Film event: Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Thursday 26 April, 1-4pm
Room A1.28, Department of Film and Television Studies, Millburn House
This was a special free screening of Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010), followed by a discussion.
Made by the female independent American director Kelly Reichardt, Meek's Cutoff has been hailed as a feminist western. Set in 1845 in the Oregon high desert (and filmed on location there as well), it depicts a small wagon train on the Oregon Trail consisting of three families and a scruffy mountain man as guide. The group find themselves increasingly lost and stranded in the desert, yet as their situation worsens, the film moves away from the familiar masculine heroics of the western and increasingly into a more feminine mode of perception. It thus innovatively and engagingly interrogates white women's positioning in the capitalist, colonialist and patriarchal economy of the American creation myth.
The event was intended as both an introduction to film reading techniques from a Film Studies perspective, and an invitation to share different disciplinary viewpoints on the uses of cinema in teaching and research. It was open to postgraduates and staff from all disciplines.
Blog post reflecting on this event:
Anna Sloan - Academic privilege, or, a brief exercise in dispossession