Recent Writing Project
For as long as there has been cinema, scholars have investigated the ways in which this powerful form of entertainment and human expression plays a role in the representation and development of society. These investigations have taken us from an understanding of the formalist features of cinema, through Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories, and into the study of specific populations of society through their presentation on the big screen. Recent studies have thoroughly examined “images of” racial and gender groupings, as well as issues of social class.. This list coincides with a paper that is part of a larger project tracking a sociological group that to date has been over-represented in film but noticeably under-studied film in criticism: the orphan. Utilizing research in folklore, cultural studies, psychology, and exhibition trends of cinema, I am examining Hollywood’s use of orphans and orphanhood over time. This list is limited to a discussion of top box office films from the last decade in order to argue for the reclamation of the term “orphan film” so that it may be applied to films exhibiting common orphan-related conventions through the use of similar plot constructions, stereotyped characters, and cinematic devices that evoke a sense of orphanhood. Asserting orphan films as a categorization provides a specific avenue for investigating themes of loss and familial relationships while declaring that a population of society, which has until recently been erased from intellectual debates, affects our cultural history more than we have previously recognized.
Recent Video Projects
CITY LIGHTS
City Lights is a series of experimental poetic short films documents a city using a single tracking shot that is then compiled as a kaleidoscope of lights providing a new life and dancing quality to the stop and go of night life. The lights of the city are accompanied and timed to music creating a sensual experience of sight and sound that lets the viewer’s eyes and ears work in tandem to create unique engagements with the beats of the music and lights on the screen that embody those bets differently with each viewing.
CHICAGO
City Lights from Matt Swift on Vimeo.
COLUMBUS
City Lights – Columbus from Matt Swift on Vimeo.
Recent Photographic Projects
Tomorrow Project
As our world becomes more and more integrated with the use of technology our populated spaces begin to take on the design of the very technology that dictates how we use those spaces. This project explores the imagery behind how the future of spaces may look if the design of technology completely takes over the design of our populated environments.
Tomorrow Project
Tomorrow Day 1
Tomorrow Day 2
Tomorrow Day 5
