This paper considers how the melodramatic form of Out in the Dark is employed to subvert the biopolitical discourses concerning queer migration across the Israel-Palestine border. In the diegesis, the queer Palestinian refugee is gradually stripped of his human rights, security, and legitimacy during border crossing, gradually being reduced into a state of ‘bare life’. I contend that the film Out in the Dark represents queer bare lives to subvert the homonationalist discourses employed by Israeli state power. The melodramatic form of Out in the Dark alters the recognition of the victim/hero/villain and cultivates novel spectatorial sensibilities via aesthetics. Ultimately, I show how the film associates queerness with the confluence of nationalism, militarism, and heteropatriarchy on both sides of the Israel-Palestine border, which offers a critique of biopolitical governance over the lives of queer migrants.
The last twenty years of open science advocacy and the more recent proliferation of programs and funding have shown that open science has become a veritable mantra. The term relates to a variety of initiatives and dimensions, from opening up the institutional governance of institutions to opening up access to scientific articles, research fields, data production, and so on. As mentioned in the call for proposals in this special issue, the diversity of these initiatives makes it difficult to carry out a comparative analysis.
Within the Venice Film Festival, a dedicated section for immersive works was introduced in 2016, quickly gaining competitive status alongside traditional cinematic works. Venice Immersive serves as both an exhibition and promotion venue for XR and a forum for discussing pivotal market issues. This interview with the Venice Immersive creators and curators, Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac, delves into the early stages of the section, its objectives, the challenges faced, and the major issues within the immersive works market.
Despite animation techniques being highly material, the environmental impact of animation is understudied. This essay starts bridging the gap by investigating the making of digital animated documentaries through the lens of ecomaterialism. In particular, it brings to light how the quest for realism that prompts the production choices of creators of such works often comes at a significant cost to the environment. Indeed, many present-day digital animated documentaries prove unsustainable, because multi-layered, wasteful, and excess-informed modes of production that foresee a squandering of resources tend to be adopted when making them. In so doing, the need for animation-focused green protocols is made apparent, especially since, paradoxically, due to animation being a craft-oriented medium, such non-environmentally friendly approaches tend to be encouraged within the industry.
Dutch artist Nemo Vos discusses his approach to VR and his vision of the role played by film festivals in making VR available. Reflecting on the premiere of his work 8 Billion Selves at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024, Vos addresses both the challenges and advantages of exhibiting VR at festivals. Looking to the future, Vos outlines his vision for a series of co-created VR works, each featuring a different artist and aiming for distribution in theatres to achieve economic sustainability for the medium. The artist emphasises the responsibility VR artists themselves have in creating awareness and cultivating audiences, and details how he uses co-creation and collaboration with other art forms to elevate VR from a niche technology to a mainstream artistic form.
The ANR CROBORA project investigates the influence of stock shots in fostering a shared European cultural imaginary through television and online media, focusing particularly on the selective deployment of visual elements. This data paper centers on an extensive dataset of French television content preserved by the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), covering the period 2001-2021. Enhanced by meticulous manual annotation, the dataset provides a rich basis for examining the semantic nuances of these visual elements. The project aims to uncover patterns in the usage of these images, tracking their evolution and distribution across time and institutional boundaries. Additionally, the CROBORA project plans to offer this dataset on an innovative visual platform equipped with advanced functionalities to support exploratory data analysis, enabling researchers to integrate various keywords and delve into the data more effectively.
The exhibition Liquid Spaces: Politics of the Screen, curated by Doreen A. Ríos for the Bienal Universitaria de Arte Multimedial (BUAM) in Ecuador, delves into the dynamic nature of environments shaped by digital technologies. Underscoring the complexities of screen interfaces and their societal implications, Ríos explores the concept of ‘liquid spaces’, where boundaries blur and definitions remain elusive, reflecting perpetual change. Set within the Latin American context, the artworks address themes such as extractivism, surveillance, and technocapitalism. The exhibition features a diverse range of artworks, including painting and virtual reality, through which the relationship between the body and the screen is discussed, while highlighting audience engagement and interaction as integral components of the viewing experience. Drawing from her previous curatorial endeavors, in an interview with Annet Dekker, Ríos reflects on the transformative influence of screens on perceptions and realities, suggesting that screens serve as modern oracles and their users as potential shamans navigating the digital landscape.
The transformation of established academic publishing systems is reshaping the landscape of media studies and emerging publication formats are challenging traditional habits. This article examines open access publication practices through the prism of the Open Media Studies Blog (OMS Blog). With a praxeological lens, the study delves into the sociotechnical dimensions of this shifting media studies publication environment. Central to our inquiry is the concept of ‘lived’ open science. Our open science philosophy guides content curation, format selection, and engagement strategies, shaping the very essence of our scholarly endeavors. By placing our own editorial practices under the microscope, we engage in a form of self-reflection that elucidates the challenges and triumphs of embracing openness. We probe the boundaries of openness, recognising the intricate interplay of financial, technical, social, political, and strategic factors that shape our scholarly endeavors. This study also examines the evolving roles of authors, editors, publishers, and readers in response to evolving scholarly demands. We question whether we are prepared, supported, and empowered to challenge prevailing structures that uphold inequality.
In March 2020, the series Veneno was released on the streaming platform Atresplayer Premium, immediately becoming one of the biggest media sensations in Spain. The series centres on the life of the television star Cristina ‘La Veneno’ Ortiz Rodríguez, who shot to fame during the 1990s. Herself a transgender woman, Veneno was frequently an object of both public fascination and mockery, with her life as a sex-worker and gender-identity often relayed in the media through sensationalistic and dehumanising terms. By focusing on a figure who was an object of public fascination, but whose experiences of discrimination were often trivialised, the series Veneno not only humanises its central protagonist, but also acts as a commentary on the broader history of transgender representation in Spanish media and as a re-evaluation of la Veneno’s own legacy as a prominent media representative of the trans community. In turn, this focus on both mediated and hidden histories of transgender experience reflects a broader turn in the Spanish televisual and cinematic landscape, which has shown a marked focus on excavating and recreating local LGBTQI histories, as is evident from recent television series such as Bob Pop’s Maricón perdido (TNT, 2021), Miguel de Arco’s Las noches de Tefía (Atresplayer Premium, 2023) and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s Vestidas de azul (Atresplayer Premium, 2023), as well as in Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres paralelas (2021). In the case of Veneno, the recreation of transgender history also intervenes into current political discourses on transgender rights, with even Spain’s then-vice president Pablo Iglesias recommending the series to his followers on Twitter during a period of intense public debate surrounding the so-called ‘Ley Trans’ or ‘Trans Law’, which came into force in 2023. Drawing on this, this article will examine the ways in which the series intervenes into contemporary discourses surrounding trans rights, as well as how it comments on broader questions of transgender memory and the history of transgender media visibility within the Spanish context.
