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<p> Autobiographical memory is an elusive and ephemeral experience to try and articulate or analyze. It is dynamic, interpretive, and subject to influence. It is malleable and inevitably colored by the variety of beliefs and values held by individuals and which change over the course of a life. With these considerations in mind, is it possible that our own autobiographical memories are ideological? It doesn&rsquo;t seem a stretch to presume our autobiographical memories are imbued with and surrounded by ideas of racism, sexism, classism, patriarchy, privilege and other ideologies of power; topics like these may be encoded into our personal, interior memories and thus deserve to be scrutinized there. The problem is locating, assessing, and then analyzing ideology within the ephemeral, interiorized, and extremely subjective medium of personal memory. As an attempt to solve this problem, this study examines ideology in cinematic depictions of autobiographical memory.</p><p> By analyzing eleven films that include visual depictions of memory, it seems that autobiographical memory and ideology intersect in specific ways. 1. Such memories are not only composed of varying degrees of fact and fiction, but that they are also, in many circumstances, ideological constructions. 2. Autobiographical memories can be ideological not only in the content of the memory but in how autobiographical memory is presumed to operate. 3. In these ways, memories are surrounded by and vulnerable to competing ideologies. It is my hope that this study allows for a continuing conversation about ideology in autobiographical memory as well as how ideologies are affected by perceptions about the nature of remembering, forgetting, and sharing memories.</p>

Modern Asian American activists are shining a spotlight on the lack of diversity in media, and the root of this inequality traces back to the origins of cinema. Since Asians first immigrated to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, the U.S. government and its citizens have repeatedly demeaned, misrepresented, and excluded Asian Americans from most facets of society, including the opportunity to appear on screen. This project explores how early cinema shaped negative perceptions of Asian immigrants, primarily by subscribing to popular stereotypes including the pollutant, coolie, deviant, and yellow peril, the first four of Robert G. Lee’s “Six Faces of the Oriental.” By analyzing a series of Hollywood films from the years 1894–1934, and providing the historical context surrounding Asian Americans’ slow and contested assimilation, this project maps the evolution of these four threatening identities and how they influenced exclusionary laws targeted towards Asian immigrants. It also explores yellowface, the branch of racial cosmetology wherein non-Asian (primarily white) actors are “made up” to appear of Asian heritage, and how this practice promoted the literal exclusion of Asians from the film industry. This project ultimately concludes that while modern cinema offers less bigoted representations, the invisibility of Asian Americans persists through the practice of whitewashing, the successor to yellowface.

This thesis is an historical investigation of the North of England in British fiction feature film released between 1927 and 2000. Taking an approach to the research that involved an examination of the entire corpus of texts available, rather than the more orthodox route of studying a smaller number of films deemed representative of the wider body of work, this thesis has quantitatively and qualitatively mapped the presence of the North of England in British film outputs. This methodological approach is, in itself, unique compared to the existing studies of how the different regions or ‘Home Nations’ are depicted in British film, and therefore provides a template that can be used in any future examination of regional or sub-national identities in British film. Making a further original contribution to knowledge, this thesis both provides a definitive inventory of Northern set films and identifies that, throughout the period under scrutiny, the North has been depicted on film as an environment dominated by the working classes. Whilst it is invaluable to scholars of cultural history and film studies to have each of these areas finally definitively mapped, the greater worth of the research - and the most profound of its original contributions to knowledge - lies in its identification that across the 1927 to 2000 period the representations of the North on film have been congruous with and totemic of the conceptual location ascribed to the English working class.

In recent years there has been a noticeable increase in Chinese-language films about lesbian romances. Many of these films have found commercial and critical success in Chinese markets such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as honors at international film festivals.In order to analyzes how these films reflect and shape Chinese lesbian identity, this thesis considers how a range of contemporary Chinese-language films produced in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and abroad deploys the figure of the lesbian. In particular, this study examines the production of such films by Chinese cultures outside of Mainland China as a means of promoting an alternative, inclusive Chinese identity in opposition to Mainland censorship.

<p> This dissertation examines the rhetoric of popular and academic film criticism across moments of major technological change, focusing on the coming of sound, television broadcasts of movies, home video, and digital projection. Specifically, I investigate the appearance of four seemingly binary oppositions (change/continuity; specificity/convergence; scarcity/plenitude; and hope/disillusionment) constructed and deployed by film critics to ascertain the scope and value of these changes. In doing so, I uncover common responses to otherwise new and distinct cinematic technologies. </p><p> Although material and cultural differences distinguish these moments and their respective critical receptions, I argue that the persistence of these tropes belies claims frequently made by film critics that such changes represent &ldquo;radical breaks.&rdquo; My analysis of film criticism thus reminds us that both the use and interpretation of new technologies is contingent and relational, not determined by the technologies themselves. Technological determinism of this sort is stubbornly resilient among film critics, but viewed in the alternative perspective I propose, cinema and film criticism become interdependent mirrors of one another. Forged by humans and therefore lacking an immutable essence, cinema and film criticism are subject to being transformed, redefined, and reevaluated. Each must be understood as liberated from any medium-specific destiny; indeed, they are always the products of our invention, not objects of archaeological discovery. As I demonstrate, film critics meet such epistemological uncertainty ambivalently, evoking sensations of exhilaration and melancholy. </p><p> In tandem with my study of technological change, my study of cinephilia looks at the <i>styles of thought</i> and <i>structures of feeling</i> characteristic of <i>serious film culture</i> since the silent era. Whereas most studies of film criticism and technological change assess new styles or articulate new theories, I also contemplate technological change&rsquo;s emotional resonances. In other words, I am interested not only in problems of filmmaking practice and modern technology, but also in probing the affective bonds connecting film critics to the medium. <i>The Awkward Ages</i> shows us, then, that film culture&rsquo;s current crisis&mdash;the impact of digital technologies&mdash;is just the most recent instance of a larger pattern, whereby moments of major technological change simultaneously unsettle the myth of medium specificity, and provide an occasion for affirming the myth.</p>

<p> This paper critically examines films created with smart phones and similar devices in order to discuss how these films are understood within modern society, and how they can potentially be used as a potent source of empathy or a destructive tool of manipulation. Since the tools of cinematic creation have become more widely available, thanks to the development of inexpensive cameras and smartphones, making films and viewing films made by other amateur filmmakers has become a part of many people&rsquo;s everyday life, so much so that these films are rarely considered to be &lsquo;films&rsquo; at all. In this thesis, I take six films shot on what I call &ldquo;pocket cameras&rdquo; and focus a critical eye on them, examining them as though they were &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; films. It is the goal of this thesis to show that &lsquo;pocket films&rsquo; have the depth and complexity of &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; films, but because viewers do not consider them to be &lsquo;films&rsquo;, viewers thus having fewer protective &lsquo;barriers&rsquo; between themselves and the pocket film&rsquo;s messages, these pocket films&rsquo; methods of ideological dissemination are more effective than those of a &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; film.</p><p>

This thesis examines the complex and dynamic relationship between the streaming platform Netflix and the world’s most renowned and prestigious film festivals. Film festivals like Cannes and Sundance have often positioned themselves as a counterpoint to the dominance of the Hollywood film and television industry and a showcase for groundbreaking, independent art cinema (and, increasingly, prestige television); Netflix has similarly presented itself as a revolutionary alternative to legacy film and television creators and distributors by providing instant, unprecedented access to media content to millions of subscribers worldwide. Using an industry studies framework, I argue that Netflix’s presence within the film festival network exposes the industrial factors that complicate both idealistic discourses. Beneath the existential controversies that have enveloped Netflix at these festivals are questions of labor, “independence,” and the tension between international showcases like Cannes and the local industries that subsidize them. Netflix and many of the top festivals like Sundance, Venice or Cannes purport to be an alternative to the more mainstream entertainment industry, but they are not wholly discrete from the industrial practices and strategies that they claim to subvert.

This thesis explores different aspects of touch and the role of the body in three works by Robert Bresson: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (1956), Pickpocket (1959) and Une Femme Douce (1969). It intends to show how affective qualities can complement our understanding of the director’s meanings. Drawing from recent phenomenological scholarship it focuses on the experiential elements of Bresson’s works and the thematic threads linked to them. By exploring touch, the unusual treatment of bodies and other material elements that Bresson incorporates in different kinds of visual, audible and haptic juxtapositions, it exhibits the director’s imaginative meanings grounded in physicality and materiality.

This thesis analyses the representations of girls as active agents in fictional films about African colonial and postcolonial conflicts. Representations of these girls are located within local and global contexts, and viewed through an intersectional lens that sees girls as trebly marginalised as "female," "child soldiers" and "African." A cultural approach that combines textual and contextual analyses is used to draw links between the case study films and the societies within which they are produced and consumed. The thesis notes the shift that occurs between the representations of girls in anti-colonial struggles and postcolonial wars as a demonstration of ideological underpinnings that link these representations to their socio-political contexts. For films about African anti-colonial conflicts, the author looks at Sarafina! (Darrell Roodt, 1992) and Flame (Ingrid Sinclair, 1996). Representations in the optimistic Sarafina! are used to mark a trajectory that leads to the representations in Flame, which is characterised by postcolonial disillusionment. On the other hand, Heart of Fire/Feuerherz (Luigi Falorni, 2008) and War Witch/Rebelle (Kim Nguyen, 2012), which are produced within the context of postcolonial wars, demonstrate the influences of global politics on the representations of the African girl and the wars she is caught up in. The thesis finds that films about anti-colonial wars are largely presented from an African perspective, although that perspective is at times male and more symbolic than an exploration of girls' multiple voices and subject positions. In these films, girls who participate in the conflicts are often represented as brave and heroic, a powerful indication of the moral strength of the African nationalists' cause. On the contrary, films about African postcolonial wars largely represent girls as innocent and sometimes helpless victims of these "unjust wars." The representations in the four case study films are significant in bringing to the fore some of the experiences of girls in African political conflicts. However, they also indicate that sometimes representations of girls become signifiers of ideas relating to local and global socio-political, economic, and other interests rather than a means for expressing the voices of the girls that these films purport to represent.