I was punched in the gut. It hurt. I thought this would be the seminar session to bring all the theories and histories of documentary across analog and digital together with a big political and epistemological impact. But I should have summoned my semiotic training to...
The Andy Warhol Foundation has lost its suit against photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The Supreme Court’s May 18, 2023, ruling positioned the decision as a defense of lesser known artists against famous ones. The majority argued that Fair Use was not applicable when...
Natalia Almada’s documentary essay film “Users” (2021) questions a mother’s deep ambivalence about technology. But the film’s aesthetics makes clear that she has already chosen technology. The film is the binational Mexican American director’s first shot in the United...
On Contemptuous Men and the Women who Fight Back A short note about the subtitle before I begin: it is interesting how these gender terms hold sometimes in all their simplicity and binary force. Other than the title, when I use the term woman/en it is inclusive of...
It is May. In the U.S., Italy, Japan, Mexico, and many other countries, it is a month that celebrates mothers. Deconstructed, it heralds women bearing and caring for children to ensure the health and welfare of the family. For many, celebrating Mother’s Day means...
South Butler, New York, is a forgotten byway in American history. Its moment of notoriety came and went. Now it is just a crossroad hamlet struggling to matter like so many other such places in rural America. But once it did matter. In the decades before the Civil...
The 2024 election season has begun. Candidates identify political and policy priorities. Voters constantly wonder where on the political spectrum the country will land. At the same time, a political messaging battle about voter turnout and possible voter suppression...
Bill Morrison is known for his often-magical transformations of archival film in various states of decay into new works that speak to both past and present. Until the recent success of “Dawson City: Frozen Time” (2016), “Decasia” (2002), which was admitted to the...
Because a number of my maternal ancestors settled in South Butler, New York, and surrounding communities in the first decades of the 19th century, I have mused on any possible connections between my family and the social ferment bubbling around them. In the course of...
“What is happening in Florida?” asked a recent headline in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Since the New Year, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Republican allies have ramped up efforts to eradicate ‘woke’ ideology from public colleges,” its reporters responded. This...
