Chris Robé is an associate professor of film and media studies at Florida Atlantic University. He’s written for various journals such as Jump Cut, Cinema Journal, Framework, and The Velvet Light Trap. His monograph Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Left Film Culture was published by University of Texas Press. In his spare time he agitates for his friendly faculty union. He is currently researching contemporary media activist formations from the 1970s to the present.
Features
Tuesday, January 3 2012
Occupying Video: The Underbelly of Globalization Caught on Camera
Occupy Wall Street's strength might be how it enables diverse constituencies to seize upon its imagery and message to engage with social justice concerns, both on the ground and within the video.
Wednesday, July 20 2011
Rust Belt Visions: The 2011 Allied Media Conference
In Detroit, a cauldron where neoliberal experiments are tested and then unleashed upon the world, the Allied Media Conference reveals both the huge challenges facing community organizing and how media can assist the disenfranchised.
Friday, November 12 2010
Be the Media: The Current State of Activist Media and the Work of Franklin Lopez
At its best, López’s work engages in constructing a new vision where popular culture serves the interests of the poor and dispossessed, where humor is reignited within activism, and the D.I.Y. ethics of punk and hip-hop allow those with talent and gumption to be the media, once again.
Thursday, May 21 2009
Forbidden Hollywood’s William Wellman: The Forgotten Man
The 1934 Production Code’s puritanical stance towards sexuality is often highlighted by contemporary historians, but it also held extremely reactionary political mandates that forbade movie representations of conflicts between capital and labor.
Wednesday, March 19 2008
Agnés Varda: Gleaning the Dispossessed
It is the two divides -- between the rich and the poor, between publicity and the practices of everyday life -- that most concerns Agnés Varda.
Columns
Thursday, October 7 2010
'The Grapes of Wrath': The Specter of Tom Joad Emerges From America's Dark Past, Once Again
With the current economic climate -- increasing rates of foreclosure, evictions, unemployment, poverty and misery -- this classic story dangerously impinges upon the present to reveal the specter of Tom Joad emerging from the darkness, once again.
Reviews
Friday, October 14 2011
'The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom': A Soviet-Era Critique of 'Americanitis'
As the New Economic Policy attempted to infuse a dose of capitalism within a faltering Soviet economy, American cinema and Soviet avant-garde techniques and content merged within commercial Soviet cinema in its mixed attempts to fashion a truly utopian cinematic world: one that is both popular and political.
Tuesday, June 7 2011
'AC/DC: Let There Be Rock': The Working Class Ethic, Amplified
AC/DC revitalizes the sounds of working-class life through their music, unleashing and claiming the vitality that capitalism normally disciplines and harnesses for the benefits of the bosses at the expense of the workers.
Sunday, April 17 2011
'Casino Jack': B-Movie Billionaires
By remaining true to the spirit of Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack embodies the B-movie failure that takes itself too seriously.
Wednesday, November 24 2010
The Haunting of Lars von Trier in 'Anti-Christ'
Just as the female lead character strikes out against the identifiable point of oppression in her own life, von Trier strikes out against the very audiences and critics who continue to endure his films in order to both convince them otherwise -- and annihilate them.
Monday, April 19 2010
Vivre Sa Vie / My Life to Live
This film seeks redemption among the ruins, yet every moment of existential transcendence comes crashing back into a flat screen, an immobile camera, and, ultimately, a lifeless body.
