Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts

Anything but a bomb, 'Dr. Strangelove' turns 60

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Anything but a bomb, 'Dr. Strangelove' turns 60 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/27/2024 - 00:00

Bradley Worrell

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts shares insights on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘doomsday sex comedy’ and why the film is more relevant than ever

In early 1964, U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack D. Ripper ordered his bomber group to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from communist subversion.

Fortunately for the state of U.S.-Soviet relations at the time—and for the planet—the surprise attack was entirely fictional, serving as the plot for the movie Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, director Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy that satirized Cold War tensions while also offering up a heaping dose of sexual innuendo.

In the years since its debut, Dr. Strangelove has joined the pantheon of Kubrick’s great films, which also includes classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, who has been teaching a course on Stanley Kubrick as a filmmaker for more than 20 years.

With this year marking the 60th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove’s debut, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Arts and Sciences Magazine recently asked Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, who has been teaching a course on Stanley Kubrick as a filmmaker for more than 20 years, for insights into the making of the film and why it has retained its cultural relevance. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Kubrick made a number of memorable films. How much time during your course do you devote to Dr. Strangelove?

Acevedo-Muñoz: There’s an advantage in that Stanley Kubrick only finished 13 movies and a normal semester is 14 weeks—and since this isn’t a comparative course, it’s more like the history of a filmmaker’s aesthetics and history of a filmmaker’s concerns—then we’re able to talk about all the movies he did.

And, unlike my Alfred Hitchcock course—Hitchcock completed 52 films, so to curate 14 out of 52, you have to start cutting here, cutting there, and being very jealous about the period that you’re going to cover—with Kubrick, we don’t have that problem. We start the first week of classes by watching his two shorts that we have access to and his first feature film, which is only 67 minutes.

And we talk about all the Kubrick movies all the time. I make reference to some visual moment in his early movies where I say, ‘Look at this here, we’re going to see this again in Dr. Strangelove, and we’re going to see this again in 2001: A Space Odyssey.’

Question: How you would describe Dr. Strangelove, if you had to describe it succinctly for people?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Well, I would make a very simple amendment to how Kubrick described this movie. We refer to it as a doomsday comedy, with the irony implied in that label. But I would add the word ‘sex’ to that label. So, it’s a doomsday sex comedy.

As the observant or the dirty minded will quickly realize, the movie is full of sexual innuendo and most of the punch lines in the movie are some kind of sexual innuendo.

It’s a doomsday comedy, but it’s really a doomsday sex comedy all the way up to and including the very explosive, orgasmic series of nuclear events at the end, with the irony of the lyrics, ‘We’ll meet again. Don’t know where. Don’t know when.’

When we saw the movie as kids, we were laughing at Peter Sellers doing Peter Sellers things—the body comedy, the farcical situations and such. But then seeing the movie again as an adult, there comes a moment where you realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute. I see now all these airplanes penetrating each other. That’s sexual innuendo. And the way Dr. Strangelove’s right arm keeps raising up in salute, that’s sexual innuendo.’

A working title of this movie was, I sh-t you not, The Rise of Dr. Strangelove. I’m not making this up.

Question: Besides the political and satire, what are other aspects of the film that you share with your class?

Acevedo-Muñoz: We spend a lot of time talking about two things in particular: the production design—what the sets look like and what the function of the of the movie sets are—and special effects.

A scene from the war room in Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

In the case of Dr. Strangelove, when we talk about the production design, we’re talking particularly about the war room. There are stories, which may or may not be apocryphal, of the CIA and intelligence agencies being concerned about how Kubrick and his production designer, a man named Ken Adam, had come up with the set design, because it looked like the real thing.

The same goes for the interior of the bomber, which again, Ken Adam, the production designer, he’d been a Royal Air Force pilot during the war, so he knew what a bomber looked like. But then he had to sort of bring that up to speed 20 years, to the mid-1960s.

It’s really fantastic that Kubrick would put so much emphasis in production design of spaces that nobody has ever seen. Or nobody who isn’t part of a very special, small elite.

Do you know what the interior of the war room looks like? No, nobody does. So, how did Kubrick and Adam come up with this part? It’s one of the truly amazing things.

An important part of the movie is that all the action is contained within these confined spaces that are treated with this deadpan realism. And they have to be functional spaces. In fact, the lights that you see in the war room are actually doing the lighting of the set. That’s extremely rare.

The other thing I mentioned is special effects. Those might look primitive to contemporary audiences, but they are decidedly state of the art. Consider what we see with the B-52 in flight and the explosions.

With Dr. Strangelove, a significant part of the budget went to production design and special effects.

Question: Beyond the production elements, are there other notable or distinguishable elements about this film?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Few people realize that Dr. Strangelove takes places in real time. We have a phone call at the opening of the movie and the doomsday machine goes off at the end of the movie, and in between that we have about 89 minutes of action in which at no point is there a discernible time ellipsis.

Real time is a very hard thing to pull off in cinema. Kubrick was not the first one to do it, but this was his only real-time movie. It is admirable how compact this movie is kept in terms of its narrative structure.

In terms of story structure, that’s a very difficult thing to do, and this is a function of both the writing and editing to maintain a movie in real time. You have to write it that way, and then you have to edit it in a way that these transitions are seamless. It’s a major reason why Dr. Strangelove got an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.

I should mention the movie is based on a book, Red Alert, which is dead serious. Kubrick determined that the scenario was so demented that the only way to do the film was to make it a comedy.

Director Stanely Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove in 1963 (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

To do that, he hired American humorist Terry Southern, who is really the person who shares most of the screenwriting credit with Kubrick. Southern was a humorist and a playwright and a screenwriter, and when Kubrick needed a funny person to come up with this script and make it absurd and yet believable, he came to Terry Southern, so I always emphasize that connection with my students. Coincidentally, Terry Southern’s son, Nile, is a long-time Boulder resident.

Question: How was Dr. Strangelove was received by the film critics and by the greater audiences when it debuted in 1964? Have perceptions of the movie changed over time?

Acevedo-Muñoz: The movie was a huge hit, commercially. Some critics may have been baffled by it, but the reviews were largely positive. The movie got four Oscar nominations, which was quite a feat at that time. It was Kubrick’s first nomination for best director, along with best screenplay. The movie was nominated for best picture, and it was nominated for best actor for Peter Sellers, of course.

In the end, Kubrick made some decisions where things could have gone differently. The movie originally was going to end with a big pie fight. They tried the ending and it kind of fell flat. So, he dropped that and gave us that ending that was sort of improvised with the orgasmic series of nuclear explosions. …

Today, Dr. Strangelove is regarded as a classic.

Question: How do you view Dr. Strangelove in relation to Fail Safe, which was released after Dr. Strangelove and which offered a serious take on the possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union?

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz:Fail Safe was perfectly well-received when it came out. It was made by Sidney Lumet, a respected director, and starred Henry Fonda playing the president of the United States. …

The original movie poster for Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

It’s just that not every movie—even every good movie—is destined to be a classic. We don’t know if a movie is destined to be a classic until some time has gone by. But today, you didn’t call me to talk about Fail Safe, did you? We’re talking about Dr. Strangelove.

And Dr. Strangelove still gets shown on Turner Classic Movies and sometimes in movie theaters, and people still get up off of their asses and go to see it. That staying power is attributable to a lot of different elements, which is why it’s never possible to predict if a movie will become a classic.

Kubrick also made Barry Lyndon, which is the most gorgeous movie ever made. Period. And this was the movie that Kubrick wanted to be remembered for. And do you know what happened? Nobody remembers it. So, you never know.

Question: Do you think Dr. Strangelove was Kubrick’s most political movie?

Acevedo-Muñoz: Kubrick always said he wasn’t a political filmmaker, but you only have to look at his movies to realize that they are, in fact, political movies. … And I should add any movie made in the 1960s with a Cold War setting and the nuclear race as part of its environment is, by definition, political.

The fact that Kubrick and Terry Southern have both the president of the United States and the premier of the Soviet Union come out looking like complete morons is a political statement. And having the military establishment filled with this toxic masculinity is a political statement, which Kubrick went on to do even more transparently in Full Metal Jacket. …

Or look at the Slim Pickens character, Major King Kong, who rides the bomb between his legs like a bull, waving his 10-gallon Stetson hat as his cowboy persona takes over. That’s a political statement.

Question: The Cold War officially ended in the 1990s. Do you think Dr. Strangelove has the same relevance today that it did back in the day?

Acevedo-Muñoz: The cold war is over? We are having more tensions with Russia today than we have had in 30 or 40 years, since the 1980s.

Frankly, as long as there are lunatics with their finger on the nuclear button—and I’m thinking here of Kim Jong Un, I’m thinking of Vladimir Putin and I’m thinking of Donald Trump—this movie will be as relevant as ever, if not more. I have no qualms making a comment like that.

Precisely because it’s comedy, it also has that kind of lasting power. As the great American philosopher Homer Simpson says, ‘It’s funny because it’s true.’

It’s why we take movies seriously—and it’s why we’re celebrating 60 years of Dr. Strangelove. Hopefully at 70 years we’ll be celebrating it as a cautionary tale rather than as a prophecy.

Top image: Peter Sellers playing the titular Dr. Strangelove (Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts shares insights on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘doomsday sex comedy’ and why the film is more relevant than ever.

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Say hello to my little friend, the gangster movie

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 20:16:36 +0000

Say hello to my little friend, the gangster movie Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/26/2024 - 13:16

Bradley Worrell

In honor of what would have been Al Capone’s 125th birthday, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder cinema researcher Tiel Lundy explains the enduring popularity of gangsters in film and the American imagination

What is the most quintessentially American genre of film?

Some might argue for the Western, but there also is a case to be made for the gangster film, says Tiel Lundy, associate teaching professor with the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts. Lundy should know—she’s been teaching a class on the portrayal of gangsters in film for almost 10 years as part of the Libby Hall Residential Academic Program (RAP), recently rebranded as Creative Minds RAP at Libby.

Movies about gangsters date back to the early days of modern motion pictures, and hundreds of them have been made over the years. In fact, following the success of the first recognized gangster film, Little Caesar, in 1931, starring Edward G. Robinson as a small-town mobster rising through the ranks of organized crime, Hollywood made more than 50 gangster movies the following year.

Tiel Lundy, a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder associate teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, teaches a course on the portrayal of gangsters in film.

With this month marking the 125th anniversary of the birth of America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Arts and Sciences Magazine asked Lundy about the continued popularity of the genre, how it has evolved over the years and what makes for a good gangster movie. Her responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Given how many gangster films have been made, it seems fair to say the genre is popular with Hollywood producers.

Lundy: It is. And I think that, much like the genre of the Western, there’s always a question about gangster movies amongst film scholars: Does it continue to be viable, or has it pretty much reached its terminus? But just when people want to pronounce it dead, it finds its next incarnation.

I have some thoughts as to why it remains a really enduring genre. From its beginnings, the gangster film is an American cinematic invention. Other national cinemas have adopted it and riffed on it, but it is an American genre, and the genre itself really was contemporaneous to the history of gangsters in America, like Al Capone. I think that’s part of what explains its continuing appeal—that it’s rooted in actual history. I also think the gangster, as this mythic figure, is kind of the embodiment of this American identity.

Question: It seems like early gangster films focused on Italian-American or maybe Irish-America mobsters, but later films have broadened to represent greater American diversity.

Lundy: You’re definitely touching on something that is core to the genre. The genre is about American identity. And you can’t extricate race and ethnicity from American identity just because of the sort of unique nature and way this country has come together and continues to evolve. So, early films from the 1930s reflected the immigration patterns of the day. If you look at the late 19th and early 20th century, many of the immigrants were coming from southern Europe, and from Italy in particular.

As our questions about American identity become refined and maybe more focused on second- and third-generation Americans, I think they start to become less concerned with immigration status and ethnicity and really more at the intersection of race and class. I’m thinking now about Boyz n the Hood, for example. That is not the classic rise-and-fall story. That is a story that condemns racism and the failures of democracy and capitalism.

If you look at other films that are slightly more recent, for instance, The Departed, they do look at ethnicity, but I think their focus is really more on capitalism.

Question: Do you have any thoughts on Hollywood’s treatment of perhaps America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone?

Lundy: The obvious two films that we would look to would be the original Scarface, by Howard Hawks, and then the remake from 1983 from director Brian De Palma. And they’re remarkably similar in the way that they depict Capone, or in this case, ‘Tony.’ Tony Camonte is the name of the character in the original movie and Tony Montana is the remake with actor Al Pacino's character.

What I think they share between the two depictions, as well as the actual Al Capone, is that this man who is very aware of his presentation publicly and who really has worked to craft a kind of persona and public image of himself. And that’s my understanding as to part of why Al Capone has lived on in our memory, because he was a very good kind of social promoter—almost like an influencer of his day. The gangster’s identity has everything to do with how the public sees him, so he goes to great lengths to create this kind of mythic, larger-than-life impression in the press and popular culture.

John Singleton's 1991 film Boyz n the Hood condemned racism and the failures of democracy and capitalism. (Photo: Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.)

Question: Movie-wise, it seems like the American gangster has gone through several incarnations over the years.

Lundy: You’re right, there are definitely different iterations. And those iterations are a function of the release date of the film as well as when it’s set. They also are very much impacted by censorship.

If you look at the bulk of what we call the classic cycle of gangster films—those films that come out from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s and early ’50s—the content of those and the depiction of the gangsters was strongly enforced by the Hollywood Production Code.

The writers and directors were always somewhat hamstrung by the demands of the Hayes Office and the Production Code. If you were to try and really abide by the letter of the law, you couldn’t have a gangster that was flouting the law or remained sympathetic … because then you are creating a figure who doesn’t exemplify proper values. But, of course, that also makes for a really boring gangster.

So, the directors were always trying to find a way to kind of thread that needle to create a gangster who was charismatic, and was interesting, and who satisfied audiences’ craving for criminality and ruthlessness—but at the same time, that they could get it past the censors and release their films.

So, up until Bonnie and Clyde from 1967, movies were very much informed by the restrictions of the Production Code. By the time you get to Bonnie and Clyde, you have a different set of parameters, and a little bit more latitude as far as how to depict these gangsters.

Question: Prior to the Production Code, it seems like Hollywood romanticized gangsters a bit, but after the code Hollywood turns its attention to romanticizing law enforcement, correct?

Lundy: During the Great Depression, there was a feeling of disenfranchisement and dissatisfaction with American institutions, and that’s really embedded in gangster films at the time. They (gangsters) are there to challenge those institutions like banks and other institutions that were seen as utter failures that had let people down.

So, in the 1930s the gangster was most certainly romanticized. Those gangsters had qualities that made them more sympathetic to audiences and they had certain vulnerabilities.

Edward G. Robinson starred in Little Caesar, considered the first gangster film. (Photo: Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive)

Once we get into the official Production Code era, after 1934 until about the end of the 1940s, that 15-year or so period is when the Production Code was enforced most vigorously, and as a consequence the gangsters became less romanticized because the code was leaning hard on the studios to make gangsters less sympathetic and make law enforcement more sympathetic.

Question: With the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code, it seems like movie gangsters were predestined to end up dead or in prison by the end of the movie.

Lundy: Exactly. You could have a gangster committing crimes, but ultimately, he had to be punished for them. So, that’s why you have movies like Little Caesar and Scarface and Public Enemy, where the gangster always goes out in a hail of bullets. He’s effectively ‘punished’ by dying. But it’s a very dramatic, spectacular death that satisfied audiences craving for that kind of action and violence and drama.

Question: Besides being focused on gangsters, are there some general unifying themes in this genre of film?

Lundy: What those movies—especially The Godfather and Scarface—have in common is this ongoing central theme about social mobility in America and the kind of tension between the gangster wanting to move up the social ladder and acquire a certain kind of class respectability—but at the same time never wanting to really fulfill that social contract. He wants to get to the top, but he wants to find the shortcut way to get there.

I think that’s common to some extent across American gangster films. They express that tension between wanting to be accepted in the highest levels, maybe even have political capital, but be able to commit crimes with impunity.

I’ve been thinking more about this recently, and I think that explains why this genre continues to remain vital: It’s pretty hard-baked into the American consciousness, that tension between being a renegade and also wanting to do your part so that we can have a functioning society.

Question: With so many gangster films to choose from, how do you narrow down the list of ones you will focus on in class to a manageable level?

Marlon Brando (right) starred as Don Vito Corleone, the titular godfather, in The Godfather. (Photo: Paramount)

Lundy: Basically, that’s what goes into shaping the syllabus. What can we do in about 14 weeks? If this is the only time that a student is going to watch gangster films, what are the ones they absolutely must see? What are the films that express those key turning points in the genre that express the central conflicts and themes?

I always know where the starting point is going to be. It's going to be the first film, Little Caesar. I don’t always know what the last, most recent film is, because I always move chronologically. But there are always going to be some films that that will never go away, like The Godfather. I would be drawn and quartered by my colleagues if I taught a gangster class and left out The Godfather.

Question: Is there anything specific that you think makes for a good gangster film?

Lundy: Beyond the technical effects, I think what the most endearing films have in common is the scope of the story. These are master narratives with sweeping stories that cover decades in a family’s story. I think that, in part, that’s why The Godfather trilogy is such a favorite.

Movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas offer really broad, sweeping narratives. I think why they work so well and are so appealing is that, with that kind of scope, they can really engage in questions about America and American identity that is always going to be core to the gangster genre. It’s always going to be interrogating Americanism and the promises of America.

Maybe my answer is not so much what makes for a ‘good’ gangster film, but what makes for the most enduring and popular gangster films for American audiences.

Top image: scene from Howard Hawks' 1932 film Scarface, starring Paul Muni (center) as Tony Camonte. (Photo: Bettman Archive)

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Making movies that people love watching

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:13:41 +0000

Making movies that people love watching Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/22/2024 - 09:13

Rachel Sauer

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ cinema alum Nick Houy discusses his work editing the megahit Barbie and the joys of storytelling

Nick Houy thought about robbing the Chinese restaurant in Boulder where he worked.

He never would have done it, of course, but that’s the joy of storytelling: Exploring your most out-there ideas, asking “What if?” and making all your friends perform the script you wrote.

It was a heist movie called The Grand, and Houy and his friends screened it in the gym for their classmates at New Vista High School one day at lunch. They thought nobody would come, but everybody came “and it was really fun,” Houy recalls. “We all ate lunch and watched this movie I’d shot on S-VHS and Super 8. I remember thinking, ‘The sound in here isn’t great, it doesn’t look great,’ but people seemed to enjoy it anyway.”

The funny thing is, he only wrote, directed and shot the film so he’d have something to edit. That was what he really loved, making sense and stories from hours of footage, shaping scatters of stars into constellations.

Nick Houy, a 2004 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder graduate in film production, is considered a likely Academy Award nominee for film editing for his work on Barbie.

Now, when the Academy Award nominees for best film editing are announced Tuesday, Houy is widely predicted to be one of them for his work editing Barbie.

For Houy, a 2004 University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder graduate in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, editing Barbie marked his third collaboration with director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig. He also edited Lady Bird and Little Women—and all were exciting artistic challenges in a career that he has steadily grown from that lunchtime screening of The Grand in his high school gym.

“I think of the editor very much as one of the authors of a movie,” Houy says, “like a co-writer or co-director. As an editor, you’re also making the movie. For me, I’ve always sought out the best footage I can edit. A long time ago I realized that you can do anything with any group of footage, and that’s very exciting.”

Bringing images together

Houy grew up in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Springs, the child of two copy editors, so he’s always been familiar with the idea of making an artist’s work as clean as possible. His parents also were movie fans, and he remembers going to Poor Richard’s, a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Springs institution and restaurant/bookstore hybrid with a tiny screening room that was the place for New Wave cinema.

When he was in third grade, Houy and his mom moved to Boulder—he attended Mapleton Elementary, and she worked for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder with an office in Old Main. When he started at New Vista High School, he played drums in a punk band with an ever-changing name and pursued his passion for photography, especially black and white photography. He began thinking about how found images and footage could coalesce into a film with the right editing.

He would rent a camera from community television in the Dairy Arts Center, then rent a room there with two tape decks on which he learned to meld photography and his love of watching films through the art of editing.

“I would get Super 8 cameras from yard sales, and I remember meeting old men in parking lots who would have a trunk full of Super 8s, and I’d buy them for like $20,” Houy says. “I’d shoot Super 8 film and get it processed at (now-closed Jones General Store and Camera) on the Hill.”

He shot movies of every genre—and they were mostly terrible, he recalls with a laugh, but he was doing it so he could have something to edit.

“The first time I started editing even Super 8 movies, I’d have to splice it and put it together. I was just like, ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do,’” he says. “Even if you’re doing something like making a video for someone, like for a wedding, just putting a few shots together and adding music, that’s really exciting.

“Then, if you just go a little further and say, ‘What can I do with found footage?’ So, I would just go shoot and would make totally random found footage things, which was really fun to do, even more than drawing or being in a band or just shooting stills. It was just more exciting.”

Nick Houy (center) and his colleagues having a working lunch while editing Barbie.

While he was still in high school, Houy took screenwriting and film production classes at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, and concentrated in film production when he became a student there. He remembers rewatching Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in a class taught by Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz and feeling profoundly moved by not only the storytelling, but by how music and images and every other element of filmmaking can come together into something that resonates and lingers.

Persistence pays off

After graduating, Houy moved straight to New York City for the simple reason that he’d always wanted to live there. He had about $1,000 and crashed on a friend’s couch while he worked at a video store and, in his free time, went from one post-production house to the next, leaving his resume and asking whether they’d give him work doing, well, anything.

Finally, he got a job moving furniture at Post Works, a pre-eminent film post-production facility where he happened to meet a film colorist who hired him to be an assistant conforming editor. In that role, he took a low-resolution film edit and increased the resolution so it could be color-corrected.

That led to a position on Michael Moore’s film Sicko: “(The film's colorist, Ben Murray) was like, ‘Do you want to be my assistant conforming editor at night instead of making coffee?' We would be up all night working on the conform. I would sleep under the theater and never go home because I much preferred to be working on a big movie, and I really lucked out.

“The Post Factory in those days, everyone was working there. Michel Gondry was down the hall, the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes—anyone who was cutting in New York in the mid-2000s. I saw Spike Lee and Godfrey Reggio when I was in college, and I ran into both of them there. I said to them, ‘Hey, I saw you speak at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.’ I literally talked to them about them talking at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, which just shows, to students out there, go see those people when they talk, even if it’s on Zoom, because you might run into them.”

He bumped into editor Anne McCabe in a Post Factory hallway when she was working on Adventureland and mentioned how much he loved one of her previous films, You Can Count on Me. “And then I just kind of followed her around, saying, ‘Please can I be your assistant editor?’ for like a year,” Houy remembers.

She hired him to work on Top Five, starring Chris Rock, which Houy considers one of his biggest breaks. Another was his experience working as an apprentice editor on 2008’s The Lucky Ones with editor Naomi Geraghty.

It was while working on The Lucky Ones that he was told one day that he needed to go pick up a mini fridge from another cutting room and bring it to the cutting room where he was working at the time, because his colleagues didn’t want to trek to the kitchen constantly. While he was grabbing the fridge, he met another apprentice editor named Jennifer Lame (who edited Oppenheimer and is also considered an Academy Award frontrunner for film editing) and they hit it off, becoming good friends.

Lame ended up editing Frances Ha, starring Greta Gerwig and directed by Noah Baumbach, and she became Baumbach’s editor. When Gerwig wrote the script for Lady Bird, Lame recommended “her friend Nick” to edit the film, and a creative partnership was born.

An image from Greta Gerwig's 2019 Little Women, which Nick Houy edited. (Photo: Wilson Webb/2019 CTMG Inc.)

It was while partnering with Gerwig on Little Women that he realized he’d reached a point in his career of working on Movies with a capital M: “When we got the first round of dailies, the first shot was of a horse and carriage pulling up outside a house, and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, this is a movie movie.’”

Movies that people love watching

Barbie saw him ascending to another level of his career—it was a comedy (which he’d never really worked with before), it had elaborate, choreographed dance sequences (which he’d never cut before) and had not only an enormous studio budget, but even more enormous expectations from fans worldwide.

“We knew we had one thing against us: Comedies just don’t do well at the box office these days,” Houy says. “That’s the ethos of the industry, so we already were worried. But I remember reading the script and almost crying. Only Greta and Noah can write scripts like that, so I knew we had it. So, then the challenge was just to make sure we did all of that justice—these big comedy moments and big emotional moments, and huge songs by huge artists.”

Although he could have, Houy never visited the Barbie sets in London or Los Angeles, preferring instead to “feel like I’m as close to the audience member as I can be at all times,” he says. “I want to experience the film like an audience member, and an audience member has never walked onto that set. I want to be as fresh as possible, so I’m cutting from a place of me as the audience member. I want to make a movie that I want to watch.”

The film finished shooting on July 21, 2022, and was released July 21, 2023, so factoring in that a film must be completed at least a month before its release, Houy and his colleagues had just 10 and a half months to complete the movie with visual effects, music and everything else.

“It was insane, but I’m very proud of that,” he says.

Houy currently is lending editing support on Bob Marley: One Love and taking a bit of a breath following the enormous hit that Barbie became. Reflecting on it, “I will always see things I wish we’d done differently,” Houy says.

“The old adage is you’re never done; you either run out of time or money or both. I always want to keep working to make a movie better, until we run out of money or time, so that when I watch it again, I can be really proud of it. I just want to make movies that people love watching.”

Top image: Warner Bros. Pictures

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ cinema alum Nick Houy discusses his work editing the megahit Barbie and the joys of storytelling.

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Filmmaker sees familiar images in unfamiliar ways

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 19:12:26 +0000

Filmmaker sees familiar images in unfamiliar ways Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/16/2024 - 12:12

Rachel Sauer

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Associate Professor Kelly Sears will premiere her short, animated feature ‘The Lost Season’ at the Sundance Film Festival beginning Thursday

Not too long ago, Kelly Sears went for a walk in the snowy New Hampshire woods and thought about the last winter on Earth.

She went for a lot of walks, actually, with an aging Canon Rebel XS camera in hand—capturing thousands of wintery images and speculating on how humanity would respond to losing the coldest season. She calls her musings science non-fiction.

Would there be collective and worldwide grief? Would mourning finally lead to climate action? Or would humanity, inevitably, find some way to commodify the loss?

Filmmaker and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Associate Professor Kelly Sears will premiere her short, animated film The Lost Season at the Sundance Film Festival beginning Thursday.

Her thoughts wandered and then coalesced in The Lost Season, her short, animated film that will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival beginning Thursday in Park City, Utah. It will be her fifth time screening at Sundance, which in no way diminishes the thrill of making one of just 53 short films selected from 12,000 submissions.

“I feel like—and I say this with pride, I don’t say this in any defeatist way—I do feel like my films are very much an outlier at Sundance,” says Sears, a University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder associate professor of cinema studies and moving image arts. “One of the (Sundance) programmers was texting with me, asking, ‘Where do you want to be? Do you want to be in fiction? Do you want to be in animation?’ I think I’m an outlier in both those areas.

“I had such a connective time working on this project and I feel so close to it. I’m really happy to bring it out in the world.”

Familiar images reborn

Sears’ films occupy a niche in the world of cinema. They often begin with familiar images that Sears intentionally sculpts in a world-building process to that sees them reborn as something new. And they are animated, but not in a way that evokes cartoons or character-driven stories.

“There are many animation worlds,” Sears explains. “When I teach animation, I ask my students on the first day, ‘What do you associate with animation?’ Some might say Pixar or Disney, and then we may get wild answers like intuition or movement or intention.

“On the animation spectrum, there are so many ways to go about activating something that’s not there, whether with line and drawing, or by using a material or object and having it perform in a way that it wouldn’t without your hand.”

Growing up, Sears loved movies and gravitated to the art ones, the outsider ones, the weird ones. As an undergraduate at Hampshire College, she didn’t at first know she wanted to pursue film but spotted someone cranking a 16 mm Bolex camera on campus one day and fell in love.

This happened at a time when film was moving into digital practices, but Sears was nevertheless infatuated with the tangible objects of the art—the Bolex cameras, the optical printers, the animation stands.

“I started playing with this longstanding technology and asking things like, ‘What happens when I put two pieces of film together? What if I animate the matte layer?’” Sears says. “When I went to grad school, I didn’t have access to that film apparatus, so it was a really good lesson that my art practice has to be able to go with me. It can’t be dependent on some equipment that I may or may not have access to.

Kelly Sears' film The Lost Season is a speculative docu-animation that grew out of contemporary ecological and labor histories.

“I taught myself digital animation at that point, but I still thought about it in a really analog way, about putting different layers together. As I was figuring out my film practice, it became apparent to me that there are so many film practices and one that people most often think about is narrative-based with actors, with dialogue. But none of that interested me foremost. I was always experimenting with visual textures and creating visual languages.”

Her work has been featured in festivals and shows around the world, as well as in the 2023 book Earmarked for Collision: A Highly Biased Tour of Collage Animation. In 2021, the band Sleater-Kinney contacted Sears about creating the video for their song “High in the Grass.”

“Something I’ve never seen before”

As she evolved as an artist, Sears grew increasingly interested in the juncture between non-fiction and speculative or science fiction. “I think across all my work there’s a tone of doom and dread and anxiety,” Sears says. “There’s also the element of the fantastic, this way of looking at the world as it is and thinking about a new way of moving through it at the same time. Even though my films have a bit of a doom tonality to them, I think when you’re in that place there comes a point where you have to ask, ‘What could be different?”

It's a question she asked herself during her MacDowell artist residency in New Hampshire, when she wandered the snowy woods and where The Lost Season was conceived. As Sears conceptualized Earth’s last winter, she envisioned a giant streaming company hiring all available photographers and videographers to film the final weeks of the soon-to-be-lost season. After seeing how their footage is used for ecological exploitation, they refuse to further commodify climate collapse with their labor.

In her director’s statement, Sears writes, “The Lost Season is a speculative docu-animation that grows out of contemporary ecological and labor histories. In 2023, we witnessed historic heat, monster ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and extreme weather storms. We also experienced labor disputes around Hollywood and studio productions concerning wage disparities and worsening job security. These grievances are shared by many other industries that also went on strike this year.”

The film is narrated by Skinner Myers, a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder assistant professor of cinema studies and moving image arts and Sears’ colleague. “We have a seriously cool department,” Sears says.

The Lost Season is one of a connected series of short films that Sears is shaping into a feature film, which is a different approach to filmmaking and an exciting artistic challenge, she says.

“A huge pleasure when I’m making films is trying to build an aesthetic tone in each film that doesn’t exist and really sculpting what the visuals look like and producing these frames that feel like something I’ve never seen before,” Sears says.

[video:https://youtu.be/dvTee-Uu3WU?si=nJuum4dfBJ_9F1zN]

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Associate Professor Kelly Sears will premiere her short, animated feature ‘The Lost Season’ at the Sundance Film Festival beginning Thursday.

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College announces inaugural class of social justice scholars

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:34:43 +0000

College announces inaugural class of social justice scholars Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/01/2022 - 09:34

This new program, headed up by the social sciences division, recognizes students that are taking a stand

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder is excited to announce the 2022 inaugural class of social justice scholars.

The social justice scholars program is a brand-new program that aims to elevate social justice as an orienting theme in the social sciences divisional work, demonstrating how different disciplines can effectively converge to tackle some of society’s biggest problems.

Up to ten undergraduate students (rising seniors) will be chosen on an annual basis to serve as social justice scholars their senior year. Each scholar will be awarded $5,000 that will become of a part of their financial aid package. Each year’s cohort will take part in social events and seminars throughout the year designed to build connections between each other, faculty in the division and members of the community engaged in related activity.

“Whether it was work for community organizations (both nationally and internationally), or service to fellow students at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, this year’s social justice scholars have clearly defined a high level of excellence and achievement. What is more, their stories give hope that there is a very strong current of empathy, intelligence and energy directed at what we in the social sciences hold as a foundational goal: social justice,” said David Brown, the college’s divisional dean for the social sciences.

This year’s recipients are:

Aliya Trapp, international affairs and ethnic studies
Molly Fox, leadership and community engagement and sociology (minor in business analytics)
Rachel Hill, political science and mathematics (minor in philosophy)
Meenakshi Manoj, international affairs and economics
Shae Stokes, sociology and philosophy
Sibonelly Espitia Sanchez, sociology and psychology
Gabriela Mejia, cinema studies and ethnic studies (minor in leadership studies)
Peri Cooper, International affairs and theatre
Natasha Panepinto, political science (minor in Spanish)
Blen Abamecha, ethnic studies
Isla DePuy-Bravo, international affairs (minors in Spanish and political science)
Makayla Sileo, speech, language and hearing sciences (minors in sociology and leadership studies)
Maymuna Jeylani, ethnic studies and secondary education (minor in leadership studies)

For these students, the resounding response at being chosen has been one of excitement.

“I can't think of a better opportunity to finish out my time here than serving as a Social Justice Scholar. I am excited to see not only what this experience has to offer me, but to learn how I can leave an impact on both the program and the university and Boulder community that has given me so much,” said Panepinto.

Espitia Sanchez agrees, adding: “My studies have confirmed the frequent occurrence of everyday social problems, exposing just how cruel the world can be and how many victims of social injustices exist in all corners of the world. I’ve become incredibly inspired and determined to not only address social justice issues, but learn to contribute to their solutions during my time at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.”

For those interested in applying for 2023, applications need to be submitted through AcademicWorks by May 14, 2023.

The application consists of a two-page, single-spaced letter explaining how your course of study, work in the community or interest and participation in addressing social justice issues forms an important part of your experience at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. In addition to the written statement, provide an unofficial copy of your transcript. All applicants must have an overall GPA of at least 3.0.

The selection committee will be looking for students who have crafted a course of study that addresses social justice issues or have participated in related clubs, programs or organizations.

The selection will be announced by June 1, 2023.

Aliya Trapp

The Social Justice Scholars program seemed like an amazing and unique opportunity to get involved in activism within the Boulder community with my fellow classmates. Social activism has always been an important cornerstone in my life, and I knew this program would give me the ability to increase my knowledge on being more effective and having a greater impact. I am incredibly honored to apart of the inaugural year.

Molly Fox

As a transfer student to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, I saw the potential for a social science degree to grow my formal training in social justice and elevate my understanding of my place in the issues that I want to pursue. As I continue engaging in social justice research, public action projects and volunteering through my senior year, I hope to only grow my motivation and fascination with how social systems function to produce such ill effects in society, and how those same systems hold the answers for sustainable solutions for the future. Excited for the ways I will grow and the people I will meet through this program!

Rachel Hill

Rachel Hill is a senior studying political science and math. Originally from Littleton, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, she attended Columbine High School and started gun violence prevention work when she was sixteen. Since then, she has worked to lobby and testify for common sense gun legislation at local, state and federal levels. Following the Boulder King Soopers shooting, she has turned her passion toward helping her local community heal from the effects of gun violence. She is also currently serving as Student Body President here at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.

Meenakshi Manoj

My name is Meenakshi Manoj, and I'm an international affairs and economics double major at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. I'm excited to be part of the Social Justice Scholars program! I have previously worked with the Office of State Planning and Budget at the Governor's office in pursuing better equity goals in legislation. I'm currently hoping to establish a student organization on campus devoted to dealing with and combatting sexual assault on campus at large. I'm looking forward to the opportunities and connections this program will bring!

Shae Stokes

Hello! My name is Shae and I am a rising senior pursuing a double major in sociology and philosophy at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, as well as a certificate in animals and society. Animal welfare is one of my greatest passions, both for its own sake and because animal agriculture is closely connected to numerous other social justice issues affecting people and our planet. I am honored to be able to further develop my skills as a social justice activist through this program!

Sibonelly Espitia Sanchez

As a sociology and psychology double major, I have developed passions to understand the world we live in and the individuals which inhabit it. My studies have confirmed the frequent occurrence of everyday social problems, exposing just how cruel the world can be and how many victims of social injustices exist in all corners of the world. I’ve become incredibly inspired and determined to not only address social justice issues, but learn to contribute to their solutions during my time at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.

Gabriela Mejia

Gabriela Mejia is a film student based in Boulder, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ who is pursuing a BFA in Cinema Studies and Ethnic Studies with a minor in Multicultural Leadership.She works towards diversity and inclusivity both in front and behind the camera and casts women of color as leads in her films and is committed to working with a female-helmed crew.

Peri Cooper

My whole life, I’ve loved stories, from books to art to theatre. I loved the way that they can solve problems and create a world that doesn’t really exist in real life. I want to help make that a reality. We live in a world filled with prosperity and amazing things, but not everyone gets to experience those in the same way. For the world to become more equitable, that must start with us.

Natasha Panepinto

Social justice is something I have cared deeply about long before I arrived at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. I was lucky enough to have parents who shared my passion and took me to marches and protests whenever they had the chance. Throughout my last three years at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, I have continued to pursue this passion, taking every opportunity offered, despite the complications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it was constantly changing and interrupting things, I was able to take numerous courses that gave me a better understanding of social justice and why we need it. These courses combined with my participation in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ in DC, establishment of the student organization Leading Women of Tomorrow, and service on the Appellate Court have given me an extremely memorable and meaningful experience at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. That said, I can't think of a better opportunity to finish out my time here than serving as a social justice scholar. I am excited to see not only what this experience has to offer me, but to learn how I can leave an impact on both the program and the university and Boulder community that has given me so much.

Blen Abamecha

I am interested in the Social Justice Scholars Program because I want to be in a space alongside other scholars who not only want to make a change but are taking steps to end racial injustice by actively doing social justice work. As a Black woman in Boulder, I feel like this is a community where I would feel a sense of belonging and collaboration on campus which is really important to me. I love that we will also be working with alumni and leaders because I'd love to build connections with them and hopefully be inspired by the work they have contributed to their communities. I am excited to meet and form/strengthen relationships with other students in this program who have similar values as me.

Isla DePuy-Bravo

I was born and raised in North Denver to two very unique parents whose engagement with political/social issues inspired my interest in social justice issues from a young age. My studies at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder have aligned with and prompted further interests regarding socioeconomic injustices and inequities facing those less privileged than I. As the daughter of an immigrant from Central America, issues pertaining to immigration and the harsh realities faced by immigrants have led to my eager desire to develop the skills to advocate for those in vulnerable and unsafe circumstances. I am eager to continue my academic and life journey to make tangible improvements in the lives of others and feel that with the guidance and knowledge from the Social Justice Scholarship program I will be even better equipped to do so.

Makayla Sileo

My name is Makayla and I hope to spend my life seeing, listening, learning and advocating for those on the fringes of society. I love art, reading, writing, hiking, camping, being active and, most importantly, spending quality time with quality humans. My parents raised my sister and I to “leave the campsite better than we found it” and I believe this is how we make the world a more compassionate place. I cannot wait to take this idea and bring it to the Social Justice Scholars community.

Maymuna Jeylani

I was very interested in the Social Justice Scholar program because my experience at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ has been one rife with racial and social hardships and I think of my being at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ as an act of resistance in which there are many ways I engage in social justice. I'm interested in seeing how this program can engage me and help me address social justice problems, especially those with personal diasporic meanings as I am Black and Somali.

This new program, headed up by the social sciences division, recognizes students that are taking a stand

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Award-winning filmmaker gives persistence, ‘energy’ to next generation

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 22:51:30 +0000

Award-winning filmmaker gives persistence, ‘energy’ to next generation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/14/2022 - 16:51

Cody DeBos

John W. Comerford, who discovered the power of film at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, arranges major gift to the Brakhage Center for Media Arts

A gust of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ night air washed over John W. Comerford (’90 Psych & Film) like a tidal wave.

The ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumnus recalls stepping out for a breath of fresh air after viewing the hard-hitting Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda piece Triumph of Will for a film-studies class.

Looking for a sign of where to take his career, that gust of wind led to an epiphany.

Film can change the world.

Under the wing of legendary experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, Comerford would go on to pursue a career in film and push the boundaries of what it means to tell stories on the big screen.

“I learned that the impact of film is a lot bigger than I had ever imagined,” Comerford says, reflecting on his time at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

At the top of the page: As principal at Paradigm Studio, John Comerford has helped produce and write a wide array of films. Above: Comerford hopes the gift he arranged to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder will help inspire young filmmakers to pursue a career in the industry.

He also reflected on a propaganda film from the Spanish Civil War period that Brakhage chose to show in class. The piece depicted scenes of seemingly normal life while the narrator spoke of sickness and suffering among the people. By all appearances, the people were healthy.

“This film demonstrated the power of narrative voice,” Comerford says.

He also pinpoints this as a pivotal moment in his career. He learned early on that film can be powerfully suggestive and that such power could be used to illuminate rather than manipulate.

Now, 30 years later, Comerford works as principal at Paradigm Studio, a production company. Comerford lends his visionary eye for the meaning of film to a wide array of projects and experimental pieces.

One of which, Around the Fire, co-written and produced with longtime friend and fellow ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alum Tommy Rosen (‘90), is slated for its 25th-anniversary re-release this year. The award-winning coming-of-age drama explores topics like adolescence, drug use and the importance of music culture.

Comerford attributes much of his success to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s spirit of discovery.

“I didn’t get a lot of direction from my parents growing up as far as what sort of career to pursue,” he says. “When my acceptance letter from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder arrived, it was actually dated on my birthday, Jan. 18. I thought, well, that’s a sign.”

Comerford’s first on-campus experience is committed to memory.

He reflects, “Coming down 36 and seeing the Flatirons for the first time, I thought, ‘Well this is going to be amazing.’”

Indeed, it was the start of something special for Comerford.

He has helped produce and write a number of critically acclaimed documentary and narrative films via Paradigm Studio, exploring topics from jazz music to gun violence. Themes of late include the environment and media literacy.

Lynch: A History made a splash as an experimental piece. It stitches together more than 700 internet video clips of former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch to form a narrative on race, media and the world of professional sports.

Comerford notes the piece has received praise from athletes at all levels, including from Lynch himself. He says it has also sparked discussions about the media’s impact among players and coaches throughout the sports industry.

Currently, Comerford has several projects in the works. He is producing a narrative feature film based on a true story of the fight to preserve California’s native redwood trees, authored by David Harris.

He’s also working with fellow Boulderite, filmmaker and musician Charles Hambleton on a film titled Kensu Maru. It highlights the search for a Japanese hospital ship laden with gold scuttled in the Philippines during WWII.

None of our productions happen without persistence. ... That persistence, and most importantly the persistence inspired by collaboration, is really essential.”

The story is about more than treasure, though. It is a tale of justice and defeating personal demons.

In recent years, Comerford has been thinking about how to give back. “The first thing that popped into my head was Stan,” he says.

“I did some research, and I thought of the Brakhage Center and the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. I just thought, ‘Wow, that is the perfect place to return to the world, if you will, the energy and spirit of that gift given to me by Stan.’”

Comerford helped arrange a gift of $30,000 to the Brakhage Center for Media Arts at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. To be rolled out over three years, the gift is one of the largest ever received by the Brakhage Center.

He hopes the gift will help inspire young filmmakers to pursue a career in the industry. Comerford also hopes that students studying at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder will be able to gain a higher understanding of media literacy and its impact on consciousness.

Hanna Rose Shell, assicuarte professor and faculty director of the Brakhage Center for Media Arts, says the gift will do just that: “We at the Brakhage Center are thrilled to have the support and deep engagement from John Comerford, which will help enable students to enrich their horizons in the multiple realms of experimental film and beyond.”

When asked to share a bit of wisdom with those interested in pursuing a film career, Comerford offered two words:

“Collaboration and persistence.”

“None of our productions happen without persistence,” he adds. “Particularly as a producer, where you have the longest relationship with the motion picture of anyone involved. That persistence, and most importantly the persistence inspired by collaboration, is really essential.”

John W. Comerford, who discovered the power of film at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, arranges major gift to its Brakhage Center for Media Arts.

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Viva! West Side Story, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder cinephile says

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 19:34:31 +0000

Viva! West Side Story, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder cinephile says Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/31/2022 - 12:34

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, cinema studies chair—and man who’s ‘morally opposed’ to remakes—gives thumbs-up to Spielberg’s version

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, professor and chair of cinema studies at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, had never been a fan of movie remakes.

“I’m generally morally opposed to the concept of the remake, because it’s based on what I believe to be a flawed premise that contemporary younger audiences are not interested in (film) classics,” says Acevedo-Muñoz, author of West Side Story as Cinema: The Making and Impact of an American Masterpiece.

[video:https://youtu.be/l8uRSCH_uEE]

At the top of the page: Dancing with danger (West Side Story/Amblin). Above: The final theatrical trailer for West Side Story.

“I don’t agree. My experience in the classroom every day is the opposite of that.” He notes the marketing tagline for the 1968 re-release of the original movie: “Unlike other classics, West Side Story gets younger.”

And, as he put it in 2020, “Who asked to see a remake of Dirty Dancing? Who asked to see a remake of Fame? Who asked to see a remake of West Side Story? Nobody.”

Even so, Acevedo-Muñoz agreed in 2019 to serve on the Community Advisory Board for Steven Spielberg’s recently released (and now Oscar-nominated) remake of the 1961 cinematic version of West Side Story, which he credits for inspiring him to go into film study.

“The Community Advisory Board brought artists, intellectuals, teachers and historians, many from Puerto Rico and the Latino community, and other groups misrepresented in 1961 movie and the (original) show to offer feedback and advice,” he says.

After several months of Community Advisory Board meetings and consultations, Acevedo-Muñoz declared himself “cautiously optimistic” about the remake. Still, he was leery, warning that “the recent box-office track record of musical and other remakes suggests it could be a risky enterprise.”

He attended a private screening in August, under obligation to keep his counsel until the film’s premiere on Dec. 7. But now, after two and half years of consulting on the project, his time on the red carpet has arrived. His opinion?

“I’m very happy,” he says. Specifically, he gives a thumbs-up for:

“The movie is gorgeous to look at … It’s one of the most beautiful movies I’ve seen this year.”
“I’m extremely satisfied with the cast, particularly Rachel Zegler (Maria), David Alvarez (Bernardo) and Ariana DeBose (Anita).”
“They went a long way into making these characters stand out as real people, as opposed to the caricatures they’ve been to some extent in the past.”

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz at the West Side Story premiere (Jenna Hoffman).

Whereas the voices in the ’61 version had “mostly been dubbed by ghost singers, these are the voices of the real actors, and they sound magnificent, with accurate inflections of things like accent.”
“They asked earnestly for advice and feedback (from the Community Advisory Board). … They made an earnest effort to see what the new movie could do better and to correct some of the perceived and real injustices committed in the first movie and the original show.”

(Still, he recognizes that the plot is a bit silly, implausible, perhaps even histrionic: “Tony and Maria know each other for all of 24 hours!” he notes. Meanwhile, Romeo and Juliet, the teens whose tragic, impulsive romance inspired West Side Story, had a whole five days to cement the undying love that led to their deaths and those of many others in their respective clans. And he likes to open lectures about another implausibility with a classic joke: “Tony runs through the Puerto Rican neighborhood yelling ‘Maria!’ and only one girl comes to the window.” Ba-dum-tsss.)

Acevedo-Muñoz is especially impressed that the producers incorporated so many of the Community Advisory Board’s recommendations and suggestions into the final cut, including advice about “the musical landscape of 1950s New York City” and the look of the barrio, right down to the graffiti. Especially important, he says, was the producers’ decision not to use English subtitles for spoken Spanish, as recommended by most of the Community Advisory Board’s members.

“To use subtitles would in a way be ‘othering’ (Spanish-speaking characters) who are really central” to the film, he says.

He’s also pleased that the new version works hard to portray the Puerto Rico-born immigrants who make up the Sharks gang as “fully rounded characters with histories and personalities, not flat and unidimensional”—and, some critics argue, stereotypically violent—as they were portrayed in the 1961 version.

The movie examines the anti-Puerto Rican prejudice of police more fully and give more weight to Anybodys (a rough analog of Romeo’s servant and informant Baltasar Romeo and Juliet played by Iris Menas), portraying him as a complex transgender man, as opposed to caricature of a “tomboy” in the original.

Though Acevedo-Muñoz remains morally opposed to remakes, he says that West Side Story is a rare exception to the rule.

Through his contribution to the film, he got to meet members of the cast, including Zegler, DeBose and Alvarez. And was honored to be invited to the premier at the famous El Capitan Theatre—one of the elaborate, ornate “movie palaces” from Hollywood’s early days—where he hung out with Kristie Macosko Krieger, Spielberg’s long-time producer.

“Going to a Hollywood premier wasn’t on my bucket list, but when the bucket comes, that’s it. I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity,” he says. “Being on the red carpet, beneath that marquee, was fun.”

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, cinema studies chair—and man who’s ‘morally opposed’ to remakes—gives thumbs-up to Spielberg’s version.

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Libraries, cinema studies win support to teach film preservation

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 20:55:12 +0000

Libraries, cinema studies win support to teach film preservation Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/04/2021 - 14:55

Doug McPherson

The $188k grant will help develop curricula to give undergraduates hands-on experiences in film archiving and preservation.

The University Libraries Rare and Distinctive Collections and the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder have won a $187,585 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create five advanced, “experiential” classes focused on media archiving and preservation for cinema-studies undergraduates.

It will be one of the only programs of its kind in the country for undergraduates, according to Sabrina Negri, assistant professor in cinema studies and moving image arts, and Jamie Wagner, faculty fellow and moving image archivist for University Libraries, the grant’s principal investigators.

They say programs that teach media archiving and preservation skills are limited to graduate students at private universities in major coastal U.S. cities and that ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder would be the only public university to offer this type of program in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions.

Sabrina Negri, assistant professor in cinema studies and moving image arts, is one of the grant’s principal investigators.

“It’s important to have a preservation program located at a public university that’s not on one of the two coasts,” Negri said. “It gives access to the profession to a broader and more diverse group of students, and it would provide trained media archivists for smaller archives that aren’t located in big cities.”

Negri and Wagner say advances in technology, especially the transition from tape to digital media formats, have introduced a need for more media to be archived and for more archivists and conservators. “So that means there’s a growing need to teach individuals how to care for and preserve historical materials,” Negri said.

Students will learn the theory and practice of film archiving, restoration, preservation and how to preserve analog tapes—which are actually more endangered than film, Negri said. In addition, students will learn how to archive and preserve digital files and how to manage a media collection.

The program will also include paid fellowships in media preservation for undergraduate students working with the libraries’ moving-image archival collections and digital-media lab.

Wagner adds that the program will also feature a community-oriented internship program that pairs undergrads with under-resourced institutions and organizations that have media preservation needs for their own historical materials.

“Students will use the skills they learn to directly benefit at-risk cultural heritage material throughout the Front Range area,” said Wagner.

Wagner said what ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder is doing with the curricula, fellowship and internship could serve as a model for other universities around the country.

The director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Crosby Kemper, said the 2021 grant awardees are “responding to the gaps in our society, under-resourced communities, professional development for underrepresented members of our communities, and the programs and services with impact on the daily lives of … people.”

Students will use the skills they learn to directly benefit at-risk cultural heritage material throughout the Front Range area."

Wagner will teach the first class, which is on collection management, in spring 2022. All the other classes are scheduled to be taught in academic years 2022-23 and 2023-24.

The idea to create the curricula came to Negri when cinema studies and moving image arts received a gift of preservation equipment from GW Hannaway and Associates, a Boulder-based imaging and video company.

“Given that a lot of media are in need of preservation, it made sense to think to use that equipment to train new media archivists,” Negri said.

Negri taught seminars in film archiving and preservation in 2018 and 2020 and said they were well received.

“Now with the collaboration of the University Libraries and the grant, cinema studies and moving image arts can expand the project to include the five different classes,” Negri said.

Wagner adds, “We hope we can build a model for a curriculum or a certificate that has demonstrated success and data to inform next steps for the program.”

The $188k grant will help develop curricula to give undergraduates hands-on experiences in film archiving and preservation.

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