Film and New Media

 

Dreams and Delusions

Dreams and Delusions

Because I'm taking a "Pathways of World Literature" class called Dreams this semester, I signed up to watch a program of short films called "Dreams and Delusions," which was part of last month's Imagine Science Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Despite my stint with high...

The Dust Behind the Magic: Volunteering at ADFF

The Dust Behind the Magic: Volunteering at ADFF

Red carpets … movie stars … and glamour! Aren't these the words we often think of when we hear about the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, or any film festival for that matter? We see movie posters on the walls and blinding lights that are trying to capture that beautiful...

The Problem of Point-of-View in Documentary Film

The Problem of Point-of-View in Documentary Film

Five minutes into a film a friend described to me as "a documentary about the First Intifada," I stared incredulously at the stop-motion animation of four cartoonish cows. The narrator introduced them as proud Ruth, pacifistic Rivka, overly dramatic Lola, and Goldie,...

The Lasting Appeal of Sholay

The Lasting Appeal of Sholay

"Film is one way -- perhaps the most important way -- in which India makes sense of the teeming, heaving and chaotic multiplicity and the sprawling diversity of this tumultuous nation state. Bollywood is 'ordered chaos' or pastiche, Bedlam at its chaotic best." --...