Although the term and the theory entered into Film Studies scholarship as a genre grounded in European culture and American cinema, melodrama is clearly evident in many international film traditions. In this course we will look at the ways that the term has traveled and how melodrama has manifested in different cultures as an expression of social injustice, gender inequity, and an affective bridge between private and public desires and repressions.
Acting and Performing are notoriously difficult to talk about because they are elusive and always enmeshed in storytelling, technologies, collaboration, and of course costume and miseen-scene. This course aims to help students talk and write about film acting, which is often a matter of finding the right vocabulary and identifying the performative aesthetics in any given media.
A classic of Japanese cinema described as a ‘masterpiece’ by Yasujiro Ozu, Floating Clouds is a melancholy meditation on the hopeless side of love. Through the lens of Yukiko and Tomioka’s tempestuous relationship, Mikio Naruse’s most acclaimed film quietly captures the devastation of a country in economic post-war ruin.
Russell situates the film within the trajectory of Naruse’s career and analyses how his social critique is balanced with an aestheticization of a harsh and brutally gendered world, creating an affective tension that is symptomatic of Naruse’s own position as an industrial worker.
I have a contract with Routledge for a new book on Non Professional Acting that will include essays by 13 contributors on the topic.
I have a contract for a book on the 1987 Canadian film with McGill Queen’s University Press. I am currently conducting research on A Winter Tan made by a directorial collective of Jacqueline Burroughs, Louise Clark, John Frizzell, Aerlyn Weisman, and John Walker.