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Eugenie Brinkema

Biography

By the time Eugenie Brinkema began to study cinema in college, she already loved the medium. Years earlier, her parents had hosted mini film festivals for her in their living room, once showing all the works of Fellini over the course of a weekend. At Yale, "the discipline of film studies brought it all together for me," says Genie, "allowing an exploration of form, frame, music, narrative, and meaning."

Genie found that "a close attention to every aspect of the craft - the lighting, sets, costumes, score, dialogue, point of view, aesthetic and thematic nuances - created a whole new work for me, different from the one I watched passively." Great directors, she believes, demand this sort of attention.

Her two passions are psychoanalytic and feminist film theory. Psychoanalytic film theory, she says, "focuses on the regressive state of film viewing - the darkened theater, the dream-like images - and attempts to make psychic sense of the filmmaking experience." Feminist film theory "has an interest in representations of the body and gendered spectatorship."

Genie was appointed by the Yale Film Studies department chair to a research group on current scholarship in race and representation in film theory, with the goal of inviting scholars to speak at Yale. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of P.O.V. magazine, Yale's first undergraduate film journal, which she hopes will become a forum for every type of film enthusiast and a permanent part of Yale undergraduate life.

Genie intends to obtain a master's degree in film studies and then pursue a Ph.D. in film theory and criticism. Beyond that, there are many areas in which she would like to research and publish.

These include films made after the Nazi era that took as their subjects "the joint issues of fascism and sexuality," as well as horror cinema, post-war French cinema, revisions of feminist film theory, and race and representation in contemporary American cinema.

Genie also hopes to someday undertake a full teaching and research schedule at a university or college, becoming involved with film studies as well as literature, women's studies, art history, and philosophy. She also has a dream to start a film studies pilot program in Virginia high schools "to enhance students' critical and analytic abilities and expose them to film history."

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