Off the Page and onto the Big Screen

Top Films from SUP Authors

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

Contrary to popular belief, we’re not always buried in a book. Sometimes, we’re buried in a film. We reached out to a few of our authors to tell us about some of their favorite films – films that inspired their research, or films that they just happened to enjoy.

 

1. Chronicle of a Disappearance (dir. Elia Suleiman, 1996)

In Elia Suleiman’s debut feature, the director plays a version of himself, E.S., an expat Palestinian filmmaker attempting to piece together the fragmented story of a journey home and match it up with hilarious and poignant vignettes of life under occupation. Suleiman opts for deadpan humor to convey trauma and absurdity. An inheritor of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati, Suleiman speaks volumes even though E.S. hardly utters a word in the entire film. When asked for a speech, E.S. finds himself drowned out by feedback from the microphones that are supposed to amplify his voice.

2. Memoria (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visionary 21st century filmmaker, whose debut feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, was released in the year 2000. Memoria is nominally about an investigation into a mysterious loud sound that awakens Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an expat living in Columbia. Her search for an explanation leads her on an inner and outer journey that explores various secular and supernatural origins for the possible source of the uncanny sound. Personal and collective trauma bleeds into haunted places and lives whose histories are somehow joined across the world. There is no return home, only further openings into the unknown.

Contributed by J. M. Tyree, author of Vanishing Streets: Journeys in London.

Joshua recently contributed his own top ten list to the BFI.

You can explore his top picks here.

 

3. The Matrix (1999)

The film's iconic scenes of digital glitches, where the virtual world of The Matrix bleeds into reality, struck a chord with me when I first watch it in 1999. I realized that glitches were not just technical errors, but powerful metaphors for the cracks in our digital existence. It produced groundbreaking visual effects, unique storytelling, cultural and popularity impact, societal relevance, and technical and artistic achievements. I reference a scene in the movie in Arabic Glitch – the one where a Neo sees the image of a passing cat glitch in the matrix, and he says, “déjà vu.”

4. Minority Report (2002)

As a doctoral student, I studied with the movie’s production designer, Alex McDowell, who is also a USC professor. His work on 5D cinema and worldbuilding continues to have an impact on my research and teaching. Minority Report presents a futuristic vision of a world where crime can be predicted and prevented before it happens. The film's depiction of advanced technology, including holographic interfaces, personalized advertising, and futuristic transportation, was visually groundbreaking and provided a unique and immersive cinematic experience. It portrayed ethical and moral dilemmas associated with the use of predictive technology, making it a thought-provoking film.

Contributed by Laila Sakr, author of Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives.

 

5. No One Knows About Persian Cats (dir. Bahman Ghobadi, 2009)

Ghobadi takes the audience on a thrilling journey into the underground music scene of Tehran. Despite the government's repression of music and its disapproval of women singing, the film demonstrates how music still thrives in clandestine settings. The film portrays the occurrence of unofficial performances in concealed spaces, such as basements, rural cow sheds, and rooftop rooms constructed from scraps, which resonate with many unconventional art spaces that I discuss in my book Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art & Critical Spatial Practice. The film’s black-and-white portrayal of the creative life of artists may give the impression that everything is so clear-cut in Iran.

6. Taxi (dir. Jafar Panahi, 2015)

However, as many case studies in Alternative Iran show, unconventional and even prohibited activities also take place in porous environments, such as those shown in films like Jafar Panahi's Taxi. The taxi in Tehran serves not only as a mode of transportation but also as a platform for passengers to listen to prohibited music and discuss their disappointments with the government. As in real life circumstances, Taxi shows that the discussions in Iran’s taxis can become so enthralling that the driver may prolong the journey without charging extra, just to continue the conversation. Many alternative sites of art production in my book bear a resemblance to the permeable ambiance of these taxis.

Contributed by Pamela Karimi, author of Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice.

 

7. Oldboy(dir. Park Chan-wook, Oldŭboi, 2003).

I first watched this film when it was released on videocassette, on a tiny television set with a built in VCR. I was blown away. The film tells the story of man who is mysteriously imprisoned from 1988 to 2003 only to be just as mysteriously released. These years in South Korea were a period of rapid globalization and then economic tumult after the so-called IMF crisis in 1997-1998. He thus experiences the transformation of Korean society in that period as a disorienting rush. After watching it repeatedly over the next several years, I came to identify with this aspect of the film. My family last visited Korea in 1986, and it was not until 2006 when I returned. Through a distressing story of revenge and regret, Oldboy represents the horrified affective sensorium of South Korea’s disappointed modernity, a modernity that happened so fast that we, like the film’s protagonist, are left to grasp for answers, always a step behind. 

8. Take Care of My Cat(dir. Jeong Jae-eun, Koyangirŭl Put‘akhae, 2001)

Take Care of My Cat narrates the story of five young women from the port city of Incheon and their limited prospects for success after graduating from high school. It thus tracks the fate of a generation of young women left behind under an economy shifting further away from the developmentalism that characterized Korea’s rapid growth in the second half of the 20^th century, in which women’s labor once held an important place. Take Care of My Cat represents an important demographic that was largely overlooked during the economic crisis of the late 1990s in South Korea; it comments on obsolescence and surplus populations within gendered terms. In this respect, it anticipates the discursive terrain occupied by 21-century Korea feminisms.

Contributed by Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, author of Vicious Circuits: Korea’s IMF Cinema and the End of the American Century.

 

9. The Private Eyes (dir. Michael Hui, 1976)

From the moment the zippy theme song launches over crowds heading to work, all issues of geographic and historical distance disappear. “Working folks like us… Earn just a little money, all gone too soon…” sings Cantopop icon and film co-star, Sam Hui. Hong Kong comedian Michael Hui wrote, directed, and starred in this 1976 comedy as a Hong Kong everyman, doing what he can to pay bills. Playful depictions of surveillance were central to Hong Kong film and culture in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Its eminently accessible humor—with homages to Chaplin, Keaton, Columbo, and Bruce Lee—helped Hui achieve his status as an international star. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, but it still makes me laugh out loud.

10. Ten Years (dir. Jevons Au, Kiwi Chow, Zune Kwok, Ka-Leung Ng, Fei-Pang Wong, 2015)

In 2015, a television broadcast of the annual Hong Kong film awards abruptly cut when Ten Years was named Best Picture. The film, a collection of five speculative shorts imagining Hong Kong one decade into the future, is a bleak, brutally dystopian vision of mainland Chinese power, whose prescience only seems more obvious today. Today, the freewheeling and commercial Hong Kong cinema has disappeared under the self-censorship enforced by lucrative mainland Chinese markets, but hope remains in the impoverished but newly revitalized independent cinema. Costing less than US $70,000 to produce, Ten Years was one of the first and most important examples of this industrial shift. Its lean but powerful depiction of Hong Kong’s ominous future exemplifies the local cinema’s ability to craft indelible images for a pittance of Hollywood costs.

Contributed by Karen Fang, author of Arresting Cinema: Surveillance in Hong Kong Film

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