Editor's Introduction

tanya silverman's “Automotive Associations in Post–New Wave Films by Czech Directors” examines the rich connotations that cars convey to generate a timely account of work by four significant Czech directors: Jiří Menzel (1938–2020) and Věra Chytilová (1929–2014), who worked exclusively in their home country, and Miloš Forman (1932–2018) and Ivan Passer (1933–2020), who exiled themselves following the Soviet invasion in 1968. In “Facing the End of the World: Take Shelter as Horror Ecocinema,” Katarzyna Paszkiewicz advances scholarship in the areas of genre studies, audience reception, and cultural engagement with climate change, through research that deftly integrates multiple threads of inquiry with nuanced analysis of visual and narrative elements in Jeff Nichols's 2011 acclaimed independent film. In “Audiovisual Silence: A Lever for Narrative Change and Transition,” Daniel Torras i Segura offers valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners in his ample illustration of why and how silence so often facilitates transitions or variations between scenes and effectively signals change within and between scenes. In “Documentary Film and the Flint Water Crisis: Incorporating the Sociological Imagination,” Cedric Taylor places documentary work in a new light through his thoughtful analysis of how public sociology principles grounded his approach to making Nor Any Drop to Drink: Flint's Water Crisis (2018) and to sharing it as an open-access resource.