RECIPIENTS’ STORIES

Finding the New in Investigating the Remake

By Christine Beggan

In the Spring edition of AtLAS, we published a story on the first cohort of students to conduct research projects in the LAS Undergraduate Research Initiative. The initiative not only pairs students with faculty members on specific research topics across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, it also provides scholarship support for the student researcher and research support for the faculty mentor.

While many of the LASURI students wrote to tell us about their experiences, we were able to publish only a fraction of them in AtLAS. Below is a submission by Christine Beggan, a Germanic Studies student, who has recently completed a project on the social issues that inform film remakes. She says that the critical skills she has honed in her studies have heightened her social awareness and inspired her to take an active role in the community. After graduation in December, she hopes to take a position in the AmeriCorps VISTA program, possibly working in West Virginia, and afterwards pursue a graduate degree. By assisting her faculty mentor, Professor Sara Hall, on her research, Beggan has discovered new avenues of inquiry for herself.

Beggan at the UIC Student Research Forum

Beggan presents her project at the UIC Student Research Forum

For the past two semesters I have been working on the LASURI project "The International Remake Phenomenon" with Professor Sara Hall. In this project, we explored how film remakes engage issues of directorial style, storytelling conventions, the Hollywood commercial system, and the very nature of cinema. My responsibilities included attending screenings of recent international film remakes and their originals, surveying reviews and coverage of those films, reading and outlining film and art theory, gathering and reviewing research materials (including theory and secondary literature) and keeping up to date on current pertinent film and DVD releases. My initial goals involved increasing my research skills in Germanic Studies and Film Studies, as well as my ability to gather sources for use in papers and bibliographies. I was also eager to learn what it means to interpret a film as a text, and, in doing so, enter into an academic dialogue about that text. On a broader level, I hoped to use this research opportunity to hone and increase my skills in crafting a concise, cohesive argument in an academic setting.

This project was enhanced by a special series Professor Hall held at the Gene Siskel Film Center entitled The Art of the Remake: Revisions and Revivals. The series ran from September 4th - December 15, 2009 and covered many aspects of the film remake phenomenon, including the Hollywood film remade in another national context, the foreign film remade by Hollywood, and the silent film remade as a sound film (Nosferatu), among others. The series was open to the public. Before each screening, Professor Hall lectured on the films, enhancing the viewing experience by providing background information and historical context. After screenings, Professor Hall led a group discussion. Rather than filing out of the theater after a screening as one normally does, we had the unique opportunity to have an open dialogue with the entire audience, which was a stimulating forum both as a viewer and as a student researcher.

Beggan studies how film remakes engage cinematic issues

Professor Hall's thorough analysis of the remake phenomenon was the springboard I needed to launch into my own research. As a Germanic Studies major, I was inspired by her screening of Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (based on Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula), paired with Herzog's 1979 remake Nosferatu. I decided to explore film remake theory in order to determine what a remake entails and how these two films might fit such criteria. After screening so many films both in the Siskel Center series and beyond, I recognized that a common thread among remakes in their “revisionary attitude” (to borrow film scholar Thomas Leitch's term) toward original films is the desire to update the original (whether subtly or overtly) in order to engage with the social issues and conditions contemporary to the remake. This certainly holds true for Herzog's Nosferatu. However, given the endless amount of film remakes that have been released over the years, I wanted to test whether the Nosferatu model worked for these two German films due to the unique relationship between Murnau's Weimar-era film and Herzog's New German Cinema film, or whether this model worked on a broader level.

Without LASURI, I would never have had the opportunity to enter into such a unique and thorough research experience. Not only was my research topic particularly fascinating as a Germanic Studies major and a film fanatic, but the very act of research itself was enriching and rewarding. With Professor Hall’s guidance, I have learned to love the UIC Daley Library and the research tools on the website, which I rarely utilized previously. I have become an expert at digging through the stacks as well as ordering books and articles from other libraries. The UIC Library provides free access to many essays and articles from conferences and journals worldwide that would otherwise be costly to access. The LASURI experience greatly benefitted my research methodology. Also, to have had the opportunity to present my research paper at two conferences as an undergraduate is incredibly beneficial to my future in academia, especially as an exercise in crafting a cohesive argument worthy of presenting before a critical audience. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of LASURI's first year and will carry the research, analysis, interpretation and critical skills I've honed throughout this experience with me for the rest of my academic career and beyond.

This research project culminated with a final paper which I presented at the UIC Student Research Forum on April 20, as well as at the 4th Annual Midwest Undergraduate Film and Television Conference, held April 23-24 at the University of Notre Dame.

The UIC Student Research Forum was a great opportunity to explain my research project to numerous community members with varying degrees of familiarity with my topic. Being able to get my point across in anywhere from two to ten minutes helped me solidify my argument and left me well-prepared for the conference at Notre Dame. The Notre Dame conference was an excellent experience, not only as the culmination of my research project but also because I enjoyed two days of presentations by students from across the country and Canada. I was impressed with and humbled by my peers' expertise in film and media studies.

We invite you to learn more about the LAS Undergraduate Research Initiative, the student and faculty participants and projects and about ways that interested supporters can contribute to the program.

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