Film And Media Studies Program And Queen’s Film Society To Host Free Screening Of ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’
The Film and Media Studies program in the Texas A&M School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts and The Queen’s Film Society will host a free screening and discussion of “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” Sunday at 7 p.m. at The Queen Theatre in Downtown Bryan.
The 2014 Iranian-American black-and-white film, directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, is set in the fictional Iranian ghost town of Bad City. The lead character roams the town as a vampire as she seeks her prey, according to Dr. Daniel Humphrey, professor of Visual, Material and Performance Cultures.
“A lot of people think of it as this Iranian vampire movie, but it is actually an independent American film,” he said. “Ana Lily Amirpour is a young female filmmaker whose family comes from Iran, and she is a second-generation Iranian immigrant. Her parents fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.”
Following the screening, Humphrey will join other Film and Media Studies faculty and members of The Queen’s Film Society in a discussion about thematic allegories presented in the film including drug addiction, the patriarchy, gender dynamics and sexuality.
Humphrey said the film “breaks a lot of cultural taboos” regarding sexuality. He said it has similarities to the 2005 American film “Sin City,” directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.
“They would never be allowed to film a movie like this in Iran,” he said. “Because the main character is out looking for victims alone at night, she is also in a way a feminist avenger. One of her first victims is this toxically masculine drug dealer who goes around bullying both men and women.”
The film is in Farsi with English subtitles and was filmed in Taft, California, which is a part of the Midway-Sunset Oil Field. This oil field is one of the largest oil fields in California, Humphrey said. As some of the scenes are set among oil pumps, there is an allusion to larger themes throughout the film, Humphrey said.
“The director is able to portray this political allegory by comparing oil drilling with vampirism,” he said. “Instead of taking blood from someone’s neck, you are taking oil from the ground, which later connects to an allegory of drug addiction, because one of the characters is a heroin addict.”
Critiques have argued the film explores the experiences of expatriates, Humphrey said. They feel “culturally displaced” in America, he said, not unlike the characters in the film who live in a fictious town called Bad City.
“It is clearly not a realistic depiction of a city,” he said. “It resides at the end of the road as this kind of limbo-like place. Critics have discussed how the film deals with a person who has ties to Iran, though they have never been there but still feel connected to it and also disconnected to both it and their new residence. As children of immigrants, they are influenced by America and by Iran.”
Humphrey said the film also expresses a sense of alienation for immigrants, where characters in the film have to explore their national identity, gender-based identity, and their roles among a patriarchal-controlled society. The film combats the stereotypical horror trope that depicts women as “damsels in distress,” he said.
“This movie upends the cliches in horror where men are the only strong characters,” Humphrey said. “And there is a male hero in the film, but he is not your traditional masculine man. He is more soft-spoken, and in that way, this is subverting the genre. You have this strong, tough woman lead who is in a way protecting a weak vulnerable man, and in the meantime is taking out these dangerous toxic masculine men.”
The cinematography is beautiful, Humphrey said. Filming the movie in black and white was an aesthetic choice by the director as a nod to classical Hollywood horror films, he said. The film features indie and pop music from around the world, with strong acting, he said.
“A lot of people look down on the horror-drama genre,” Humphrey said. “But horror films have consistently dealt with important social issues that other film genres don’t often deal with, and they get away with it by wrapping it in allegories. If people think if this film is just about a scary vampire — it’s not — this film is about a lot more. There is drug addiction, pollution, economic exploitation, gender dynamics among people and how vampirism works as an allegory for drug addiction.”
For tickets, contact Patrick Sullivan, instructional assistant professor, by emailing patricksullivan@tamu.edu.
Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber EDU.
