Cinema Studies Talk Series
Cinema Department Speakers Series | Fall 2026
Friday, October 23rd at 4pm in LH-6
Julia Alekseyeva, "Matsumoto Toshio's Antifascist Film-Philosophy"
Abstract: 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.
Bio: 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).