Rachel Thaw

Fusion Film Festival Begins Soon!

By Kenzie Packer

For those of you with a penchant for the creative and a love of storytelling, Fusion Film Festival is opening its doors just for you! Our annual festival will commence this April from the 12th through the 15th with a series of fantastic events, illustrious guest speakers, and unforgettable awards!

The festival begins Wednesday, April 12 with the Industry Visionary Award Luncheon. For those of you who have been named finalists at the festival, you will receive a personal invitation to join us in the Dean’s Conference Room and chat with fellow filmmakers, as well as meet the Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Anne del Castillo! If you’re a finalist, come on down for a morning of wonderful conversation with fellow artists!

On Thursday, April 13, we will be hosting the eminent Magdalene Taylor, a writer on sex and culture whose name has crowned the bylines of the New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, and Vulture. She will be joined by a stunning team of folks working in the film industry to discuss Representing Female Sexuality and Intimacy on screen. Brittany Huckabee, producer of HOT GIRLS WANTED, will also join.

For the first time in two years, we will even be bringing back our Docs-in-the-Works Pitch Competition. On Friday, April 14, we will host this fantastic event to honor filmmakers whose documentaries are currently in progress. Join us as we watch finalists pitch their ideas to a panel of top industry professionals.

After, stick around for a screening of the action-comedy film POLITE SOCIETY, followed by a Q&A with director Nida Manzoor. Manzoor’s debut feature with Focus Features and Working Title premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The boisterous and original film follows a British Pakistani teenager (and aspiring stuntwoman) who attempts to save her older sister from a semi-arranged marriage by performing an elaborate heist.

On Saturday, April 15, we round out our festival with a Panel on Critiquing & Analyzing Media with an amazing group of literary publishers and writers. They will chat about criticism versus reviews, the challenges faced in the field, and the responsibilities of film and television writing.

After, join us for the highlight of our festival, a Masterclass with writer, actor, and director Ana Fabrega! We will screen two episodes of HBO’s cult hit comedy series LOS ESPOOKYS, then Fabrega herself will stay for a conversation that will be moderated by Insider’s Libby Torres. Laugh along with us as we watch a hilarious group of friends who turn their love of horror into a peculiar business, providing horror to those who need it in a dreamy Latin American country where the strange and eerie are just part of daily life.

The final event of Fusion Film Festival’s 2023 circuit will be our Finalist Screening & Award Ceremony. Join us for a stunning finale as we screen the finalists of the festival and award the next generations of storytellers!

We can’t wait to see you there! Check out our Eventbrite page for more details about each event and to RSVP. See you at the festival!

Rebecca Hall’s Passing and the Fallacy of Black & White

By Tenzing Pixley

The term ‘cosmopolitics’ is derived from the Greek ‘kosmos’, a term which relates to a holistic composition in regards to an effective, yet ornamental, functionality; once ‘-politics’ is attached, a word synonymous with ideological conflict and endless debate, the combined noun speaks to a system in which all sentient parts of a societal whole are granted substantial democratic representation. As a result of the fallibilism of the individual, ever-increasing global cross-pollination, and greater emphasis on the urban environment as a cultural epicenter, cosmopolitics morphs into an ideological perspective: cosmopolitanism, a worldview inherent to multicultural environments where one’s human obligations break cultural boundaries whilst still being keenly aware of said differences. Case and point, each borough of New York City contains many vibrant communities distinct in creed and values, yet they all simultaneously coexist and overlap with each other. Coexistence, instead of separation, is key to cosmopolitan thought.

Now, if a cosmopolitan worldview runs adjacent to integration, an anti-cosmopolitan worldview runs adjacent to pluralism. A reaction to the pluralism enforced by Jim Crow, author Nella Larsen wrote Passing (1929), a seminal novel focusing on two African American women, Irene Redfield and the racially ambiguous Clare Kendry, the latter of which frequently ‘passes’ as a white woman for the societal benefits she receives. In 2021, it was adapted for Netflix by actress-turned-director Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, respectively.

To reduce its thematics to merely a story about flitting through racial identities would be an extreme understatement. The source material already serves as a poignant critique against notions of ethnocentric superiority, as to which the film doubles down and, while sacrificing the syntactical beauty of Larsen’s prose, embraces merits only afforded by a wholly visual medium. Take, for instance, Edu Grau’s black-and-white cinematography. Coupled with a boxed-out 4:3 aspect ratio, one would assume basic homage to the aesthetic sensibilities wrought from technical limitations of ‘20s cinema. But, in terms of thematics, the choice to shoot in black and white reflects the binary perceptions of race brought on by Jim Crow, with Grau citing this as essential to establish a white world and then find the nuances of the grays and the blacks so that [the film can show] what’s in between,” (Shachat, 2022).

As portrayed in the film, and by extension the book, Hall depicts race as a social construct rather than a tangible difference in character: Black and white denizens of Harlem dance together at swing parties, intermingle over dinner, and drink and smoke together with carefree attitudes emblematic of the flapper new woman and a general push against puritan values. Irene’s closest confidant is that of a white novelist–Bill Camp’s intellectual Hugh Wentworth–a point that comes off even more so in the film due to Hall’s slight omission of Irene’s other significant interpersonal relationships in favor of highlighting multicultural discourse. The film even enters its second act at one of these aforementioned parties, a charity event for African American welfare partly organized by Irene, attended by both Black and white people freely dancing together–although it should be noted that Irene and Wentworth have a playful discourse about the guests’ motivations for racial intermingling.

Racism–through mentions of lynching, slurs, and Clare’s virulent husband, unknowing of her biracial heritage–is an ever-looming presence throughout the novel and subsequent script. But just as apparent is a true cosmopolitan outlook where cultural differences are acknowledged yet can be pushed aside in the face of human universality. Much of how Hall visually destroys binary notions is through her depiction of the book’s narrative axl, the enthralling Clare Kendry, portrayed by Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga, who’s of mixed Irish descent herself. At a time where notions of binary race were enforced by law, the mixed Clare represents a form of danger to the status quo: both black and white yet neither black nor white, a racial makeup more reflective of the average American. In the book, we experience the story from the perspective of Irene Redfield, who is enthralled with Clare to the point where subtextual readings of queerness are certainly valid. She’s at first possessed by Clare’s beauty, but as page turns to chapter, that enthrallment progressively morphs into resentment. As such, Clare’s syntactical beauty becomes somewhat soured by the way in which Irene see’s her.

Though, it should be worth noting that Irene’s vilification of Clare exists largely within her internal monologues and thought processes characterized by Larsen’s prose, prose that is forlorn in favor of a visual representation in Hall’s adaptation. Played by Tessa Thompson, Irene’s distaste towards Clare really only becomes apparent by the entrance into the third act, when by the pacing of the book it finds its onset much earlier. Thus, when Irene ogles at Clare in the movie, our perception of the blonde beauty isn’t challenged by Irene, rather all we do is sit and watch and let ourselves be entranced by ambiguity we can’t just put a finger on.

Works Cited

Shachat, Sarah. “The Cinematography of ‘Passing’ Captures Tessa Thompson’s Unease in White – and Black – Spaces.” IndieWire, IndieWire, 1 Feb. 2022.

Solving the Case of Velma’s Struggling HBO Show: A Whodunit of Ratings and Criticism

By Illia Solano

HBO Max’s Velma, following the much-loved character from the “Scooby-Doo” franchise, made its debut on the platform on January 12, 2023. The adult-animated show—which follows a teenage Velma going through her awkward years at Crystal Cove High—was sure to break records. And it did. It was HBO Max’s most streamed original adult-animated cartoon on its first day of it being released. However, that might be a misleading metric since most of HBO Max’s original cartoons have been moved to the platform right after their first season, leaving Velma to be compared with itself.

But metrics aside, this isn’t why people are talking about the show. At this point, Velma has a 42% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, followed by an audience score of 6%. Not only that, IMDB and Google Review also rate it at 1.3 stars out of 5. With Scooby Doo spanning more than 50 years, its beloved characters have stayed popular enough to stand the test of time. In fact, I’ve noticed that their popularity actually went up when the character Velma became an LGBTQ icon in recent years. Not to mention, Velma carries the Scooby-Doo IP (Intellectual Property), which brings with it a horde of fans, evidenced by the massive amount of streams the show received for its premiere. So, how is it possible that this reboot is being so brutally criticized?

On the one hand, creator and star Mindy Kaling changed many of Mystery Inc’s races to make the show more diverse: Daphne is of Asian descent (and adopted by two lesbian moms), Shaggy is now Black and instead goes by his given name Norville, and Velma is South-Asian like Kaling. Not to mention, there is no Scooby. All of this made a lot of hardcore fans mad because their beloved characters were changed. However, it is this sort of close-mindedness that led the show’s actual merit to be overlooked. But personally, this wasn’t the problem I found with the show. I was excited about this push for diversity and representation. Not having Scooby run around with Shaggy, hiding from masked villains while downing Scooby snacks, did make me kind of sad. But I was still very open to seeing where the series would go. Not to mention, the animation was great! The style and the aesthetics all flow so well together and are the backbone for a successful animated show.

But that’s the funny thing. The show’s low ratings are not because of the visual quality. They aren’t even because of the diverse cast! As one Forbes review mentions, “Velma seems like it’s upsetting both sides of its potential audience here” (Tassi). In the span of 25 minutes or so, Velma failed to deliver the raunchy and enjoyable adult-animated humor that is expected on these shows. Instead, high schoolers are oversexualized in the first 5 minutes, the show’s meta self-awareness works only as a one-sided joke that doesn’t support the storyline, and there is an ineffective use of gratuitous violence. Overall, Velma makes it impossible to like the titular character, especially not when Kaling keeps on portraying Velma as the unpopular, unattractive girl who cares only about herself and what others can do for her. It’s hard to watch a character that you’ve grown to love, hate herself so much that she overcompensates by acting better than everyone.

Once I finished the pilot episode, I couldn’t go on. It wasn’t the original “Scooby Doo” and it wasn’t trying, but at the same time, it wasn’t bringing anything new to Velma’s origin story. Instead, the show breathes completely new personalities into these characters and uses the IP as a crutch to get viewers to watch. Though it didn’t help their case. Kaling had good intentions when making this show. She did try to push the envelope when it came to bringing in the diversification of a long-time homogenous set of characters to make them modern and therefore reflective of the world. But those merits don’t outweigh all the issues that the show has.

Works Cited

Singh, Olivia. “Mindy Kaling and the Cast of ‘Velma’ Address Critics Who Are Angry That the Titular Character Is South Asian and Explain the Absence of Scooby.” Insider, Insider, 12 Jan. 2023, www.insider.com/velma-mindy-kaling-cast-show-backlash-scooby-absence-explained-nycc-2022-10.

Tassi, Paul. “HBO Max’s ‘Velma’ Is Getting Absolutely Savaged in Reviews and Online.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 16 Jan. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/15/hbo-maxs-velma-is-getting-absolutely-savaged-in-reviews-and-online/?sh=7b1b403e4ff2.

It’s a Girl Eat Girl World: Yellowjackets and its Killer Female Characters

By Clara Collins

Complicated. Unhinged. Good for her. Evil.  Though there’s been debate over what to call them, and how to classify them, there’s no denying audiences are enjoying horror and thriller films with morally complex female characters. Jennifer in Jennifer’s Body, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, and Gabi in Infinity Pool are just a few characters whose ability to wreak havoc pulls viewers in.

Television, however, has less of these characters as the center of stories. In recent years, Fleabag, following the titular character as she stumbles through life, mucks up relationships, and uses brutal honesty as a crutch, has proved to be a massive hit, and shows like Harley Quinn and Sharp Objects have similarly challenging female characters. But on “prestige” television shows, female characters (particularly these so-called “complicated” characters) have often been leveled with extreme hate from viewers: think of Skylar White from Breaking Bad, or even Shiv from Succession.

Few shows have women acting evilly, much less setting these women as the main characters, allowing them to have moments of humanity that resonate with the viewer while simultaneously resisting the urge to make every woman on a screen “likable.”

But what if a show did all of that while exploring how cruel a teenage girl can be? And what if that cruelty extended not just to boyfriend stealing, name calling, or gossiping behind people’s backs, but cannibalism?

Enter Yellowjackets. Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson conceived this Showtime thriller as an answer to the question, “What if Lord of the Flies happened to high school girls?” The result is an intense, ridiculously hard to stop watching drama.

Yellowjackets is the story of a team of high school soccer players that survives a plane crash and makes it in the wilderness for more than a year. The rigid social structures and hierarchies of high school quickly transform into something entirely new, though no less fixed, as the girls adapt to their life in the wild.

The characters—seen as both teens and adults twenty-five years later—are each ruthless in their own way. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse/Melanie Lynskey) is the insecure best friend to queen bee Jackie in school, but in adulthood is a stay-at-home mom whose cunning, fearless side begins to reappear when a reporter begins looking into the story of the crash. Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown/Tawny Cypress) will do anything to succeed, first as a soccer player and later as a candidate for state senate. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher/Juliette Lewis) is a fiercely independent teen who grows to struggle with addiction and guilt as an adult. And Misty (Sammi Hanratty/Christina Ricci) is the oft-bullied equipment manager who becomes a cruel, contriving nurse in a care facility.

Each of these girls, along with other teammates, find different ways to adjust to their new circumstances and survive, and seeing how this carries on to their adult lives makes Yellowjackets impossible to stop watching; you know so much about these women that each one feels real. As a viewer, your perception of characters and who you “root” for can change just as quickly as the on-screen relationships do.

The show has proven immensely popular with critics and viewers. Online, fans debate which character has the strongest morals and who is most to blame for various character deaths, but they also just theorize what the next gnarly thing to take place on screen will be, or celebrate an older version of a player appearing for the first time. Shauna’s behavior gets more and more shocking as episodes progress: she sleeps with Jackie’s boyfriend in high school and later marries him, manipulates every person close to her, threatens murder, actually commits murder (not a spoiler!), and though the whole story hasn’t been revealed yet, definitely committed cannibalism. But all of this, while enjoyed by fans, is also not definitive to her character. She’s also a mom, a great student, a fantastic athlete.

Many of the films with these complex female characters show them exploiting their femininity to get back at men, or achieve some goal. However, because Yellowjackets has so many female characters with such a wide range of perspectives, flaws, and motivations, no one character has to exemplify a woman. As we watch them in this new space, they are free to exist outside of our societal expectations, and we don’t really question it.

Yellowjackets season two premieres on March 24th, so there’s plenty of time to watch the ten episodes in season one before it starts again. But I think you’ll probably speed through the whole thing long before that—it’s that good!

All Ears for Hildur Guðnadóttir

By Andrea Nguyen

In film, there are few things more seductive than music in its power to direct and even dictate emotion. Consider the acoustic guitar against a cello, or a perfect fourth versus a tritone. Down to the instrument and the interval, audiences are fluent in the language of musical cues. With such a powerful tool at the ready, it can be tempting to blanket the sonic landscape of a film in a way that leaves little room for misinterpretation or subtlety. However, renowned musician Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker, Chernobyl) has built somewhat of a reputation for resisting a heavy-handed approach to scoring, and her discerning ear has earned her the coveted position of composer on two films released this past year, Todd Field’s Tár and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking.

With Tár, Guðnadóttir’s work serves the world that the film imagines rather than just the film itself. To the chagrin of many musical traditionalists, the majority of Guðnadóttir’s pieces go entirely unheard by the audience. Instead, her compositions lived in earpieces worn by the actors, setting the tempo of their performance and enriching their inner universe.

Tár’s soundtrack comprises its own concept album, including a completed version of Lydia Tár’s work in progress, “For Petra,” which opens up a parallel – or future – world beyond the central storyline in which Tár finishes the piece. The actual score, mixed low, remains nearly imperceptible for the vast majority of the film. It instead constitutes a dust that settles into the lungs of the narrative, unsettling the viewer without formally announcing its presence. Even when Guðnadóttir’s music does surface in our consciousness, it still serves to disorient.

During the scene in question, Tár wanders through a labyrinthine apartment complex in search of her newest cellist and fixation, Olga, as a vocal version of “For Petra” (featuring Guðnadóttir herself), fades in and out of hearing range. At first listen, it’s easy to assume that Guðnadóttir’s haunting voice is diegetic, so tonally well-matched as it is to the shadowy passages and dripping pipes of the basement hallway. As the scene carries on, it becomes equally plausible, from a sonic standpoint, that the melody exists solely in Lydia’s head, and, by proxy, in ours. This disembodiment of sound showcases music’s ability to merge the listener’s consciousness with that of the character, offering an elasticity of identity that implicates us in Tár’s unchecked curiosity. Like our antihero, we become creatures without restraint, chasing blindly after the source of wonder.

With Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, Guðnadóttir takes a more traditional, which is to say melodic, approach. Her ruminative score leans folksy, underpinned by layered guitars,  occasionally swelling with orchestral strings and percussive hits. Each melodic strain gives body to the same sense of purpose but shades it with a different color, paralleling the voices of the titular characters, whose debate strives toward liberation but through different pathways, like so many rivers seeking their outlet in the sea.

Guðnadóttir’s score is immediately grounding, balancing the familiarity of a porch-side jam session with the regularity of a work song. Plucky guitars signal cautious hope, while reverberant drum hits spell trouble on the horizon. Tracks like “Pros and Cons” anchor the listener with an acute sense of surfaces – perhaps copper, tin, wood – firmly rooted in the material world of the  Mennonite women navigating their response to the men who have preyed on them for years. As listeners, we hear the walls in the recording and intuit the profound silence that will remain should the women vacate the colony. While Guðnadóttir’s work here boasts emotional richness, it refrains from being prescriptive, instead unfurling like the most earnest of questions seeking its resolution, as much sunrise as it is sunset.

Just as Tár inspires us to consider the question of when exactly sound becomes music,  Guðnadóttir’s work inspires us to consider the point at which music becomes score. With Tár and Women Talking, the decorated composer demonstrates incredible range, reminding us that music is a tool with many edges; it wields the power to not only deepen emotional resonance but also set the metronome of a performance, ground us within the texture of a given time period, and subsume us into minds other than our own.

The Zola Experience – Retrospective Review of Fusion Film Festival 2022

By Illia Solano

(Spoilers below!)

The basement of the Tisch building is bare when you enter it on a Saturday afternoon. I make my way to the designated room and am greeted by smiling faces wearing matching black shirts. This is just the beginning of my time at the Fusion’s Film Festival screening of the 2020 critically acclaimed Zola by Janicza Bravo.

I enter the room 10 minutes before the film starts and find myself in an almost packed room of people talking amongst themselves. Some sit on their phones while others look at the little programming schedule of events provided at the door. I watch the audience as I make my way down to an empty seat at the far left side of the room on the third row. I’m watching. Waiting.

Finally, the time comes when the lights start to dim. The crowd’s chatter turns to a whisper and then simmers into silence — then, the screen comes to life.

Last year, NYU’s Fusion Film Festival had the privilege to honor Janicza Bravo as Fusion’s Woman of the Year. She is the writer and director of the exhilarating comedy-thriller Zola which follows a series of tweets originally posted by Aziah King, also known as Zola. Filled with twists and turns, the female-centered Zola delves into unfamiliar territory filled with unconventional characters that transport viewers into a weekend to remember.

The film opens with a breath-catching dream sequence that mixes realism and surrealism. Zola begins her retelling of how she and “this bitch fell out” (Bravo). That’s when the audience is transported into the unexpected twists and turns that the film’s two primary women, Zola and Stephanie, experience.

But despite the film’s tense moments, there are always light parts to balance them out. There are always laughs that come about when characters find themselves in these ironic situations, and each one gets a chance to be in the spotlight. Zola’s “are you for real’s,” Stephanie’s naive comments, Derek’s puppy personality, and X’s sudden shift in emotions from 0 to 10 easily manage to get a crack from people. No matter what, Bravo successfully gets a reaction from her audience—and maybe the best example of this is when a montage of dicks fills the screen. The audible gasp from every single person, including myself, was deafening.

The ending was the most gasp-worthy scene. After a harrowing kidnapping, in an almost deserted motel that almost turned into a shoot out, the main cast escapes triumphantly. The viewers are then transported to a two story modern apartment complex looking out into the ocean and its crashing blue waves. We follow our characters’ sigh of relief, thinking their journey has finally ended. But at the last minute… tensions rise and boil until Derek runs out of the balcony on the second floor. The film then cuts to Derek sprawled on the floor by the pool, unmoving.

But it doesn’t end there. Zola and the crew are once again back in the car. X reverts to his “holier-than-thou” persona, Derek whimpers with a hand on his bloodied temple, and Stephanie tries to make amends to Zola by telling her that she loves her. Meanwhile, Zola ignores Stephanie and tries to drown out the weekend by rolling down the window and taking in some air.

After a rollercoaster of emotions, the credits roll in. A scattered round of applause builds into a roar. Fusion Film Festival’s screening of Zola was the marquee event last year, and it’s clear why. It was not only the shared energy in the room that made this screening such an enjoyable experience, it was the chaotic energy within the film that made everyone react. Overall, Zola is the film to watch if you feel  like holding your breath and laughing out loud, and the Fusion Film Festival attendees can attest to that. Everyone at Fusion was so lucky to have experienced this masterful film, and we can’t wait to see what Janicza does next. See you all at the festival this April 12-15!

The Cinematic World of Female Athletes

By Avery Hendrick

Women’s professional athletics is expanding around the world. Last summer, the women’s Euro Cup broke and set its own attendance records multiple times. Women’s NCAA March Madness is bursting onto the scene in the US and, in the National Women’s Soccer League, expansion is a constant with two new teams debuting in the 22-23 season and the Utah Royals slated to join the fray for the 2024-2025 season.

So, where are the women’s sports movies, TV shows, and documentaries following the stories of female athletes? Female athletes deserve to have their stories told and women worldwide deserve to see themselves on the big screen in every aspect. However, the sports films and TV shows hailed as the “biggest and the best” almost always follow men: Ted Lasso, Rocky, Drive to Survive, Miracle, Creed, Friday Night Lights, Moneyball, and so many more. Female sports films and television are often pushed aside or viewed as “women’s movies” rather than mainstream sports films despite the multitude of films that deserve more public attention and appreciation.

However, this does not mean there is a lack of female-centered sports movies entirely. In fact, there’s a rich history of women’s sports media with additions being made every day. The problem is these stories lack much-deserved appreciation.

Most recently, there has been a surge in documentaries concerning female athletes, sports, competitions, and histories. ESPN’s 30 For 30 program is a shining example. The show, which currently has four seasons, has at least half a dozen specials centered on women like 2010’s Marion Jones: Press Pause and the 2022 three-part special Dream On following USA’s women’s basketball team. In 2013, ESPN released Nine for IX, a nine-part series in which each woman-directed episode follows a unique fight for equality in women’s athletics. Finally, in 2022, ESPN released 37 Words, a documentary following the creation and implementation of Title IX in celebration of its 50th anniversary.

There are plenty of productions outside ESPN, too. In March 2023, the documentary Ice Queens premiered on Hulu, which features Black women and athletes in hockey as they strive to grow the game around the world. Though not recent, Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team is another important addition. And, in the world of running, Tracksmith’s commercials and video essays showcase elite female runners. The company’s most ambitious project, Church of the Long Run (2023), is a half-documentary, half-experimental film that literally follows a solo female runner on a long winter run.

Perhaps the more classic and well-known genre of female sports cinema is the “biopic” or “fictionalized retelling.” In this category, we see favorites like the 1992 film A League of Their Own and its 2022 television remake on Amazon Prime, which strove to portray a more accurate picture of the Women’s Baseball League. Both versions had female creators involved in the production process, with the film being directed by Penny Marshall. I, Tonya and Battle of the Sexes, both 2017 releases, along with A League of Their Own (2022) represent a recent surge in movies within this genre, though the male director and screenwriter of I, Tonya presented very little of the sports side of the story within the film, choosing instead to focus on the familial relationships of Tonya Harding.

These productions were all hits, with I, Tonya receiving three Academy Award nominations and winning one. However, they tend to shy away from the “athletics” side of sports. If there’s a sports moment, it’s probably a montage, and the films as a whole are overshadowed by comedy or acting prowess. While not a massive problem, these stylistic choices cause many of these movies to be identified as dramas as opposed to sports films. One exception is the South Korean film Take Off 2. Released in 2016, the film depicts the creation of South Korea’s first women’s ice hockey team, a women’s sport overshadowed in nearly every aspect, especially media coverage. The movie, while based on a true story, is an undeniable sports film.

The most common type of female sports film, though, is the comedy/drama, or dramedy. Often short and low-stakes, these films rarely stray from the narrow genre of “female sports.” Fan-favorites like Whip It (2009), Stick It (2006), and Bring It On (2000) come to mind first. Whip It and Stick It both feature female directors, yet overall, none of these films drive to develop the world of female sports as a serious or intense place. The massive exceptions here, though, are Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). To this day, Million Dollar Baby is the only sports film in the top 50 grossing sports films to primarily follow a female athlete, though Clint Eastwood was a huge pull in the film’s critical and commercial success. Bend It Like Beckham is an exception in its own way for its portrayal of race conflicts in sports, the community of sports, and female athletics as a career rather than a hobby. Deservingly, Bend It Like Beckham is the highest-grossing soccer film of all time with no others coming close.

As the world of pro women’s sports grows, it’s important that the universe of women’s sports cinema and film grows alongside. It’s instrumental that the stories of female athletes, both their successes and failures, are shown on the big screen, phones, and laptops. It is especially important for female sports films to focus on the grit of athletics and sports outside the realms of dance, gymnastics, or figure skating. Female athletes are more than these three disciplines and there are so many stories and sports that have yet to be touched.

Charlotte Wells and the Magnificent Seven

By Carly Burton

To cry during a movie is, for me, a sacred act reserved for that which truly makes me feel something. Whether it be the nostalgic euphoria I felt watching Avengers: Endgame opening night or the bittersweet heartache brought on by La La Land, the swell of emotions rising up over the course of two hours will move me to tears. This isn’t necessarily an indication of a good film; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made me cry because of how infuriating those 152 minutes were, my tears a battle-cry for Zack Synder to fear. Whether it be pure anger bubbling in the depths of my soul or a deep appreciation of a job well done, my body will find a way to free these emotions. A hitch of my breath. Foggy vision. A moment of wetness sliding from my brown eyes, past the dark circles resulting from my borderline nocturnal habits, down my warm cheeks to disappear in my skin. Inhale. Exhale. Relief.

However, it’s very rare for me to react the way I did to Charlotte Wells’ 2022 debut feature Aftersun. The heavy feeling in my chest sat there for the nearly 90 minute film and weighed heavily on my psyche as the credits rolled. My mom and I sat together in silence. We then shared a couple of short words about enjoying it. She told me goodnight. She left to go to bed. I sat there motionless. Then my body acted before my mind could catch up, grabbing the remote and rewinding to the final five minutes of the film. Watching a polaroid of 11-year-old Sophie and her father Calum slowly fade into existence as they talk and laugh together off-screen about not wanting their vacation to end, I felt something inside me start to burn. Then came the “Under Pressure” scene – the final moments of Sophie and Calum’s last vacation together. Their joyful movement to the Queen-David Bowie classic on a hotel dance floor is intercut with shots of a grown Sophie trying to hold onto her father in a disorientingly strobe-lit room, embracing him as she did when she was a child only for him to slip from her grasp.

Like a tea kettle left on the stove for too long, my emotions bubbled over in a hot, burning wave and my sobs felt like a deafening whistle to my own ears. If there ever was a film to clear my sinuses, I’ve found it, and I have the disgusting Snapchat memories to prove it. This is a film that felt uniquely and absurdly personal. It feels rare for me, a 19-year-old Queer Wasian woman, to feel represented. It was absurd that I saw myself most in this violently Scottish film where I had to turn the captions on to understand what they were saying.

My dad passed only months prior to me watching Aftersun. As a person who had been reflecting on the summer vacations spent with my father and who he was as a man outside of his parental role in my life while trying to get my hands on any recording left of him to help me do so, it’s no wonder why I connected to this movie. It’d be a marvel if I didn’t. It also helps that Charlotte Wells simply did a fantastic job at depicting this final holiday through the lens of a memory long gone by use of the disrupted shots, the jumps in time, the switches between the normal camera and Sophie’s MiniDV camera, and the very specific framing that had me in awe – the kinds of directorial choices that felt far more ambitious and riveting than quite a few other films I saw in 2022. And yet, despite all this, despite the fact that this film shook me to my core and managed to turn me into the Mucinex monster in the process, I didn’t for a moment think it would get a major award nomination.

Then it did. Aftersun is officially an Academy Award Nominated film since Paul Mescal, who played the titular role of Sophie’s father Calum, was nominated for Actor in a Leading Role. It was an absolute shock to me as he hadn’t been nominated at the Golden Globes or even the SAG Awards. I thought the Academy would fully glaze over Aftersun, making it just another indie classic that would remain unrewarded. (I’ll never forget you Frank). Yet, they did take a look at Aftersun. They just ignored the woman who made it all happen.

This seems to be a theme at the Academy. After 95 years, seven women have been nominated and only three have won. Now, yet another year of female directors receiving little to no nominations for their amazing work has gone by, even with the female-led and female-directed film Women Talking being nominated for Adapted Screenplay and, the biggest category of all, Best Picture. With fantastic films like Causeway, Till, and The Eternal Daughter being released this year, there was no shortage of female directors to be considered for this honor. Hell, this year had six male directors nominated with only five nominations total. I love the Daniels dearly, but isn’t that hilarious? Perhaps a bit painful? Was that this year’s Oscars slap – a slap in the face of female directors everywhere?

Okay, the 95th Academy Awards is not without its merits in terms of progress for the industry. I’m just as excited as everyone else, if not more, for the win of the Daniels and their absolute sweep with Everything Everywhere All At Once, yet another 2022 film that had me falling apart at the seams. It’s rare that a female-character driven story of queerness, immigrant roots, Asianness, generational trauma, and absolute absurdity gets rewarded so heavily at the Oscars; it’s a film that goes so deeply against the norm of what an “Oscar winning” film usually is. While I acknowledge and celebrate how amazing these accomplishments are, though, I still wonder… is it enough? Will it ever be when the women who helm the ship of their incredible films get ignored and the men who they bring aboard are the only ones rewarded?

The Academy Awards are not just a golden statue to collect dust on a director’s shelf. For women who claw their way into this industry and become one of  few women who even get nominated, it’s a huge platform to take their career to the next level and bring as many other women with them as possible. It’s not only a way to push forward in a profession that seems fragile, especially as a woman in a male-dominated industry, but a way to inspire aspiring female filmmakers to take the next step towards telling their stories.

The first time I felt like I could possibly take that step was seeing Greta Gerwig become one of the magnificent seven, nominated for her first feature Lady Bird. I know quite a few other aspiring female filmmakers felt the same based on the amount of women I met during my first week in film school who said their favorite director was Gerwig despite her only having directed two films total. Lady Bird is yet another film I deem personal, and to see it rewarded with even a nomination at the Academy Awards motivated me enough to take a chance for what I’m truly passionate about. You can imagine my pain when Aftersun wasn’t treated the same way. I can’t begin to imagine how many potential aspiring female directors this has stopped, but I do have hope that soon it won’t be such a rarity for a woman director to get a nod of acknowledgment from the Academy, or that women won’t have to stand in a room full of men and seem brave or inspirational for doing so. Here’s to double digits!

Life is scary, let the talking animals help you out: celebrating Niki Lindroth Von Bahr

By Tenzing Pixley

A monkey who works as a telemarketer dramatically sings about the failure of his life atop his work desk. A deer who works as a bathhouse manager is continually pestered and harassed by entitled customers. Touch-starved bathrobe-clad anchovies bellow about their loneliness in a hotel that is specifically catered towards depressed anthropomorphized fish. These are a collection of just a few poignant moments from the short films of Swedish director Niki Lindroth von Bahr. 

Over the last decade, the Stockholm based animator has built up a small yet punchy œuvre of stop-motion animated shorts, all of which depict absurdist scenarios not unlike the one’s just described. Aesthetically, think Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) but with half the symmetry and double the existential ruminations. No, triple. The typical Lindroth von Bahr short goes something like this: anthropomorphized animals fill human roles and deal with day-to-day mundanities with a pessimistic twist. It’s humorous in presentation, after all, who wouldn’t laugh at animated sardines singing about their woes. But there’s a very dark subtext to much of her work, as you come to realize that the problems of the talking sardines aren’t too different from your own problems. I think the funniest thing about her shorts is that the only thing separating her work from the realm of reality is the fact that all of her subjects are animals, and this is ironically the most superficial aspect of it.

Her sophomore effort, 2014’s Bath House, focuses on a deer who works as a manager of the titular establishment. Throughout the short’s 15 minute runtime, our protagonist is repeatedly pestered by entitled customers and harassed by small-time criminals who end up botching a heist and spilling chemicals everywhere. However, it isn’t the heist or the motley of other side plots which take precedence, it’s the mental toll it takes on the manager. As their working conditions get worse and worse, we feel for the manager not just because the narrative trajectory is a downward slope, but we know that they’re an employee and it is their job to sort out this entire mess, even after the camera stops rolling. The fact that Lindroth von Bahr’s subjects are all animals is the only thing separating them from human. Otherwise, the problems they face and the emotions they feel are all those of mankind. We’ve all taken on occupations that we’ve hated and dealt with people we’d rather not. We’ve all faced rough patches in our lives, where loneliness can be suffocating or our occupation uninspiring. Simply put, Lindroth von Bahr’s body of work can be distilled down to “cinema of the overworked and dispassionate”. And this manifests itself in no place better than her seminal 2017 short, The Burden. Picking up over 80 awards across festivals globally, the short once again chronicles her signature mentally-fatigued anthropomorphized animals as they grapple with existential meaning, loss of ambition, and lack of emotional contact with others. Except it’s now recontextualized as a musical, where stop motion anchovies sing in shrill autotune about how they have no friends or loved ones. And this tore me apart. Visually, how could I take this seriously? Swedish autotune-singing anchovies, what’s more ridiculous than that. But the subject matter they sing about is so distinctly human that it’s impossible not to sympathize with the malaise fish.

The titular “burden” is life itself. It’s deeply pessimistic, but Lindroth von Bahr’s narrative style is one that shows great contempt for the social constructs created by humanity. We are a cosmic coincidence by definition. Animals in every sense. Outside of reproduction and the desire for carnal pleasure, we have no reason to exist. Thus, we create constructs, society and everything it comes with, to give our lives meaning. The problem is that more often than not, these constructs can be depressing or devoid of any creative passion yet are so deeply rooted within human tradition that it’s nigh impossible to go against the grain. When you rewatch The Burden with this context, it’s easy to see that von Bahr both holds disdain for life, yet understand its inevitability that we must go through it. All of her characters are clearly disillusioned with their occupations but positive or proactive change is rarely ever shown. When her characters are discontented with life, they don’t fight against the current, they submit and wallow in their misery, hoping that one day something will change. And in the final shot, it shows the town where all of the animals live, a plot on a giant slab of rock, floating through space. And like the depressed foxes and rabbits of her art, the slab continues floating onwards, its course as unpredictably bland yet inevitable as life itself.

As of this very sentence, Niki Lindroth Von Bahr’s most recent work, The House, has just been released on Netflix. A four-way collaboration between herself, Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, and Paloma Baeza, it is aesthetically in-line with Von Bahr’s œuvre, and thematically might be more of the same or a completely new direction. Either way, if you are or aren’t familiar with the Scandinavian filmmaker, I’d strongly suggest exploring her work. After all, who doesn’t want to wallow in the monotony of life?

Fusion Film Festival 2023 Awards Review

By Tenzing Pixley

This year’s Fusion Film Festival has come to a close in celebratory fashion: a multicolored fountain of artistic voices. The organization was founded in 2003 by Tisch Film & TV students Emma Heald and Gina Abatemarco, guided by Kanbar Professor Susan Sandler as a direct reaction to the lack of representation for women in the U.S. film industry.

The “Woman of the Year” award went to alumnus Janicza Bravo, writer-director of 2020’s acclaimed crime-drama Zola, and key directing roles on hit series including Mrs. America (2020), In Treatment (2021), and Them (2021).  The packed audience for her Master Class heard her speak movingly about the journey an artist takes entering the highly competitive commercial entertainment industry, and the strength of purpose and will it takes to say on course and continue to grow artistically and personally.

 Winner of best undergraduate film was Olivia De Camp’s Chico Virtual, which centers on a boy grappling with the realization of his immigrant status when his brother doesn’t return home one day. The runner-ups were Samina Saifee’s AmeriGirl and Kaia Santos’ Saltwater Interlude. Best graduate film award went to Kristian King’s Twice As Gold which deals with the weight placed on a high school senior, grappling with her mother’s career expectations. The runner-ups were Rio Tobaccowala’s Shadows and Louise Zhang’s Nights and Days in America.

Winner of best animation went to Lauren Kim’s Mind Control, a vivid film exploring a girl’s self-deprecating messages to herself  as sticky notes, illustrating the metaphorical weight of self-doubt. Runner-ups were Johanna Xue’s Dumplings and Shira Seri Levi’s Leftovers.

Winner of the Sight & Sound category was Manami Forward for Fresh Meat, which focuses on fish being slaughtered but interestingly, from the perspective of the fish. Runner-ups were Jessery Darlington’s Be a Better Lady and Isabelle Perez’ Mano de Flor.

Best music video went to Come Through by Maya Peters, complementing the song’s lyrics about unrequited love across three different timelines. Runner-ups were Rhea Li’s Let Me In and Olivia De Camps’ The One – Plant Skull.

Best documentary went to Flora Nolan for White Lie, a Super 8 piece on subjectivity as several friends go on a road-trip together in the midst of quarantine. Runner-ups were Aiyue Li for Leave Slowly and Miranda Manganaro for Hello, My Name Is Chronic Pain.

Spotlighting as the “Freshman Rising Star” was Carly Lin for her documentary About Grandpa. Heartfelt, it deals with Lin’s research into why her grandpa became unhappy in the twilight years of his life.

Best undergraduate feature-length screenplay was The Later Years by Lauryn Darden, a coming of age story that follows an elderly woman after she leaves her husband of forty years and takes on life with her estranged sister. Runner-ups were The Ponderosa Pine Society by Amelia Annen and The Prettiest Black Girl in School by Rebekah Strauss. Best graduate student feature-length screenplay went to Iraisa Ann Reilly for La Reina Del Bronx. Facing religious persecution, a sheltered Cuban refugee is forced to flee to the Bronx in 1961, where she forms an unlikely friendship with a kind-hearted drag queen, until the sins of her past threaten to tear them apart. Runner-ups were Inés Camiña for CATALINA and RAIN (Summer on Washington Street) by Aisha Ford and Josette Roberts.

Rounding out the competition, for television categories, best undergraduate half-hour pilot was Carley DeFoe’s Feign and Glory. When aspiring celebrity Kacie is lured into an alternate dimension and mistaken for a long-awaited messiah, she must fake her way through a prophecy. Runner-ups were Ila Finn’s Accidents Happen and Gabie Yacobi’s Untitled Rabbi Pilot. For graduate student half-hour pilots, the winner was Danielle Koenig for Soccer Moms. Cat fights and nasty rumors are started and flourish as the mothers of a young boy’s soccer team vie for ultimate suburban supremacy. Runner-ups were Grace Dennin’s The Space Race Experiments and Naná Xavier’s Bia from Brazil.

Well, that’s a wrap on this year’s Fusion Film Festival! It’s been a joy to witness all of these beautiful and varied artistic voices: each and every one deserves our praise and attention. We’ll see you next year!