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The Assamese film Kothanodi (2015) radically demonstrates how film adapts to folklore, rather than the other way around. It actively contributes to the folkloric tradition, notably through its commitment to establishing a thoroughly material sense of premodern Assamese life. This grounds the representation of its folkloric narratives in a tangible ecology, bringing the grain of lived experience to material that might otherwise appear to be fantastical, If things horrify in Kothanodi, they do so out of recognition rather than shock, If the film features tricksterish phenomena, as in its account of a woman giving birth to an outenga, known in English as elephant apple, it also incorporates such tricksterism into its own methods, querying its own representation of reality and productively disturbing its audience. Similarly, violence takes many forms in the film. It can be customary and ancestral, superstitious or avaricious, intergenerationally transgressive or simply malicious. The audience is left uncertain how to decode all of it, other than to acknowledge that such material contains more truths and problems than might initially be realized. Such an adept appropriation of folkloric uncertainty into cinema not only captured an international audience for Kothanodi but also engendered the emergence of further interpretive routes, especially within online fan communities. Rather than reading Kothanodi as the auteurist product of its director Bhaskar Hazarika, it can instead be seen as part of an ongoing folkloric enterprise, an expression of the practical magic of a folkloric aesthetic. Keywords: folklore--tricksters--horror--infanticide--adaptation--retelling--violence, In Ram Venkat Srikar's online review of the Assamese film Kothanodi (2015), he cited how the great Italian director Dario Argento paid tribute to the capacity of the horror genre [...]

Las películas Signs, The Village y The Lady in the Water, de M. Night Shyamalan, tienen como tema central la búsqueda de refugio ante situaciones de violencia y pueden entenderse como actualizaciones del topos de la guarnición según lo definió Northrop Frye. La protección que ofrecen estos refugios no es sin embargo absoluta y los personajes de Shyamalan deben enfrentarse a la amenaza de criaturas monstruosas que pueden entenderse como proyecciones de experiencias traumáticas, provocadas en parte por los ataques terroristas de septiembre de 2001 e, incluso en mayor medida, por la percepción del propio Shyamalan de una violencia social incontrolada en la sociedad de los Estados Unidos. Palabras clave: M. Night Shyamalan; trauma cultural; terapia del trauma; violencia; mentalidad de la guarnición; monstruos en el cine This paper argues that M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, The Village and The Lady in the Water turn around the need to find refuge from violence, in an updated version of Northrop Frye's garrison motif. The protection that these refuges offer is nevertheless put to the test by the presence of threatening, monstrous creatures. These creatures can be defined as projections of two traumatic experiences: on the one hand, the terrorist attacks of September 2001; on the other, and more significantly, the violence that, according to Shyamalan, is rampant in North American society. Keywords: M. Night Shyamalan; cultural trauma; trauma therapy; violence; garrison mentality; monsters in film, Traumatic Seclusion in M. Night Shyamalan's Garrison Trilogy: Signs (2002), The Village (2004) and The Lady in the Water (2006) M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999) was a phenomenal [...]

IN ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC SCENES in Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter (2011), a film about a construction worker who begins to have nightmares involving an impending storm, the protagonist [...]

This article positions Christian Petzold's feature Undine (2020) in relation to German Romanticism. It considers the film as a turning point in Petzold's oeuvre, offering a way out of alienation: love engenders a comportment that is radically different from the rules of existence dictated by capitalism, the schedules and demands that mold life into a rigid form. The fluidity of water, I argue, is an analogy for a different mode of life--a floating that mirrors his own desired mode of creativity and contemplation, described by him as 'a state of hovering' and by others as 'abeyance.' But who can float above the neoliberal city, and who must go on kicking to keep from drowning? Through this question, a different kind of romanticism can be glimpsed, one that is less resolved than Undine might suggest., A FAIRY TALE FOR CAPITALISM At the Spree a stronghold of glass and steel towers, where the historicist facade of Lehrter Bahnhof once impressed Berlin's travelers with its palatial splendor. [...]

The familial romantic comedy extends the trajectory of the traditional rom-com into the wider family, further affirming the rom-com's reliance on heteronormative ideology, positing blood ties and a unified, cordial family unit as the ideal outcome for any coupling. But the comedic moments in familial rom-coms occur when the future-oriented trajectories of heteronormative couplings are ruptured and become incompatible with romance's warm fuzzy feelings and its optimistic look toward the future. Instead, comedy tears at the seams of heteronormative polite civility as a momentary rupture of its eventuality., MEET THE PARENTS (JAY ROACH. 2000) BEGINS WHERE MOST ROMANTIC COMEDIES END: with a proposal, albeit one that is soon abandoned once Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) learns that his prospective [...]

This article examines the disruptions seen between the London romantic comedy's depictions of pre- and post-digital urban space. Focusing on Richard Curtis's About Time (2013) as a pivotal case study, I analyze how the London rom-com has navigated the rapid integration of digital technologies within urban life since the genre's boom in the 1990s. I argue that the kinds of aesthetic and formal challenges to rom-com conventions seen in About Time in fact preserve the genre's central ideological underpinnings (and expectations of city space) in the face of the potentially unsettling or destructive impacts of digitization., THE BRITISH ROMANTIC-COMEDY GENRE SAW ASTONISHING SUCCESS IN THE LATTER HALF OF the 1990s. Emerging at a time of economic and cultural transformation in London, these films helped to reshape [...]

This essay reconstructs and analyzes the context of production for D. W. Griffith's The Idol Dancer (1920) and The Love Flower (1920), both filmed in South Florida shortly after Griffith Studios relocated from Hollywood to Mamaroneck, New York. By reconstructing production processes, this essay demonstrates that Griffith's ambitions exceeded his abilities. He was often indecisive when choosing filming locations, as exemplified by his capricious relationship with South Florida. The essay further argues that Griffith's overzealous ambition and geographical ambivalence correlates with his attempt to function independently when the industry shifted to a more producer-centered model post-World War I. KEYWORDS: D. W. Griffith, production culture, Florida, Bahamas, Most histories of D. W. Griffith focus on his output prior to 1916. The importance of formulaic developments like parallel action and close-ups, which are generally attributed to Griffith's single-reel [...]

Introduction What if a group of slaves murdered their overlords and returned home to find themselves targeted by a bounty hunter? What if the slaves were really bioengineered beings seeking [...]

IN THE EXTENSIVE BODY OF SCHOLARSHIP devoted to George Romero's groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead (1968), rarely has anyone asked an obvious question: who is Duane Jones? (1) [...]

This article explores connections between C.S. Lewis and filmmaker Terence Fisher, notably how their works explore themes like the charm of evil, white magic's dubious nature, and myth hinting at divine truths. By viewing these themes, Fisher and Lewis's common views on fairy tales, and how feedback informed their work, scholars discover nuance in the perceived 'Inklings versus secular British culture' dichotomy. Additional Keywords hammer horror; russell kirk; christopher lee; peter cushing; gothic horror; dennis wheatley; dark fantasy; roald dahl; david cronenberg; space trilogy; narnia; frankenstein; dracula; gorgon; the devil rides out; aleister crowley; order of the golden dawn, Mentioning C.S. Lewis and horror in the same sentence will shock some readers. Yes, Roman Catholic culture critic and ghost story writer Russell Kirk argues in 'A Cautionary Note on [...]

In Celia (1989), writer/director Ann Turner engages with the intersection between the public realm and the experience of everyday life. Presented from the perspective of child protagonist Celia Carmichael (Rebecca [...]

ONE OF ONLY A VERY FEW FEATURES MADE IN AUSTRALIA IN THE 1960S, LUDWIK DUTKIEWICZ AND IAN DAVIDSON'S LITTLESEEN AVANT-GARDE CREATION HAS LONG BEEN ABSENT FROM THE NATIONAL FILM CANON. [...]

Ingmar Bergman's 1960 Jungfrukallan (The Virgin Spring) is unusual among his films in that it does not derive from the auteur director's own, original screenplay but rather from a medieval [...]