‘Hollywood’s disdain for masturbation has its roots in an oft-misinterpreted biblical story in the book of Genesis,’ recently, however, things have started to change: ‘The watershed fall from grace appeared in 1982 in Amy Heckerling’s classic sex romp Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ according to Brian Johnson, who charts the history of self pleasure in American teen movies. ‘[T]he depiction in film of the causes, conduct, and consequences of nuclear warfare has not only shaped public opinion on a visceral, emotional level but has in many instances mirrored the debates over such issues as deterrence, proliferation, and command and control that occurred at the highest intellectual and governmental levels during the Cold War and are ongoing during the War on Terror’, according to Si Sheppard examines how cinema has ‘articulated the issues involved in the formulation of nuclear weapons policy.’ As stated by Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Qubadi, ‘a strange thing has happened in the Kurdistan of today: there are fewer parents wishing their children to become engineers or doctors, but most of them wish their children to be film makers.’ Abdulla Al-Dabbagh writes on the renaissance of Kurdish cinema. Also in our next issue, Matt Fullerton on the relation between ‘Folktales, Female Martyrs and Flaubert in Tunisian Film’, Kevin Chabot on temporality and colonialism in The Battle of Algiers, Deborah Allison on ‘Film Title Sequences and Widescreen Aesthetics’ and Brianne Brenneman on Hollywood’s shifting portrayal of women in World War II films. Plus interviews and columns, as per usual.

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