The Evolution of the Monstrous: An Interview with Bong Joon-ho

Academy award-winning Director Bong Joon-ho has captivated the global audience with compelling takes on the concept of the monstrous. From his earliest film, Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), to his most recent Best Picture Winner Parasite (2019), each of his films explores personal and intimate experiences in monstrous societies. Bong Joon-ho speaks about his most personal works while examining his success of The Host (2006) and how this shifted perspectives on the monster movie genre in South Korea. Additionally, Bong discusses his creative process and future works with upcoming adaptations of his beloved films.

Hearing from Insiders

The focus of the three activities in this chapter is hearing directly about the lived experiences of people with disabilities. There are two activities that involve watching Academy Award–winning documentaries (King Gimp and Best Boy) and holding discussions in class. Specific questions about each documentary can help guide discussion. One activity has students interview a person with a disability using a disability interview protocol. A format for students to explore their own thoughts and emotions is included. For students eventually to be able to interact with clients with disabilities, they need to process their own emotional reactions to disability in a safe environment. Although not all three activities have to be completed, it might be best to have students respond to films prior to interviewing an individual with a disability to help destigmatize disability first.

Sagapò e Soldatesse: la Grecia degli invasori

Among the many authors who covered the Italian military occupation of Greece (1940-1943), Renzo Biasion and Ugo Pirro still stand out as being the most influential. Their books, halfway between memoir and fiction, tell the stories of soldiers living their youth in a dreamy yet dangerous world, where all men have been deported as war prisoners, and everyday products such as gasoline display Homer’s alfabet. The antifascism of Sagapò (1953), which inspired the Academy Award-winning film Mediterraneo (1991), and Le soldatesse (1956) lays therefore in the rediscovery of a common heritage, both ancient and modern.

Nilai-Nilai Shintoisme pada Perbedaan Warna dan Bentuk Gerbang Dunia Dewa di Awal dan Akhir Film Spirited Away Karya Studio Ghibli

Spirited Away is an animation made by Ghibli Studio on 2001 under Hayao Miyazaki direction. This movie awarded as The Best Animation by The 75th Academy Award. This movie tells about the journey of Chihiro, the protagonist who’s been “spirited away” to the spirit world. There’s a significant difference on the visual and surounding of the scene when Chihiro went inside the spirit world through the gate in the beginning of the movie and when she’s back from that world at the ending. Even it’s pretty clear that it is the same place, but the gate, the colors, material, and the environment seems to be different. This visual generate a long controversy, include of how excactly the story end. Question arise of the significant distinction on the visual of the gate between the scenes, like why on the beginning the color of the gate is red with some characteristic of Shinto’s Temple architectural, but then the gate at the ending is white and made from stone piles. Hayao Miyazaki as creator of the movie has never explicitely answer the question on this matter. This qualitative study using visual examination method on colors and material of the gates, from the perspective of Shinto’s and Japanese architecture, to know the reason behind the importance of differentiating the visual of the gates in the beginning and the ending of the movie.

1926 and Beyond

This chapter tracks Vitagraph's physical assets after its sale to Warner Bros., including the Brooklyn and Hollywood studios, as well as the actual films themselves, about 20% of which survive in archives. The post-Vitagraph activities of the company's founding partners is examined, from Blackton's profligacy that resulted in dire poverty, to Smith's second career as owner of the iconic Chateau Marmont hotel and receipt of an honorary Academy Award in recognition of his fundamental contributions to motion pictures. Several post-Vitagraph reunions and the fate of many of its key personnel are covered, including Margaret Gibson, a former ingénue at the Santa Monica and Hollywood studios who led an especially troubled existence. The chapter concludes with an in-depth discussion of how and why Vitagraph has been so utterly absent from the canon of film history.

African American Queer Cinema

African American queer cinema was born as a reaction to the AIDS/HIV epidemic as well as the blatant homophobia that existed within the Black community in the 1980s. It began with the pioneering works of queer directors Isaac Julien and Marlon Riggs and continued during the new queer cinema movement in the 1990s, particularly including the works of lesbian queer director Cheryl Dunye. However, these works were infinitesimal compared to the queer works featuring primarily White lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) protagonists during that time. That trend continues today as evidenced by looking at the highest-grossing LGBTQ films of all times: very few included any African American characters in significant roles. However, from the 1980s to the 2020s, there have been a few Black queer films that have penetrated the mainstream market and received critical acclaim, such as The Color Purple (Spielberg, 1982), Set It Off (Gary, 1996), and Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture. The documentary film genre has been the most influential in exposing audiences to the experiences and voices within the African American queer communities. Since many of these films are not available for viewing at mainstream theaters, Black queer cinema is primarily accessed via various cable, video streaming, and on-demand services, like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO.

Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain: Divulgence of Characters

British Guardian Prize winner and thrice nominated for Booker Prize, famous Indian novelist writing in English Anita Desai’s Sahitya Academy Award winning one of the masterpieces Fire on the Mountain published in1977. The book focuses on an elderly widow’s isolation and loneliness as it tells the story of Nanda Kaul who lives in Kasauli and leads a solitary existence. The old lady, Nanda lives alone in a colonial house on a slope. She gives nobody a chance to interfere with her secluded life. She had spent numerous years thinking about her husband, their kids, and numerous grandkids. She has turned into a loner and remains confined from everybody including an incredible grandkid. This is her circumstance until the point that the colossal grandkid touches base on her doorstep. Raka,a young girl who is wiped out and is as withdrawn as Nanda. The child lives in her very own kind of disconnection as she withdraws into a universe of inward dream where she makes undertakings of pursuing snakes, creatures, and phantoms in the serene slopes that encompass her and her incredible grandma. The old lady sees that both of them share things for all intents and purpose however that a noteworthy distinction exists also. Nanda has been a solitary person while the young lady was naturally introduced to that sort of presence. Nanda gradually starts to need to be a piece of the kid's life and needs to impart her reality to her. Her endeavours, be that as it may, seem, by all accounts, to be futile. Her awesome granddaughter will give nobody a chance to enter her life. Nanda is not debilitated and endeavours to associate with the child by imparting stories to her. Anita Desai talks of her writing as simply ‘stories,’ and of herself as a ‘storyteller’. In this very simple way she has beautifully painted the female characters and their sufferings in the novel Fire on the Mountain which is the focused area of this research article.

From Cannes to Cardboard: The Circulation and Promotion of Visages Villages and the Auteur on Instagram

This article explores the Instagram activities of Agnès Varda and her Visages Villages (Faces Places, France, 2017) codirector JR to consider the role of social media in the film's theatrical release and awards campaign, which led to the film's nomination for Best Documentary Feature—Varda's first and only Academy Award nomination. Through analysis of Varda's posts and her appearances on JR's Instagram, the author argues that social media complemented the film's conventional promotion while extending Varda's aesthetic practices and interests, offering one of the final examples of her consistent, enthusiastic experiments with new forms of media. On Instagram, Varda recycled and recontextualized the strategies of self-presentation and formal play seen in her documentaries for a different format, as she posted images and videos involving premieres, special events, and press coverage from her perspective. Throughout the film's release and awards campaign, social media began to function as an atypical way to draw attention to the film and its directors, especially for a low-budget documentary. The Visages Villages team merged traditional methods of achieving visibility with an unusual and intentional online presence, culminating in substantial coverage from new types of outlets when JR traveled to the Academy Awards luncheon with cardboard cutouts of Varda.

Bhabani Bhattacharya as a Novelist: A New Approach

Bhabani Bhattacharya, the Sahitya Academy Award winner is among the major Indian novelists writing in English. His literary fame is not confined to India alone. His books have been translated into 26 languages, including 16 European languages. Being a humanist, he is greatly moved by the poverty, hunger and sufferings of the people. In his novels, he has exposed the various social evils of modern men hunger for food and freedom, prostitution, exploitation, superstition, hoarding of foodgrains etc.