U-M Creative Currents

Film 101: Colin Gunckel

• Arts Initiative • Season 4 • Episode 9

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In this episode of U-M Creative Currents, host Mark Clague sits down with historian and professor Colin Gunckel from the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Gunckel is a faculty member in both the Program in American Culture and the Department of Film, Television, and Media (FTVM), where he also serves as department chair.

Colin shares insights from his extensive experience teaching film and media studies. As a historian specializing in Latinx media and art, Latin American cinema, and popular culture linking the U.S. and Mexico, he brings a rich transnational perspective to his work. His book Mexico on Main Street: Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II (Rutgers University Press, 2015) explores the relationship between Mexican audiences, the rise of Hollywood, and the development of Mexican cinema.

This fall, students across U-M will collaborate with internationally acclaimed performer and filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell—visiting faculty in LSA’s FTVM Department—through the Arts Initiative’s Student Creative Fellowship program. Their work will culminate in a public showcase on November 16.

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*Production Note: This episode is part of U-M Creative Currents' special Michigan Arts Festival podcast series and is edited by Sly Pup Productions.


Mark Clague:

Welcome to Creative Currents, the Michigan Arts podcast where we explore the power of collaborative creativity and the way the arts inspire dialogue and community connection. I'm your host, Mark Clegg, and today we're continuing our special series about the Michigan Arts Festival, showcasing the people and happenings of the 2025 Michigan Arts Festival, which runs from September 25th to October 26th. In our arts initiative studio today, we have historian and professor Colin Gunkel, who teaches from Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts, where he is a member of both the program in American Culture and the Department of Film, Television, and Media, where he also serves as department chair. Colin is a historian of Latinx Media and Art, Latin American cinema, and popular culture intersecting both the United States and Mexico. His first book, Mexico on Main Street, Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II from 2015, examines the relationship between Mexican audiences, the birth of Hollywood, and the rise of Mexican cinema. His research on Chiconex, art and culture includes work on self-help graphics and art, the artist collective Osco, and the early history of the East Los Angeles punk scene. He has contributed to multiple curatorial projects across the country and currently serves as associate editor of the book series Aver, Revisioning Art History. Colin, it's great to have you on Creative Currents. There are indeed. And uh maybe people don't know FTVM. I mean, you guys have great connections to Hollywood, to the industry. We've had guests before. Um Anna Baumgartner talked about her uh film Disfluency on an earlier episode. If people want to check that out, it was a great conversation and it's a great film. Um but tell us a little bit about the program.

Colin Gunckel:

The program, um, it's it's about 30 years old. It it for our undergraduates, it's split between film studies and film production. So they get a really balanced education, and we're in the liberal arts model model trying to kind of give them a full range of experience and different kinds of experience and a sense of what it means to study media in the world and produce media in the world. And along those lines, I think what we do with a medium-sized department um uh is pretty impressive. In terms of production, we offer courses in VR production, animation, experimental film, fiction film, documentary. So the students are really able to get a sense of their different possibilities. And even if they're not going to become experimental filmmakers, for instance, they get to try that out for a semester. And that undoubtedly, I've seen it happen and undoubtedly informs uh and and shapes and and transforms students who thought they were otherwise just going to make fiction film or write for television and things like that. We also have a really robust and successful screenwriting program uh that we're pretty well known for. Um, so that that is our department in a in a nutshell. But we're able, we we do a lot of a wide variety of things. We have a lot of breadth. Um, I'm really always impressed by our our faculty and what we're able to offer students, and we're trying to do more of that all the time.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, it sounds a little bit like my experience in School of Music, Theater and Dance, because of course I'm a music historian and a lot of people there are there making and producing art. Um, I guess how many students are in the program more or less?

Colin Gunckel:

So we have about 300 majors right now. We hover between three and four hundred.

Mark Clague:

Um what do they do when they leave the university? Do they do all sorts of things?

Colin Gunckel:

I mean, they do all sorts of things. Actually, the I would say about half of them go into the industry in one form or fashion. Um, and that that includes people they become talent agents, screenwriters, uh working in documentary production. A good chunk of them also go into the nonprofit world or university administration and things. So they're they they end up in on a variety of paths, which is pretty exciting. But we do, for those students who are interested in a career in the industry, we do have a really great track record of getting them where they want to go.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And those are those are great statistics, actually. 50% of people staying in the industry from a program in the arts is really strong.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah. And you know, I will say I have to give credit to our alumni network, which is very strong and very supportive. So there are instances of our students getting connections by sitting in a coffee shop wearing a Michigan hat and working on their screenplay. That block M is powerful. It is so those stories. I mean, I it there are more than one of those stories about being recognized in Los Angeles and getting connected to the alumni network. And they we we've created mechanisms for the alumni to come back and and engage in our stupid with our students. And like this weekend, Parents Weekend, we have a lot of people coming in and they all want to come to classes, they all want to connect with the students. So we're finding ways to create those connections here on campus.

Mark Clague:

One of the coolest things about FTVM are your secret studios. Oh, the secret studios in the basement. Uh reached out to some of your colleagues, and I got a tour. Um, can you tell us a little bit about the secret studios and what's there and where maybe maybe the bunker? It's sort of like the Batcave.

Colin Gunckel:

It is a little bit like the Batcave. And I I I've spent a little bit of time down there, but I don't spend as much time as I'd like because I'm on the sixth floor chairing. And but I I try to make it down there. We have three studios. Um, two of them are equipped for multicamera production. So our television production happens in there, television production courses, which includes this semester's a sketch comedy course. So there's a range of different things. The students in their intro course get trained on multi-cam. And a lot of them think, oh, I'm gonna go to Hollywood and make, you know, be the next Christopher Nolan or whatever and direct a film. But a lot of them through that intro course end up falling in love with television. Um, so we have courses in sitcoms, like I said, sketch comedy. So it's a very that that place is used constantly both for courses and for student productions. And it's also the home of Wolve TV, which is a student-run television channel, which is a course in our department, but also just a student org that I now think is around 200 students. Wow. And they make their own, it they they do self-guided production with a faculty mentor and advisor, but they do everything from sports media to interviewing, you know, uh folks who are visiting campus and things like that, or just doing news segments. So it really depends on student interest and what they want to do. It's a place where the students who do sports media um have kind of found a niche where where they can where where they can produce um and you know, try their hand at producing sports media or doing broadcast of some sort. So it gets a lot of use. We're updating, I'm I we're working on updating those cameras and everything.

Mark Clague:

Well, there's so much innovation in sports television, just in how the game is tracked. And I mean, it's really becoming a big TV show. I, you know, maybe to the to the disappointment of those of us in the big house.

Colin Gunckel:

No, I mean, yeah, I was talking to a sports media student the other day or a student who was interested in sports media and talking about how s how central storytelling is to sports media. So even though they may we may not have a course on producing sports media per se, that storytelling element is really central to any uh to any sports broadcast. You know, the the players, the trajectory of the team and the way they put it, it's high melodrama, right? Like yeah.

Mark Clague:

So the the skills they're getting in their other classes, I think, are relevant to well if you want to imagine a course where students in FTVM tell stories about the arts, let's talk because we should create something actually where um because you know putting arts in film is sort of interesting because it's movement and it's three-dimensional and you how you represent it, but how you tell the story of, you know, which you know well as a historian, like what's motivating, what are the messages, how does the the motion or the sound or the the lighting and the color contribute to that storytelling? I think could be really fantastic, and it would be really benefit our arts ecosystem to have some great stories out there.

Colin Gunckel:

No, I agree with you, and I th I I could imagine even a course dedicated to that. All right, let's do it. I could imagine who would teach it right now. Sounds like a great idea.

Mark Clague:

I'm talking to the chair, so I'm I'm hopeful. Well, let's let's talk about the arts festival. So the festival is just a few days away and it's gonna kick off. And uh we're trying to create basically a wider awareness of just the treasure trove of artistic experience here on campus, get people who haven't tried the arts before to take the dive, and also to give people who love maybe one form of the arts to try something else. So the dancers to come to a film screening or the film folks to go to a concert or to the art museum. And uh the way in which the arts inform one another. And maybe, you know, in a way, FTVM, I mean, you work with everything. You're working with music, you're working with theater, screen plays, you're working with, you know, design and color and visual sort of, you know, sets. So maybe it's it's it is that ultimate gesamt kunstfrick, you know, the bringing of all the arts together on plays. But uh what does FTVM have going for the festival? I hear you have a pretty cool guest on campus.

Colin Gunckel:

We do have a guest on campus. Our we we have a visiting professor position every fall, the John H. Mitchell Visiting Professor in Entertainment. And this fall, our visiting professor is John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote, directed, and starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, uh, wrote and directed Short Bus and has worked in Hollywood, worked in television theater. He's a musician. So he himself brings He does it all. He does it all. So he absolutely does it all. He he he actually uh that that is what I think is so exciting about his presence is that he's bringing that into the classroom, exposing students to that, and also um part of events that that tap into those different areas of his expertise and experience and talent. So he's teaching a class for us every Monday at the state theater. The state has been gracious enough to host us. Um, his class is held in there. The screenings begin at 10 a.m., but those screenings are open to the public. Oh, wow. And they happen every Monday at 10 a.m. So I can go John Cameron Mitchell's class at 10 a.m. You could you could watch if you if you are free on Monday at 10 a.m., you can go watch uh see John Cameron Mitchell and just to remind people, our class does now start right at the posted time.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, that that Michigan time that our alumni may remember so fondly of everything starting 10 past the hour. That's no longer the case.

Colin Gunckel:

We start 10 on the dot, and uh we get he it's it's been a lot of fun. He's cre uh essentially kind of curated a really fantastic semester of films.

Mark Clague:

Well, I've seen him speak to students, and he he's such a like open sesame of possibility. He just lays out, I mean, not only his own career and example, but he really invites students to think in in fantastic ways and to, you know, boundless ways. So what a cool person to have working with our students.

Colin Gunckel:

No, very accessible and very personal, very engaging, and it's it's just great. It has really transformed, I think, the environment, not only of our department, but the just Ann Arbor in some ways. That to see how excited people are to come to the screenings and engage with him and just to have something fun like that going on every week. Like my Monday morning is checking to make sure that John Cameron Mitchell's at the theater and everything someplace that it's become a routine, but it I I have to pinch myself sometimes that like he's actually doing this. Like we actually pulled this off.

Mark Clague:

It sounds like you have the most amazing job ever to basically get paid to watch film. Like that's I how do you actually get to watch film, or are you you're uh I do.

Colin Gunckel:

You'd be surprised how little I get to watch. Like the there's a joke among film scholars about like you know, you there's a way you think you imagine we spend our time, and then there's the way we spend our time, which is answering emails and writing and researching.

Mark Clague:

Well, I actually used to teach a course in in film music, so music accompanying films. You know, look going back to classical how classic Hollywood and um, you know, and what I ended up doing is I was always staying up late at night what preparing the lecture and watching the film two or three times because I always found I had to watch it at least three times because the first time I just got sucked into the story. And then the second time I started to go, oh yeah, there are these themes and here's the insertation, and to really analyze it, even at the most basic level. And so, yeah, I would it was great because I was watching films, but I did not get much sleep that those semesters.

Colin Gunckel:

No, I can imagine, and that's the case. It's time consuming to watch that much. Yeah, but it's fun.

Mark Clague:

I did feel it did feel pretty cool.

Colin Gunckel:

I mean, I I think that I I try to keep up the best I can with watching series and and films just because the students do. And I I think just even as an instructor, being able to talk about what came out last week. Yeah, right now I'm actually I'm watching the paper, the the kind of spin-off of the the office, which I I think in my mind is is is getting kind of uh shortchanged by critics. Like I found it really enjoyable. There are different kinds of stakes and about like the death of print media and um it's set in Toledo, which I which even I know, even though it's not filmed there for the most part, it still feels kind of regionally relevant. And I'm just really enjoying it and the characters. And I will say, um, I was really excited to find out that Alex Edelman is on the series. I don't know if you've seen his stand-up special on HBO that oh, it's just it's brilliant. It's it's I recommend it to everyone. Um, and it it's it's just kind of mind-blowing. It's one of those stand-up specials that turns into something else, and it'll have you riveted. So that that's my recommendation.

Mark Clague:

All right, creative current listeners, go out and watch the paper. So, how did you become a film historian? Like what what how did you get the bug?

Colin Gunckel:

You know, I I went to UT Austin as an undergrad and was studying Spanish. And then I my last year I discovered I decided just on a LARC to take a film course. On I actually was Iranian cinema, and this was like in the 90s during the golden age of Iranian cinema, and just got hooked and and also discovered you can do this for a living. But Austin UT Austin at the time had the had two theaters and they were pro both of them were programmed every weekend. Oh and on Tuesdays, the Austin Film Society would have free screenings. So I I that just became my that became my university. I just went every weekend, I went every Tuesday, I saw as much as I could and just discovered all these things that I had no idea ever existed and realized, oh well, uh I'm too close to finishing my degree. I don't want to change gears right now. So I I moved on and got a s uh another degree elsewhere. But that was really a formative experience for me having a campus in which film culture was such a big presence and there were so many opportunities.

Mark Clague:

In our campus, if that young version of you or current student uh wants to just maximize their film viewing. I mean, they have the Ann Arbor Film Festival in the spring, which is pretty amazing, brings stuff from all over the world, and of course has shorts and features and all that. But what what is what can you do in Ann Arbor these days if you want to have maximize your film diet?

Colin Gunckel:

I think the the state and the Michigan always have really great programs, and the state is doing some revival stuff now that I think is really great. I uh I'm a big proponent of that. I think we could do more of it. I think we as a department uh I have thought about how we might do more of that. We did have a screening series at one time that I think was akin to what I experienced in Austin, but and I'd like to revive that. But just keeping an eye on on local programming, on the festivals, on the festivals in the in Detroit, the the Detroit Film Theater has a yes fantastic program.

Mark Clague:

I got I got to their documentary series on the spring.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah, and for me, they have a great Mexican series that I don't make it out to as much as I'd like, but they're that that programming is excellent. So I there are there are a lot of it's not all centralized. I think I I I benefited from having everything on campus when I was at UT Austin, but within the region, there's so much going on and there's so much opportunity, and there are there are festivals uh even regionally that pop up that are great opportunities.

Mark Clague:

Since we have an expert in the house, um and so much of our film viewing these days is on a small screen. Like even people watching on their phones, right? Uh as a as a film expert or someone who loves the art, what's the value of going to the theater? Why should why should someone actually not watch Netflix at home, but come into the theater and see it on the big screen?

Colin Gunckel:

You know, one reason I think for me is this the sound in the picture, and I've I've as I as I get older, I I I value those things more, like proper projection and like good sound, and that's a very different experience. So like seeing seeing standards in the theater on IMAX, like there's no there's no substitute for that, I don't think. I I watched it again at home and it's fantastic. But seeing it at IMAX was just mind-blowing that that immersive experience. And but also the communal experience of the you and the people around you having your minds blown or even just laughing at something. I think that that can be. Yeah, doing it together. Doing it together. Yeah, I love I I love that about it. Or and even the I think I have as I again as I as I spend more time in this profession and uh because I've been into film for a long time, I'm I'm less interested in whether I like a film or not than what kind of conversation that film opens. And so I think there's something about that communal experience and seeing it together and then maybe having a conversation afterwards, which is why I love teaching and and and having physical screenings when I can as opposed to having students watch things on their own or on their laptops.

Mark Clague:

Right. That is so important. I mean, and the communal aspect really speaks to me. I mean, I know that a little bit from like the concert world. You know, when you're on stage and there's 2,000 people in Hill Auditorium and you're playing, like it's a totally different experience than when you're rehearsing, right? Because you're there's a communication, there's an energy that's going back and forth. And I can also just imagine, you know, one of the things we have in concerts, we have intermissions and the concerts are like two hours long, sort of like a film, right? And and then you're talking to people in the lobby and you're talking to people on the way home. And when we're binging the TV show at home and just one episode after the other, and and the sort of the the technology is pushing us not to take a break, not to think about it, but just to stay immersed and stay like glued to that that series until it's over.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah.

Mark Clague:

Um, very, very different in terms of how we process and build the relationships that actually are really essential to what art is. You know, it's not it's not just something to be consumed, it's actually something to inspire us to connect.

Colin Gunckel:

No, I agree. And I and I think I don't wanna I don't want to sound like the folks that are complaining about cell phones and technology, digital technology and things, but there's a way in which I think we all end up looking at our phones and we're just gonna we're all it's all distracted viewings. I think that's also the benefit of being in the theater. I will, just as a historian of movie theaters and and and that kind of experience, I also like the unruliness of going to the theater. I like when people like laugh and talk and you know, like boo and boo like there's something about like the human experience and the I know it annoys some people, it annoys me sometimes too, but like I really like I I love but one of my favorite experiences is going to like I used to go to dollar theaters where like people are just having full-on conversations or eating McDonald's or like you know, there's there's all kinds of things going on. And but that's also historically, that's also part of the film going experience, you know. And it's um but otherwise, you know, I John Cameron Mitchell and his class is having their students uh turn in their phones before the screening begins, just so they have a different experience of cinema and this kind of non-distracted experience, not because it's the only way you can watch a film, clearly, or the only context or uh venue in which you can watch a film, but because it is a particular kind of experience. Yeah. Um and paying attention to detail and focus, which is, I think for students super important because I for me, I know that in my some of my classes as students are watching films on laptops and not paying close attention. Yeah, but they're in a class in which they're they're being asked to pay attention, to watch in a different way, uh, to think about film form, to think about narrative, uh, to think about how all these different elements, including including music and sound, work together. So that requires a certain kind of attention that you yeah. Um yeah, that I think that that's a long answer to the question about why the theater. Well, that's a great one. Also love the smell of popcorn. That's about it.

Mark Clague:

The popcorn's better, yeah. They put they put more butter on it at the end. They do. So um what else is gonna happen during the film festival? I I hear you have some talks or things going on as well.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah, on October 2nd, we have a talk that's open to the public. A scholar named Juan Yamas Rodriguez is coming, and he just released a book called Border Tunnels, oh wow, which is about the the the tunnels between the UGS and Mexico. But he stumbled upon a really fascinating object in the sense that it is almost a hundred these these tunnels are a hundred percent mediated. In other words, we as viewers only have access to these tunnels through media on television, in documentaries, in kind of fiction film, in video games, even. So the book is about the way these tunnels are mediated because we do not have access to them. Right. Um, and we only know them through. So it is about it's about the tunnels, but it's also about representation and the way the tunnels become um a stand-in for debates about drug trafficking, about immigration, about the US-Mexico border, and the role of the media um in shaping those perceptions. Which I think So that's October 2nd. That's October 2nd.

Mark Clague:

Um, so I hear John Cameron Mitchell is also hosting a symposium on this will be a little bit after the festival, November 12th, right?

Colin Gunckel:

On November 12th, uh John Cameron Mitchell is hosting and organizing a symposium, our annual John H. Mitchell Symposium, critical uh John H. Mitchell Critical Conversation Symposium, in which our visiting professor invites three guests of their choosing to do a public symposium. The the audience for that symposium is largely our undergrad students. That's the intended audience, but it's open to the public. So the concept has something to do with punk and the the kind of whole ethos that he's bringing to this class.

Mark Clague:

And I hear we have a little bit of Ann Arbor history in here with Danny Fields, right?

Colin Gunckel:

We do. Uh well one of Danny Fields has accepted our invitation to attend the symposium. We're we're working on getting him here. But uh, for those who don't know, Danny Fields uh managed the Ramones, he managed the MC5 and the Stooges. He discovered the Stooges uh when they were playing at the the the Michigan Union, evidently, to an audience of nine. Uh and was walking up the stairs and heard this sound is like this is the sound of the end of the world. Like this is like this this is something, right? Uh so we're bringing him back to the Michigan campus and and hopefully kind of activating some of that punk history on campus because I'll say it, I'll say, and John Cameron Mitchell, by the way, agrees with me. We're on the same page. Punk rock was born in Ann Arbor. And if you don't think that's true, you're you're wrong. You're just wrong.

Mark Clague:

And I think they're I like it. I like it. Well, and and you can disagree with me, but you'd be wrong. The Trans Love Energy's house on Hill Hill Street, right? And and uh so Lenny and John Sinclair were pretty frequent guests in my classes. Oh uh Lenny's still with us, I think. And uh amazing, amazing informants and just you know, but very different people, you know. Yeah.

Colin Gunckel:

No, and I I I just I as someone who knows that history and knows the different parts in town, the the I it's amazing to me that that that history is not not better known. Uh yeah, well we should do something about this too. I think so too.

Mark Clague:

Okay, great. So um I should also just say and thank you because uh John Cameron Mitchell also is working a little bit with the Arts Initiative this year as part of our student creative fellowship. So we have about, I think, 30 undergraduate students who do work with the Arts Initiative every other fall. And uh basically it's just try creating an environment um for a structure, a little bit of financial support for materials to get them to make stuff, to to make art happen for them. Um 70% of students on our campus report that they want more art in their lives. And amazingly, and you you may not even know this, um, 75% of our current students, and this is at the undergrad and grad level, um self-identify as an artist already. Oh wow, right? So they see themselves as musicians and actors and playwrights and writers and poem poem uh poet poets and uh but also filmmakers. So one of the things that I think makes the arts so exciting and thriving on campus is that we have those 250 plus student arts organizations. Students are actually in this space already. Yeah. And I think part of what your work is doing, part of what the arts initiative is doing, is just trying to remind the whole community that the arts are thriving here. And that's really what we want the Michigan Arts Festival to highlight.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah.

Mark Clague:

And also hopefully to get people to get the bug, the arts bug, and to check out the arts all year round. So um we know about a few FTVM things during the festival and um right after the festival with uh the symposium. But what other things are do you have planned for like next semester? Or how can people sort of generally um be hip to and and participate in FTM VM events?

Colin Gunckel:

We have I I we're still working on our plan for next semester. So we have a visiting filmmaker that I'm not gonna announce because it's still kind of in the works, and we have another scholar visiting. But in general, you could check our website. We do a really good job of keeping up our um our events page and things like that. And we try to collaborate with other departments and organizations on campus to promote their events if they're relevant to the to that audience. And there's as you know, tons of film screenings and events that are put on by other folks that we either co-sponsor or publicize through through our events page and things like that. I will say, as for students, getting involved means maybe taking a course, but it also, as you suggest, means connecting to the student organizations. And we have a a good number of student or student organizations associated with the department. One is Wolf TV that I mentioned earlier, but there's also Imagination Films. It's a student organization that that that writes, directs, and produces their their own uh films over the course of the the academic year and then showcases them at the Michigan Theater. Anyone can join. A lot of FTVM students are in that organization, but it's not only it's not restricted to FTVM students. There are other organizations like Filmic. There's the Black Film Society that lasts.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, actually, we did a creative currents episode with the Black Film South. Oh, yeah, that's fantastic. We'll link that into the show notes too. Okay, there you go. Along with the Disfluency episode.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah, and they they produced a doc they they produced a documentary last year about Black Life at U of M. Uh, there's Cinnamon Cinema, uh, which is more Asian American uh focused. And there are other student orgs that I'm forgetting that are film related. There's just a lot of activity on the places. And I think in some ways, uh we we follow their lead in terms of um gauging their interest, seeing what they're up to and what they're interested in, but all very entrepreneurial, all very proactive. Um, I don't know how they pull it all off by taking classes, having social lives, and also producing these things on their own.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, that is incredible.

Colin Gunckel:

It's really remarkable.

Mark Clague:

It's the energy of being a student is pretty, pretty intoxicating. Yeah, it is. So, last thing. So I'm a student, I've never done uh film before. I I want to learn. Pitch me one history class and one filmmaking class that I should get involved in.

Colin Gunckel:

One history class? That's a good question. Hold on. I'm trying to think of, I gotta put my curriculum hat on. I will say, you know, I I think the one one of our professors, Eve at Granada, who you you probably know, is teaching some really fascinating classes in terms of production, VR 360, kind of pushing students in new directions and bringing in new technology when it comes out and just purchasing things uh and and pushing the the boundaries of what we do. And and is I think those students come out transformed because they they're exposed to kind of the cutting edge of technology. Wow. Uh, but they're also they're also thinking in new ways about moving image media and how to produce moving image media. Um, and in terms of history, you know, last semester, I don't know if this is for everyone, but last semester our professor Professor Dan Herbert taught a class uh dedicated entirely to Wes Anderson, uh, which was at the Michigan Theater. And the screenings were selling out every day. Evidently, um uh it was really popular on a local level, but also with the students. Um and that was a way of thinking about contemporary film history. And he teaches a lot of courses about the film industry and contemporary uh contemporary film. So that's a great one. But I we also have classes on exploitation film uh that I think are fantastic.

Mark Clague:

And um yeah, you're really uh quizzing me on the curriculum here, and for some reason I well what I'm getting from you is uh which is exciting, is it's not just about taking Film 101, you know, introduction to film history. It's actually diving into an area that interests you as a student. And it sounds like your department is welcome to inviting students of really of any type to just jump in.

Colin Gunckel:

No, exactly. And I think we're trying to to broaden what we do all the time. We have a new uh relatively recent arrival uh in terms of a professor, Joseph Nguyen, who's teaching classes on queer and trans gaming. And we're looking on we're looking to build a focus on gaming and both in terms of studying games, uh game design, but also studying the theory and history of games alongside that uh just as a complement as one thing that we do. And there's in of course as you could imagine, there's more student interest in that all the time.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, well, and game music is fascinating to me because you know generally music composition rolls out from beginning to end, and and games music depends on what's being triggered, where the character goes, right? So it's it's pretty astonishing how beautifully they make and dramatic they make things, all knowing that it's gonna be played out in real time and and constantly redesigned sonically as it goes. So anyway, uh Colin, we this week could talk for another 45 minutes or two hours. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining me on Creative Currents, and I really hope that folks check out FTVM and all your offerings during the festival.

Colin Gunckel:

Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a great conversation.

Mark Clague:

It's a pleasure Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents at umish.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Jessica Dinks and edited by Slypup Productions. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, an alumnus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative, please visit our website at arts.umish.edu. Thanks for listening and for being part of the Michigan arts community that makes our campus so fabulous. So until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep your creative currents flowing.