Fall 2016 FMS Newsletter - Notes from the director - FMS expands production - Documenting China - An anthropological approach to film - Internship rundown - Faculty profile - Dudley Andrew visits Tufts - Alumni snapshot - "Starring John Cho" 1 | P a g e Notes from the FMS Director The second year of FMS is proving to be as eventful and thrilling as the first. We are continuing to attract students to the program, and are ending 2016 with over 70 majors and minors. We are also expanding our curriculum by sponsoring or co-sponsoring innovative new courses. Highlights this fall included "Race to the White House" taught by CNN political analyst David Gregory, Susan Napier's "History of Animation," and new faculty member Alexander Shraytekh's "Popular Culture and the Arab Spring." Next semester, we are tremendously fortunate that our technical support specialist Natalie Minik, who is an accomplished documentary filmmaker, will be teaching "Documentary: History, Theory and New Directions" through the Experimental College. Among the events we participated in this fall, of particular note was "A Year Like No Other: Politics & The Press in 2016," which FMS Co-director Julie Dobrow helped organize. Featuring New York Times reporter Patrick Healy, National Public Radio reporter Asma Khalid, Mic co-founder Jake Horowitz, and moderated by David Gregory, the panel offered insights into the role of the media in this tumultuous election cycle. Meanwhile, in December we welcomed to campus Dudley Andrew, the R. Selden Rose Professor of Comparative Literature and professor of Film Studies at Yale University, who gave a stimulating talk on 3D. Finally, the merger with the SMFA continued apace, and we are in the process of integrating the SMFA's curriculum with ours. We are very excited that Tufts students will be able to take advantage of the SMFA's many wonderful courses on experimental film, video, sound art, and moving image installations. I look forward to being in touch again at the end of the spring with more exciting news about the growth of FMS. Until then, I wish you a very happy 2017. Malcolm Turvey, FMS Director 2 | P a g e FMS expands production By Natalie Minik, FMS Technical Support Specialist and Instructor It has been an exciting year for the production side of Film and Media Studies. With a newly-structured production track, students are getting experience in both the technical and theoretical sides of creating media content. To help this process, FMS has invested in professional audio and visual equipment to give students hands-on experience with industry standard equipment. Over the summer, the department acquired a fleet of Panasonic GH4 cameras, Tascam DR-701D sound recorders, and Felix LED light kits. This fall semester, students in all three sections of Filmmaking I used this gear to develop their technical filmmaking skills while working on their class projects. Students will continue to produce work during the spring semester in courses centered on filmmaking, screenwriting, and directing, while also completing senior projects. In addition to our main fleet of GH4 cameras, FMS has invested in cameras for faculty work and advanced student projects. This year we purchased two Sony FS5 units, featuring a smaller, handheld form factor that uses a Super 35mm- sized sensor for cinematic imagery. This camera is great for both narrative and documentary work, and students and faculty have already begun to experiment with its scope. We also purchased an Arri Alexa Plus, a professional camera that provides a great cinematic look and is used in many commercials and Hollywood films. For example, the 2015 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, Ida, and 2015 Academy Award nominee, Mr. Turner, were shot with this camera. Two faculty member projects have been shot with the Alexa Plus this semester: Howard Woolf’s feature Letting Daniel Go and professor Jennifer Burton’s ongoing project Half the History. Additionally, FMS student Ben Taylor, A17, will use the Arri Alexa to shoot his senior film, Trail, over winter break. This year, Tufts students have had access to more audio and visual equipment than ever before. By providing access to resources students need to execute their creative visions, we hope to continue to support and promote the 3 | P a g e production side of FMS over the next semester. Inside the equipment "cage" in the basement of 95 Talbot Avenue Senior project profile By Conner Calabro, A17 Menglan Chen, A17, came from China to Tufts with a purpose. And now, three and a half years later, she has fulfilled it. Chen first contacted Film and Media Studies Co-director Julie Dobrow as a high school student in China seeking advice about what she could do after she graduated from high school (but before she came to Medford) to gain some experience with documentary. Chen’s passion for documentary began to gravitate toward photography after she took advantage of the SMFA courses offered to her as a Tufts student. In addition to documentary, Chen is also interested in anthropology (her major), 4 | P a g e as well as Asian American studies - which both led to her chosen topic for her first photo-documentary and Communications and Media Studies senior project: Qiang and China, Made and Unmade. Throughout her final semester at Tufts, Chen made a photo-documentary book with supplemental text that examines an ethnic minority group in southwestern China. She chose Qiang as the ethnic minority group of focus because a large earthquake struck the group's village, and after it hit, the centralized government enforced many reconstruction projects. Chen wasn’t sure what the goal or theme of her work would be until she took a semester off from college to live in the Qiang village and personally experience the environment, as well as hear many of the stories of its inhabitants. “When I lived there I was able to not only see the changes that the earthquake had caused, but also how the meanings of places in the village have changed for the people over the past 100 years,” she says. From her lived experience with the village and villagers, a story emerged: the exposition of how the Chinese central government imposed a narrative of what the ethnic minority is in this region and how it attempted to reconstruct the ethnic unity of the village. More importantly, though, is the underlying theme that Chen hoped her readers would extract: “I’m really hoping that my readers can try to understand these experiences without pre-supposed ideas of what the identity is of these people or what it means to be autonomous.” Although Chen has completed her senior project and her time at Tufts, her work on this particular project is far from over. She graduated last fall and hopes to return to the village at a different time of year so she can see the place again before the Chinese New Year. Ultimately, Chen hopes that her work and experience thus far is just a starting point; she hopes to be able to go to more villages and talk to other ethnic minorities to tell their stories, as well. 5 | P a g e Chen's camera eye: An excavator hired from the city to repair private farmland in Radish Village, Sichuan, China, March 2016 An anthropological approach to film By Abby Lord, A17 It was 8 a.m. and my first day at the School of Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Minneapolis. I was there to do research for my undergraduate thesis and was fully confident that I was where I needed to be. However, to be completely honest, I was nervous about whether I would find what I was looking for. My senior thesis is on sensory ethnography, audiences, and film. This intersection between anthropology and film has been studied before but most of the studies 6 | P a g e are focused deeply on only a few films - I wanted to write about something new. When I talked to Film and Media Studies Co-director Julie Dobrow about this film festival, she encouraged me to apply to the Undergraduate Research Fund, and I ended up getting this trip fully-funded by Tufts. So there I was in Auditorium B of the Minneapolis Convention Center, the lights were dimming and the first film was about to start. The first film was At Low Tide by Anna Grimshaw and it confirmed exactly my reasons for going to the festival. The film incorporated aspects of anthropology and aesthetics that I was interested in. Beginning my experience with that film provided a framework for the types of questions I would ask filmmakers and myself. Sitting, experiencing, thinking, watching. It made me think about what it means to be a viewer and helped me practice what it means to be an active viewer in a way that is specific to sensory ethnographic film. After the film, I scheduled an interview with her and it made me realize the tremendous amount of support and encouragement that established practitioners have for the younger generation of ethnographic filmmakers. My senior honors thesis topic was an idea that was formed from my dual interest in my double majors- anthropology and film/media studies. I was attracted to the encouragement of creativity in knowledge creation in anthropology and was particularly interested in the relationship between film and representation in anthropology. The creation of the FMS major came at a perfect time because it gave me an environment I didn’t know I needed but did. Taking Natalie Minik’s Experimental College class "History and Theory of Documentary" confirmed my interest in documentary film and laid the building blocks for what I am still doing, which is exploring and discovering a variety of experimental ways of creating non-fiction film.