Please note: This lecture will be held in person in room 1010 Weiser Hall and virtually via Zoom. The webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered, joining information will be sent to your email.

Register for the Zoom webinar at: https://myumi.ch/5y2k8.

This talk analyzes the film and philosophy of Matsumoto Toshio, an 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 at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary affiliation with cinema and media studies. Her first academic book, Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s (UC Press, Feb. 2025), builds off of long-standing work analyzing the interaction between radical media and leftist politics, especially in Japan, France, and the Soviet Union. In addition to her academic work, she is also a practicing cartoonist and author-illustrator of the award-winning graphic memoir Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution (Microcosm, 2017).

This lecture is made possible with the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at cjsevents@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.