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2013 Fall Film Issue

5 Questions for Eileen Jones

Visiting assistant professor, Berkeley Department of Film and Media 1. What was the first film you saw? Eileen Jones: Bambi was the first film I remember. I hid under the seat during the terrifying parts: the shooting of Bambi’s mother, the stag fight, the forest fire. But at the same time I loved the intense emotional […]

Finding Her Tribe

A producer pursues her vision of a feminist TV show. One glance at the promo for her TV show was enough to send her heart plummeting like an elevator with snapped cables. The ad depicted a female flight attendant—or stewardess, as they were once universally called—lying in bed, partially draped in a sheet, wearing only a […]

The SS vs. Shirley Temple

Excerpt from The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand, Ph.D. ‘11 (Harvard University Press, September 2013) The collaboration of American movie studios with Nazi Germany was complex and multifaceted, and as the decade progressed, it evolved in a clearly discernible way. More and more, the Nazis dictated the terms of every encounter, and the […]

Search Light

Researchers create a gel that moves in response to light. Fans of vintage science fiction will fondly recall The Blob, the 1950s flick starring a young Steve McQueen and a rapacious pile of alien goop that was irresistibly drawn to teenaged human flesh. Berkeley engineers have concocted an analogue of sorts. Rest easy, though; it was […]

For Better or for Worse

A Berkeley biologist investigates why mantis shrimp stick together. Mantis shrimp are known in the scientific community for their ocular prowess—they can see more colors than a butterfly. Some scientists study the shrimp’s raptorial appendages, which can generate as much force as a 22-caliber rifle. Others study their intricate fighting rituals. But Molly Wright, a former […]

Behind the Curtain

A Berkeley neurobiologist looks at the science behind film. Berkeley psychology professor Arthur Shimamura is unabashedly obsessed with cinema, but his day job is studying the brain. So, as both cineaste and scientist, it made sense to merge his livelihood with his passion. Shimamura has coined the term “psychocinematics” to describe the cognitive aspects of the […]