Doc Corner: The Hollywood history of 'Cane Fire'

By Glenn Dunks

A history of exploitation unfurls in Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire like the plot of a Hollywood movie. A deeply empathetic documentary, Cane Fire takes its title from a Lois Weber film, White Heat. That film, Weber’s last from 1934, is considered lost and survives only in images and fragments. As Banua-Simon shows, that is a lot like the non-white population of the island of Kaua’i, where it was filmed, who have been worked until their backs were broken by a series of industries that have crushed and sapped the non-white population like you would strip bare sugar cane.

First it was sugar cane and pineapples, then Hollywood who used locals as extras in bright and colourful productions starring big names like Elvis Presley and John Wayne. Today it’s tourism—an industry that has caused Hawaii more broadly to become the most expensive state to live in, something that is inceasingly out of grasp to many of the population who predominantly work as service staff at hotels and resorts. If you saw The White Lotus, then maybe you could consider this its darker companion piece...

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Why everyone should know and cherish Lois Weber

by Cláudio Alves

In such works as his Story of Film and Women Make Film, Mark Cousins has put forward the idea that film history is sexist by omission. That's undeniable when one considers the case of the many women film pioneers who saw their achievements overshadowed by and even misattributed to their male colleagues. Lois Weber, who's currently being celebrated on the Criterion Channel, is one of those filmmakers whose legacy has been usurped, forgotten, despite both its quality and importance. The fact most of her 140 films are lost doesn't help matters. However, the few that have survived speak of an accomplished visual storyteller, political artist, and fearless provocateur. I think every cinephile should know about Lois Weber, and here's why… 

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Back to School with Realistic Movie Professors

by Kyle Stevens

Professor Indiana JonesAfter teaching for years as a graduate student, then as a postdoc, and then as a Visiting Assistant Professor, I’ve finally started a proper position as Assistant Professor of Film Studies. As semesters begin all over the country, I turned to thinking about my favorite on-screen professors. High school movies tend to serve as microcosms of society; they’re all emotional peaks and valleys, in-groups and out-groups, and the goal is to get out. In college movies, from Animal House and Old School to Legally Blonde and The House Bunny, the goal is to stay on the rip-roaring ride of university life. 

Not surprisingly, college teachers don’t feature heavily in these movies. And in other genres where professors pop up, they’re not exactly realistic. Think Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, Natalie Portman in Thor, Hugh Grant in The Rewrite, and so on. (Propriety dictates that I not comment on the realism of Bruce Humberstone’s 1952 Virginia Mayo vehicle She’s Working Her Way Through College.) Television doesn’t fare much better, as the patently absurd characters in How to Get Away with Murder or Transparent attest. 

But here are my personal favorites. The Top Five Professors in Film..

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