I am imploring studios, which are already becoming more and more centralized, to stop casting the same few teenagers in every movie. This is far from a new phenomenon. For a while, at the start of this decade, it was Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, and Ansel Elgort in every movie within a five-year span. In a single year, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort played love interests in The Fault in our Stars (2014), and siblings in Divergent (2014). Miles Teller was also in Divergent, after he and Shailene Woodley played love interests in The Spectacular Now (2013). Occasionally there would…

In 1992, film scholar B. Ruby Rich coined the term New Queer Cinema to describe the film movement consisting of independent filmmakers using new technologies to make stories about a previously under- or poorly- represented group. The movement emerged largely due to rage at the Reagan administration (and later Bush Sr.’s) for its response (or lack thereof) to the AIDS crisis, condemning millions to an early death. The movement was crucial at the time and groundbreaking in its depicting of human stories about queer people, especially since in the history of film (largely due to regulations like the Hays Code)…

Film began (in its earliest form) in the late 19th century as a way to settle a bet between two rich horse breeders. Since then, it has slowly and gradually transformed into the art form we know, love, and study today. Since the Great Depression, when movie studios decided that women were not business-minded or financially-oriented enough for the industry, female filmmakers have been few and far between; like most other art forms, film has been dominated by men since its inception (or at least since it became a business). To this day, there continues to be a paucity of…

The idea of authorship (or auteurism) is often measured in time and iconicity. In his essay “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” Andrew Sarris names his list of top twenty auteurs and states that the list is “somewhat weighted toward seniority and established reputations.” He explains that the auteur theory “emphasizes the body of a director’s work rather than isolated masterpieces.” This seems to indicate that an auteur is a director who not only has a distinct aesthetic and style, but also has historical presence and significance. It would seem to follow, then, that the Hitchcocks and Welles of…

“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.” When Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote these words in The Woman’s Bible in 1895, she spurred a social movement that still resounds today with every “smash the patriarchy” shouted at a protest. Although she was initially ostracized from the women’s suffrage movement for questioning the implicit patriarchy in religious orthodoxy, Stanton was a pioneer for women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Since Stanton and the Seneca Falls Convention, women have gained the right to vote, the right to obtain birth control, the right…

FILM

A drum line over a black screen. A horde of men in business suits of varying shades of gray walking purposefully in slow motion. We see tweed-covered square shoulders, briefcases held firm, short manly haircuts, and black or brown dress shoes. The men take up the entire sidewalk, street, and screen. The fight song “10,000 Men of Harvard” spells it out, in case you were confused about what was happening. Suddenly — we see a high heel clicking on the concrete. A shot of a purse, a shoulder-length head of hair bouncing along with the march. A singular female figure…

What do you get when you cross a surrealist writer/director, a graduate of a prestigious French clown school, a burrito, and a free-falling airplane? You get the cold open to The Passage, a short film that premiered in the festival circuit this year. Directed by Kitao Sakurai and written by Sakurai and its star, Philip Burgers, The Passage is a surrealist comedy that follows a silent protagonist (Burgers) as he escapes two men who are following him (why? doesn’t matter) and stumbles into increasingly nonsensical situations that he seems to accept without question. This absurd adventure drags Phil (and, by…