Land of the Dead (Canada/France/USA: George Romero, 2005)

Land of the Dead (Canada/France/USA: George Romero, 2005: 93 mins)

Bloom, Michael. "Reanimating the Living Dead: Uncovering the Zombie Archetype in the Works of George A. Romero." Offscreen (April 30, 2009)

Bradley, S.A. "My Ride's Here: Remembering George A. Romero." Hellbent for Horror #48 (July 27, 2017)

McSweeney, Terence. "The Land of the Dead and the Home of the Brave: Romero's Vision of a Post-9/11 America." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 107-116. [Professor has a copy]

Read, Jason. "Zombie as Critic." Unemployed Negativity (June 11, 2007)

"Understanding the Zombie Mentality, Pt. 3." Dialogic (July 29, 2005)

The Power Principle: Corporate Empire and the Rise of the National Security State (Metanoia Films, 2012)

The Power Principle: Corporate Empire and the Rise of the National Security State (Metanoia Films, 2012) [3 pts: 1 Empire; 2 Propaganda; 3 Apocalypse. Part 3 discusses Dr Strangelove)

Tarah Ketron: On the Documentary The Cove

On the Documentary The Cove
by Tarah Ketron
ENG 102 essay for Spring 2013

How does one sleep at night when they spend their life slaughtering harmless, vulnerable animals for six months of the year? I do not understand this either. In Taiji, Japan every year for six months there is a slaughter in a hidden cove where no outsiders are allowed to go. Before 2008 this cove in a sleepy little town was unknown to even most of Japan, and unknown to most of the world. In 2008 a documentary, The Cove was released showing the world that over 20,000 innocent dolphins and young pilot whales are slaughtered every year. In this documentary it also shows how far the town would go to keep their secret safe from the world.

One organization that is highly involved with trying to stop this slaughter is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The SSCS is a non-profit organization that dedicates it’s time and volunteers on saving marine mammals around the world. They have very strong views on many things and take hefty actions to prevent the slaughter and unrighteous killing of the worlds most needed wildlife. Founder and leader of this organization is Captain Paul Watson, who would die to save a dolphin or whale as would anyone who volunteers with him. He has helped save thousands of these animals over the years and continues to try and do so daily; he and his team have dedicated their lives to saving the lives of others who cannot speak for themselves, the marine mammals. Captain Watson is not alone in his fight to stop the slaughter in Japan as the Oceanic Preservation Society dedicates their time and lives as well.

Taiji has a town that looks like they respect dolphins and love them. They even have an aquarium for tourists and the people of the town. At the aquarium they actually serve dolphin meat and whale meat for you to eat while you can go and watch the dolphin show. This fact is absolutely disgusting to me, and makes me feel physically ill. While you are watching the show several bottlenose dolphins are captured in the cove and shipped out to different places across the world like Sea World and other swim with dolphin programs. The town of Taiji, makes several million dollars a year for these live dolphins that can be handpicked by dolphin trainers. But for the thousands of dolphins that are captured and not picked they are slaughtered and Japan makes $600 for each dead dolphin (O’ Barry). To me that is not enough money for the price of a dolphin who is as intelligent as modern apes and even humans.

A dolphin’s intelligence is one of their most loving qualities, they see us humans and try to befriend us and save us against other ocean predators. This quality is what makes them so great and the fact that they are friendly as can be. Dolphins in captivity take on a sense of depression after a while, but they put on a show and smile through the routines they learn. It is when you look into the eyes of a dolphin in captivity that you can see the sadness and despair of these creatures. When capturing a dolphin to hold in captivity, it is like going to jail for something you did not do. When one goes to jail and has not done anything wrong they become sadden and long to be free out in the world again. For a dolphin it is the same, they long to be free in the ocean again. Some dolphins have even been known to commit “suicide” (O’ Barry). According to Richard O’ Barry, who was the star of Flipper, he witnessed this. Dolphins are mammals who need air to breathe, every breath they take they choose to take, so when they choose to not come up for air it is their decision, and in that that he says they commit suicide, as the dolphin Cathy did who was one of the Flipper dolphins.

That show is one of the predominant reasons that dolphin shows became so popular and is now a multi-billion dollar corporation, and it is because of these places that the fishermen of Taiji continue this slaughter every year. Captain Watson and the SSCS sent a team into Taiji in 2003 to get footage of the cove to expose to the world. What the team found was horrid even beyond their dreams and in light of seeing what they saw they decided to take action. The team cut the nets freeing the dolphins that could now swim away to safety. Two hundred dolphins were saved that day and the team was arrested by the Japanese government and is now banned from ever coming back. Over the past few years new teams have been sent in just to watch and monitor the dolphin slaughter in Taiji. They now post for the world to see how many dolphins are slaughtered each day, and how many their interference saves. Good days are ones where no dolphins die.

If you have ever been to Sea World or gone on vacation to a marine animal park and you see these dolphins playing shows you have become part of the problem. Sea World used to say that the reason for these parks was for species preservation, but when the species gets too stressed out to perform and they kill it and find a replacement dolphin, I do not consider this species preservation. Also the fact that because the trainers try and replace the dolphins the money in the Taiji slaughter is too good for them to pass up. Quitting going to these places that are supposed to be fun and helpful for the dolphin species is the first step for the general public to stop this intense killing of innocent creatures.

Another disturbing thought is that the IWC (International Whaling Committee) does not protect these animals against this intense slaughter; however there are rules that are supposed to limit the amount of dolphins hunted and killed. Japan has almost always had a dolphin slaughter but they did not always have the cove. On the Japanese island of Iki in 1978 thousands of dolphins were rounded up and shot with machine guns and the ones who survived after that were beat with clubs or speared to death. These innocent creatures had been in the protection zone where fishermen were not supposed to kill these cetaceans and actually did get somewhat in trouble after they tried to prosecute Dexter Cate who had jumped into the water late one night to free these animals (Watson ch. 8). Since then the SSCS has sent various letters to the Presidents of the United States asking him to help stop this slaughter in Japan for the inhumane killing of cetacean species. His request was not accepted with much faith however, he got responded with “there is nothing more we can do.” This is our government who would not help these creatures that they claim to protect.

The Oceanic Preservation Society and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had reached out to the world and are supported by thousands, one small group of those thousands included actress Hayden Panettiere, who went to Taiji with a group of surfers and surfed into the cove then gathered into a circle and held hands as a sign that they would not move until they stopped the slaughter. The group was poked with metal rods and eventually forced out of the water and immediately arrested and are banned from Taiji, Japan. Several people have been arrested or even killed on the premises of trying to save these animals. A close friend of Ric O’ Barry’s and himself went on a hunger strike for ten days, on that tenth day O’ Barry fainted and was taken to the hospital, his friend was left alone and strangled with a belt that night. These fishermen are relentless and even have signs saying “nature conservancy” no entering, and behind those “conservation” signs is the biggest endangerment for dolphins. Regular people who see this wrong doing have given their lives to save these amazing animals, who are self-aware and can understand what is happening to them.

A dolphin can pack a serious punch if it were to become angry and want to hurt a human being, and even through all this killing and capturing of their families the dolphins are always docile and they never bite or ram people. They like to save people which to me, makes me think that they have an understanding of how important humans are, but they will not stay this way for long if we keep allowing these fishermen to brutally kill them. These docile creatures are part of what keeps the ocean alive and going without them the entire ecosystems of the oceans will fall, and when that happens all of the world will be in hurt, we need the water; we need the ocean to survive. So by helping to save these marvelous beings you are actually helping yourself to live in a world that you want.

One defense of the fishermen is that the dolphins are depopulating their fish, but if this was the case why do they drive the dolphins for miles offshore to the shore? The fish are close to inland as well and the dolphins do not come that close on their own typically to eat. Also why do they eat the dolphin meat and say that it is part of their culture when half of the population does not know that they are eating dolphins? It is not part of their culture; it is strictly part of their economy and a way for them to make money. Dolphin meat also contains very high amounts of mercury, more so than regular fish and because of this and the mislabeling that the fisheries do, the general public of Japan who eat this meat unknowingly to them are causing them to become very ill with mercury poisoning. This is not just unfair to the dolphins but when you start endangering the lives of you own kind for an “economic profit” you are not doing a good deed.

Overall the slaughter in Taiji that takes place does not seem to help anyone aside from the selfish and greedy. These people are all what is wrong with the world as a whole, taking what they can because they can and not thinking about the consequences of their actions or who they are hurting. Any argument that is brought up in support of the Taiji slaughter does not seem logical and can be refuted in a matter of minutes. There is no real need for Japan to make money this way as they have several other million dollar ways of making the money they need to sustain their economy. Aquariums around the world do not need dolphins at them however much tourist attractions they are. We should not raise our children to live in a world where you can literally pay to see the beauty stripped from it. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the Oceanic Preservation Society and a few other groups realize the beauty in true nature and want to preserve and protect it, especially with creatures that are so amazing in several ways. The Taiji slaughter needs to end, and we all have a choice, to help or not to help.

Works Cited

The Cove. Perf. Ric O' Barry. 2008. 2009. DVD.

Kupiers, Dean. "Sea Shepherd activist arrested filming cove dolphins - Los Angeles Times." Los Angeles Times Articles. Los Angeles Times, 5 Jan. 2012. Web. 13 Apr. 2013.

Oceanic Preservation Society. "Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji." Oceanic Preservation Society- Home. Oceanic Preservation Society, 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2013.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. "Cove Guardians - Sea Shepherd." Sea Shepherd International. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Mar. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.

Watson, Paul. "The Dolphins of Iki." Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas. Toronto, Canada: Key Porter Books, 1994. Print.

Rob White: Interview with Manuel Alberto Claro

Interview with Manuel Alberto Claro
by Rob White
Film Quarterly



Cinematographer for Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Manuel Alberto Claro was born in Santiago, Chile in 1970. His family moved to Denmark in 1974, after the Pinochet coup. Having graduated from the European Design Institute, Milan, he worked in his twenties as a photographer’s assistant in Copenhagen and New York. At age 27, he changed tack and studied cinematography at the Danish National Film School. His second feature in his new professional capacity, Reconstruction (Christoffer Boe, 2003), gained the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, and Claro’s career has gone from strength to strength. Melancholia won the award for best film at the 2011 European Film Awards, with Claro taking the cinematography prize. He is due to collaborate again with von Trier on the director’s next project, The Nymphomaniac.

“My aim is to make images that are in love with the story and not with themselves,” Claro told Idol Magazine, adding that his professional role model is Harris Savides, whose credits include Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007) and Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005): “If you can create poetic images, full of texture and emotional presence, out of something trivial, then you are good,” said Claro.

Melancholia has its own wedding and last day, and neither event ends in celebration. The marriage between Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) goes off the rails before it can even be consummated (Justine prefers a roll in the golf-bunker sand with one of Michael’s colleagues), and Melancholia is bookended by slow-motion collisions between the eponymous renegade planet and Earth. Yet von Trier’s anti-disaster film is neither tragic nor miserable. “When I left the theater and exited out into Cannes, I felt light, rejuvenated and unconscionably happy,” wrote the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman after a festival screening. My own reaction was rather similar. Despite its chaotic nuptials and global wipeout, Melancholia does not induce melancholia, at least if Freud’s description of the state in “Mourning and Melancholia” is to be taken as gospel: “profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love.”

Von Trier’s wry DVD commentary (in conversation with University of Copenhagen professor Peter Schepelern, included on the U.K. edition published by Artificial Eye) often zeroes in on transient pleasures, such as the improvised moment when Udo Kier, in the role of the thin-skinned Wedding Planner, lumbers after a flaming paper lantern as if out of empathy for the object’s own flimsy epidermis. The director also rues small infelicities that most viewers would never notice, such as CGI complexion-smoothing (“skin fixes”) that he now considers unsatisfactory. Since he also admits to so-called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, perhaps his focus on minutiae should be classed as pathological persnicketiness—but that would be to prefer armchair psychoanalysis to the beautiful variegation of Melancholia, to which Claro’s cinematography contributes so much.

It is an eccentric, rogue film that never obeys the usual rules of stylistic and emotional consistency. Paradoxes and incongruities abound from the start: the miniature drama of Justine opening her eyes against a background of avian rainfall is juxtaposed with a cosmic conflagration rendered as one liquescent heavenly body plunging into another. And if von Trier’s film embraces sci-fi, Wagner, uncanny tableaux, homages to Bergman and Tarkovsky, Dogme-style handheld jitteriness, there is also a long take of summer quiet as Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) dozes which is reminiscent, as Schepelern suggests during the commentary, of Rohmer’s bittersweet idylls. To dwell on such a detail, and to go further and think it more notable than the ensuing celestial firestorm, might after all involve a kind of melancholy, though one quite unfit for Freudianism.

To Read the Interview

Hostel (USA: Eli Roth, 2005)

Hostel (USA: Eli Roth, 2005: 94 mins)

Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010) [Available from your teacher]

Cromb, Brenda. "Gorno: Violence, Shock and Comedy." Cinephile #4 (Summer 2008)

Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)

Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)

Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." Jump Cut #50 (Summer 2008)

Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)

Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Torture (Archive on Dialogic: The culture and politics of "torture.")

The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi, 2009)

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that come along at a certain moment in time and presents a finely tuned presentation of where we may be heading as a global society. For lack of imagination this could be defined as eco-punk, with its vision of a future ecological catastrophes, isolationist societies seeking to resist predatory multinational agri-businesses, gene-rippers mucking with DNA of living creatures creating wonders and pestilence, calorie-men combing the globe to seek out local seed banks, and the creation of new people that might present a new possibility for life on earth or be the final stake in its heart. The story takes place in Thailand and Bacigalupi is great at bringing to life the society and the competing interests. A powerful story and great reading experience all the way through to the last page!

View all my reviews

Grizzly Man (USA: Werner Herzog, 2005)

Grizzly Man (USA: Werner Herzog, 2005: 103 mins)

Bramble, Serena. "Werner Herzog's View of Nature (video essay)." Press Play (February 13, 2015)

Carr, Jeremy. "Notebook Primer: Werner Herzog." Notebook (July 2, 2020) ["Becoming something of an existential philosopher in the process, Herzog’s career-long presentation of a mysterious, multifaceted world is an overwhelming collective exhibition. While he is not religious, his films — transcendent meditations on faith, superstition, and sublime experience — have a pronounced spiritual constitution. He finds humanity within pure chaos and mysticism in the ostensibly banal. Perhaps more than anything, however, Herzog is driven by an unceasing search for new visual encounters. As he notes when discussing the enigmatic mirages of Fata Morgana (1971), he remains occupied by a “quest for images that you haven’t really seen yet,” and, he affirms, “I’ve not stopped searching.”]

Geller, Conrad. "Grizzly Man." Cineaste (Winter 2005): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 158-159 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]

Harrison, Robert Pogue and Werner Herzog. "Werner Herzog Visits Another Look: The Movie!" Another Look (February 18, 2016)

Noys, Benjamin. "Antiphusis: Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man." Film-Philosophy 11.3 (November 2007)

Odorico, Stefano. Werner Herzog Between Documentary and Fiction Offscreen (March 31, 2010)

Palmer, Landon. "6 Filmmaking Tips From Errol Morris." Film School Rejects (September 25, 2013)

"Werner Herzog Links inc Youtube Fest." Film Studies for Free (April 20, 2009)

Caché (France/Austria/Germany/Italy/USA: Michael Haneke, 2005)

Caché (France/Austria/Germany/Italy/USA: Michael Haneke, 2005: 117 mins)

Arthur, Paul. "Endgame." Film Comment (November/December 2005)

Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.

---. "On the Films of Michael Haneke." The Marketplace of Ideas (April 15, 2010)

"Caché (Hidden) [2005] – Michael Haneke – the mechanisms of secrecy, amnesia and denial." Cutting on the Action (November 25, 2009)

Ebert, Roger. "Cache." Chicago Sun-Times (January 13, 2010)

Eggert, Brian. "The Definitives: Cache (2005)." Deep Focus Review (February 6, 2018)

Ford, Hamish. "From Otherness 'Over There' to Virtual Presence: Camp de Thiaroye - The Battle of Algiers - Hidden. Postcolonial Cinema Studies. ed. Sandra Ponzanesi & Marguerite Waller. NY: Routledge, 2012: 63-77. [Available in BCTC Library PN1995.9 P6 P68 2012]

Frey, Mattias. "Great Directors: Michael Haneke." Senses of Cinema #57 (2010)

Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

Grundman, Roy, Edward Nersessian, Brigitte Peucker, Brian Price, and Garrett Stewart. "Caché - Videoed roundtable discussion of Michael Haneke's film." Philoctetes Center (2008)

Jeong, Seung-hoon. "Gaze, Suture, Interface: The Suicide Scene in Michael Haneke’s Caché." Cinephile 5.1 (2009)

"Michael Haneke: A Ribbon of Links." Film Studies for Free (October 6, 2009)

"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Articles." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)

North, Dan. "Michael Haneke's Cache and the Politics of Privacy." Spectacular Attractions #3 (Posted on Youtube: March 17, 2013)

Ogrodnik, Benjamin. "Deep Cuts." Film International 7.1 (February 2009)

Pizzaro, David and Tamler Sommers. "But You Can't Hide: Michael Haneke's Cache." Very Bad Wizards (August 3, 2021) ["David and Tamler go deep on Michael Haneke’s unnerving psychological thriller Caché. An upper middle class French intellectual couple receives mysterious videotapes of the exterior of their house, forcing them to confront their past and present. Can we run from our history? Or will it always find a way to break through? And who’s sending the tapes? "]

Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.

Sammond, Nicholas. "'Hidden,' or Fear of a Black Planet." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)

Sternagel, Joerg. "From Inside Us: Experiencing the Film Actor in Michael Haneke's "Caché." Film International #39 (2009)

Tobias, Scott. "Gateway to Geekery: Michael Haneke." The A.V. Club (June 3, 2010)

Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]

Brokeback Mountain (Canada/USA: Ang Lee, 2005)

Brokeback Mountain (Canada/USA: Ang Lee, 2005)

Benshoff, Harry M. "Brokering Brokeback Mountain — a local reception study." Jump Cut (2008)

Garrett, Daniel. "You Don't Know What Love Is." Film International #21 (2006)

Koziak, Barbara. "Shepherding Romance: Reviving the Politics of Romantic Love in Brokeback Mountain." Genders #50 (2009)

"Queer Cowboys: Alternative Space in "Brokeback Mountain." Film International (2006)

Schneider, Richard, Jr., et al. "Not Quitting Brokeback/Lost in Adaptation/The Hate Crime/Beyond the Mountain." Gay & Lesbian Review (May/June 2006): Reprinted in Annual Editions: Film 07/08 170-174 [Available in BCTC Library PN1993 A6285]

Sharrett, Christopher. "Death of the Strong, Silent Type: The Achievement of Brokeback Mountain." Film International 7.1 (February 2009)

Stamatopoulos, Irini. "Ang Lee's Cowboys: Fallen from Brokeback’s Paradise Lost." Offscreen (February 28, 2007)

Vicari, Justin. "Discovering America: Reflections on Brokeback Mountain." Jump Cut #49 (Spring 2007)

Still Life (China/Hong Kong: Jia Zhangke, 2006)

Still Life (China/Hong Kong: Jia Zhangke, 2006: 111 mins)

Dalle, Eric. "Narrating changes in topography: Still Life and the cinema of Jia Zhangke." Jump Cut #53 (Summer 2012)

Sukhdev, Sandhu. "'Slow cinema' fights back against Bourne's supremacy." The Guardian (March 9, 2012)

Xiao, Jiwei. "The Quest for Memory: Documentary and Fiction in Jia Zhangke’s Films." Senses of Cinema #59 (2011)

Pan's Labyrinth (Spain/Mexico: Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)

Offside (Iran: Jafar Panahi, 2006)

Offside (Iran: Jafar Panahi, 2006: 93 mins)

Ferdinand, Marilyn. Offside Ferdy on Films (May 23, 2010)

Hudson, David. "Jafar Panahi Sentenced to 6 Years in Jail, 20 Years of Silence." MUBI (December 20, 2010)

"Studies of Censorship and Cinema: In Solidarity with Jafar Panahi." Film Studies for Free (April 6, 2010)

The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)

Director’s Statement

German movies produced after the reunification generally, and strangely, depict the GDR (the German Democratic Republic or former East Germany) as funny or moving. Both my parents come from the East, so as a child, I was often in East Germany to visit friends and relatives. A cousin of my father’s had been named chief of protocol of Erich Honecker, the East German head of state and boss of the ruling S.E.D party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany). Other people we knew had very normal jobs, yet one could see the fear in all of them, right up to the end of the regime. Fear of the Stasi (The State Security), fear of the 100,000 highly trained employees whose sights were trained on one thing: “The Lives Of Others”: the lives of those who thought differently, who were too free spirited and above all, the artists and people working in the arts. Every aspect of life was recorded. There was no private sphere and nothing was sacred, not even one’s closest family members. I met Stasi victims who had been jailed and harassed in Hohenschonhausen (where the central detention center of the Stasi was located). I asked “unofficial agents” about their activities and I talked to documentary filmmakers who had worked on these topics.

In the film, each character asks questions that we confront every day: how do we deal with power and ideology? Do we follow our principles or our feelings? More than anything else, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.

--- Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck





The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006: 137 mins)

Ash, Timothy Garton. "The Stasi On Our Minds." The New York Review of Books (May 31, 2007)

Bamford, James. "They Know Much More Than You Think." The New York Review of Books (August 15, 2013)

Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]

Brockmann, Stephen. "Das Leben der anderen (2006) or the Power of Art." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 488-500. [Professor has copy of the book]

Bromwich, David. "Diary: The Snowden Case." The London Review of Books 35.13 (July 4, 2013)

Coulter, Jerry. "Visual Story Telling and History as a Great Toy -- The Lives of Others." Wide Screen 1.2 (June 2010)

Cox, Harvey and Jonathan Steele, reply by Timothy Garton Ash. "‘The Stasi on Our Minds’: An Exchange." The New York Review of Books (May 31, 2007)

Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)

Garcia-Mainar, Luis M. "The Return of the Realist Spy Film." Cineaction #88 (2012)

Hansen, Per Krogh. "Unreliable Narration in Cinema: Facing the Cognitive Challenge Arising from Literary Studies." Amsterdam International Electronic Journal of Narratology #5 (Autumn 2009)

Hoffgen, Maggie. "The Other Germany: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006). Studying German Cinema. London: Auteur, 2009: 201-213. [Available in BCTC library]

Horn, Eva. "Media of Conspiracy: Love and Surveillance in Fritz Lang and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck." New German Critique 35.1 (Spring 2008)

Jennings, Tom. "Rehabilitating Big Brother." Libcom (August 12, 2007)

"The Lives of Others: East Germany Revisited." GHI Bulletin 41 (Fall 2007)

Nordlinger, Jay. "Florian's World." National Review (April 7, 2008)

Ring, Annie. The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). BFI Film Classics, 2022. ["This study offers a fresh approach to the remarkable German film The Lives of Others (2006), known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he begins spying on a playwright and his actress lover. Annie Ring analyses the film's cinematography, mise-en-scène and editing, tracing connections with Hollywood movies such as Casablanca and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain in the film's portrayal of an individual rebelling against a brutal dehumanising regime. Drawing on archival sources, including primary research from the Stasi files themselves, as well as Enlightenment philosophies of art and Brecht's theories on theatre dating from his GDR years, she explores the film's strong but much-disputed claims to historical authenticity. She examines the way the film tracks the world-changing political shift that took place at the end of the Cold War – away from the collective dreams of socialism and towards the dreams of the private individual, arguing that this is what makes it at once widely appealing and fascinatingly problematic. In doing so, she highlights why The Lives of Others is a crucial film for thinking at the horizon between film and recent world history."]

Steyning, Anthony. "The Lives of Others." (Personal Website: No Date)

"Security/Security Agencies/Surveillance: Peace and Conflict Studies Archive." Dialogic (Ongoing Archive)

Films We Want to See #26: Now You See Me (France/USA: Louis Leterrier, 2013)

Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven, 2006)

Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven, 2006: 145 mins)

Barton-Fumo, Margaret. "Paul Verhoeven." The Film Comment (November 15, 2016) ["What are the uncanny forces at work behind Paul Verhoeven’s visceral and transgressive cinema? In anticipation of the Film Society’s complete retrospective of the Dutch master’s films and the U.S. release of Elle, this episode offers a comprehensive discussion of the director’s audacious and eclectic career encompassing art-house Dutch films (Turkish Delight [1971], Spetters [1980]) and big-budget Hollywood productions such as Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). In the first part of the podcast, Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca sits down with a panel of Verhoeven connoisseurs, including Cinema Scope critic Adam Nayman, Film Comment Deep Cuts columnist Margaret Barton-Fumo (also the editor of a forthcoming book of interviews with Verhoeven), and Fort Buchanan director Benjamin Crotty, to tackle the controversy that lies at the core of Verhoeven’s work. In the final part of the episode, Margaret Barton-Fumo speaks to Verhoeven about the uncomfortable eroticism that pervades Elle and his Brechtian influences."]

Carlin, Dan. "Logical Insanity." Hardcore History #42 (March 31. 2012)

Cribbs, John, James Hancock and Leanne Kubicz. "The Cinema of Paul Verhoeven." Wrong Reel #200 (November 2016)

Howard, Ed. "TOERIFIC: Black Book." Only the Cinema (July 20, 2009)

Judt, Tony. "The Legacy of War" and "Retribution" from Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. NY: Penguin, 2006: 13-63. [Your professor has a copy].

Children of Men (Japan/UK/USA: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)

Children of Men (Japan/UK/USA: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006: 109 mins)

Baishya, Anirban Kapil. "Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction & the Post-Human." Wide Screen 3.1 (June 2011)

Boyle, Kirk. "Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Chaudhary, Zahid R. "Humanity Adrift: Race, Materiality, and Allegory in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men." Camera Obscura 24.3 (2009)

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Unpeople: Postcolonial Reflections on Terror, Torture and Detention in Children of Men." Postcolonial Cinema Studies. ed. Sandra Ponzanesi & Marguerite Waller. NY: Routledge, 2012: 191-204. [Available in BCTC Library PN1995.9 P6 P68 2012]

"Children of Men: Alfonso Cuarón’s Bleak but Genius Vision of the Past, Present and the Future." Cinephilia & Beyond (ND)

"Children of Men: The Repetition of the Ringing." Film International (2007)

Gessen, Keith. "Dystopia." Bookforum (June - August, 2010)

Hardy, Robert. "Renowned Gaffer John Higgins Reveals Secrets Behind Lighting Some of Hollywood's Biggest Films." No Film School (November 12, 2013)

Kunkel, Benjamin. "Dystopia and the End of Politics." Dissent (Fall 2008)

Nixon, Bryan. "The Long Take: Finding Hope Amongst the Chaos." Film International (2007)

Price, David H. "Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam's Brazil Through the 9/11 Looking Glass." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 167-182. [Copy in BCTC Library]

Puschak, Evan. "Children of Men: Don't Ignore the Background." (Posted on Youtube: September 9, 2015) [MB: This was a powerful film that looked to the future to examine the global politics of 2006 when it was released (highlighted even more by the collection of philosophers/theorists that provided commentaries on the imagery/narrative in the original DVD edition), and, as Evan Puschak demonstrates in this video essay, its relevance has only increased over the next decade. This analysis includes references to our current social/political issues to demonstrate its continuing relevance.  Don't ignore the background (context) - could be applicable in our own attempts to understand the issues of the world.]

Riesman, Abraham. "The Vulture Transcript: Alfonso Cuarón on Children of Men." Vulture (January 6, 2017)

Rodriquez-Cuervo, Ana Yamel. "Are We Living in the Dawning of Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men." Tribeca (November 30, 2015)

Schwartzman, Sarah. "Children of Men and a Plural Messianism." Journal of Religion & Film 13.1 (April 2009)

Udden, James. "Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization." Style 43.1 (Spring 2009)

Zizek, Slavoj. "On Children of Men." (Extra from DVD posted on YouTube September 9, 2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007: 106 mins)

Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Documenting The Dark Side: Torture and The “War On Terror” in Zero Dark Thirty, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure." Screening the Past (October 2013)

Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]

Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)

Gosztola, Kevin. "Obama Employs Bush Administration Tactic, Blocks Photos." Open Salon (May 14, 2009)

Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)

Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)

Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)

Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. NY: Harper Colophon, 1978. [excerpts from pages 15-33]

Torture Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Funny Games (Austria: Michael Haneke, 1997);Funny Games (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2007)

Funny Games (Austria: Michael Haneke, 1997: 108 mins)

Funny Games (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2007: 111 mins)

Bradley, S.A. "Killed by Death." Hellbent for Horror #33 (February 27, 2017)

Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.

Dawson, Mike. "Comparative Examination: Funny Games and Funny Games U.S." Left Field Cinema (February 27, 2009)

Frey, Mattias. "Great Directors: Michael Haneke." Senses of Cinema #57 (2010)

Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

Hui, Daniel. "Fun and Games: On Michael Haneke's 2007 Remake of His 1997 Funny Games." Bright Lights Film Journal #61 (August 2008)

"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)

North, Dan. "Funny Games Funny Games." Spectacular Attractions (October 15, 2009)

Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.

Rapp, David. "Seeing Double: Funny Games." Keyframe (Posted on Vimeo: 2016)

Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)

Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania: Cristian Mungiu, 2007)

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania: Cristian Mungiu, 2007: 113 mins)

Mungiu, Cristian. "Oppression and Abortion in Mungiu's '4 Months'." Fresh Air (February 7, 2008)

Parvulescu, Consantin. "The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Ratner, Megan. "Stunted Lives: Unsettling and Unmissable. Bright Lights Film Journal #59 (February 2008)

Roddick, Nick. "Eastern Promise." Sight and Sound (October 2007)

Roman, Denise. "Film Notes: Three Romanian Movies (On Belonging and Corporeality in the New Wave of Romanian Cinema)." UC Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. (April 1, 2008)

Waltz With Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008)

Waltz With Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008: 90 Mins)

Baker, Nicholson, et al. "Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self." Philoctetes (December 13, 2008)

Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]

Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]

Folman, Ari. "Waltz with Bashir." Worldview (January 23, 2009)

Hallinan, Chris. "The Lebanon Border: "Uniquely" Dangerous." Foreign Policy in Focus (September 1, 2010)

Kamiya, Gary. "What Waltz With Bashir can teach us about Gaza: The stunning new Israeli film reveals painful parallels between one of Israel's darkest moments and the current conflict." Salon (January 13, 2009)

Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)

Polonsky, David, et al. Waltz with Bashir: The Art Director’s Cut at War. Open Source (April 17, 2009)

Rozenkrantz, Jonathan. "Colourful Claims: towards a theory of animated documentary." Film International (May 6, 2011)

Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008)

Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008: 116 mins)

Andrews, David. "Reframing Standard Operating Procedure: Errol Morris and the creative treatment of Abu Ghraib." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)

Boxer, Sarah. "Al and Abu Ghraib." Los Angeles Review of Books (March 21, 2018)

Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010)

Butler, Judith. "Torture and the Ethics of Photography." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space #25 (2007): 951 - 966.

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Documenting The Dark Side: Torture and The “War On Terror” in Zero Dark Thirty, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure." Screening the Past (October 2013)

Cockrell, Eddie. "Directors of the Year: Errol Morris." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 24-31.

Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]

Feld, Rob. "Errol Morris: Truth be Told." Directors Guild of America (Winter 2011)

Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)

Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)

Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)

Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)

Nichols, Bill. "Feelings of revulsion and the limits of academic discourse." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Palmer, Landon. "6 Filmmaking Tips From Errol Morris." Film School Rejects (September 25, 2013)

"Private Corporation May be Sued for Role in Abu Ghraib Torture, Judge Rules." Center for Constitutional Rights (February 21, 2018)

Rosenbaum, Ron. "Errol Morris: The Thinking Man's Detective." The Smithsonian (March 2012) ["The documentary filmmaker has become America's most surprising and provocative public intellectual."]

Rosenbaum, Ron. "Errol Morris: The Thinking Man's Detective." The Smithsonian (March 2012) ["The documentary filmmaker has become America's most surprising and provocative public intellectual."]

Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. NY: Harper Colophon, 1978. [excerpts from pages 15-33]

Torture Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Warren, Vincent. "Abu Ghraib 10 Years Later: Challenging Corporate Impunity for Torture." Truthout (April 28, 2014)

Williams, Linda. "“Cluster Fuck”: The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Slumdog Millionaire (UK: Danny Boyle, 2008)

Slumdog Millionaire (UK: Danny Boyle, 2008: 120 mins)

Anselmi, William and Sheena Wilson. "Slumdogging It: Rebranding the American Dream, New World Orders, and Neo-Colonialism." Film International (2008)

Banaji, Shakuntala. "Seduced ‘Outsiders’ versus Sceptical ‘Insiders’?: Slumdog Millionaire through its Re/Viewers." Participations 7.1 (May 2010)

James, Andrew, et al. "Danny Boyle." The Director's Club #123 (January 2017)

Ferguson, Susan. "Capitalist Childhood in Film: Modes of Critique." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)

"In Bombay [Mumbai] with Slumdog Millionaire." The Business (November 17, 2008)

Khair, Tabish. "The Ironies of Bollywood." 16:9 (April 2009)

Llosa, Alvaro Vargas. "A Bollywood Ending: What the overly PC critics of 'Slumdog Millionare' still don't understand." The New Republic (March 3, 2009)

Narain, Atticus. "Rethinking post-colonial representation after Slumdog Millionaire." Dark Matter (March 9, 2009)

Oh Danny Boyle Film Studies for Free (March 2, 2009)

Pandey, Anjali. "The Million Dollar Question: How Do You Sell English on the Silver Screen? - A Socio-Linguistic Analysis of Slumdog Millionaire." American (Fall 2010)

Revanche (Austria: Götz Spielmann, 2008)

Revanche (Austria: Götz Spielmann, 2008: 121 mins)

Ashbury, Roy. "Prostitution." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 115-142. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]

Spielman, Götz. "DVD OF THE WEEK & PODCAST: Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)." Green Cine Daily (February 18, 2009)

Totaro, Donato. "Revanche (2008, Götz Spielman)-- A Matter of Stillness." Offscreen (February 28, 2010)

White, Armond. "Revanche:
Revival of the Fittest." The Criterion Collection (February 11, 2010)

Bluegrass Film Society: Ongoing Pool of Films

Summer 2014 Series: Celine and Julie Go Boating; Platform; Andrei Rublev; Colossal Youth; The Thin Blue Line
Army of Crime (France: Robert Guédiguian, 2009: 139 mins)
Andrei Rublev (Soviet Union: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966: 205 mins)
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (France/Canada/Italy: Jean-François Richet, 2008: 113 mins)
Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (France/Canada: Jean-François Richet, 2008: 133 mins)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (West Germany: Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975: 106 mins)
The Music Room (India: Satyajit Ray, 1958: 95 mins)
How To Survive a Plague (USA: David France, 2012: 110 mins)
The Warped Ones (Japan: Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960: 75 mins) [Suggested by Mitch Snider]
The Forsaken Land (Sri Lanka/France: Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2005: 108 mins)
White Material (France/Cameroon: Claire Denis, 2009: 106 mins)
Millennium Mambo (Taiwan/France: Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001: 119 mins)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (France: Jacques Rivette, 1974: 193 mins)
Heartbeat Detector (France: Nicolas Klotz, 2007: 143 mins)
Read My Lips (France: Jacques Audiard, 2001: 115 mins)
The Ballad of Narayama (Japan: Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958: 98 mins)
The Weeping Meadow ( Greece | France | Italy | Germany: Theodorous Angelopoulos, 2005: 170 mins)
Maîtresse (France: Barbet Schroeder, 1975: 112 mins)
Heading South (France/Canada: Laurent Cantent, 2005: 108 mins)
Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964: 137 mins)
Sugar (USA/Dominican Republic: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2008: 114 mins)
The Decameron (Italy/France/West Germany: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971: 112 mins)
Platform (Hong Kong/China/Japan/France: Jia Zhangke, 2000: 154 mins)
Love Affair, Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Yugoslavia: Dusan Makavejev, 1967: 70 mins)
The Freethinker (Sweden: Peter Watkins, 1994: 276 mins)
Letter Never Sent (Soviet Union: Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959: 80 mins)
Suspiria (Italy: Dario Argento, 1977: 92 mins)
Departures (Japan: Yôjirô Takita, 2008: 130 mins)
Squatted Freedom (Netherlands: Joao Romao, 2012: 56 mins) (Suggested by Michael Marchman)
The Passion of Anna (Sweden, Ingmar Bergman, 1969: 101 mins)
Lord of the Flies (UK: Peter Brooks, 1963: 92 mins)
The Canterbury Tales (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972: 140 mins)
After Life (Japan: Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998: 118 mins)
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (UK: D.A. Pennebaker, 1973: 90 mins)
Arabian Nights (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1974: 130 mins)
Germany Year Zero (Italy/France/Germany: Roberto Rossellini, 1948: 78 mins)
The Conformist (Italy/France/West Germany: Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970: 111 mins)
Gigante (Uruguay/Argentina/Germany/Spain/Netherlands: Adrián Biniez, 2009: 84 mins)
3-Iron (South Korea/Japan: Kim Ki-Duk, 2004: 88 mins)
Entranced Earth (Brazil: Glauber Rocha, 1967: 111 mins)
Naked Lunch (Canada/UK/Japan: David Cronenberg, 1991: 115 mins)
The Seventh Seal (Sweden: Ingmar Bergman, 1957: 96 mins)
Habermann (Germany/Czech Republic/Austria: Juraj Herz, 2010: 104 mins)
Marketa Lazarova (Czechoslovakia: Frantisek Vlácil, 1967: 180 mins)
3 Idiots (India: Rajkumar Hirani, 2009: 170 mins)
The State I Am In (Germany: Christian Petzold, 2000: 106 mins)
Sans Soleil (France: Chris Marker, 1983: 100 mins)
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Germany: Marc Rothemund, 2005: 120 mins)
Waking Life (USA: Richard Linklater, 2001: 99 mins)
The Elementary Particles (Germany: Oskar Roehler, 2006: 113 mins)
Katalin Varga (Romania/UK: Peter Strickland, 2009: 82 mins)
The Forgiveness of Blood (USA/Albania/Denmark/Italy: Joshua Marston, 2011: 109 mins)
Savages (USA: James Ivory, 1972: 106 mins)
Stalker (Soviet Union: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979: 163 mins)
Zelary (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Austria: Ondrej Trojan, 2003: 150 mins)
The Secret of the Grain (France: Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007: 151 mins)
The Last Temptation of Christ (USA/Canada: Martin Scorsese, 1988: 164 mins)
Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico: Alfonso Arau, 1992: 105 mins)
World on a Wire (West Germany: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973: 212 mins)
The Wages of Fear (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953: 147 mins)
A Hard Day's Night (UK: Richard Lester, 1964: 87 mins)
Her Name is Sabine (France: Sandrine Bonnaire, 2007: 85 mins)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Soviet Union: Sergei Paradjanov, 1965: 97 mins)
The Holy Girl (Argentina/Italy/Netherlands/Spain: Lucrecia Martel, 2004: 106 mins)
The Makioka Sisters (Japan: Kon Ichikawa, 1983: 140 mins)
Tokyo Drifter (Japan: Seijun Suzuki, 1966: 82 mins)
Synecdoche, New York (USA: Charlie Kaufman, 2008: 124 mins) [Suggested by English Roberts]
The Way I Spent the End of the World (Romania/France: Catalin Mitulescu, 2006: 106 mins)
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (UK/Japan: Nagisa Ôshima, 1983: 123 mins)
The Double Life of Veronique (France/Poland/Norway: Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991: 98 mins)
Lust, Caution (Taiwan/USA/Hong Kong/China: Ang Lee, 2007: 157 mins)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Italy/USA: Sergio Leone, 1968: 165 mins)
The Ascent (Soviet Union: Larisa Shepitko, 1977: 109 mins)

Let the Right One In (Sweden: Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Let the Right One In (Sweden: Tomas Alfredson, 2008: 115 mins)

In early 1980s Stockholm, as a Soviet sub runs aground in violation of Sweden’s borders, meek 12-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), engaged in his own Cold War with vicious bullies, practically conjures his new neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson), who helps him realise his closeted fantasies of revenge. Adapting the 2004 novel of John Ajvide Lindqvist, Tomas Alfredson merges pre-adolescent angst and timeless vampiric longing. In its cool distance, this is almost the anti-Twilight, perfectly nailing the pain of growing up, the beauty of melancholy and the irresistibility of violence. Miraculously, the results manage to be utterly unsentimental yet still deeply moving. – Anton Bitel

Benton, Michael Dean. ""Be Me, for Awhile" -- Ideological Becoming and Future Objectivity in Let the Right One In." (2009) Dialogic Cinephilia (September 12, 2014)

Bilson, Anne. "The Vampire as Metaphor." Screen Studies (Excerpted from Bilson's book Let the Right One In: "Audiences can't get enough of fang fiction. Twilight, True Blood, Being Human, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, Underworld, and the novels of Anne Rice and Darren Shan—against this glut of bloodsuckers, it takes an incredible film to make a name for itself. Directed by Tomas Alfredson and adapted for the screen by John Ajvide Lindqvist, The Swedish film Làt den rätte komma in (2008), known to American audiences as Let the Right One In, is the most exciting, subversive, and original horror production since the genre's best-known works of the 1970s. Like Twilight, Let the Right One In is a love story between a human and a vampire—but that is where the resemblance ends. Set in a snowy, surburban housing estate in 1980s Stockholm, the film combines supernatural elements with social realism. It features Oskar, a lonely, bullied child, and Eli, the girl next door. "Oskar, I'm not a girl," she tells him, and she's not kidding—she's a vampire. The two forge an intense relationship that is at once innocent and disturbing. Two outsiders against the world, one of these outsiders is, essentially, a serial killer. What does Eli want from Oskar? Simple companionship, or something else? While startlingly original, Let the Right One In could not have existed without the near century of vampire cinema that preceded it. Anne Billson reviews this history and the film's inheritence of (and new twists on) such classics as Nosferatu (1979) and Dracula (1931). She discusses the genre's early fliration with social realism in films such as Martin (1977) and Near Dark (1987), along with its adaptation of mythology to the modern world, and she examines the changing relationship between vampires and humans, the role of the vampire's assistant, and the enduring figure of vampires in popular culture."]

Bricklemeyer, Kris, Kyler Fey, and Mike White. "Let the Right One In (2008)." The Projection Booth #592 (October 19, 2022) ["Shocktober 2022 continues with a look at Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (2008). Based on the book and adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist, it’s the story of Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a young boy who’s being picked on at school. When a vampire, Eli (Lina Leandersson), and her helper move into the apartment next door, things change for young Oskar. Kyler Fey and Chris Bricklemyer join Mike to discuss this unusual vampire film as well as its American remake."]

Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In, Sweden 2008) The Case for Global Film (April 30, 2009)

Kuerstein, Erich. "Swedish Death, American Style." Acidemic #7 (2012)

The Let the Right One In Issue Little White Lies #22 (2009)

Prewitt, Zach. "The Best Horror Cinema of the 21st Cinema." (Posted on Vimeo: October 2016)

Rapold, Nicholas and Matt Zoller Seitz. "A History of Creepy Kids on Film." The L Magazine (August 3, 2009)

Rehlin, Gunnar. "Directors of the Year: Tomas Alfredson." International Film Guide: 2012. 48th Edition. [BCTC Library: PN 1993.3 I544 2012]

Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Come As You Are: Let the Right One In (2008)." Faculty of Horror #56 (December 20, 2017)

Wright, Rochelle. "Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity." Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 1.1 (2010)

The Hurt Locker (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)

The Hurt Locker (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008: 131 mins)

Alpert, Robert. "The Hurt Locker litigation: An adult’s story—part 2." Jump Cut #57 (Fall 2016)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Kathryn Bigelow's Wild Men: Gender in The Hurt Locker." North of Center (2008: Reposted on The Smirking Chimp, March 4, 2010)

Kemp, Philip. "Directors of the Year: Kathryn Bigelow." International Film Guide:2010 ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. NY: Wallflower Press, 2010: 17-24. [Professor has copy]

Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)

Peebles, Stacey. "Stories from the Suck: The First Wave of Iraq War Narratives." Berfois (April 15, 2011)

Stork, Mattias. "Chaos Cinema: The Decline and Fall of Action Filmmaking." Press Play (August 22, 2011)

Hunger (UK/Ireland: Steve McQueen, 2008)

Hunger (UK/Ireland: Steve McQueen, 2008: 96 mins)

Addley, Esther. "A great right hook of a role: Michael Fassbender tells [on] how he braved controversy and lost 16kg to play hunger striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's new film." The Guardian (October 31, 2008)

Bacal, Edward. "Sharon Lockhart and Steve McQueen: Inside the Frame of Structural Film." Cineaction #91 (2013)

Bennett, Ronan. "Life and death in Long Kesh: Held in the notorious Northern Irish jail in the 70s, Ronan Bennett recalls the gas attacks, the beatings, the smell - and the jokes - and applauds Steve McQueen's haunting new film about its best-known inmate, IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands." The Guardian (October 22, 2008)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008): A Powerful Exploration of Political Resistance and Retributive Justice." Uprooting Criminology (December 2, 2013)

Bradshaw, Peter. "Hunger." The Guardian (October 30, 2008)

Conrath, Ryan. "Interview: Editor Joe Walker on 12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Shame, and More." Bright Lights Film Journal (April 30, 2014)

Cox, David. "Hunger Strikes a Very Sour Note." The Guardian (November 3, 2008)

Darke, Chris. "Hunger: On the Threshold." The Current (February 17, 2010)

French, Philip. "Hunger." The Guardian (Nivember 1, 2008)

Gregory, Derek. "Legendary Comedian Dick Gregory on Hunger Strike to Protest Capital Punishment, Death of Troy Davis." Democracy Now (October 3, 2011) [Cites Bobby Sands and IRA prison hunger strikes as inspiration]

Hoberman, J. "The Excruciating Details of Death-by-Starvation in Hunger." The Village Voice (March 18, 2009)

"Hunger: Life Inside the Maze." Channel 4 (2012)

"Hunger Q & A: Steve McQueen at New York Film Festival." (Posted on YouTube: October 6, 2008)

"Hunger: The Morning Routine." Channel 4 (2012)

Lennon, Joseph. "'Dreams that hunger makes’: Memory and the origins of the hunger strike." UCD Humanities Institute (2016)

Lim, Dennis. "History Through an Unblinking Lens." The New York Times (March 8, 2009)

"The Making of Hunger with Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender, & more." A Bittersweet Life (2013)

"McQueen, Beyond Hunger." The Current (March 2, 2010)

McQueen, Steve. "On Hunger." Channel 4 (2012)

---. "The Power of Cinema." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014)

Morgan, Jason. "'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland." History for the Future (March 2, 2010)

O'Hagan, Sean. "Hunger: The Real Maze Men Speak." The Guardian (October 19, 2008)

---. "McQueen and country: He has won the Turner Prize, been a war artist in Iraq, and is campaigning to put the heads of dead British soldiers on stamps. Now Steve McQueen has made a stunning film about the harrowing lead-up to the starving to death of IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, including a scene that moved him to tears on the set." The Guardian (October 12, 2008)

Onesto, Li. "California's Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strike: "We Are Human Beings!" Global Research (July 18, 2011)

Shelton, Lynn. "The Film That Changed My Life: Hunger by Steve McQueen (2008)." The Guardian (April 3, 2010)

Sobchack, Vivian. "What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh." Senses of Cinema (April 2000)

"Steve McQueen: 5 Minute Guide." Channel 4 (2012)





MICHAEL FASSBENDER - First Years in Movies from Brutzelpretzel on Vimeo.

Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008)

Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008: 137 mins)

Ahmed, Omar. "GOMORRAH (Dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008, Italy) - The Italian Renaissance." Ellipsis (October 23, 2008)

Bochenski, Matt. "Gomorrah." Little White Lies (October 10, 2008)

Bradshaw, Peter. "Gomorrah." The Guardian (October 9, 2008)

Cilento, Fabrizio. "Saviano, Garrone, Gomorrah: Neorealism and Noir in the Land of the Camorra." Fast Capitalism 8.1 (2011)

Curti, Roberto. "File Under Fire: A brief history of Italian crime films." Offscreen (November 30, 2007)

Gamman, Lorraine. "If Looks Could Kill: On gangster suits and silhouettes." Moving Image Source (May 8, 2012)

Greenburg, Kathryn Elizabeth. "Rewriting Historical Neorealism in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah." (A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Romance Languages, 2010.)

Ivey, Prudence. "Gomorrah Actors Arrested." Little White Lies (October 13, 2008)

Jenkins, Steven. "Grande Fratello Is Watching You: Matteo Garrone’s tough guys, little men and scheming dreamers face up to reality." Keyframe (February 14, 2014)

Larrea, Carlotta. "Nightmare in the Sun: Mateo Garrone’s Gomorrah." Senses of Cinema (November 2012)

Ming, Wu. "The New Italian Epic." Opening talk @ the conference "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic." Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK. (October 2, 2008)

Saviano, Roberto. Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System. NY: Picador, 2007. [Your professor has a copy you can check out.]

Sragow, Michael. "The Shape of Corruption." Current (September 18, 2017)

Stephens, Chuck. "Gomorrah: Terminal Beach." Criterion (November 23, 2009)

The Class (France: Laurent Cantent, 2008)

The Class (France: Laurent Cantent, 2008: 128 mins)

Ashbury, Roy. "Schools and Teachers." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 51-74. [Available in BCTC library PN1995 U4977 2005]

Chen, Lu. "I Hate Mathematics and Racists." The Brooklyn Rail (March 2009)

Livingston, Jessica. "Global capital’s false choices in the films of Laurent Cantet." Jump Cut #53 (Summer 2012)