cinema studies. Lea Hogan, analyzing the trans YouTuber ContraPoints, argues that YouTube is a more liberating platform than cinema for trans makers than other social media. Maria Filipina Palad proposes a well-grounded, non-paranoid aesthetics for virtual reality, based in theories of embodied perception, that will be useful for both theorists and practitioners as this medium returns to popularity. Mohammad Zaki Rezwan creates an original reception theory based on the concept of the associated milieu, in order to study how Bangladeshi painters adapt popular films to rickshaw paintings. And while it is common for film scholars to disparage small-screen media, Kwyn Aquino argues compellingly that watching movies on devices constitutes an intimate encounter with the world in microcosm, like the ancestor she proposes for device media: the cabinet of curiosities.
