Serious Feather Arts with Brett Gregory

Dominic Lees is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking at the University of Reading, UK. He is an experienced film and television director, with a career that has included directing 40 episodes of drama as well as the award-winning independent feature film, Outlanders (2008). Following a PhD in film at the University of Reading, UK, he has written for the Journal of Media Practice, Critical Studies in Television and Media Practice and Education, as well as leading interdisciplinary practice research into 'Deep Fakes' (digital face replacement) in television drama and film.

Narrated stories: 'Before the Law' (1915) and 'An Imperial Message' (1919).Franz Kafka (born July 3, 1883, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died June 3, 1924, Kierling, near Vienna, Austria) was a German-language writer of visionary fiction whose works—especially the novel Der Prozess (1925; The Trial) and the story Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis)—express the anxieties and alienation felt by many in 20th-century Europe and North America.Many of Kafka’s fables contain an inscrutable, baffling mixture of the normal and the fantastic, though occasionally the strangeness may be understood as the outcome of a literary or verbal device, as when the delusions of a pathological state are given the status of reality or when the metaphor of a common figure of speech is taken literally. Thus, in The Judgment a son unquestioningly commits suicide at the behest of his aged father. In The Metamorphosis the son, Gregor Samsa, wakes up to find himself transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect; he slowly dies, not only because of his family’s shame and its neglect of him but because of his own guilty despair.Many of the tales are even more unfathomable. In the Penal Colony presents an officer who demonstrates his devotion to duty by submitting himself to the appalling (and clinically described) mutilations of his own instrument of torture. This theme, the ambiguity of a task’s value and the horror of devotion to it—one of Kafka’s constant preoccupations—appears again in A Hunger Artist. The fable Vor dem Gesetz (1914; Before the Law, later incorporated into The Trial) presents both the inaccessibility of meaning (the “law”) and humankind’s tenacious longing for it. A group of fables written in 1923–24, the last year of Kafka’s life, all centre on the individual’s vain but undaunted struggle for understanding and security.Kafka’s stories and novels have provoked a wealth of interpretations. Brod and Kafka’s first English translators, Edwin Muir and his wife, Willa, viewed the novels as allegories of divine grace. Existentialists have seen Kafka’s environment of guilt and despair as the ground upon which to construct an authentic existence. Some have seen his neurotic involvement with his father as the heart of his work. Others have emphasized the social criticism, the inhumanity of the powerful and their agents, the violence and barbarity that lurk beneath normal routine. Some have found an imaginative anticipation of totalitarianism in the random and faceless bureaucratic terror of The Trial. The Surrealists delighted in the persistent intrusions of the absurd. There is evidence in both the works and the diaries for each of these interpretations, but Kafka’s work as a whole transcends them all. One critic may have put it most accurately when he wrote of the works as “open parables” whose final meanings can never be rounded off.For more information: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Kafka/Works

'Top Gun: Maverick was the biggest hit of 2022, but audiences were largely unaware that a behind-the-scenes contract with Paramount gave the military the right to "weave in key talking points," edit the script, and screen the film before its release. This was not the first time, of course. Internal documents from the Pentagon's Entertainment Media Office praised its work with "Top Gun" (1986) as having "rehabilitated the military's image, which had been savaged by the Vietnam War." Naturally, the upper echelons of the military see Hollywood as a PR opportunity, but questions arise: How deep does this PR campaign go? How many films? What's the extent of script doctoring?Roger Stahl, a professor of communication at the University of Georgia, has studied the 'military-entertainment complex' for a decade. He's aware that the military housed an office for doing business with Hollywood and TV, but the scholarly consensus was that it was a small-time operation that perhaps influenced a couple hundred films. Then he learns of two British researchers, Matthew Alford (University of Bath) and Tom Secker (freelance journalist), who obtained tens of thousands of pages of internal U.S. Defense Department and CIA documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents confirm that the security state has exercised direct editorial control over at least 1,000 feature films and another 1,000 television shows.For more information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11841496/

Jean Luc-Godard, the titan of cinema who passed away in 2022, leaves behind a prodigious legacy that eschews easy analysis. Cyril Leuthy's comprehensive feature-length documentary attempts to make sense of the filmmaker's vast output and influence across 140 films, from his formative contribution to the French New Wave to his later innovations in the fields of political cinema, video art and film-collage. Canvassing opinions from a huge range of contributors and drawing from a fascinating wealth of clips and archive footage, Godard Cinema examines the man behind that incomparable run of '60s masterpieces from Breathless to Week-End, who would leave it all behind to plough a more discursive, revolutionary furrow. And it's this section of the film that proves most fascinating, offering a tantalising glimpse behind the elusive persona who seemingly disappeared from view in the late 1970s but was merely attempting to reinvent cinematic language afresh. Leuthy, who has previously directed documentaries on Jean-Pierre Melville and Maurice Chevalier and edited films on Cary Grant and Jean Renoir, has crafted an insightful and invaluable guide through the labyrinthine oeuvre of one of cinema's great masters.For more information: https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-godard-cinema-2022-online

James MacDowell's (University of Warwick) research is primarily concerned with exploring the aesthetic strategies of popular screen art, with a particular focus on the generic conventions, narrative strategies, and stylistic properties of Hollywood film, American independent cinema, and (most recently) YouTube. His work is influenced by philosophical aesthetics, and by critical traditions dedicated to exploring the interdependence of style and meaning. He has written books about the nature of irony in film, the Hollywood 'happy ending', as well as numerous articles about contemporary 'quirky' indie filmmaking, and cult movies valued for being 'so bad they're good'. Current research interests include the aesthetics of YouTube, the role of intention in film interpretation, and the critical possibilities of audiovisual essays. He also makes video essays on his YouTube channel, The Lesser Feat.For more information: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-happy-endings-in-hollywood-cinema.html

David Archibald is Professor of Political Cinemas at the University of Glasgow. His previous publications include The war that won’t die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema (2012), and many essays on film and film culture. He is the Series Editor of the Edinburgh University Press Political Cinemas Series, sits on the editorial boards of Journal of Class and Culture and Media Practice and Education, and is a member of the Radical Film Network international steering committee. David is currently making films with Núria Araüna Baró under the banner ‘Ragged Cinema’, writing songs for and performing with The Tenementals, and is researcher-in-residence at The Revelator Wall of Death.In 1933, a group of communist and socialist inmates of Borgenmoor Concentration Camp first performed what became known as Die Moorsoldaten/Peat Bog Soldiers. This EP consists of two versions of the song - in English and German - that seek to both reimagine and blast the song into the future.For more information: https://strengthinnumbersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/peat-bog-soldiers-ep

Iconic director Werner Herzog reveals extraordinary anecdotes about the filmmaking process. Featuring interviews, archival footage and never-before-seen excerpts.For more information: https://mubi.com/en/gb/films/werner-herzog-radical-dreamer

As a schoolboy aged 14, Nick Broomfield met Brian Jones, by chance, on a train. Brian was at the height of his success, with the world at his feet, but just six years later, he would be dead.This film takes a look at the relationships and rivalries within The Rolling Stones in their formative years, exploring the iconoclastic freedom and exuberance of the 60s, a time of intergenerational conflict and sexual turmoil that reflects on the present day.Featuring revealing interviews with all the main players and unseen archive released for the first time, this documentary explores the creative musical genius of Jones, key to the success of the band, and uncovers how the founder of what became the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world was left behind in the shadows of history.More information here: https://www.magpictures.com/thestonesandbrianjones/