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 Pre COVID-19 pandemic situation saw the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon

Prime, Apple TV+ and Disney+. The blockbuster films series of MCU and DCU were ruling

supreme with their hundreds of million dollars of budgets and billions of dollars of worldwide

box office revenue. The pandemic halted all that. Most countries shut down film productions,

film theatres and universities where new generation of filmmakers were trained. These

developments came just after the bright future promised in academic studies and reports in the

UK and Ireland on the future of cinema (Stolz, A., Atkinson, S. A., & Kennedy, 2020). Both

reports acknowledged the impact of screen production on economy as a whole. With the

pandemic this whole ecology collapsed. Major film released were delayed. The film exhibition

industry started waiting for the Tenet phenomenon, whereby the release of an expected

blockbuster, like this Nolan film, could revive the ailing film industry. Tenet's release was

delayed a couple of times and the final release did not satisfy the theatre owners as the public

fears of keeping close distance with strangers in closed spaces proved to be a negative effect for

audiences. The delay announcement of the release of the next Bond film No Time to Die, led

British theatre owners to declare bankruptcy. Still there is some hope for future releases of

Hollywood films like Wonder Woman 1984, Dune, Black Widow, and Top Gun Maverick which

are all delayed until 2021. Most of the mid-range films were released through the streaming

platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, who are themselves now global film studios with

access to entire world markets. They are creating a new monopoly on not only production and

distribution but also on storytelling canon and conventions (Van Esler, 2020)

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Cinema, Life and Other Viruses: The Future of Filmmaking, Film Education and Film Studies

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 3

Film production was also negatively affected. There are now new protocols in place to keep

the actors and crews safe. Yet even with the best of intentions new reports indicate that the virus

is spreading across the globe on films sets too. As the UK was inching toward Brexit, it left the

European Union’s Media program casting doubts on how international film coproduction could

be financed by the UK producers. There are positive developments like Belfast city deal to create

film studios and the establishment of VR studio/lab by Declan Keeney of Ulster University. Such

developments are a beacon of hope for the future of film industry.

As one observer noted film festivals refused to "go silently into the night" (Salti, 2020).

Many film festivals had to be cancelled or simply went online (Zielinski, 2020). Festival circuit

had gained enormous power through the art and independent filmmaking circles when the

pandemic hit. Toronto, Berlin, Cannes had become epicentres of not only finding new talent but

also crafting the coming of that talent. Venice had a controlled opening, Cannes went virtual,

Berlin was saved in 2020 and plans to keep the same profile in 2021.

Film sets were already rocked positively by MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements'

impact on diverse and inclusive recruitment regime sett. CBS led series Star Trek Discovery are

among those who actively train and hire diverse talent: women and ethnic minorities. How much

negatively this new diversity be affected by the pandemic is still uncertain (Eikhof, 2020). Covid

19 outbreak also exposed the precarity on film sets (Comunian, R. & L. England, 2020).

Teaching filmmaking has proved to be a challenge as the practice-based classes were

cancelled, shortened, or delayed until 2021. The zoom factor, the constant migraine inducing

teaching learning online from homes proved to be a distressing factor for both the lecturers and

the students. The need to access online films for educational purposes for free would be the new

frontier to explore for policymakers in the higher education sector.

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Murat Akser

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu

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On the film studies side there have been welcome developments. eBooks became more popular

as publishers could not access distributors and stores for hardback and soft back book sales. New

global screens from brill has been a welcome development. There are refreshing new scholarly

work from academics around the world. (Özdüzen, 2019; Erensoy, 2020; Cengiz 2020; Baykan,

2020; Taş Öz, P. and Erensoy, Ş., 2020; Strohmaier, 2021).

And then there were losses. The last issue of CINEJ witnessed the passing away of two

important film theorists Wollen and Elsaesser (Akser, 2020; Przylipiak, 2019). With this issue

we lost Fernando Solanas, one of the founders of third cinema, a great filmmaker and cultural

icon for many around the world. The original James Bond, Sean Connery also left us at the age

90. The importance of his work and Bond as a cultural phenomenon is still relevant in recent

studies (Behlil, M., Prado, I. M. S., & Verheul, J., 2020). The future of filmmaking will be

uncertain for a brief period. There those who think that the future may be in microbudget feature

filmmaking (McBratney, S., Minichiello, M., & Roxburgh, M., 2020) and solidarity-based talent

development across borders (Hjort, 2019).

This issue of CINEJ was prepared under COVID lockdown. We had high quality

submissions that lead to the creation of rich and diverse content. Meghna Sapui's "Billions in

Debt and Still Surviving”: Curing the Female Shopper in Confessions of a Shopaholic" analyses

P.J. Hogan’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) in three sections (Sapui, 2020). In the first

section, Sapui studies how the film maps shopping as an illness that needs to be cured onto the

body of its female heroine. She argues that is done by portraying her as a patient suffering from

Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD). In the second part, Sapui traces how Confessions

necessitates the cure of the female shopper, given its background of the Great Recession and how

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Cinema, Life and Other Viruses: The Future of Filmmaking, Film Education and Film Studies

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 5

this holds generic significance for the romantic comedy. She then concludes by charting the

heroine’s cure in group therapy as predicated upon the principle of the Foucauldian confession

and how this then resolves the narrative as, what Diane Negra calls, one of “adjusted ambitions.”

Hoda Shabrang takes a look at a now cult horror film through her "Shattered Identity of

Immigrant Artist and Creation of Art in a Hybridized Space: The Case Study of A Girl Walks

Home Alone at Night" article (Shabrang, 2020). In this article, Shabrang first discusses the

“paradox of assimilation and difference” and its consequences and then the film A Girl Walks

Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amanpour. She argues how the main character's shattered

identity as an immigrant is represented in her art. The film, she further argues, is an

amalgamation of different signs from both cultures. These signs are not completely related to

host culture (American) or local culture (Iranian). Although this impossible situation seems very

painful at the first glance, it is beneficial for immigrant artist. In this hybridized space, the

director creates a kind of art which is very innovative and unique, because she is not forced to

follow the cliché styles which those cultures are dictating her.

Michael Fuchs' "Crushing Life in the Anthropocene? Destroying Simulated "Nature" in The

Cabin in the Woods" looks at the horror film The Cabin in the Woods (2011) as a highly selfreflexive

movie that is aware of its generic roots (Fuchs, 2020). Fuchs argues that the film

struggles with the meaning of “the woods” in the horror genre. Cabin’s central twist in this

respect is that the titular “woods” are not untamed nature, but rather a place of artifice. Cabin’s

woods are not uncanny because they are far removed from “civilization,” but rather exactly

because they are part of it. The film’s emphasis on the artificiality of nature suggests that the

concept of “nature” is exactly that—a concept, a cultural construct, loaded with meaning.

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Murat Akser

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu

6

Tolga Ekinci (2020) in his "“Youtuber Movies” From New Media to the Cinema" article

“YouTuber movies” are examined via genre criticism as method. Coşkun Liktor in "Wild Pear

Trees, Patrimonial Legacies: Father-Son Relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear

Tree" Tree analyzes the father-son relationship in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film The Wild Pear

Tree (2018), which tells the story of a son who desires a life as unlike his father’s narrow,

provincial life as possible, only to find himself following in his father’s footsteps almost against

his will (Liktor, 2020). Drawing upon Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Liktor examines

the film as an oedipal drama that portrays the predicament of a son who grapples with an

ineffectual, humiliated father that fails to embody the paternal function.

Hasan Yüksel in his "The Urbanization of Labor and Its Struggle for Unionism in Turkish

Cinema" investigates the emergence of labor and its struggle for unionism in Turkey in parallel

to the process of urbanization on the basis of a particular Turkish employee film named after The

Blood Money (Diyet). Yüksel claims that labor has become a labor and unionism has converted

into a professional and institutional background in the aftermath of the announcement of

Republican period despite some ups and downs. In the 1950s, the capital was urbanized which

was the case for labor in the 1960s and hereafter (Yüksel, 2020).

In Adiba Asraf's "Emerging Discourses, Changing Perspectives: Iraq in Oscar Documentary

Films" shows how documentaries are projecting scepticism and sarcasm of Iraqi people due to

volatile, uncertain complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions (Ashraf, 2020). The sample of

this study consists of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary films from 2003 to 2011

with a total of 45 films. Through the criterion sampling, Ashraf selects four films that depict Iraq

and all the four was nominated for Oscar that includes: Iraq in Fragments (2006-Nomination); My

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Cinema, Life and Other Viruses: The Future of Filmmaking, Film Education and Film Studies

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 7

Country My Country (2006-N); No End in Sight (2007-N); Operation Homecoming: Writing the

Wartime Experience (2007-N). To explore Iraqi people’s perspectives, Ashraf further applies

further sampling and selects two documentaries depicting entanglement of religion and politics in

Iraq from Iraqi people’s perspective.

Shiva Khalili Kolahian's "An analytical study of the ritual ceremonies in Iranian performing

arts, a case study of Travellers" explores the standing of rites and ritual arts in Travellers and

analyzes its atmosphere regarding to performing rituals. The researcher proposes that the film's

scene design changes as the script process, so that the application of elements such as light and

color, and their intensity and reduction in different mental conditions, from pleasure to

mourning, has been considered wisely, and the atmosphere has a dramatic impact on the

audience in different scenes. The lighting and the coloring of the scenes in the movie, indicates a

tribute to beliefs and faith in rites and ritual arts.

Minakshi Dutta's "A Reading of Bhabendra Nath Saikia's Films from Feminist Lens" explores

the questions related to women’s representation by taking the films of Assamese director Dr.

Bhabendra Nath Saikia as reference. The article also covers a historical overview of the

representation of women in Indian cinema and Assamese cinema.

Aybike Serttaş's article "Transformation of Love in the Digital Age: The film Her and

Reaching God through the love in the Perspective of Sufism" analyses the Spike Jonze film Her

using semiotic analysis (Serttaş 2020). Mentioning the differences between love simulacra

created in social media and love in real life, the semiotic analysis of the film Her is carried out

with the indicators that match the criteria to find God through love in Sufism. In Abdorreza

Naser Moghadasi's "Evaluation of Neurocinema as An Introduction to an Interdisciplinary

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Murat Akser

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu

8

Science" looks at neurocinema as way of investigating film whose content includes patients’

neurological and psychiatric problems (Naser Moghasai 2020).

Milad Minakar and Amir Hossein Chitsazian's "The Study of Rubaiyat attributed to

Khayyam in Movies" studies filmic coverage of Hakim Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat in English

and Persian language feature and non-biographical films excluding, biographical films depicting

factual or imaginary life of Khayyam or any serials, TV productions, documentaries, non-

English, non- Persian films. The aim is to expound any relationships between the films and

Rubaiyat (Minakar and Chitsazian, 2020).

Mustafa Mahmoud Yousry Matbouly's "The Effects of Film Illumination Hues – An

Exploration Study" is an attempt to investigate the ability of different colors used in cinematic

lighting designs to affect audience’s impressions towards the appearance and mood of film

characters (Matbouly 2020). The study critically appraises existing cinematic lighting techniques

and identified the two basic color groups (i.e., warm and cold colors) that should be examined in

order to answer the research questions and formulate its conclusions. The study concludes that

audience’s perception of appearances and moods within cinematic images is linked, even in part,

to different colors of lighting.

Selma Köksal Çekiç unearths a neglected director from Turkey in her "Antiochia As A

Cinematic Space and Semir Aslanyürek as a Film Director From Antiochia". She looks at

cinematic representation of Antiochia, a city with multiple identities, with a multi-cultural, long

and deep historical background in Turkish director Semir Aslanyürek’s films (Köksal Çekiç,

2020). The article focuses on Aslanyürek’s visual storytelling through his beloved city, his main

CINEJ Cinema Journal: Cinema, Life and Other Viruses: The Future of Filmmaking, Film Education and Film Studies

Volume 8.2 (2020) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2020.351 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 9

characters and his main conflicts and themes in his films Şellale (2001), Pathto House (2006), 7

Yards (2009), Lal (2013), and Chaos (2018). This article bases its arguments on Aslanyürek's

cinematic vision as multi-cultural and as a multi-disciplinary visual artist.

"In Transformation of Comedy with Streaming Services: The Case of Bartu Ben" Nisa

Yildirim studies the comedy series Bartu Ben (It's me, Bartu) which is one of the original series

of Turkish streaming service: Blu TV (Yıldırım, 2020). The study aims to interpret the

differences provided by streaming services which contributes to the transformation of comedy

genre. Before studying the case, comedy genre in Turkish cinema and television will be analyzed

briefly.

Finally, in "A Moebial Ride through Polanski’s Repulsion" Defne Tüzün examines Roman

Polanski’s film Repulsion from a psychoanalytic perspective by attending Julia Kristeva’s notion

of abjection (Tüzün 2020). This article deals primarily with two main focal points. First, it

focuses on the film’s portrayal of the protagonist, Carole’s abjection, her problem of nondifferentiation,

as evidenced by her relation to the maternal body and to corporeality. Secondly,

the article investigates how the film positions its viewers with regard to Carole. It questions how

Repulsion impels its spectators to engage Carole with a similar non-differentiation by generating

a complex web of ambiguities with regard to the differentiation between external/internal,

objective/subjective and reality/fantasy.