ALFONSO CUARÓN: A RETROSPECTIVE
Q&A with Dierdra Reber, Associate Professor of Latin American Culture at the University of Kentucky
"Director and co-writer Cuarón brilliantly manages to create both awe at his glorious space vistas, and knuckle-gobbling tension at what's happening in the foreground." —Guardian
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission. Her commander is veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney), helming his last flight before retirement. Then, during a routine space walk by the pair, disaster strikes: The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Ryan and Matt stranded in deep space with no link to Earth and no hope of rescue. As fear turns to panic, they realize that the only way home may be to venture further into space.
ABOUT DIERDRA REBER
Dierdra Reber is Associate Professor of Latin American Culture in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. Reber is author of Coming to Our Senses: Affect and an Order of Things (Columbia University Press, 2016) and is working on a critical study of Alfonso Cuarón's full filmography, under contract with the University of Illinois Press Contemporary Film Directors Series, and a study in progress of affect, race, and Western empire. Reber's work situates film and media, and other narrative genres from literature to advertising, in the context of affect studies and broader Western philosophy over the 600-year period that comprises Western (neo)imperialism from the 1400s to the present.