Go to content, skip over navigation

Sections

More Pages

Go to content, skip over visible header bar
Home News Features Arts & Entertainment Sports OpinionAbout Contact Advertise

Note about Unsupported Devices:

You seem to be browsing on a screen size, browser, or device that this website cannot support. Some things might look and act a little weird.

Film

Film

“Great Films Unite Us”: Maine Jewish Film Festival brings screenings to the ‘Jewel Box’

Silence was a topic of passionate discussion at the Maine Jewish Film Festival’s (MJFF) screening in Mills Hall this past Monday. The festival is celebrating its 25th year this week with the motto “Great Films Unite Us,” proven true by a full room of people gathered to watch “The Art of Silence” and “The Peacock That Passed Over.” The Cinema Studies Program at the College partnered with MJFF to bring these films to Brunswick and to make the screenings available at no cost to students and area residents.

Read more

Books

An academic scare: Briefel and Middleton release new book exploring labor representation in horror films

Just in time for the height of spooky season, last Friday marked the launch of the book “Labors of Fear: The Modern Horror Film Goes to Work,” the first study of horror’s critique of labor, edited by Edward Little Professor of English and Cinema Studies Aviva Briefel and Associate Professor of English and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester Jason Middleton.

Read more

BOC

“Un-define the feminine:” Film festival explores identities in the outdoors

Yesterday, students, faculty and community members gathered on the Ladd House patio for No Man’s Land Film Festival’s return to campus, marking the second consecutive year the organization has held a screening at Bowdoin. The event, co-hosted by the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) and the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center (SWAG), consisted of a series of short films that focused on “un-defining the feminine” in athletics and outdoor adventure.

Read more

Film

“Palisadia”: Spritz ’23 leaves Maine for the city

Although it’s not his first film that has screened at Bowdoin, “Palisadia” is Henry Spritz’s ’23 last before he graduates. The film, which premiered in Sills Hall last Friday, tells the story of an actress living in New York City as she navigates both the acting in a movie and her life outside her work, as the experiences begin to increasingly mirror one another.

Read more

Film

Francophone Film Festival returns to Bowdoin for spring

The Francophone Film Festival is back at Bowdoin. After showing three films over three weeks last fall, the festival returned on Tuesday, screening the first film of Francois Truffaut’s beloved Antoine Doinel series, “400 Blows,” to an audience of Brunswick residents, students and faculty in Searles Hall.

Read more

Editing Life and Film

Eighth Grade: A Box of Little Things

This contains spoilers for “Eighth Grade.” “Can you help me burn something in the backyard?” “…Yes.” Kayla (Elsie Fisher) and her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) sit in lawn chairs before a campfire. Kayla sets a time capsule with the fire, an old shoebox her fifth-grade self had stuffed with little mementos and trinkets, upon which she wrote with multicolor foam letters “TO THE COOLEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.” There’s a blankness on Kayla’s face as her father asks her if there was anything inside.

Read more

Editing Life and Film

Minari’s Racial America

My family owns a small Mexican bakery and restaurant and has run the place since 2008. It was a consolation after scrambling from the recession, a way to build back up—home lost, business bought. Growing up there I met a lot of strangers over the years, some of whom became good family friends.

Read more

Editing Life and Film

Aftersun: Is This Our Last Dance?

This contains major spoilers for “Aftersun.” Before I started writing this, I rewatched the ending of “Aftersun.” I’m shocked it was only five minutes that made me smile (again) and laugh at the brilliance of the artistry, of the command of the form, to see that here is a director (Charlotte Wells) who is moving the medium forward and will help keep film alive—only to then burst out into uncontrollable sobbing.

Read more

Editing Life and Film

A case of right movie, right time.

“Whisper of the Heart” isn’t a Ghibli movie on a grand scale. Unlike the epic nature of “Spirited Away” or “Princess Mononoke,” this one is small, intimate and down-to-earth. Director Yoshifumi Kondo is interested in the moments between breaths and frames scenes with more interest in subtlety rather than monumental motions.

Read more

Quarantine Cinema

Please stop asking for director’s cuts

After watching six hours of footage expanded from what was previously one two-hour movie, I can say that “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is vastly better than the original theatrical release of “Justice League.” A film that was meant to make millions was fumbled so badly by those involved that it took four years before the intended cut was seen by fans.

Read more

Film

Bowdoin Film Society plans programming and Journal of Cinema release

The Bowdoin Film Society looks forward to re-engaging the College community with cinema through the inaugural launch of Bowdoin Journal of Cinema in May. The Journal is an extension of the Bowdoin Film Society, and came about after Society member Kate McKee ’22 reached out to Finn McGannon ’23, one of the Society’s officers late last fall.

Read more

Faculty

Killeen stars in Smithsonian television episode

When Associate Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen first heard about the opportunity to act in an episode of the Smithsonian’s “America’s Hidden Stories,” she did not realize that she was auditioning for a starring role. Earlier this month—almost a year after that audition—she made her debut as Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy who fought for the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.

Read more

Quarantine Cinema

The importance of Black stage-to screen adaptations

It’s safe to say that the majority of present-day moviegoers steer clear of stage-to-screen adaptations. There are films in this subgenre that would be considered classics, like Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but there is something about the intimacy of watching the film version of a work originally performed as a stage play that turns many audiences off.

Read more

Quarantine Cinema

“The Forty-Year-Old Version” and the nightmare of being a marginalized creator

Over the past few weeks, I have constantly been thinking about the movies that studios are putting on the backburner to release when theaters are completely reopened. I am excited to see Cary Joji Fukunaga’s “No Time To Die,” Edgar Wright’s “Late Night in Soho,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” and, honestly, I am curious about Malcolm D.

Read more

Film

‘Call Me by Your Name:’ deconstructing the universal utopia

Fruit always ripe, gentle chords on the guitar, dancing to The Psychedelic Furs and teenage bodies glistening under the Mediterranean sun—vivid colors and ’80s music set the scene for the sensual gay romance of “Call Me by Your Name.” However, in his Monday night lecture, Associate Professor of Italian and Cinema Studies at University of Oregon Sergio Rigoletto unearthed the hidden symbolism beneath the film’s beautiful imagery, haunting the picture-perfect love story.

Read more

Film

On PolarFlix: ‘Almost Famous’

Welcome to On PolarFlix, a column that will review a movie a week that can be found on Bowdoin’s very own, BSG-sponsored “PolarFlix” network. We are starting with Cameron Crowe’s cult classic “Almost Famous” (2000). Plot summary (no spoilers!): “Almost Famous” is a contained movie about colossal subjects: coming of age, the changing nature of rock ’n’ roll, first love and the ultimate disappointment of meeting one’s heroes.

Read more