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March 2007 : Matthew Bernstein

In the Director's Chair with Matthew Bernstein

Matthew Bernstein began his undergraduate career with every intention of becoming an English professor like his older brother. However, after his first film class at the University of Wisconsin, the lifelong movie lover quickly abandoned literature, embarking instead on what has become an extensive and varied career in Film Studies. At Emory since 1989, Bernstein is an associate professor and also the newly-appointed department chair of Film Studies. Emory’s film studies department currently has about forty-six majors, eleven minors, ten MA students and eleven PhD candidates taking courses that cover a range of topics from a Korean cinema course to advanced seminars on avant-garde films.

Recently back from a year-long sabbatical filled with research and other activities, Bernstein talked to us about his academic interests, his plans as the new department chair, and the ongoing Janus Film Series: A Festival in 35 mm, which continues throughout the end of the semester. Janus series screenings are held on most Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. in White Hall Room 205 and are free and open to the public. For a series calendar please visit www.filmstudies.emory.edu.

Film Series Events

Q: Please tell us about the current Emory Cinematheque series, Janus Film Series: A Festival in 35 mm that your Department has organized.

A: The series is co-sponsored by Emory College, a program former Dean Steven Sanderson initiated and Dean Robert Paul has continued.  We are grateful for that support.  We are able to show commercial gauge 35mm films on the big screen in White Hall 205.  The series has always been a repertory program--showing films already released which are worth screening again. The Janus series is the best example of that.  Janus introduced Americans to classics of world cinema—the films of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, you name it.

We made some changes to the series format this year.  The series had been programmed by professor and former chair David Cook single-handedly.  Now it is programmed by James Steffen, PhD, Film Studies and Media Librarian in Robert W. Woodruff Library. We moved the starting time to 8 p.m., so that more Film Studies students can attend them (after a 6 to 8 class screening that evening).  And we allowed the Film Studies faculty to choose some of the Janus films to tie in with their courses, so the students could experience these classics in 35mm at least once a semester.  We will try to continue this format into the future.

Q: Of the remaining Janus series films, do you have a favorite?

A: I love them all, Cries and Whispers for its emotional intensity, Autumn Afternoon for its sense of acceptance, Black Orpheus for its depiction of the Orpheus myth during Brazilian carnival.  But I guess my favorite is Jacques Tati's Playtime, a very unusual comedy with virtually no plot, an entirely studio built set of Paris, and an incredibly imaginative approach to visual humor. Tati is a true comic genius and this is his masterwork. I only wish we could show it in 70mm. But 35mm is splendid. In fact, I’ve never seen this film in 35mm so I am looking forward to it

Q: What are your plans for future film series events?

A: We are in discussion with Emory’s Tibetan Studies to do a series on Tibetan films before the Dali Lama comes to teach at Emory in the fall.  We'd also like to do a series in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies.  It's a home town connection we want to solidify.

Q: Tell us about your recent series “Walt Disney in His Prime” that was co-sponsored by the Emory University Founder’s Week.

A: The Disney films tied in with Neal Gabler's talk about Walt Disney. He authored the most comprehensive and best researched biography of Disney. We were glad to be able to show some Disney classics in conjunction with his Founder’s Week presentation. Neal introduced Pinocchio.

The Sabbatical and Current Research

Q: What are some of the academic highlights of your recent sabbatical?

A: I was mostly here in town, working on a book about the two theatrical films and two TV shows that have been made about the Mary Phagan/Leo Frank murder case that took place here in Atlanta from 1913 to 1915.  I've just sent it off to the University of Georgia Press. It should appear in the summer of 2008.  I also wrote an entry on film producers for a forthcoming Scribner's Encyclopedia of Film.

But I also did a number of other things--the usual things professors are asked to do—such as evaluating book manuscripts and tenure cases at other universities. I was elected to the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), an advisory board to the Librarian of Congress.  Every year the Librarian chooses twenty-five films to be named to the registry for preservation.  The NFPB makes recommendations to the Librarian who takes them under advisement. In addition, I serve as Book Review Editor for Film Quarterly, the longest continuing film and media publication in America.

My commitment as host of the Key Sunday Cinema Club now at the Midtown Art Theater continued since the Garden Hills Theater shut down in October.  We met fourteen times over the past year.  Additionally, I did a number of Q&As at screening previews with filmmakers and stars:  Harrison Ford for Firewall, Stephen Ghagan for Syriana, and the director and star of Akeelah and the Bee. That was a lot of fun. I was very involved in several committees of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

I am also active at my synagogue, The Temple, where I just stepped down from the Board.  I continue to serve as Co-Chair of the Membership Committee there.  Another interest is my committee work at the Paideia School, where my wife Natalie works as the elementary librarian and my younger son Adam is a senior this year.

Q: What one experience during your sabbatical stands out?

A: It's hard to pick one. Serving on the NFPB, discussing particular films with other film scholars, preservationists, and members of the film industry (such as Phil Alden Robinson, who directed Field of Dreams), was informative and a lot of fun.  It was gratifying to see the Librarian agree with some of my suggestions though, of course, any film has to have multiple endorsements to make it to the final cut.  The top of my list was Imitation of Life (1934), an interracial maternal melodrama which was a landmark in Hollywood's depiction of African-Americans.  That made it on.

Another highlight was working with the wonderful people at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.  They are a smart, knowledgeable, and fun group who love movies.  I really enjoyed working with them, especially the Executive Director Kenny Blank. But attending a talk at Emory with director Mira Nair, and getting to do a Q&A with her after her talk in the spring of 2006 was a highlight as well. Emory Department ofAsian Studies director Deepika Bahri brought her here, and her talk about her work in film was magnificent--it provided a much-needed perspective on globalized media from outside the United States (although she resides in New York now).  She is a wonderful artist and an inspiring person.

Q: Talk a little bit about your current research interests.

A: I'm pursuing a big project with Professor Dana F. White of Emory’s Institute for Liberal Arts, "Segregated Cinema in a Southern City," which looks at film culture (movies shown, the theaters they were shown in, the censorship of the movies and the reviews of the movie) in segregated Atlanta and since.  It's a fascinating, multi-faceted study.  This project in particular involves a method called reception studies, where we examine not just how a film was made, but how it was interpreted by critics in a certain region (in this case, Atlanta), or of a certain political persuasion. I myself continue to research and write about how films are made, but I find reception equally fascinating. One article I published in 1995 was about a Walter Wanger produced film, the classic film noir Scarlett Street that was banned in New York State, Milwaukee and Atlanta.  I compared how the bans were rescinded eventually, but Atlanta was the only case where the distributor had to take the city to court.  The others relented after a time.  That says something about how Atlanta regarded Hollywood at that time as well as this particular film. . I’ve also published essays on the Atlanta premieres of Gone with the Wind and Song of the South (the Disney film of Uncle Remus tales). These are fascinating moments when Atlanta’s local culture comes into contact with national film culture, as produced in Hollywood. The Leo Frank on Screen book is something of a spin-off of the Segregated Cinema Project. I’m also completing an anthology on the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and I’m contemplating a monograph analyzing his films in detail.

The New Department Chair

Q: What’s it like to be chair of the department?

A: I'm finding that right now, being chair unfortunately leaves me less time to interact with students.  I am teaching only one course a semester to compensate for administrating the department.  But Film Studies is also having an exceedingly busy year. The same is true for my own research.  I hope this will change next year.  It's fun to be chair--one can make things happen and quickly--speakers, special screenings, co-sponsorships, etc., but there are a LOT of details to attend to.

Q: In what ways, as chair, would you like to see the program expand and develop?  How would you like the department to look several years down the road?

A: We’d like it to look like this: seven or eight faculty members (we currently have four), who teach Film Studies but also other topics such as narrative filmmaking as well as documentary filmmaking (which is now very ably taught by Professor Bill Brown in the Visual Arts Program and Professor Anna Grimshaw in the ILA). Students want to take courses in fiction filmmaking—we’re discussing how we can bring this about with the Visual Arts Program, Theater Studies and Creative Writing. I think it’s a crucial form of research for our Film Studies majors to undertake (deciding where to cut from shot A to shot B can teach you a lot about film art. It would be great to also have one or two faculty members teaching television studies and new media studies (video games, online culture, etc.). The technology of visual media is changing very rapidly and we need to equip our students to understand what it all means. The department would also like a state-of-the-art movie screening space and more office space.

Just for Fun

Q: Do you have time to go see new releases?  If so, are there any that stand out in your mind?  Do you have a favorite contemporary movie?

A: I don't get to see all the current films I want, but that's what DVD is for. I do see a certain number of new releases because I host the Key Sunday Cinema Club, which screens new foreign and American independent films before they open in Atlanta.  But I'm not a historian-snob--I think people are making great films now.  I really, really liked The Queen and Little Miss Sunshine. The former did an amazing job of imagining and portraying the royal family and Tony Blair behind the scenes.  The script of the latter was astoundingly funny and smart about how Americans make themselves miserable because of our society's ridiculous ideals of success.  The young daughter's sexy dance number at the end revealed what the entire contest was truly about. . I couldn’t help but think of poor Jon Benet Ramsay. And I have to admit, I really enjoyed Borat, though it raises all kinds of red flags about the ethics of pseudo-documentary comedies like that. One could write an entire book about it.

Q: Did you watch the Oscars?  Is there any film you think was overlooked or one that won an award that shouldn't have?

A: I host a party so I only get to watch it in fits and starts.  I most appreciate the opening monologues, the tributes to filmmakers who died in the previous year (not out of morbidity, but just for the recognition they get), and the special awards.  It's always swell to hear a good acceptance speech, especially one that acknowledges the competition.  I do think these awards are often kind of meaningless--frequently I feel all the nominees should win. I think the best movie out there right now hands down--and probably the best film of 2006 period, is the German film The Lives of Others.  This won the Best Foreign Film Award at the Oscars. Everyone should see that one.  It's playing right now at the Midtown Art. It depicts the state surveillance program in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall and it probes the nature of a police state, the constraints of artistic creativity, and inevitability of human feeling breaking through, and it is done with such intelligence and compassion, it is truly astounding, especially from a first time feature director.

Compiled by Jessica Moore
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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