Thursday 27 November 2014

Thanksgiving Round Up! On the Audiovisual Essay, Bordwellian Beneficence, FROZEN, Fincher, SNOWPIERCER, Jodorowsky, Charles Barr interview, Horror Grrls, Fan Studies, Media Industries, Animation, and SO MUCH MORE!!



An audiovisual essay by Adrian Martin. Read Martin's accompanying text at [in]Transition 1.3, 2014, where you can see the other entries in this latest issue of the new journal of videographic film and moving image studies. Also, check out the latest issue of LOLA (co-edited by Martin and Girish Shambu), which features great new essays by Joe McElhaney (on German cinema) and Lesley Stern (on the ghostliness of gesture in film), among others.



Life, travel and lots happening at the good old salaried job rather got in the way, in the last three months, of Film Studies For Free's foolish claim that it would be "right back" after its last entry. This miscalculation heralded the longest hiatus in this blog's six and half year long existence! But FSFF is BACK and (even more foolishly) claiming that December should see some further new entries! Don't believe a word of it, people, till you see them with your own eyes!

Just be thankful, then, if you're so inclined, for all the openly accessible film and moving image studies that have appeared or been located online since the last entry. Links to many of these are lovingly gathered below for your reading and viewing pleasure and for your film and media studies edification.

Two further items of interest: first, you still have time to apply to attend a free two-week long workshop on making videographic criticism at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, in June 2015, run by Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell, with Eric Faden and Catherine Grant as guest presenters! In case you think that, while free, this will still be an expensive venture, through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, participants will receive a small stipend as well as having all travel, housing, and food expenses covered. The application deadline is Monday December 1, 2014.... So go to it! Full details here: http://sites.middlebury.edu/videoworkshop/.

Finally, do be sure to tune in to In Media Res from Monday (December 1) for a weeklong discussion of Open Source Academia: "Featuring communications and media scholars from various avenues and alleyways, this multimedia discussion will take place at the In Media Res website as well as at Facebook, Twitter and beyond! Curators for this week include Catherine Grant, of Film Studies for Free, writing on "Scholarly Striptease," and Suzanne Scott, drawing on the troublesome canard of the "Fake Geek Girl" to address the possibility of the 'Fake Geek Academic.' Open Source Academia week is a collaboration between In Media Res and the students of IML 501, Seminar in Contemporary Digital Media in the Media Arts and Practices Division in The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. Follow Open Source Academia on Facebook and Twitter to enjoy custom curated web content to enrich the conversation as it unfolds."

P.S. It's not open access, sadly, but USC film and media scholar Holly Willis published a great profile of Film Studies For Free in the Fall 2014 issue of FILMMAKER Magazine. If you're a subscriber you can find it here: "Film Studies in the 21st Century": http://filmmakermagazine.com/87920-film-studies-for-the-21st-century/.

  • NEW ISSUE! Media Industries Journal 1.2 is now out with twelve think pieces from its editorial board: http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/issue/view/2
  • More podcast brilliance: the Aca Media team have published two episodes since FSFF's last entry:
    • Episode 18 (aka The Halloween episode) has lots of laughs and frights! Also: Forrest Gump and the SCMS-U conference. http://www.aca-media.org/episode18
    • Episode 17 features Courtney Brannon Donoghue discussing Sony's film production in Brazil. an introduction to an exciting new outlet for video essays, [in]Transition, and a discussion of baseball players who don't have a clue and a couple of British detectives who do: http://www.aca-media.org/episode17
  • VIEWING! From the OPEN HERE conference and festival on social, technological & cultural issues re. the digital commons: https://vimeo.com/user33775574
  • ALSO! 1000 Frames of Hitchcock: See Each of Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artistic Frames: http://goo.gl/Wa8ulI 
  • ALSO! Darren Tofts and Mark Amerika, joined new media philosophy journal Ctrl-Z editor Niall Lucy and film director Ken Miller to "discuss the flows and eruptions of remix culture, to reflect on its technological and intellectual pre-histories, and to consider its implications for cultural practice": http://www.ctrl-z.net.au/press/media/ (link via Adrian Martin)

2 comments:

girish said...

Katie, this is a FANTASTIC collection of reading: thank you! It will surely keep us busy into the new year! If you'll forgive the self-promotion, I thought I'd post here, FYI, a link to a blog entry I put up after the one you so generously linked to above: this one has short takes on ten TIFF films, plus links to reading. Cheers!

Catherine Grant said...

Thanks Girish. Sorry about missing out the second entry. I'll add it above when next at my computer.