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Reposted by Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 3h

I wish everyone talked to all of them like this all the time

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 4h

"What do you have to say about the capitulation that you participated in?"

Cory Booker clearly wasn't expecting the pushback he got from @ivehaditpodcast.bsky.social

Full interview: youtu.be/HLfzsOVjlxc

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1h

Glad I included Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) in Ecocinema. I assigned it because I thought students would like it, but now I'm also reminded it's a fascinating depiction of petromasculinity, which it both reviles and adores. Hoping it'll set up the later session on petrocultures well.

The Bullet Farmer from Mad Max, wearing a ridiculous wig made out of high caliber bullets.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1h

Time does go by fast!

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1h

It's interesting to watch right after Take Shelter, which is also a film that seems in love with and horrified by a certain type of masculinity as it relates to resource extraction (the main character works for a sand mining company).

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1h

Glad I included Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) in Ecocinema. I assigned it because I thought students would like it, but now I'm also reminded it's a fascinating depiction of petromasculinity, which it both reviles and adores. Hoping it'll set up the later session on petrocultures well.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 7h

Mine, but for film (stolen from Walter Benjamin): The experience of laughing, crying, or screaming with an audience full of strangers is a model form of solidarity. We just need to be sure we're laughing at rich people being beaten/humiliated; screaming at their horrors; and crying at their triumphs

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 15h

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 6h

Obviously this is a bit of an oversimplification. Fascism, for instance, often asks us to mock rich people for being effete, globalists (i.e. gay Jews).

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 7h

Mine, but for film (stolen from Walter Benjamin): The experience of laughing, crying, or screaming with an audience full of strangers is a model form of solidarity. We just need to be sure we're laughing at rich people being beaten/humiliated; screaming at their horrors; and crying at their triumphs

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 15h

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 13h

The DSCC is excited to announce its new lineup of candidates!

Dust with a smily face from Dracula: Dead and Loving It

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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 11h

"The case is proceeding."

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa says the US-backed agreement to end Israel's war on Gaza will have no bearing on his country’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/xhyzpq

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Peter Labuza @labuzamovies.com · 12h

“It’s a crisis that there are liberals on campuses that don’t want to be friends with conservatives.”

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

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Caio Almendra @caioalmendra.bsky.social · 13h

Fun fact: Cuba has free trans healthcare, including surgeries, for 17 years now.

Valerie @vibingvalerie.bsky.social · 19h

Are women bourgeois?

Ari: WELL I AM

Ari Drennen @AriDrennen
X.com
Transsexualism as we conceive of it in America is bourgeois, the product of a society that venerates the freedom of an individual to choose. There is no designer vagina under communism, I'm sorry.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 13h

The DSCC is excited to announce its new lineup of candidates!

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 14h

Today is In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) day in Intro to Film. One of the great pleasures of teaching this class is introducing it to students year after year.

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Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 22h

Q for the sci-fi fans - what would say are the biggest Malthusian-themed mid-20thc works (e.g. on overpopulation). As non-fan I’d default to Logan’s Run & Soylent Green but sure I’m missing good stuff. Pref film but books OK (both =perfect). 1945-1980. #HistSTM

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 14h

It's for Intro to Film and Media Studies. You can see the film list here:

bsky.app/profile/benj...

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · Sep 11

Thank you for all the great recs everyone! Here's the list I have for now, but I'm also considering adding some of your suggestions to Film History and Film Theory when I teach them next.

• Por Primera Vez (Octavio Cortázar, 1967)
• On Cannibalism (Fatimah Tobing Rony, 1994)

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 14h

Today is In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) day in Intro to Film. One of the great pleasures of teaching this class is introducing it to students year after year.

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Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 15h

The thing that I see pro-Israel commentators struggle with the most of all is that anti-Israel sentiment is just not going to recede. The reason for this is really simple but it's one that they can't even comprehend because they don't see it this way: the Palestinian question isn't resolved.

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 15h

It is not clear to me what exactly would be permissive to say about Israel's regime of control over Palestinians if one can't even assess what they saw with their own eyes on a personal visit to the very site of the situation.

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Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 1d

Biden was forced to do that. OK he wasn't forced but he did it because he needed to. OK he didn't need to he did it because he wanted to, but why are you mad about that? You shouldn't talk about this ever again and also you shouldn't work to ensure it doesn't happen with next POTUS. I am smart.

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Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social · 1d

CFP — “The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics”
Spectator Special Issue (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

Essay submissions due December 1, 2025.

See images with alt text here and in thread for CFP details. 1/

Spectator Special Issue: The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

The category of the “amateur” has long been marked by instability. Etymologically linked to love (amator), the amateur historically signified passion and connoisseurship, yet in modern usage it has oscillated between devotion and dilettantism. This semantic tension has shaped how amateur practice has been positioned within aesthetic discourse, labor history, and the formation of the public sphere.
Cinema and media studies has repeatedly returned to amateurism to both dismiss it and laud its critical and creative possibilities. Accounts of home movies and small-gauge film cultures once considered them part of the marginalia of personal or domestic life, but scholarship has since demonstrated their aesthetic, social, and historical significance. Scholarship, including Patricia Zimmermann’s foundational work, has situated amateur media within broader institutional and discursive frameworks, from the formation of aesthetic norms in clubs and contests to the intersections of labor history, expertise, and the public/private divide. Simultaneously, amateur practice has been examined as a counter-aesthetic and an alternative mode of production, as in Maya Deren’s “Amateur Versus Professional” (1959), which framed amateur film as resistant to the industrial logics of Hollywood. Yet amateurism has also been understood as politically mobilized: Soviet avant-garde circles and interwar Japanese movements such as Prokino envisioned the amateur as a figure of collectivism, workers’ culture, and social transformation. These diverse trajectories indicate that amateurism has never been a singular phenomenon, but rather a contested and heterogeneous category that both reflects and unsettles the boundaries of cultural production and consumption.

At a moment when digital platforms both amplify non-professional production and intensify regimes of credentialization, amateurism demands renewed critical scrutiny. How might the consideration of amateur practice illuminate shifting conceptions of authorship, expertise, and creativity? In what ways does amateurism negotiate or contest the professionalization of cultural life? And how might the figure of the amateur reframe our understandings of mediation, publicness, and the politics of work and play?

This special issue of Spectator seeks contributions that interrogate amateurism as a theoretical and historical category across media forms and cultural contexts. We welcome essays that draw from diverse archives and methodologies, including studies of amateur film and video, domestic and vernacular media, digital platforms, and transnational amateur practices.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Histories and theories of amateur media
Digital platforms and amateur media
Amateur media in a transnational/global context
The politics of amateurism
The aesthetics of amateur media
Leisure, hobbies, audienceship, and labor
Home movies
Fandom
Preservation and archival practices regarding amateur media
Pedagogical approaches to amateur media
Book reviews of recent scholarship examining amateur media

Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2025

Spectator is a biannual publication by the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Cinema & Media Studies.
Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to:

Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 W. 34th St. Suite 320
Los Angeles, CA-90089
wnakane@usc.edu

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1d

Today is a great day to read @sgj.bsky.social's fabulously violent, puzzle-box time travel comic series Earthdivers, which, among other things, includes a mission to save the planet by going back in time to kill Christopher Columbus.

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1d

Also a great day to watch these.

P.S. I would love to know of any new indigenous futurist films that the list is missing.

bsky.app/profile/benj...

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · Oct 14

To celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day, why not watch these awesome works of Indigenous Science Fiction (all available online)?

1. The Path without End (Elizabeth LaPensée, Anishinaabe/Metis, 2011) vimeo.com/32861833

The Path Without End (2011)

Anishinaabe stories of the Moon People are retold through an experimental steampunk animation by Irish, Anishinaabe, and Métis Elizabeth Aileen LaPensée…

vimeo.com

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, the soundtrack does so much work and is so unique. It's great!

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1d

Love that film!

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 1d

Leaving @criterionchannl.bsky.social at the end of the month. Don't let this one slip by!

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · Sep 10

I just watched the Sudanese documentary A Camel (Ibrahim Shaddad, 1981) on the Criterion Channel, and, wow, it was unlike any animal doc I've ever seen. At times strange, funny, surprising, grotesque, brilliant, and disturbing, it's definitely worth seeking out if you haven't seen it before.

Screenshot from A Camel (Ibrahim Shaddad, 1981)

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