Stepping Up, and Out

The Fall 2018 issue of Film Quarterly was the first that I worked on as the journal’s associate editor. As a seasoned reader of the journal, and sometime contributor, I was excited to get my first peak under the hood of a publication I’d long admired. What I saw took me by surprise. The content—provocative, political, unapologetically engagé—was bracing but not unexpected, reflecting the vision B. Ruby Rich had brought to the journal since the start of her tenure as editor in chief five years earlier. No, what surprised me was the process: the high level of editorial care that Ruby lavished on journal contributors, the spirit of collaboration that powered the editorial team, the enthusiasm and energy generated by a supportive board. Film Quarterly was that rare thing—a true community—and I loved it immediately.Having had the privilege of serving as Ruby’s deputy for the past five years, I am honored to be stepping into her inimitable shoes (ruby slippers?) as the journal’s new editor in chief. I look forward to continuing her vision for a journal that is vital, timely, and inclusive, a place where young scholars can publish their first book review (as I did, back in 2006) and where established academics can enjoy writing in a more popular voice. Film Quarterly’s commitment to underrepresented works, diverse critical perspectives, and a spirit of discovery that extends across disciplinary boundaries, all in the service of spotlighting films and media of urgent, topical relevance, remains robust. The journal’s motto “Why this? Why now?” still stands.I am also dedicated to the journal’s position as a crossover publication that reaches beyond the academy to engage with a broader cinephile audience. One of the pleasures of my time at Film Quarterly has been working with our talented writers to bring their best ideas to the page in language unfettered by academic jargon. And I will continue Ruby’s efforts to ensure that the journal gets out there in the world by bringing together panels of scholars, curators, writers, and filmmakers for live events and webinars held with the invaluable support of the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Initiative.So, what changes can readers expect? While Film Quarterly has always welcomed historical reconsiderations and rediscoveries that illuminate our current moment, the journal could stand to publish a few more of them, at least from my perspective as a film historian. I would also love to include more work in translation from scholars and writers outside the United States, to enrich the field of film and media studies by expanding the conversation beyond the Anglophone community. In a similar, international vein, I would like to boost our film-festival coverage to include smaller festivals outside of the primary Sundance–Cannes–Toronto circuit. Other items on my personal wish list: more TV, female filmmakers, and French cinema. (I started my career in French-film programming, and the affection abides.)In all these endeavors, I will be working in close collaboration with Marc Francis, who has moved up the masthead from assistant to associate editor (and has his own personal wish list, I’m sure).My background as a film historian with a focus on film and politics, particularly those of the Hollywood Left, adds a special resonance to my attachment toward Film Quarterly. The journal’s origins lie in wartime Hollywood, when the antifascist Hollywood Writers’ Mobilization sponsored a Writers’ Congress at UCLA to discuss how leftist artists, academics, and film-industry intellectuals could come together to support the war effort and the new world order to follow. The Hollywood Quarterly was born at the Congress, its mission—in the words of its founding editors—to promote “a clearer understanding, not only of current techniques in the film and radio, but also of the social, educational, and aesthetic functions.” The journal’s founders were responding to the war, which, in highlighting the medium’s power as propaganda, prompted a renewed call for socially engaged filmmaking. They were also responding to a time of unprecedented labor unrest in Hollywood. The first issue of the Hollywood Quarterly was published in October 1945, a month that saw violence on the picket lines in the Conference of Studio Unions’ seven-month strike against the studios. As is often the case, history chimes with the present. 2023 proved to be another tumultuous period for labor in Hollywood, with strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) paralyzing Hollywood for months before both organizations struck deals with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in the fall. Film Quarterly addressed this historic double strike in a webinar discussion this summer and will continue in the vein in which its progenitor began, almost 80 years ago: probing the role of film and media in contemporary society. Why this? Why now?September brought the loss of two towering figures in the history of black cinema, recognized as the “godmother” and “godfather” of their respective terrains.The “godmother of Black independent cinema,” Pearl Bowser was an author, archivist, activist, and filmmaker who devoted her multifaceted career to chronicling and promoting black cinema, particularly the work of the trailblazing writer and director Oscar Micheaux. In the 1960s, when Bowser began researching Micheaux for a colleague’s book project, his films were largely forgotten. Her search for them took her to archives as far-flung as Spain and Belgium and led to her discovery of works by other early Black filmmakers. Through exhibitions and programs, Bowser brought these films—which were, as she observed, also historical documents of black American life in the early twentieth century—back into the public eye, while also championing the films of Black filmmakers in Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.Like Bowser, Horace Ové was a pioneer, his six-decade-long career earning him the accolade “godfather of black British film” in addition to a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) and a knighthood. The irony of these official recognitions was not lost on Ové, whose feature film Pressure (1975)—the first by a Black British filmmaker—was considered so incendiary on account of its scenes of police violence that its producer, the British Film Institute, shelved it for three years. A groundbreaking depiction of a Caribbean immigrant family dealing with racism in 1970s Britain (Ové himself had emigrated to Britain from Trinidad in 1960), Pressure was eventually released in 1978 to wide acclaim, earning a reputation as a “film of great historic significance,” as FQ contributing editor James Williams wrote in this journal in 2018. In addition to Pressure, Ové directed the feature film Playing Away (1987), a culture-clash cricket comedy, along with numerous documentaries that reflected his naturalist aesthetics and political commitment.The award-winning documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski was a model of reinvention. From her early career as a photo editor for the New York Times (where she selected the image that won the newspaper its first Pulitzer Prize for photography), she went on to found the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, which became a thriving center for the documentary community under her direction. A lifelong champion for other filmmakers, Nancy became one herself in the final decade of her life. Her first film, The Loving Story (2011), about the interracial couple Mildred and Richard Loving’s challenge to Virginia’s antimiscegenation laws, won both Peabody and Emmy awards. Her other films include Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq (2013), The Rape of Recy Taylor (2017), and, most recently, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2022).Like Nancy Buirski, the British director Terence Davies also made an astonishing midlife cinematic début. Released when he was in his forties, his Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)—an impressionistic, largely autobiographical account of a working-class Catholic family in Liverpool—announced the arrival of Davies’s lyrical, historically inclined sensibility. (None of his eight feature films were set in the present day.) He imbued both his literary adaptations—The Neon Bible (1995), The House of Mirth (2000), The Deep Blue Sea (2011)—and his literary-inspired films—A Quiet Passion, (2016) about Emily Dickinson, and Benediction (2021), his final film, about the writer Siegfried Sassoon—with a remarkable immediacy of feeling.Finally, we mourn the loss of our vibrant and enthusiastic board member Patty Zimmermann. Patty was a formidable scholar, generous mentor, and galvanizing presence on the board whose spirit enlivened our editorial meetings and enriched the journal immeasurably. She was a tireless cheerleader for the field, one whose passionate commitment to nonfiction cinema led her beyond the curriculum. Patty’s investment in building film institutions was evident both in her scholarship (with Scott MacDonald, she coauthored/coedited two books on the Flaherty Film Seminar) and in her dedication to the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College, which she directed for almost two decades. Her spirit was unmatched, her smile unforgettable. And she always had the best curls in the room. We will miss you terribly, Patty.Contributing editor Josh Tyree starts off the issue with a fascinating exploration of what he identifies as a new cycle of Brexit-era folk horror and gothic, “old dark house” pictures. Harking back to their 1970s predecessors—epitomized by the folk horror classic The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973), rereleased in 4K this fall in recognition of its fiftieth anniversary—these recent films reflect and interrogate post-Brexit Britain’s troubled self-image. Tyree anchors his critique in Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men (2022) and Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter (2022), films that represent the new cycle at its most reflective.Another contributing editor, Brian Hu, likewise puts his finger on a new cinematic trend: the emergence of the Asian American prestige film. Noting that a striking number of the most visible and acclaimed recent Asian American films (Minari, The Farewell, After Yang, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Past Lives) have been financed or distributed by the Hollywood studio A24, Hu unpacks A24’s “winning formula.” Looking beyond the films, he observes how the studio deploys discourses of cultural authenticity—often around familiar narratives of Asian immigrant families—in its advertising and other paratextual materials to position these films as “quality” works worthy of official recognition.Eleni Palis’s feature offers a strikingly original reconsideration of director Jordan Peele by parsing his hitherto overlooked extratextual authorship. Identifying deceptive ontologies involving body snatching, doppelgängers, and alien camouflage as Peele’s most stable authorial hallmark, Palis argues that this equivocality is mirrored in Peele’s off-screen status as a producer and showrunner within a white-dominated industry. Projects produced by Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions—such as The Twilight Zone reboot (CBS, 2019–20), BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018), and Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021)—reveal Peele’s deliberate rejection of the classical auteur’s singular vision, modeling instead a collaborative, deeply reflexive authorship.Next up: an Almodóvar double bill. On the occasion of his appearance at the New York Film Festival, where his gay Western short film Strange Way of Life was on the program, the celebrated Spanish director reflected upon four decades of filmmaking, his influences, and his creative process. Written in an intimate, personal voice, the essay is full of insights and revelations. FQ contributing editor and Almodóvar’s longtime in-person translator, Carla Marcantonio, sets the stage in her own piece, which precedes Almodóvar’s in the issue. Drawing upon various interviews Almodóvar granted during the promotion of Strange Way of Life, Marcantonio discusses the influence of the classic Western genre on the film’s aesthetic choices and the aspirations behind this queer midlife cowboy film.Wrapping up the features well is a commemoration of Ruby Rich’s transformative tenure at the journal, with an introduction by Marc Francis and appreciations by FQ contributors past and present. Ruby’s dedication to the journal, exceptional skills as an editor, and significance as a mentor and all-around source of guidance and inspiration shine through all these accounts.Fortunately, Ruby’s stepping down as editor in chief doesn’t mean her absence from the journal. In her new role as editor at large, Ruby will continue to report from film festivals, with Telluride and the New York Film Festival taking center stage this issue. Now in its fiftieth year, Telluride has evolved to make room for more daring documentaries and films by women directors, while the New York Film Festival retains its stature as the official start of the season for New York’s film tribe.As usual, FQ’s columnists deliver the goods. Rebecca Wanzo traces the genealogy of Asian American sitcoms, using examples ranging from Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl to the recent Disney adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese to explore how the performance of abjection in Asian American comedy remains vexed. Caetlin Benson-Allott takes a novel approach to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie by situating the summer blockbuster in relation to the director’s previous two films, Little Women (2019) and Lady Bird (2017). Reading the films as a trilogy not only honors Gerwig’s achievement as an auteur, Benson-Allott suggests, but also generates important questions about what these films say about girlhood and middle-class white American women’s quest for autonomy and self-determination. Rounding out the columns, Laurie Ouellette takes on the Amazon streaming series Dead Ringers, a loose adaption of David Cronenberg’s 1988 body horror film about twin male gynecologists. This female-led update viscerally represents the too-often-violent act of childbirth in order to address the crisis of maternal health care in America and the racist history of gynecology and obstetrics.This issue’s Page Views feature finds Bruno Guaraná in conversation with Jie Li about her fascinating new book, Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China. The book historicizes the exhibition and reception of propaganda films across China from the 1950s to 1970s, a period when much of the country lacked any film-exhibition infrastructure, or even electricity. To bring rural communities to the “light” of Mao Zedong’s leadership, the newly established socialist state created a low-tech distribution network of itinerant projectionists. But as the conversation reveals, as much as cinema served the intentions of the government, it could also easily project and teach tactics of resistance.Rounding out the issue, the books section offers an abundance of riches. Parker Stenseth leads things off with his review of Paul McEwan’s Cinema’s Original Sin: D. W. Griffith, American Racism, and the Rise of Film Culture. Seung-hoon Jeong takes on Grant Wiedenfeld’s Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream, followed by Alison Patterson on Slava Greenberg’s Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship; Jason LaRiviere on Jussi Parikka’s Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual; Raisa Sidenova on World Socialist Cinema: Alliances, Affinities, and Solidarities in the Global Cold War, by Masha Salzkina; and finally Tory Jeffay on Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology, by Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt.

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