Cinema, in its essence, is a special effect. From the medium's first days, filmmakers have used cutting edge-technologies, physical skill, and world-class craftsmanship to dazzle audiences and keep movies spectacular. The Carsey-Wolf Center’s fall 2019 series Special Effects invites audiences to explore the diverse history of special-effects cinema through a series of remarkable films, spanning Hollywood classics, CGI blockbusters, and previously unseen documentary footage. Expanding on traditional definitions of the term “special effects,” this series investigates the craft of special

This talk is co-sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center. For details, visit this page.

Biennial Audio-Visual Archival Summer School The Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to support Professor Dana Driskel (Film and Media Studies) in attending the Biennial Audio-Visual Archival Summer School (BAVASS), to be held at Indiana University in summer 2019. The summer school, the first of its kind in the United States, is an initiative of IU Libraries Moving Image Archive in collaboration with International Federation of Film Archives and Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations. The preservation of audio-visual cultural heritages is the

Increasing Media Reporting on Climate Change: Making Extreme Event Attribution Science Accessible to Journalists Extreme weather fueled by climate change is becoming more frequent and intense. Events such as the Thomas Fire and subsequent Montecito mudslides, Hurricane Harvey’s inundation of Houston, and California’s multi-year drought have resulted in social devastation and significant economic losses. Scientists have developed a suite of methods to assess the role of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change in driving these events. However, media coverage of these same events

"Mobilizing Maps: Khasi Indigenous Story Mapping and Spatial Erasure in Northeast India" How do new media forms such as digital story maps impede or advance democratic mobilization around energy development projects? The proposed research employs a participatory action research model to investigate how Indigenous communities in the developing world deploy digital story-mapping and Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge in response to spatial erasure. The Khasi Story Map offers a counter-narrative to policymaker’s claims that the region needs critical development infrastructure,