Some professors see violent movies as more than just brainless distractions, and this past Friday this university’s Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies held an all-day “Symposium on Cinema and Violence” to celebrate and present serious discussions about all things gory in cinema.

The symposium featured five lectures throughout the day, covering subjects from torture in films to animal violence, and concluded with a round table discussion featuring several university professors from various departments.

“Depending on how films approach violence, the topic matter can transform the film and its meaning,” said languages, literatures and cultures professor Luka Arsenjuk, who helped organize the event. “Using violence, a film can raise important political and social questions, and it is these questions that we wish to explore throughout the day.”

The night before the symposium, the committee held a screening of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s films Ivan the Terrible Part I and Ivan the Terrible Part II in the Hoff Theater in 35mm, meaning the movies were played on real film and not through a digital copy. The films tell the true story of the reign and assassination of the titular Russian czar in the 16th century.

“Ivan the Terrible is about the terror of political power, and deals a lot with political based violence, which is something that will be discussed in detail in the symposium,” Arsenjuk said before the symposium. “I think it serves as a nice precursor to the remaining event.”

Two of the main lectures were held by professors from this university. History professor Saverio Giovacchini hosted a shot-by-shot analysis of the infamous duel scenes in European westerns, also known as “spaghetti westerns,” and shared his theory that in the 1960s such films served as a metaphor for Italy’s decolonization. He also noted these westerns often hired non-Mexican actors to portray Mexican parts, which he referred to as Mexican blackface — a fact some students who attended said they were not even aware of before the lecture.

“The Mexican blackface concept was a really interesting idea that I had never really thought about,” junior English major Dijon Duenas said. “[Giovacchini] really brought a lot of insight to a topic I didn’t expect to be so influential in filmmaking,”

Shortly afterward, Arabic professor Valerie Anishchenkova discussed how post-Iraqi-War films in the U.S. and Russia appear to repeat themes of movies released during the Cold War. Anishchenkova showed clips from the recent HBO television series Homeland to illustrate this notion.

Hilary Neroni, a film and television professor from the University of Vermont, gave a lecture on the frequency of torture scenes in post-9/11 films — a phenomenon she argued demonstrated a “cultural shift” in film. Art Professor James Cahill from the University of Toronto then compared the filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Jean Painlevé, both of whom were interested in animal violence. The last lecture of the day came from film Professor Nico Bambauch of Columbia University, who discussed how today’s cinema uses violence to express a political message.

Senior English major Simisola Fagbohun said she especially enjoyed the excitement each professor expressed as they discussed their respective topics.

“Even though some of the vocabulary and ideas went over my head because I don’t know a lot of background information on film theory, the lectures were still really fascinating and informative,” Fagbohun said.

Junior English major Carrie Wolford agreed.

“The professors talked about ideas that I really wouldn’t have ever thought about,” she said. “Each shared an interesting take on these movie genres and shows that I never knew had so much depth.”

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