FROM THE EDITOR
Bad Behavior
B. Ruby Rich
This issue of Film Quarterly coincides with a world on fire:
unprecedented extreme heat, fires in California, Montana,
and Oregon, terrible floods in Houston, Nepal, Sierra Leone,
and Nigeria; hurricanes pummeling Mexico, the Caribbean,
Puerto Rico, and Florida; earthquakes in Mexico; fighting
ongoing in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria; assaults on DACA, refu-
gees, and healthcare; the ugliness of Charlottesville and the
rise of fascism. Undoubtedly new disasters and outrages have
emerged to add to the list since this issue went to press.
“Our ideals have been hijacked at the highest levels,” wrote
the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker in his annual fall letter
titled “A Call for Moral Courage in America.” Courage, rather
than despair, indeed, is called for. And vision. And laughter.
In a clip I saw recently of the late Molly Ivins, she observed
that it’s crucial to have fun while fighting for justice “because
you don’t always win, so sometimes that’s the only fun you
get.” I want to take that to heart. Hope needs fun, inspiration
needs courage, and opposition needs all the friends it can get.
The fields of film and television, though, are lagging
behind those offscreen realities known as world events or, in
online parlance, IRW (In Real World). And yes, this is a film
journal, so let that be my point. Where are the films? The
television programs? Many are worthy, some are brilliant,
but too many are beside the point. This is not a time for busi-
ness as usual but rather a time of urgency that demands re-
tooled rhetorics and rethought story lines, that demands
films and documentaries and episodic television to help view-
ers make the imaginative leap into a different future, one that
can be fought for precisely because it can be imagined.
Everyone’s in shock, I suspect. But soon they’ll wake up
and get down to it. In the meantime, criticism must fill the
gap. Historians must turn forensic and unearth the models
of filmmaking from past eras of crisis for templates of suc-
cess that can be retooled and updated. Critics and scholars
must help filmmakers see a way forward, and help audien-
ces to find the work to guide them. As I turn to the students
who still come to the increasingly fraught halls of learning
Film Quarterly, Vol. 71, Number 2, pp. 5–8, ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630.
© 2017 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please
direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through
the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.
ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2017.71.2.5.
with their hopes and dreams, eager to make their mark and
scared they won’t have the chance, I know it is crucial to em-
power them, to give them the tools with which they can
fight for a better future, and force a change on a society too
willing to throw everything on the junk pile. Rescue mis-
sions? Add that to the agenda, then, for the near future.
Dateline: Buenos Aires, August 2017
It was in such a mood that I journeyed to Argentina for the
historic Visible Evidence conference that raised my spirits.
It had been thirty years since I last visited Buenos Aires, back
when Sundance sent me to curate a tribute to Argentine
cinema after the end of the dictatorship. In 1987, I found a
country full of hope, emerging from the military years with
fervor. Then in the 2000s came the wonders of the New
Argentine Cinema, which I tracked and celebrated as a
curator and critic. Now, today, it was a privilege to return to
a flourishing film scene, albeit one facing a society in worri-
some flux. The richness of its traditions was on full display
along with a welcome pan-Latin-American scope of film-
making and scholarship. Making the fine conference even
more useful was the provision of simultaneous translation
(thanks to Ford Foundation funding). Provided at a very
high level of quality, thanks to the unsung interpreters, this
is a service that is never offered at U.S. conferences and
which makes cultural exchange truly possible at an equitable
level of mutuality.
With many FQ editorial board members, contributing
editors, and contributors there, Film Quarterly held a gather-
ing at the Gorlami Bar Cultural in the hip San Telmo neigh-
borhood to introduce porteños (the term used by the people
of Buenos Aires to refer to themselves) and Latin American
cinephiles to the journal and to provide a location for mingling
and future collaboration. I chaired a short panel together with
FQ editorial board member and Buenos Aires native Natalia
Brizuela, alongside Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina (sub-
ject of a series of essays in FQ 70:4) and Argentine critic, editor,
and professor David Oubiña, whose work on Lucrecia Martel
is especially well known in English and with whom Encina
herself had studied. Speaking off-handedly in Spanish and
English, panelists reflected on this moment in Latin American
F ILM QU A RTE RL Y 5

FQ gathering at Gorlami Bar Cultural. Left to right: Natalia
Brizuela, Paz Encina, B. Ruby Rich, and David Oubiña.
cinema and the significance of the gathering. Also present as a
special guest was the legendary Lita Stantic, who produced
the early films of Paz Encina as well as those of Martel and
many other outstanding Argentine directors.
With plenty of empanadas and pizza, and typical Argentine
beer and the local wine served in distinctive pinguinos (tradi-
tional white ceramic decanters in the shape of penguins), the
crowd loosened up and hopefully new connections were made.
For FQ, it was a chance to confirm a long-standing commit-
ment to Latin American cinema and to encourage more con-
tributions from Latin American scholars.
Two events outside the conference meeting rooms marked
my stay in equally decisive ways. One was a trip outside
the city with several colleagues for an asado (barbeque) with
a group of feminist activists joining culture and politics to
fight against injustice, under the banner of the #NiUnaMenos
campaign and other such groups. As if they’d been studying
Molly Ivins (or she, once upon a time, them) there was ample
fun and laughter, a taste of a vibrant Argentina that felt ready
for whatever would come. Alas, come it did: huge demon-
strations over the arrest and disappearance of Santiago
Maldonado, a local activist fighting Amazonian rainforest
deforestation, ongoing during Visible Evidence, led to violent
reprisals and arrests less than a month later. Femicide, the
issue of this group that I had just met, suddenly seemed one
part of a broader landscape of violence and intimidation.1
The other outing was an official conference activity: a visit
to ESMA, the former military barracks right in the city, once a
clandestine center where the desaparecidos (the “disappeared”)
were jailed, tortured, and killed during the years of the dicta-
torship, 1976–83. The School of Naval Mechanics was in
2004 made into the Space for Memory and Human Rights
(Espacio Memoria y Derechos Humanos). Trained guides led
6 WIN T ER 201 7
conference attendees through the rooms after a moving film
and slideshow explaining their history and memorializing
those who had passed through them to their deaths. It was
a moving experience not easily forgotten. Yet the next day
I learned that the conservative government of Mauricio
Macri was cutting its funding, a clear attempt to extinguish
the memory of the past, the memory that was supposed to
ensure this would never happen again.
At the time of Visible Evidence, Argentina was in the grip
of one of its perpetual cycles of economic crisis: great for con-
ferees enjoying the currency exchange rates but disastrous
for Argentinians. In a restaurant window one day, I spied
an ad for the “Anti-Crisis Menu” offering cut-rate meals. On
another day, traffic ground to a halt when angry farmers
came to town to dump their bananas, handing them out free
to the crowds that quickly formed, in protest against the col-
lapse of tariffs that flooded the market with cheap imports.
On yet another day, my cab driver detoured to an alternate
route, explaining that he had to avoid the area because the
piqueteros (street demonstrators), already visible en masse
along the road, would soon launch piquetes (street blockings)
by linking themselves to each other with sticks and ropes to
block traffic and wreak havoc in the capital. Cab drivers, ven-
dors, and civilians shared tips with each other about which
way to go to avoid the roadblocks as traffic began to snarl.
Argentine cinema has been a powerful motor of change
and a wonderful reflection of a revived society. I have every
confidence that it will continue to play that role in keeping
imagination and vision alive. At least, that’s what I thought
then. In the autumn, though, dire news emerged from
Argentina. Alejandro Cacetta, the trusted head of INCAA,
its national film institute, was pushed out and government
insider Ralph Haiek took over and began to implement an
unprecedentedly commercial direction. His new Resolution
942 introduces financial demands that threaten INCAA’s
independence and the future of Argentine filmmaking.2 For
all who cherish the past thirty-five years of Argentine cinema
and its continuation, it is a time to offer support and hope that
the forces of independent creativity can prevail.
In This Issue
In the midst of the last SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media
Studies) conference in Chicago, FQ met with Racquel Gates
and Michael Boyce Gillespie to hatch a plan: to bring together
some of the best new voices for a dossier on U.S. black cinema
including and beyond Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016). Not
only did they passionately take on the mission, but they have
produced in a remarkably short time an impressive assembly
of current thinking on black cinema and television infused
Inside the Espacio Memoria y Derechos Humanos.
with African American cultural theory. In their introduction,
they trace the large number of titles still to be explored and
modestly frame their contribution as a beginning; be assured,
however, that this dossier stands as a signal intervention into
the understanding of this moment in black representation
across platforms. This issue’s cover image—taken from Leslie
Harris’s trailer for “I Love Cinema” featuring Jennifer
Williams as Leila Laneaux, a college film professor—gives a
glimpse of the reach and complexity of this dossier.
Rizvana Bradley, writing on black maternity in Mother of
George (Andrew Dosunmu, 2013), Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011),
and Moonlight, examines the relations between filiality and
intimacy as sketched through these very different works.
Racquel Gates, in her own essay, considers questions of
status in the racialized aesthetics of genre, looking at Get Out
(Jordan Peele, 2017), Love & Hip-Hop (VH1, 2011–), and
Moonlight to consider how issues of taste and class intersect
with both stereotypes and zones of possibility.
Paula J. Massood looks at African American cinematic
histories (at a moment when the HBO Confederate show was
being announced) through examinations of a range of recent
works: Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation (2016), Sam Pollard’s
Slavery by Another Name (2012), Ava DuVernay’s Selma
(2014) and 13th (2016), and Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro
(2017). Brandy Monk-Payton looks at questions of blackness
by elaborating a theory of televisual reparation, with exam-
ples from The Boondocks (Adult Swim, 2005–14) to Under-
ground (WGN, 2016–) to Black-ish (ABC, 2014–).
Samantha Sheppard looks at the “unmade” via Leslie
Harris’s failed attempt, after her successful Just Another Girl
on the I.R.T. (1992), to use a Kickstarter campaign to make a
new film, “I Love Cinema,” and references a range of recent
scholarship to argue for the value of a speculative archive.
Michael Boyce Gillespie assesses three recent short works
of “cinema in the wake”—Leila Weefur’s Dead Nigga
BLVD. (2015), Frances Bodomo’s Everybody Dies! (2016), and
F ILM QU A RTE RL Y 7
 A. Sayeeda Clarke’s White (2011)—that constitute a bold aes- Men Behaving Badly
thetic capable of going beyond identitarian absolutes. And
At press time, the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, ex-
Kristen J. Warner ranges across television, film, and event
panded, and reached a point of such a massive number of
landscapes to elaborate a theory of “plastic representation”
revelations of abuse by named actresses that he was fired from
that, among other feats, repackages stereotypes into synthetic
his own company and kicked out of the Academy, his mem-
pop-culture images consumable even by those they distort.
bership revoked. Wow. Let me go on the record: this is a
This is a dossier that I expect to see injected into the very
terrific victory. Men have run the film industry as a personal
marrow of academia with velocity, updating curricula and
bastion for too long, amassing power that gets exercised to
raising the level of discourse. With tremendous gratitude to
women’s detriment. Long ago, when I interviewed Jodie
Racquel Gates and Michael Boyce Gillespie, FQ is proud to
Foster just before Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the
have these essays in its pages.
Lambs (1991) opened, she shared that “there are men who
Also in this issue are three striking contributions from
become film directors for the opportunities it affords them
FQ’s columnists. Caetlin Benson-Allot examines the television
to abuse women.“ I didn’t ask for names and she didn’t
shows I Love Dick (Amazon, 2017–), GLOW (Netflix, 2017–),
provide them, but it’s easy enough to look up her early filmo-
and Insecure (HBO, 2016–) to assess how each figures its central
graphy. This is nothing new, people. What is remarkable
characters through a lens of abjection, querying the notion of
is the extent of Weinstein’s predation, the courage of his
“the female gaze” as an operative construct in these cases. Paul
victims, and the sudden willingness of institutions to stand
Julian Smith, reporting from Mexico, interprets the newly re-
against him. But wait… do you for a minute think this
leased statistics on Mexican media consumption and analyzes
would be happening if Harvey Weinstein had not already
the new soap opera Club de Cuervos produced by Netflix in
lost his position of dominance? If he were not already old
light of its conclusions. (See also his report online in Quorum
and weaker and no longer the potent tyrant of yore? What
of the earthquake devastation and its effect on one archive.)
I am waiting for, and I am not holding my breath, is the
Bilal Qureshi, after visiting documenta 14, writes about the
follow-up. This cannot be only about Harvey. Where are the
standout work: a three-screen installation of artist Naeem
names of the 30-something, 40-something, and 50-something
Mohaiemen’s Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), his opus re-
moguls, producers, directors, and studio heads who’ve been do-
flecting on the history of the Non-Aligned Movement.
ing the exact same thing, and still are (well, maybe not this
Meanwhile, a number of contributors have weighed in on
month)? In the wake of the testimonies, Amazon’s Roy Price
the festivals of summer and fall: Genevieve Yue on the very
was just swept out by the same new broom, fired from his cor-
real pleasures of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato; Clarence Tsui
ner office. Okay, that’s two. Sharpen your pencils and start
on the renewed importance of Locarno; and yours truly on
keeping count. There ought to be hundreds more to come–
this year’s edition of Toronto’s TIFF.
and perhaps by the time you read this, that will have come to
In this issue, too, Associate Editor Regina Longo files her
pass. Somehow I doubt that sea change will occur. Prove me
final Page Views column. Engaging with the arguments
wrong, people.
in Tessa Dwyer’s Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen
Translation, Longo speaks with Dwyer about the issues re-
Notes
volving around translation and subtitling today, utilizing her
own past experience as an archivist to query the role of lan- 1. Soon, activists were calling Maldonado “Macri’s first desapare-
guage and words in cinema. As always, this Page Views is on- cido.” For background on this and the femicide protests, see:
Uki Goñi, “Argentinian activists pin blame on machismo as
line with a sample chapter for free download; and never fear,
attacks on women rise,” Guardian, October 27, 2016, www.
the feature will continue under new direction in future issues. theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/27/argentinian-activists-
Carrie Rickey examines two new books by David Bord- machismo-attacks-women-niunamenos as well as Daniel Politi
well and Charles Taylor to excavate ideas about 1940s and and Ernesto Londoño, “Police and Protesters Clash Over Disap-
1970s American cinemas, as read through their differing pearance of Argentine Activist,” New York Times, September 2,
views of genre and history, and through her own. Other 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/americas/argentina-
protests-santiago-maldonado.html?mcubz=0&_r=0.
books reviewed in these pages are by Roger Ebert, Karen
2. See Richard Shpuntoff, “Argentine Producers Protest Changes
Fang, Jonathan Haynes, Jon Lewis, Jade Miller, Lida Ouka- in Access to State Film Funding,“ Cinema Tropical, September
derova, and Paul Ugor, and the FQ reviewers find much 30, 2017, www.cinematropical.com/cinema-tropical/argentine
there to commend. directors-protest-changes-in-access-to-state-filmfunding.

8 WIN T ER 201 7