Film and Screen Media

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Cinema as history and history as cinema - Michael Collins (1996) and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
(Wordwell Group, 2021-10) Chambers, Ciara; Australian Government; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland
The cosmopolitan aspect of Brazilian cinema: encountering the other, forging vernacular worlds
(University College Cork, 2022) Saldanha, Humberto; Rascaroli, Laura; Irish Research Council; Higher Education Authority; University College Cork
In this thesis, I investigate the cosmopolitan aspect of contemporary Brazilian cinema. Departing from the idea of cosmopolitanism as a project towards world conviviality, I propose a critical understanding of the concept, accounting for how vernacular perspectives imagine and address a set of challenges. These include the debates on migration and hospitality, the enactment of borders and in-betweenness, the persistence of neocolonial dynamics in the shape of world memories and the issue of strangeness and the otherisation of alterity, including human and non-human subjects. By framing cosmopolitanism as a critical and vernacular enterprise, my goal is to delink cosmopolitanism from its Western genealogy, while considering how localised epistemologies challenge and goes beyond universalist values. The emphasis on the vernacular does not imply the return of the national, but rather how the local provides a particular perspective on broader contexts, debates, projects, and transnational relations. Furthermore, this thesis situates cosmopolitanism as a relevant concept to reframe world cinema, dialoguing with a set of calls to consider the latter beyond its networks of global circulation. This implies embracing the world in world cinema as an entity foregrounded by cosmopolitan ethic-political dispositions. This is, ultimately, the basis to imagine alternative and vernacular worlds that include those excluded by globalisation and coloniality. In this regard, I suggest that contemporary Brazilian cinema not only is actively involved in the nurturing of cosmopolitan debates, but also, in doing so, unfolds cinematic worlds, whose vernacular epistemologies and alterity confront Eurocentric and imperial versions of cosmopolitanism, as well as their mode of organising and shaping the world.
Deconstructing Islamization in Pakistan: Sabiha Sumar wages feminist cinematic jihad through a documentary lens
(Journal of International Women's Studies, 2008) Imran, Rahat
Over half a billion Muslim women live in vastly different lands, cultures, societies, economies, and political systems. Yet, as Iranian scholar Mahnaz Afkhami points out, Muslim women’s oppressions are similar due to gender-discrimination under Islamic Sharia laws and patriarchal doctrines that are exercised in the name of religion and culture. Pakistan has been a prime example of how religious fundamentalism and politicization of religion can transform a secular society into one held hostage by Islamic extremist doctrines and gender-specific laws. It is a cause for hope and celebration then that its progressive and secular elements, particularly educated, urban women, have continued to wage a struggle against discriminatory socio-political and religious practices through various artistic, political, and activist channels-thereby posing a continuing opposition and challenge to religious fundamentalists that use women as the prime targets for the imposition of their Islamic ideologies and identity. More recently, Pakistani independent women filmmakers have also joined the ranks of this oppositional force, thereby appropriating their right to wage a feminist jihad (struggle). In initiating an anti-fundamentalist cinema category, their cinematic contributions deserve to be recognized as part of a larger feminist agenda against gender discrimination and patriarchal domination.
Defying marginalization: Emergence of women's organizations and the resistance movement in Pakistan: A historical overview
(Journal of International Women's Studies, 2018) Imran, Rahat; Munir, Imran
In the wake of Pakistani dictator General-Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization process (1977-1988), the country experienced an unprecedented tilt towards religious fundamentalism. This initiated judicial transformations that brought in rigid Islamic Sharia laws that impacted women’s freedoms and participation in the public sphere, and gender-specific curbs and policies on the pretext of implementing a religious identity. This suffocating environment that eroded women’s rights in particular through a recourse to politicization of religion also saw the emergence of equally strong resistance, particularly by women who, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, grouped and mobilized an organized activist women’s movement to challenge Zia’s oppressive laws and authoritarian regime. This movement was to see the emergence of non-governmental women’s organizations (NGOs), feminist writers, activist theatre groups, human rights and legal aid cells, as well as activist documentary filmmakers with a common agenda for social change and justice. Using secondary sources, this paper presents a comprehensive historical overview of the feminist and oppositional developments that began to take shape during Zia’s dictatorship, and have steadily grown to make their mark in contemporary Pakistani society as organs for socio-political change and women’s rights.
Feminist perspectives on physical and sexual violence against women: Pakistan as a case study
(Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Instituto Estudios de Géneros, 2017) Imran, Rahat
Extreme forms of physical and sexual violence perpetrated by men against women, such as honour killings, acid attacks and rape, continue to spread throughout Pakistani society, apart from resistance across the country by women's rights groups and civil society activists. that they continue to pressure successive governments to confront the threat and introduce strict laws in the field of criminal justice to end the situation. As this threat continues to advance, it is pertinent to examine the male mindset that causes these acts of violence to be committed. This work presents a feminist perspective of these male attitudes and mindsets that instigate men's physical and sexual violence against women. In summary, this study deals with the various activist organizations and their measures that have been instrumental in the fight against violence against women in Pakistan, and the need for strict measures to end threats and to be included as part of the gender-biased legal system.
Film Review: Stealing a Nation
(International Association of Genocide Scholars, 2017-10) Imran, Rahat
Hyphenating Ireland and America: examining the construction of contemporary hybrid identities in film and screen media
(University College Cork, 2019) Goff, Loretta; Monahan, Barry; Irish Research Council; University College Cork
Hyphenation legitimises and makes coherent the unstable and amorphous notion of identity, clarifying “who one is” with shorthand efficiency: Irish-American, Hispanic-American, Anglo-Irish, are some of many identities sutured into coherence by the hyphen. Further to this, and significantly, hyphenated identities are deeply implicated in commodified cultural exchanges between nations, and thus usefully illustrate the ideological and economic operations of identity construction and international relations. This thesis examines contemporary performances of Irish-American hyphenation across several aspects of film and screen media; including stardom, directors, production locations and genres. In doing so, it interrogates the economic and social factors that inform the construction of Irish-American identity and the relationship between Ireland and America (in a media production context). Cinema, as cultural expression and industry, is an interactive form of discourse that magnifies—literally and formally—processes of hyphenation. It therefore acts as the ideal platform for the analysis of protean identity performances. Through such analysis, this thesis seeks not just to simply categorise an emergent “type” of contemporary Irish-America that performs hyphenation with flexibility, but to assess and evaluate the processes of such categorisations. Simultaneously, it reveals the conservative stance taken in films wherein, more often than not, singular identity is implicitly, but problematically, offered as “safer”. This thesis acts as a timely paradigmatic study of contemporary hyphenated identity within the international context.
James Baldwin's embodied absence: I Am Not Your Negro and filmic corporeality
(Routledge, 2020-06-18) Rascaroli, Laura
As an essay on North American history and on the rift between lived experience and ideological images that obfuscate it, I Am Not Your Negro relies on a key motif: the body. I argue that I Am Not Your Negroâ s engagement with Baldwinâ s ideas on the question of Black bodies and their effacement from American history, media, and society becomes the kernel of the filmâ s narrative and discursive strategy. As a documentary, I Am Not Your Negro carries out a historical/biographical work of testimony and assemblage, and is a vehicle for Baldwinâ s ideas; as an essay, it suggests a corporeal fullness to Baldwinâ s textual fragments by giving them a filmic voice. Located between reality and imaginary, present and past, substance and image, the essayistic constitutes itself through voiceover as an embodied absence that carries the weight of the argument in its filmic flesh.
Legal injustices: The Zina Hudood Ordinance of Pakistan and its implications for women
(Journal of International Women's Studies, 2005) Imran, Rahat
During recent decades the women of Pakistan have been the most vulnerable and convenient targets of social, domestic and sexual violence. This paper will examine the trend of sexual violence against women that emerged in Pakistan with the introduction of the Islamization process through the implementation of the Sharia laws since1979. The paperâ s main focus will be on rape and the state legislation that governs it, namely the Zina Hudood Ordinance of 1979 and the Law of Evidence of 1984, and how the gender-discriminatory nature of these laws serves as a powerful weapon in the hands of the patriarchal society of Pakistan to subjugate women. These laws and their rigid interpretation in the name of Islam have not only facilitated oppression and sexual violence against women to an alarming degree in Pakistan, but also seriously eroded womenâ s chances of equal justice. The factors that led to the implementation and survival of such laws in the first place, and consequently how rape became a daunting weapon against women, will be discussed. The paper will analyze the various political, social, cultural and religious factors that contribute to this situation, and the legal and social complexities involved for women in seeking justice in rape cases. In conclusion, the paper will discuss Pakistani womenâ s initiative in evolving and building an organized resistance and struggle for the repeal of gender discriminatory laws.
Locating the storyteller in Silent Waters: Sabiha Sumar's cinematic tale of shared histories and divided identities
(University of Pittsburgh, 2021) Imran, Rahat; Horizon 2020
In her multi award-winning feature film Silent Waters (2003), Pakistani woman filmmaker Sabiha Sumar connects the socio-political traumas of the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan (1947) with the onset of military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization period (1977-1988) in Pakistan. Presenting a story based on real-life events, the film focuses on the impact of religious fundamentalism and nationalism on women in particular. Examining Silent Waters as an example of “history on film/film on history” (Rosenstone 2013), and film as an “agent, product, and source of history” (Ferro 1983), the discussion identifies and analyzes the filmmaker’s own tacitly embedded location and participation in the filmic narrative as an experiential ‘auto/bio-historiographer’, arguing for the value of this new paradigm in Cinema Studies.
The medi(atis)ation of the slave experience: a journey from page to screen
(University College Cork, 2019) Schroeter, Caroline V.; Jenkins, Lee; Young, Gwenda
Considering the increase in slave films in recent years, this interdisciplinary project explores the cross-generic development of nineteenth-century slave narratives into their contemporary cinematic iterations. Continuities and changes in the (self-) representation of African Americans are interrogated in two specific cinematic slave narratives: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016). My argument draws on theories of race, film analysis and intertextuality, specifically adaptation and the black tradition of Signifyin(g), to examine the network of intertexts that influences these films. Key areas considered include the representation of slavery, gender, race, the black body and sexual violence on and off screen. I also trace the conventions of the slave narrative across mediums and discuss the complex nature of authorship and authenticity. Assessing the close connection between the different narrative forms across three centuries, my research shows filmmakers of cinematic slave narratives to be modern-day mediators of the slave experience, similar to the amanuenses of their literary predecessors. This thesis therefore explores how motivations behind the production of these films reflect a recurring social phenomenon reminiscent of those underpinning nineteenth-century abolitionism and the twentieth-century Civil Rights movement. Thus, this thesis examines the effects of mediatisation on the representation of blackness and identity, as instantiated by the experiences of slavery and mediatised Othering, and the tools used to convey these to a twenty-first-century audience. This thesis demonstrates that, despite increasing historical distance, slave narratives continue to be relevant as a commemoration of the African-American experience and a commentary on slavery and its present-day legacy.
Mukhtaran Mai's transformation from gang-rape victim to the feminist face of glamour: Transcending notions of tribal honour, gender and class in Pakistan
(Routledge, 2019-10-29) Imran, Rahat
This chapter focuses on the Mukhtaran Mai gang-rape case study to examine one womanâ s resolve to fight back "honor-rape", and her struggle to seek justice through the Pakistani judicial system. The discussion explores the various dimensions underlying such sexual violence against women, and their objectification as symbols of "honour" from the tribal standpoint of power structures of tribe/caste, class, and gender in contemporary Pakistani society. It also deals with the tribal parallel legal system that itself propagates and condones such acts of violence against women. The essay, thus, traces Mukhtaran Mai's journey through the courts and her emergence as a feminist and rights activist who transcended the widely held notions of tribal honor, gender, and class, and acquired worldwide acclaim as a symbol of courage, and resistance, and recognition as a feminist face of glamour when she received in 2005 Glamour Magazine's Women of the Year award.
Sonic modernities: capitalism, noise, and the city essay film
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-03-07) Rascaroli, Laura
Oculocentric perspectives are often dominant in descriptions of the city essay film. Whether flâneurial, observational, lyrical or visionary, the gaze is often placed at the centre of the filmic perception of the city, which is itself conceived of as a sight, image, or palimpsest. In this article, I reflect on the centrality of noise to modernity, and of capitalism to urban sound. In doing so, I pursue a dual goal: to foreground a sound-based understanding of the city through the essay film; and to ask how sound can help us understand the city essay film as a critique at once of the metropolis’ entanglement with capitalism and of the cinema’s historical contribution to the creation of the city as spectacle. A workable definition of the city essay film as an object of theory is attained via an engagement with urban and sound studies, and the discussion of sound design and sound discourse in Many Undulating Things (2019), a geopolitical essay by Bo Wang and Pan Lu about Hong Kong.
Women and the archive: The early years of the Cork Film Festival
(Cork Film Festival Archive, 2020) Chambers, Ciara

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