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open access

"Miss Kathy"

Description: Miss Kathy is a documentary film that tells the story of Kathy Griffin-Grinan, a lead recovery coach for prostitution and human trafficking with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Her non-profit organization —We’ve Been There, Done That – works in conjunction with law-enforcement to offer the survivors of prostitution a chance at rehabilitation. With endless enthusiasm, she mentors survivors as they struggle to escape a destructive lifestyle. This film also explores the relationship between hu… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Alexander, Jeffrey, 1982-
open access

"Her Name Was"

Description: Her Name Was is an examination of the oppression of transgender people in a society that is built on the nominalization of cisgender people, those who gender matchers their sex assigned at birth, and how this oppression lends itself to violence. In the summer of 2015, the body of Shade Schuler, an African American transgender woman, was found in a field outside of Dallas, Texas. Ms. Shade is part of an alarming epidemic of escalating levels of targeted violence against the transgender community… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Almendariz, Sergio E
open access

Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film

Description: The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the cat woman archetype as a contemporary extension of the transgressive witch archetype, which rampantly appears over the course of cinema history, working as a signifier of a patriarchal society's fear of autonomous and subversive women. The character of Catwoman is the ultimate representation for this archetype on grounds of her visibility, longevity, and ability to return again and again. More importantly, Catwoman and her sisterhood o… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Barnett, Katrina
open access

"Bad Paper"

Description: Bad Paper follows the lives of former military service members, who have received an other-than-honorable discharge, but also have service-connected post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Due to the "suck it up" culture of the military, many of these veterans would not report any psychological troubles in fear of being labeled "weak" and potentially affecting their promotions. With no outlet for their PTSD, drugs and alcohol became a way of "self-medicating," which led to their dismissal from… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Beard, Daniel Lee
open access

Deva Plus Dog

Description: Deva Plus Dog is a look at the life of a teenage girl singularly devoted to the sport of dog agility. The film explores how relationships develop and evolve in the high stakes world of competition, and how an alternative lifestyle impacts a youth’s coming of age.
Date: May 2016
Creator: Beavers, Hannah
open access

Crying for Change: Examining the Use of Period Melodrama and the Melodramatic Mode in Contemporary Queer Representation

Description: This thesis illustrates how Melodrama and the melodramatic mode have been adapted within contemporary cinema as both a means of commenting on prior LGBTQI representation, and of exposing mainstream audiences to the issues still faced by many within this spectrum. Through my analyses of Carol (2015), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and A Single Man (2009), I examine how filmmakers have drawn on Melodrama as both an aesthetic form, and as a reference to the broader field of generic history and critici… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Bonthuys, Justin
open access

"Project Reformation"

Description: "Project Reformation" presents the process of change Amanda and Robert Bowen went through as they came to recognize Holy Spirit, the part of Trinity that was sent after the death of Jesus (John 15:26). The documentary combines various filming techniques such as observational footage, reenactments, interviews, and CGI to convey the story. This film captures the walk Robert and Amanda took as they re-examine their past, progressing through a series of supernatural encounters into a recognition o… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Bowen, Robert G
open access

"The Gordita's Guide to Body Positivity"

Description: "The Gordita's Guide to Body Positivity" is an autobiographical documentary reflecting on society's expectations of the female body image and how it affects Latinx women. Through personal recollections, media content, and archival material, the film explores beauty expectations, body discrimination, and body positivity. The document analyzes the documentary styles such as autoethnography and narration incorporated into the film and provides historical and theoretical context to body image in th… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Calderon, Jessica Andrea
open access

The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Description: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights a… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Cardenas, Jen
open access

Mineola

Description: Mineola is a poetic, observational, immersive documentary centered in the town of Mineola, Texas. The film provides an intimate, first person perspective of different locations in the town as well as underlying subversive beliefs and traditions. The film’s authoritative perspective guides the viewer not only in a direction of observation but personal connection to nostalgia of small communities.
Date: December 2015
Creator: Cater, Lauren
open access

"Restless Soul"

Description: Restless Soul is composed of observational and expository style to depict a culture of youth, strength, and passion. The film captures an improvising musician and composer named Garrett Wingfield, who expresses spontaneous sound reflected in his mind, body and spirit. By working with his music friends, he releases his creative energies through his compositions and his different types of saxophones. The documentary allows its audience to experience the youth culture in a postmodern world.
Date: August 2018
Creator: Choi, Bokyung
open access

It's All Coming Back to You: 1980s Retro Film Culture and the Masculinity of Cult

Description: The 1980s is a formative decade in American history. America sought to reestablish itself as a global power and to reassert the dominant ideology of white, patriarchal capitalism. Likewise, media producers in the 1980s sought to reassert the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations. The identity politics of the 1980s and the depictions of the white, muscled body once prominent in the 1980s have been the site of conservative nostalgia for a young, male-dominated, cult… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Collins, Ryan William
open access

King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise

Description: The Godzilla media franchise is one of the longest running media franchises, which means the character himself has gone through many changes throughout the years. However, in American pop culture, the characters of Godzilla is perceived as a hero, a friend of humanity and defender of Earth. This reputation comes from the Showa Era, where Godzilla often fought on the side of humanity, rather than trying to destroy them as depicted in the original Gojira. In recent years, Toho, Godzilla's corpora… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Cooper, Dalton
open access

"Reality" while Dreaming in a Labyrinth: Christopher Nolan as Realist Auteur

Description: This thesis examines how the concept of an auteur (author of a film) has developed within contemporary Hollywood and popular culture. Building on concepts from Timothy Corrigan, this thesis adapts the ideas of the author and the commercial auteur to examine how director Christopher Nolan's name, and film work, has become branded as "realist" by the Hollywood film industry and by Nolan's consistent self-promotion. Through recurring signatures of "realism," such as, cinematic realism (immersive f… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Cowley, Brent
open access

"Visceral Data"

Description: Visceral Data is a short documentary formatted for 360-cinema (commonly referred to as virtual reality or VR) that explores the integration of art and science, and how aesthetically creative treatments of raw data are an engaging way to interpret complex information. With Roger Malina, executive editor of Leonardo, the world's foremost academic journal for the intersections of art, science, and technology, providing a narrative overview of the subject, six art-scientists/science-artists discuss… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: DiFalco, Elaine Celleste
open access

The 50,000 Watt Blowtorch of the Great Southwest: The History of WBAP

Description: This paper looks at the history of WBAP while examining how programming has changed from 1922-2014 and how WBAPs audience helped shape programming at the station. This paper reveals four formatting changes throughout the stations history and provides in-depth statistical analysis of how WBAPs audience changed during the stations 90 plus years of existence.
Date: December 2016
Creator: Dixon, Chad M
open access

"Access Points"

Description: Access Points explores the different relationships that humans have to land, focusing on the various ways that the area known as the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is used, appreciated, and preserved by disparate groups. The natural beauty of this Wildlife Refuge and its striking appearance amidst encircling plains makes it a popular destination for many groups of people, including the local rock-climbing community and generations of indigenous peoples whose connection with this land is as d… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Dye, Aaron Charles
open access

"The Eviction"

Description: The Eviction is a film about the forced eviction of a large homeless encampment in Dallas. In an effort to understand the gravity over a month of filming I will capture the stories of people, events, and the trials of those who are trying to offer a hand up.
Date: May 2017
Creator: Galloway, Andrew Reynolds
open access

Female Friendship Films: A Post-Feminist Examination of Representations of Women in the Fashion Industry

Description: This thesis focuses on three fashion industry themed female friendship films: Pret-a-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994) by Robert Altman, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) by David Frankel, and The September Issue (2009) by R.J. Cutler. Female interpersonal relationships are complex – women often work to motivate, encourage and transform one another but can just as easily use tactics like intimidation, manipulation, and exploitation in order to save their own jobs and reputations. Through the lens of post-… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Geloğullari, Gülin
open access

Texas Paranormalists

Description: Texas Pararnormalists mixes participatory and observational styles in an effort to portray a small community of paranormal practitioners who live and work in and around North Texas. These practitioners include psychics, ghost investigators, and other enthusiasts and seekers of the spirit world. Through the documentation of their combined perspectives, Texas Paranormalists renders a portrait of a community of outsiders with a shared belief system and an unshakeable passion for reaching out into … more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Goodman, David

"The '91 Roos"

Description: The ‘91 Roos is a sports documentary focused in Killeen, Texas. exploring the 1991 Killeen Kangaroos high school football team and their journey to their city's one and only state championship in football. Killeen is a small central Texas town that is directly adjacent and provides support to Ft Hood, one of the world's largest military bases. With the Persian Gulf War raging in 1991, soldiers that lived in Killeen were being sent off to fight, leaving the city almost like a ghost town. In Octo… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Graham, Derwin Anthony
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