Julia Alekseyeva: Matsumoto Toshio's Antifascist Film-Philosophy

Please join the Cinema department and our guest Julia Alekseyeva to discuss Matsumoto Toshio's Antifascist Film-Philosophy!

This talk analyzes the film and philosophy of Matsumoto Toshio, avant-garde documentary filmmaker best known for the queer, kaleidoscopic Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) and a series of "neo-documentary" films from the early-mid 1960s. Specifically, it looks at his work through the overarching lens of antifascism. I argue that his writings describe avant-garde documentary as a privileged art form, uniquely capable of battling against everyday fascist ideology-- both fascism in the streets, and in our mindset and everyday behavior. 

Julia Alekseyeva is an Assistant Professor of English and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She researches interactions between global media and radical leftist politics, with a particular focus on Japan, France, and the former Soviet Union. Her first academic book, Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s (UC Press), was published in February 2025, and she is completing a second, titled Cinema-Truth and its Discontents: Prehistories and Afterlives. She is also author-illustrator of the award-winning graphic memoir Soviet Daughter (Microcosm, 2017). 

Friday October 23 at 4:00pm in Lecture Hall 6

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