Film Studies For Free

Vertigoed! The film scholarly value of mash-up?

2012-01-17T13:49:00.019Z

Last updated January 20, 2012

FSFF's entry for Press Play's VERTIGOED Contest.
Still three more days to submit your own entry!

A psychosexually obsessed man wanders the streets of 1950s San Francisco; he spies [on] seemingly unavailable blonde women; he makes a woman fall from a height; she drops into water; the scene is filled with circle imagery, especially circles within circles..... [See the original sequence]

As Film Studies For Free's readers may have heard, Kim Novak, co-star of Vertigo, took out an ad in trade magazine Variety to protest about the recent use of an excerpt from Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film in Michel Hazanavicius’s 2011 modern silent film The Artist. "I want to report a rape," went the headline. "I feel as if my body - or at least my body of work -- has been violated by the movie, The Artist," Novak wrote. She went on to criticise the “use and abuse [of] famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what they were intended.”

There was quite a strong international reaction to Novak's intervention. Some were dismayed by her recourse to the lexicon of rape; others were more sympathetic to her stance and background as someone very much not from the digital age of remix and creative appropriation; still others remind us that, in 'Scene d'Amour', the musical Vertigo theme in question, Herrmann was, of course, inspirationally reworking some of Richard Wagner's motifs from his Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. Good artists copy; great artists steal?

Enter the story the PRESS PLAY blog which launched a contest inviting readers to re-use Herrmann's "Scene d'Amour" music in their own mash-up, inspired by the idea that "Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score is so passionate and powerful that it can elevate an already good scene -- and a familiar one at that -- to a higher plane of expression."

Film Studies For Free's author was only too happy to have a go, joining the legions of those who, like Hazanavicius, have used Herrmann's music in their work, in large or very small ways. Her choice of film sequence? One borrowed from The Sniper, Edward Dmytryk's 1952 film noir, with its own, obsessed, wandering male protagonist and San Francisco setting.

The Sniper was one of the films that probably directly inspired Vertigo, as well as Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho -- see critic Dave Kehr's thoughts on this. The above mash-up chooses, then, to marry Herrmann's lush Wagnerian romance with the key 'amusement park' sequence from Dmytryk's brilliant film, with its astonishing performance of overt misogyny by Arthur Franz as Edward "Eddie" Miller -- perhaps the perfect, filmic, mirror-image of James Stewart's unforgettable, unconsciously misogynist, John "Scottie" Ferguson.

FSFF's author was excited to experience at first-hand the scholarly possibilities of remixing film clips in this way (the contest rules state that the original film sequence cannot be re-edited in any way -- except, if you choose to, by removing its sound -- in order not to cheat with the creative re-juxtaposition process).

Remixing is an astonishingly good (and amazingly easy) way of really -- almost literally -- getting inside a film sequence. It is thus a truly great exercise for all students of film with access to the right digital tools. Analysing just how the mash-up adapts the meaning of the original music and original sequence is rather educational and fun, too!

If you get your skates on with the Vertigo score exercise, there are still three days left for Press Play's contest entries. Click here to watch the (over 60) entries at present.

FSFF's favorite entry to the contest, so far, is a mash-up which, rather like its own, plays on the conscious or unconscious connections between an earlier film and Vertigo. It's Matthew Cheney's wonderful work with Mädchen in Uniform (the brilliant 1931 film by Leontine Sagan). But there are loads of other imaginative and highly satisfying remixes that you will enjoy checking out. UPDATE: the videographic legend that is Steven Boone just added a late Vertigoed entry which is FSFF's new favourite: a scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

If you want to see even more brilliant, Vertigo mash-up work -- actually, a work of remix in a completely different, utterly sublime class -- you simply must check out The Vertigo Variations by remarkable critic-filmmaker B. Kite.

And, for more vertiginous sublimity, don't forget FSFF's very own Study of a Single Film: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo entry.

The Sniper's amusement park sequence without Herrmann's music

The original 'Scene d'Amour' sequence from Vertigo

The mash up video at the top of the post was made according to principles of Fair Use/Fair Dealing, with non-commercial scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License in January 2012.

Latest issues of KINEMA: von Trier, Czech cinema, Romanian cinema, Woody Allen, cult cinema, de Mille, Schnabel, Practice vs. Theory

2012-01-10T14:52:00.000Z

So bad it's good? Framegrab from The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003). Read Rod Stoneman's study of cult cinema "Inside The Room and Beyond"

Film Studies For Free continues to catch up with (fairly) recently published issues of online Film Studies journals. Below are links to the articles from the Spring and Fall 2011 issues of Canadian journal Kinema.

Lots of good stuff here, and even some good stuff on bad stuff, but FSFF especially recommends Mette Hjort's wonderful article on Lars von Trier.

Fall 2011

Spring 2011

40+ Essays on Film, Moving Image, and Digital Media in the Sarai Readers

2012-01-06T12:33:00.000Z

Framegrab image of early action heroine "Fearless" Nadia (née Mary Ann Evans) in Miss Frontier Mail (Homi Wadia, 1936). Read Rosie Thomas's 2007 article on this film.

Today, Film Studies For Free focuses on, and links to, some remarkable film and digital media studies essays commissioned and edited by the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi.

The Sarai Programme was initiated in 2000 by a group consisting of internationally renowned cinema scholar Ravi S. Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram (both fellows at CSDS) and the members of the Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta), a Delhi based group of media practitioners, documentarists, artists and writers.

Sarai's mission is to act as a platform for discursive and creative collaboration between theorists, researchers, practitioners and artists actively engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces and cultures in South Asia. Its areas of interests include media research and theory, the urban experience in South Asia: history, environment, culture, architecture and politics, new and established media practices, media history, cinema, contemporary art, digital culture, the history and politics of technology, visual/technological cultures, free and open source software, social usage of software, the politics of information and communication, online communities and web-based practices.

The below collection of articles -- painstakingly drawn from the numerous, openly accessible Sarai Readers produced by the collective -- reflect the above interests, but have been curated here by FSFF because of their particular, potential relevance to scholars of cinema and related moving image and digital media studies.

FILM VERSUS FILM Series with Dustin Morrow, Chris Cagle, David Cooper Moore and Matt Prigge

2012-01-05T15:35:00.002Z

The Film Versus Film crew tackles the question, "Who's the best drunk character in all of film?" Is it the antihero from Red Lights or the matriarch from La Cienaga? The panel raises issues of gender representation as they discuss the characters from Sex and the City, and discuss such functional drunks as Paul Newman in The Verdict and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke also comes up, as does Dudley Moore's Arthur.

Film Studies For Free is a big fan of the work of film scholar and blogger Chris Cagle (see his website Category D: A Film and Media Studies blog) and so was curious about the below press release when it landed in its inbox.

Lively New Web Series Focuses on Film Discussion
Film versus Film is an exciting new web series centering on the discussion of popular cinema. The show’s panel is made up of filmmakers, professors, film critics and film scholars. The panel’s discussions stem from tongue-in-cheek, pop culture-oriented “categories” like Best Use of a Pop Song in Film, Film Failure that Should Have Spawned a Great Franchise, Most Unpleasant Christmas Movie, and Hammiest Performance Ever by a Film Actor.
     The series was the brainchild of Portland filmmaker and professor Dustin Morrow, who thought there might be an audience for the funny, passionate, good-natured arguments he was having at the pub with his fellow cinephiles over such film-obsessive questions as What’s the best film ever made starring an animal?, What’s the most uncomfortable nude scene on film?, and What films have actually been elevated by the performances of Keanu Reeves?
     The series is shot in Philadelphia, and features in addition to Morrow, professor and film scholar Chris Cagle, media educator and documentarian David Cooper Moore, and journalist and film critic Matt Prigge. The series is directed and edited by filmmaker Matt Boyle. Each Monday’s webisode tackles one question, and runs five to ten minutes. The series can be seen on YouTube, Vimeo, and at filmversusfilm.tumblr.com. The series can also be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

     For more information, the Philadelphia Daily News recently ran a full page interview with series producer Dustin Morrow in both its print and web editions.

Having now enjoyed a few of the Film Versus Film panel discussions, FSFF (who, when it's not bringing you quality film scholarly links, is almost always down the pub having discussions like these with its mates -- slightly less dudecentric ones, it must be said ...) was only too happy to convey the news about this fun and lightly informative web series to its readers.

Repulsive Film Studies? New issue of FILM-PHILOSOPHY on Cinematic Disgust

2012-01-03T17:09:00.004Z

Life's Work: The Films of Roman Polanski - Chapter 5: Repulsion, the Dark Art of Desire written and narrated by Kim Morgan and edited by Matt Zoller Seitz. Video Essay Series hosted by PressPlay at IndieWire

[Tarja] Laine’s insights on disgust have important implications for thinking about the aesthetic paradox of unpleasure. In her assessment, [Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)] offers a particularly pertinent limit-case in which disgust is not readily convertible into pleasurable cognitive satisfaction. Ultimately, her reading of the film suggests that we may need to re-think theories that construct unpleasure as antithetical to aesthetic experience. In this, she joins Korsmeyer and other thinkers who have recently suggested that we may need to abandon the pleasure-unpleasure binary, in favor of thinking about disgust as ‘modifier of attention, intensifying for a host of reasons some experience that the participant would rather have continue than not’ (Korsmeyer 2011, 118). Indeed, as Laine puts it, it is possible that what we value in cinematic renderings of disgust is precisely the ‘vivid and immediate experience’ that it offers us, ‘regardless of its non-pleasurable, non-rewarding features’. [Tina Kendall in her editor's 'Introduction: Tarrying with Disgust' for the Film-Philosophy special issue on Disgust, discussing Tarja Laine's brilliant article for that issue, as well as citing Carolyn Korsmeyer's Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)]

Many of you will already have heard about the new issue of Film-Philosophy that came out in late December, but Film Studies For Free is obsessively completist in its mission to bring you news of notable, open access, film studies, hence this, otherwise possibly superfluous, entry.

Besides, it's a brilliantly provocative special issue which successfully takes explorations of filmic disgust well beyond the, to date, canonical or entrenched Film Studies approaches to film horror. Despite some of the attractions of these approaches, for those of us marking undergraduate essays on horror cinema and television from time to time, this greater plurality of conceptual pathways into these topics is a Very Good Thing - that is, in FSFF's ever so humble view.

Thanks so much for that, and more, Film-Philosophy!

Vol 15, No 2 (2011): The Disgust Issue

Guest Editor: Tina Kendall

Articles

Introduction: Tarrying with Disgust PDF Tina Kendall
Toward a Poetics of Cinematic Disgust PDF Julian Hanich
Imprisoned in Disgust: Roman Polanski's Repulsion PDF Tarja Laine
Laura Dern’s Vomit, or, Kant and Derrida in Oz PDF Eugenie Brinkema
Chew on This: Disgust, Delay, and the Documentary Image in Food, Inc. PDF Jennifer Marilynn Barker
Body Horror and Post-Socialist Cinema: Györgi Pálfi’s Taxidermia PDF Steven Shaviro

Book Reviews

Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones and Belén Vidal (2010) Cinema at the Periphery PDF Rowena Santos Aquino
Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds. (2010) Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead PDF Caroline Walters
Joseph Mai (2010) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne PDF R. D. Crano
Boaz Hagin (2010) Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema PDF Richard Lindley Armstrong
Peter Lee-Wright (2010) The Documentary Handbook PDF Wes Skolits
William Brown, Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin (2010) Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe PDF Alison Frank
Richard Misek (2010) Chromatic Cinema PDF Robert Barry
Alain Badiou (2010) Cinéma PDF Manuel Ramos
Annie van den Oever, ed. (2010) Ostrannenie PDF Lara Alexandra Cox
David Martin-Jones (2010) Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities PDF John Marmysz

New Issue of CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

2012-01-03T16:21:00.001Z


Jeff Wall's photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Today, in its continuing series of catch up posts on new offerings from open access film e-journals, Film Studies For Free brings you links to the contents of the latest issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image.

Of particular interest, this time, are Tom McClelland's clear-eyed account of the respects 'in which the medium of film and the discipline of philosophy can intersect', Agustín Zarzosa's detailed evaluation of Rancière’s criticism of Deleuze, and Temenuga Trifonova's terrific discussion of the ways in which contemporary photography, like that of Jeff Wall mentioned above, 'seeks to reclaim the cinematic within the photographic from within the twilight of indexicality'.

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 2 (2011)

Abstracts and Contributors

Articles

Tom McClelland, 'The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy'

Agustín Zarzosa, 'Layering Images, Thwarting Fables: Deleuze, Rancière and the Allegories of Cinema'

Temenuga Trifonova, 'The Twilight of the Index'

Flore Chevaillier, 'Semiotic Images'

Gabriella Calchi-Novati, '“Biopolitics on Screen”: Aernout Mik's Moving-Image Installations' ONLINE

Interview

Questions for Jacques Rancière around his book Les écarts du cinéma (English version and French version): Conducted by Susana Nascimento Duarte

Conference Report

William Brown on the Film-Philosophy Conference (Liverpool John Moores University, 6-8 July, 2011)

In Portuguese:

Leonor Areal, 'Para uma teoria do cliché'

Teresa Pedro, 'Técnicas cinematográficas e actos mentais: The Photoplay de Hugo Münsterberg'

Translation

Mauro Carbone, trad. Débora Quaresma e Davide Scarso, 'Merleau-Ponty e o pensamento do cinema'

New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

2012-01-02T16:59:00.001Z

Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

Links to all items are set out for you below.

The Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 2

Rush to Judgement: Imperfect Justice in Fury (1936)
Stella Bruzzi
You Only Live Once (1937)
V. F. Perkins
Going Straight: The Past and the Future in The Return of Frank James (1940)
Edward Gallafent
The Woman in the Window (1944)
Mark Rappaport
Guess-Work: Scarlet Street (1945)
Adrian Martin
The Big Heat: Acts of Violence (1953)
Peter William Evans
Human Desire (1954)
Deborah Thomas
Lang With Lacan: The Power of the Gaze in Moonfleet (1955)
Peter Benson

Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of Découpage
Christian Keathley
The Texture of Performance in Psycho and its Remake
Alex Clayton
The Cry of the Owl: Investigating Decision-Making in a Contemporary Feature Film
John Gibbs

This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.

New WORLD PICTURE on 'Wrong'

2012-01-02T16:23:00.003Z

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo

A Fire in My Belly is an awkward work that at first glance can appear to be both hyperbolic or overreaching and inconsistent or contradictory. This short film resembles a travel log, an illustrated lecture, or an educational slide show that mixes the unpitying gaze of a mondo cane film (unwrapped mummies with gaping mouths, unusually disabled bodies performing daily tasks, animals forced into fighting by their human captors) with the deliriously overwrought expressionism of 1980s music videos (spinning eyeballs aflame, strobed flashes of milk splashes). The film also recalls major moments in the visual avant-garde of the twentieth century by invoking 1920s surrealist iconography, aping Eisenstein’s clunkier intellectual montages, and echoing the idolatry of Kenneth Anger’s films which themselves borrow from the formal idioms [of] religious and exploitation films. A Fire in My Belly overtly conflates symbolic registers and gains momentum by joining documentary footage of workers performing precarious tasks or snakes devouring their prey to staged studio shots of symbolic transactions involving leaking blood, throwing money, spinning globes, or torched marionettes. [from Karl Schoonover's essay 'David Wojnarowicz's Graven Image: Cinema, Censorship, and Queers'; hyperlinks added by FSFF]

Following its much appreciated seasonal break, a rather bleary-eyed but well-rested Film Studies For Free wishes its readers a very happy new year.

Its first few posts of 2012 will be devoted to catching up with some new issues of online film and moving image studies related journals, starting with a listing of links to a new collection of work from one of the most original of such journals: World Picture on the concept of 'wrong'.

FSFF particularly liked Schoonover on Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly, (as above), Schwartz's riff on Pasolini, Malsky on dystopian sound, and Manon and Temkin on glitch art.

WORLD PICTURE 6, 2011: Table of Contents

Mark Andrejevic: Estrangement 2.0
Bishnupriya Ghosh: Governing by Wrong
Seb Franklin: Is Attention Really Immaterial? Visual Culture after Post-Fordism
Danny Hayward: The Essential Standpoint of Man: An Autopsy, In Three Parts
Sam Lipsyte in conversation with Brian Price and Meghan Sutherland: Acategorical Imperatives
Matt Malsky: Being Heard: Listening In–Sound and Our Dystopian Present
Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin: Notes on Glitch
Daniel Temkin—gl1tchw0rks gall3ry
Davide Panagia: The Notion of Pantry: A Speculative Defense of Unuse
Brian Price: A Theory of Regret
Lucy Raven: Tech City
Scott C. Richmond: “Dude, That's Just Wrong”: Mimesis, Identification, Jackass
Karl Schoonover: David Wojnarowicz's Graven Image: Cinema, Censorship, and Queers
Louis-Georges Schwartz: A Futher Explanation of My Last Error By Pier Paolo Pasolini
A. L. Steiner: WELCOME TO MY RECTANGLE

FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

2011-12-20T16:05:00.025Z

Insightful interview (in English) with filmmaker and academic Clio Barnard about her experimental documentary The Arbor on the life and work of Andrea Dunbar, British writer of the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob, too. The Arbor was one of Film Studies For Free's author's favourite films seen in 2011 (interview December 5, 2011)

Not since its December 2008 blog entry A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs has the otherwise intrepid Film Studies For Free ventured into the rather crowded, online territory of end-of-year lists.

But, as it signs off on its seasonal break until the first few days of 2012, FSFF thought the time was right for a listing of links to its favourite, openly accessible, online Film Studies resources in 2011.

Thanks so much to all who worked hard to bring you these openly accessible treasures in the first place. And thanks also, dear readers, for being there to appreciate them.

FSFF very much looks forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

Top seven film and moving image studies history resources online in 2011:

The Colonial Film Project archive plus two freely accessible chapters by those involved in the project: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 32 sample pages; and Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 25 sample pages
Media History Digital Library
The Turconi Project
EU Screen
European Film Gateway
The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories
The Kracauer Lectures website

Top five, most consistently brilliant Film Studies bloggers:

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson for Observations on Film Art
Luke McKernan for The Bioscope (also see McKernan's two new ScoopIt! projects: The Bioscope and Screen Research)
Roland-François Lack for The Cine-Tourist, The Daily Map and The BlowUp Moment (also see The Autopsies Group website) and also on Twitter
Dan North for Spectacular Attractions (also see The Cinema of Puppetry) and also on Twitter
Tie between Michael J. Anderson and Lisa K. Broad for Tativille and Ten Best Films; and Omar Ahmed for Ellipsis

Best new Film Studies blog: Katherine Groo's Half/Films
Best 'media studies approaches to film and moving image studies' blog - tie between:

Just TV by Jason Mittell (also on Twitter)
Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style by Anne Helen Petersen (also on Twitter)
The Chutry Experiment by Chuck Tryon (also on Twitter)
The Negarponti Files by Negar Mottahedeh (also on Twitter and Facebook)

Most consistently original, Film and Moving Image Studies writer active online - a tie between:

Adrian Martin (e.g. see all the links here)
Nicholas Rombes (e.g. see here and here)
Amanda Ann Klein (also see here)
David Bordwell
Kristin Thompson (also see here and here)
Jeffrey Sconce (also see here)

Best Film Studies informed, commercial film criticism website: Alternate Takes
Best new online film journal in 2011 - a tie between:

LOLA edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu
ALPHAVILLE edited by Laura Rascaroli and others at the University of Cork
JOAN'S DIGEST edited by Miriam Bale

Best recently established online academic Film Studies journal: MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism
Top twelve established, online, (mostly) English language, Film Studies journals:

Screening the Past
Film-Philosophy
SCOPE
Jump Cut
Senses of Cinema
MEDIASCAPE
Participations
Bright Lights Film Journal
CINEPHILE
Offscreen
La Furia Umana
World Picture Journal
For links to one hundred more journals (including some brilliant, primarily non-English language journals, like Transit: Cine..., see here)

Most generous, Open Access Film Studies author: Thomas Elsaesser for the below freely accessible e-books and for the hundreds of further resources linked to from his website:

Best online cinephile news and criticism site: MUBI Notebook (thanks so much to David Hudson and Daniel Kasman for their brilliant work)
Best cinephile salon site - a tie between:

Dave Kehr's place
Girish Shambu's place

Best seven multimedia/multiplatform/multichannel-style film and moving image studies websites:

Most impactful online Film Studies work in 2011 - a tie between:

Tim Smith's work on how movie viewers watch, showcased here as well as on his blog Continuity Boy and his research site.
Matthias Stork's video essays on Chaos Cinema (see FSFF's original post on this)
Aitor Gametxo's video essay: Variation: THE SUNBEAM, David W. Griffith, 1912
Steven Shaviro's work on Post-Cinematic Affect: see here for lots of links

FSFF's favourite Film Studies academic links on Twitter: @filmdrblog (also see the Film Doctor's actual blog)
FSFF's favourite non-academic, film studies-informed, online film critics - a tie between:

Srikanth Srinivasan (also on Twitter)
Matt Zoller Seitz (also on Twitter
Kevin B Lee (also on Twitter here and here)
Jim Emerson (also on Twitter)
Jonathan Rosenbaum (also on Twitter)
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (also on Twitter)
Farran Smith Nehme (also on Twitter)
Marilyn Ferdinand and Roderick Heath (also on Twitter here and here) and see Rod's blog
Anne Billson (also writing for the Guardian and on Twitter)
David Cairns (also on Twitter)

FSFF's ten favourite FSFF blogposts (and blogpost clusters) in 2011:

FSFF's most read post in 2011 by some distance was "An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011
Most popular resource at FSFF: Open Access Film E-books List
Best search engine for Open Access Film Studies (and other Arts and Humanities resources): JURN (thanks, as ever, to the indefatigable David Haden)

Cambridge Film Studies Videos: Godard, Renoir, Literature and Film, Film and Forgetting, Representation of War in Film

2011-12-20T10:48:00.000Z

Framestill from Scénario du film "Passion"/Script for the film "Passion" (Jean-Luc Godard, 1982). This film is discussed by Libby Saxton in her paper on gesture in Godard's films

Today, Film Studies For Free joyously tips the wink to its readers about the online availability of video recordings of papers from research events held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge.

These valuable online resources will clearly be added to in the coming months and years so while FSFF will keep its beady eye trained for the appearance of future recordings of note, its readers might like to do the same with their own beady eyes.

Anthony Lane (film critic), 'Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne and Maupassant', 14 November 2011, Part of the Cambridge Screen Media Group series

Dr Libby Saxton (Queen Mary, University of London), 'Passion, Energy and Matter: Godard's Gesture', Part of the Cambridge Screen Media Group series

Prof David Trotter (University of Cambridge), 'Literature and Film in the First Media Age', 11 October 2011, Part of the Cambridge Screen Media Group series

Professor Jay Winter (History, Yale University) 'Moving Images: From Silent Film to Film Silences in War Films, 1914-2009'. Keynote lecture at CRASSH conference 'The Moving Image' (26-27 February, 2010). This paper explores the long history of representation of war in film, from the Great War to the present. It suggests first that silent film provided a form of public séance in an era when spiritualism was at its apogee, and secondly, that it is the silences in later 'talkies' which enable us to see how cinematic mourning practices work.

Professor Michael Wood (English, Princeton), 'Film and the Art of Forgetting'. Paper delivered at CRASSH conference 'Changing the Humanities/the Humanities Changing' (July 2009)

Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance

2011-12-19T12:29:00.007Z

Actress Nicole Kidman at the 2011 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Photograph by Caroline David, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at Wikipedia. Listen to Pam Cook's brilliant talk about Kidman's "commodity stardom" here.

Film Studies For Free was thrilled to discover that audio files of the talks from the conference on Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance, which took place on December 9, 2011 at Birkbeck College, London, are now available online for listening and download.

The talks are of a very high calibre indeed, so several hours of truly worthwhile, scholarly listening await you. Links and a description of the event are given below. Enjoy!

Organisers' description of the event:

Diane Keaton has just published her memoirs. Reflecting on becoming a mother at 50 and kissing Jack Nicholson at 57, Keaton is ageing in her own unique way. On Friday 9 December Birkbeck, University of London, [held] a major research symposium exploring how stars including Keaton, Brigitte Bardot, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Taylor aged in the public eye.
This one-day research symposium, organised by Dr Janet McCabe and Dr Deborah Jermyn, [debated] two significant (and interlinked) issues; performance and ageing. Encompassing both historical and topical case studies, speakers [considered] a range of celebrities, stars and case studies drawn from different national and industrial contexts. The keynote speaker w[as] Professor Ginette Vincendeau (King’s College, University of London).
The co-organisers believe the time is right for new scholarship focussing on ageing and celebrity and for us to think anew about how we think about growing old. We hear endless reports of how age is becoming increasingly relative, ‘60 is the new 40’ and so on’. With the baby boomer generation going into retirement and being reluctant to be written off as ‘old’, there is a heightened demand for positive representations of ageing. At the same time, stars like Helen Mirren are re-writing the rules for older women working in Hollywood, says Jermyn. The symposium addresse[d] some of these issues and ask[ed]s just how much things are really changing, since women stars are still subjected to a much more critical eye as they age than are their male co-stars. ‘Growing old, and I do mean growing’ writes Diane Keaton, ‘requires reinvention’. I like this quote, says McCabe. We must adjust our ideas about how we age without talking exclusively about how we defy the ageing process. This symposium adopt[ed] different perspectives [...] about how celebrity is changing our perceptions and attitudes toward ageing and getting older.

Introduction and Welcome by Janet McCabe and Deborah Jermyn.

Panel 1

Panel 2

Keynote

Prof. Ginette Vincendeau – Ageing Disgracefully: Brigitte Bardot at 75 [AUDIO HERE]

"Global Cinema: Cinéma Engagé or Cinéma Commerciale?" Special Issue of SITUATIONS

2011-12-15T16:11:00.000Z

Framegrab from Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu , 2006)

Babel sets out to be a new sort of film that attempts to create a “world cinema” gaze within a commercial Hollywood framework. I examine how it approaches this and ask whether the film succeeds in this attempt. I explore the tensions between progressive and conservative political agendas, and pay particular attention to the ways “other” cultures are seen in a film with “Third World” pretensions and U.S money behind it. I frame my analysis around a key question: does the Iñárritu-led outfit successfully create a paradigmatic “transnational world cinema” text that de-centers U.S. hegemony, or is this a utopian project doomed to failure in a film funded predominantly by major U.S. studios? I examine the ways in which the film engages with the tourist gaze and ask whether the film replaces this gaze with a world cinema gaze or merely reproduces it in new ways . [Deborah Shaw, "Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze", Situations, 4.1, 2011]

Film Studies For Free is delighted to announce the publication of a new film issue of the Open Access journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. The special issue is entitled "Global Cinema: Cinéma Engagé or Cinéma Commerciale?" and it contains ten essays on modern international films and cinemas, including those of Iran, Nigeria, Mexico, Romania, France, China, Argentina, and India as well as on contemporary film festivals and on films documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As the editors write:

The issue has a global reach in its coverage of countries and regions of the world ranging from Hollywood’s own “Global Gaze,” to a placement of Nigerian Cinema as the equal of Africa’s modernist cinema, to Venezuela’s difficult negotiation of a Bolivarian cinema in a neoliberal context, to a questioning of the radical othering of Eastern European cinema whose concerns now seem much closer to those of the West, and, finally, to a tracing of a complex multiperspectival fashioning of the image of the Chinese peasantry in a moment when the distinction between city and country are rapidly fading. The global reach of the issue extends as well to the range of theoretical positions used to examine contemporary global cinema, be it: structural-materialist aspects of the questioning of the Israeli-Palestinian problematic; the integration of economic and aesthetic methodologies in a post-Adornian examination of the Cannes Film Festival; feminist and subaltern theory utilized to critique the patriarchal aspects of what is sometimes viewed as India’s most politically progressive cinema; a rereading and deconstruction of French radical workerist post-1968 cinema; and a linking of feminist and anti-colonial perspectives to highlight the way that in Iran Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten spotlights Muslim women's emancipation.

Below are direct links to the contents, as per usual here at FSFF.

Situation homepage Archives

Vol 4, No 1 (2011) Table of Contents PDF

Terri Ginsberg, Dennis Broe, "Whither Globalization? An Idea Whose Time Has Come or Whose Time Has Come and Gone?" PDF
Deborah Shaw, "Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze" PDF
Dennis Broe, "The Film Festival as Site of Resistance: Pro or Cannes" PDF
Hossein Khosrowjah , "Neither a Victim nor a Crusading Heroine" PDF
Jonathon Haynes , "African Cinema and Nollywood: Contradictions" PDF
Terri Ginsberg, " Radical Rationalism as Cinema Aesthetics: The Palestinian–Israeli Conflict in North American Documentary and Experimental Film" PDF
Paul Douglas Grant, "Just Some of the Ways to Shoot a Strike: Militant Filmmaking in France from Arc to the Groupe Medvedkine" PDF
Noah Zweig, "Villa del Cine (Cinema City): Constructing Bolivarian Citizens for the Twenty-First Century" PDF
Ping Fu, "Encircling the City: Peasant Migration in Contemporary Chinese Media" PDF
Gayatri Devi, "Between Personal Cataclysms and National Conflicts: The Missing Labor Class in Malayalam Cinema" PDF PDF
"Eastern European Cinema on the Margins" by Meta Mazaj PDF
Contributors, Film Issue PDF

Film Studies with added awesomeness

2011-12-15T09:49:00.002Z

He knows his stuff...

Hey readers.... A really quick link today, one specially for the end of a long and tiring teaching term. Film Studies For Free loves this Tumblr by girldetective and hopes that you will find it stimulating, too.

It’s all part of the Hey Girl/Ryan Gosling Tumblr meme (the origins of which can be found here). In a nutshell, following the success of Danielle Henderson’s blog, Feminist Ryan Gosling (which, in turn, was a derivative of the blog F[***] Yeah Ryan Gosling), many other bloggers rehashed the format using references to different fields of study, including Typography, International Development and Rhetoric. Being the nerdy cinephile that I am, I kept hoping that somebody would create a Film Studies version of the meme, but when that didn’t happen, I decided to just make one myself. [girldetective's mission statement]

Also, must read: Anne Helen Petersen of Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style on the Gosling meme.

Hat tip to Nelson D. (aka @nelly061) for passing the link onto FSFF.

Screen Attachments: new Issue of SCREENING THE PAST

2011-12-14T12:00:00.000Z

Framegrab from Nuovo cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988), a film which is the starting point of film theorist Francesco Casetti in his new article "Cinema Lost and Found"

Film Studies for Free rushes you the wonderful news that a special issue (no. 32) of Screening the Past has just gone online. The issue treats the topic of Screen Attachments and is edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci.

The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti, but a quick glance at all the other articles indicates a very high quality issue indeed. FSFF's own favourite is Fowler and Voci's study 'Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments Outside the Movie Theatre', with its compelling use of Sara Ahmed's notion of orientation.

The Classics and Reruns section also has some real gems.

Screen Attachments

Classics and Reruns

The Artist as Ecologist by Gene Youngblood
Cerebrum: Intermedia and the Human Sensorium by Gene Youngblood
Intermedia Theatre by Gene Youngblood
What is Digital Cinema? by Lev Manovich

Reviews

The Fall of Buster Keaton by Anna Gardner
Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry by David Ehrenstein
Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition by Daniel Fairfax
Television as Digital Media by Gin Chee Tong
Twilight of the Idols by Jonathan Auerbach
Drawn To Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity by Johnny Milner
Terry Gilliam (British Film Makers) by Josh Nelson
Cinema Beyond Film: Media Epistemology in the Modern Era by Meredith A. Bak
The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture by Mas Generis
Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities by Miriam Ross
Beyond Dolby (Stereo): Cinema in the Digital Sound Age by Mike Walsh
The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film by Patricia Aufderheide
Steven Soderbergh by Paul Ramaeker
Celluloid Symphonies: Texts and Contexts in Film Music History by Roger Hillmann
Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema by Tom Salek
Dark Borders: Film Noir and American Citizenship by Tony Williams
Counter-Archive. Film, the Everyday, and Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète by Jan-Christopher Horak
Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema by Gerald Sim

Dynamic Views at FILM STUDIES FOR FREE?

2011-12-08T14:23:00.001Z

An all too telling image of the messy wondrousness of Film Studies For Free?

It is a truth almost certainly universally acknowledged that, in so far as Film Studies For Free is known at all, it is known for its content rather than for its distinctly generic design. But some (long-overdue) design and layout changes are definitely on the horizon in the new year.

This website will almost certainly be adopting what's known in Blogger's jargon as a 'Dynamic Views' format, just as soon as some of the gremlins and limitations of this new system are ironed out. The most pressing issue to resolve first will be to find out how to accommodate the veritable riches of FSFF's standalone pages and sidebar content in the new format.

In the meantime, FSFF would like to offer its readers the chance to express a preference for any of the basic options that it is considering for its makeover. If you click on the links below, you can see how this blog would look in the different dynamic views on offer.

Your own dynamic views on this matter would be most appreciated. So, if you have any preferences, or indeed any other thoughts to express about the future look and functionality of FSFF, please leave them in a comment below or email this blog.

Thank you.

Classic: A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
Flipcard - Site photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
Magazine - A clean, elegant editorial style layout
Mosaic - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
Sidebar - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
Snapshot - An interactive pinboard of posts
Timeslide - A horizontal view of posts by time period

Film,Television and Media Studies articles in STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

2011-12-06T15:08:00.008Z


Framegrab of Rooney Mara as 'final girl' Nancy Holbrook in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010). Read Kyle Christensen's article on this film's source text ('The Final Girl versus Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema'), and also check out Film Studies For Free's entry of links to 'Final Girl' Studies

Below, Film Studies For Free links to the entire online contents, to date, of the excellent Open Access journal Studies in Popular Culture: a list of more than 60 great articles on film, television and media studies.

The journal of the US Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association in the South, SPC dates back, in its offline, print version, to 1977, making it one of the oldest, continuously published academic journals to treat audiovisual media.

SPC has been online since 2006 and is a wonderful example of how an online presence indicates no necessary lowering of the quality bar for a properly peer-reviewed journal.

29.1 October 2006 [Go here for an online table of contents)

"Reinventing the Hero: Gardner's Grendel and the Shifting Face of Beowulf in Popular Culture" -- Michael Livingston and John William Sutton
"Cowboys, Indians, and Iraq: Jessica Lynch, Loria Pestewa, and the Great American Makeover." -- Gioia Woods
"Artistic Schizophrenia: How Fight Club's Message is Subverted by its Own Nature" -- Kyle Bishop
"Michael, Are You Okay? You've Been Hit By a Smooth Criminal: Racism, Contraversy, and Parody in the Video Clips "Smooth Criminal" and "You Rock My World." -- Elenda Oliete
"'Sigmund Freud, Analyze This': How Madonna Situates "Die Another Day" Beyond the Pleasure Principle" -- David Sigler

30.2 Spring 2008 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

Little America: R.E.M., Howard Finster, and the Southern "Outsider Art" Aesthetic -- Matthew Sutton
Brokeback Mountain : Masculinity and Manhood -- James R. Keller and Anne Goodwyn Jones
Race, Crime, and Motherhood in George Pelecanos's Soul Circus -- Alexander Pitofsky
The Politics of Talk: The Oprah Interview as Narrative -- Sarah Henstra
Survival of the Stereotypical: A Study of Personal Characteristics and Order of Elimination on Reality Television -- Bryan E. Denham and Richelle N. Jones
A Car of Her Own: Volvo's "Your Concept Car" as a Vehicle for Feminism? -- Roy Schwartzman and Merci Decker
Trainspotting, High Fidelity, and the Diction of Addiction -- Scott Stalcup

31.1 Fall 2008 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

From the Editor: Popular Culture of the Past
From Apicius to Gastroporn: Form, Function, and Ideology in the History of Cookery Books -- Abigail Dennis
Queer Investigations: Foxy Ladies and Dandy Detectives in American Dime Novels -- Pamela Bedore
Literary Art in an Age of Formula Fiction and Mass Consumption: Double Coding in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Blue Carbuncle” -- Nils Clausson
Lost Girl: Diminishing Dorothy of Oz -- SydneyDuncan
The Protean Character of Jello, Icon of Food and Identity -- Susan Grove Hall
Gazing on Fu-Manchu: Obscurity and Imperial Crisis in the Work of Sax Rohmer -- Rebecca Wingfield
“To Renew the Old World”: Record Collecting as Cultural Production -- Kevin Moist

31.2 Spring 2009 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

From the Editor: Popular Culture's "Material and Conceptual Conditions
Fast Food Frontiers: I've Got a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore -- Minjoo Oh
Sexed Appeals: Network Marketing and Adult Home Novelty Parties -- Dawn Heinecken
Popularizing HIgh Culture: Zemeckis's Beowulf -- Kathleen Forni
Fear and Loathing in Knoxvegas: Representations of the "Other" in the Official Press Before and During the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair -- Stephen Bales and Charlie Gee
Paul Reveres of Early Radio: The Boy Scouts and the Origin of Broadcasting -- Noah Arceneaux
The Legend of Sacco and Vanzetti: Keeping the Story Alive on the Political Left in Literature, Song, and Film -- Ron BrileyTamenicia or Tammy; James or Jim Bob; Bessie or Heather: Patterns and Significance of Choosing Names for American Babies -- Claude J. Smith, Jr.

32.1 Fall 2009 [Go here to find a PDF of the Entire Issue]

From the Editor: Moral Choices in the Art of Popular Culture
"Spiritual Warfare" and Intolerance in Popular Culture: The Left Behind Franchise, the Commodification of Belief, and the Consequences for Imagination -- Marnie Jones
The Narcissism of Bipartisanship: Accessing Ann Coulter on the Internet -- Lindsey Ives
"Not Like Other Men"?: The Vampire Body in Joss Whedon's Angel -- Lorna Jowett
"...long before the stars were torn down ...": Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan's "Brownsville Girl" -- Katherine Weiss
Death and Magic in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions: A Terror Management Perspective -- Jonathan Bassett
Disneyfying Dickens: Oliver and Company and The Muppet Christmas Carol as Dickensian Musicals -- Marc Napolitano
Even a Tramp Can Dream: An Examination of the Clash Between "High Art" and "Low Art" in the Films of Charlie Chaplin -- Richard Ward

32.2 Spring 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

From the editor: No Monoliths Here
Striking Back Without Missing a Beat: Radical Responses to Domestic Violence in Country Music’s The Dixie Chicks and Salsa’s Celia Cruz -- Delia Poey
“But This Is the South”: Ambivalent Regionalism in Jan Karon’s Mitford Novels -- Eleanor Hersey Nickel
Adapting Shakespeare for Star Trek and Star Trek for Shakespeare: The Klingon Hamlet and the Spaces of Translation -- Karolina Kazimierczak
The Jesus Fish: Evolution of a Cultural Icon -- Todd Edmondson
The Politics of the "Open" Self: America in the Cinemas of King Vidor and Robert Altman -- Margaret Hrezo and William E. Hrezo
Like a “Whopper Virgin”: Anthropological Reflections on Burger King’s Controversial Ad Campaign -- Ty Matejowsky
The Portrayal of Racial Minorities on Prime Time Television: A Replication of the Mastro and Greenberg Study a Decade Later -- Elizabeth Monk-Turner, Mary Heiserman, Crystle Johnson, Vanity Cotton, and Manny Jackson

33.1 Fall 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]

From the editor: Theory and Practice
What's Entertainment? Notes Toward a Definition -- Stephen Bates and Anthony J. Ferri
Popular Fiction Studies: The Advantages of a New Field -- Matthew Schneider-Mayerson
Interpretive Methodology from Literary Criticism: Carnivalesque Analysis of Popular Culture: Jackass, South Park, and ‘Everyday’ Life -- Gulnara Karimova
The Cinematic and Historic Weight of Stone of Destiny -- Lynnette Porter
Ken Follett and the Scribbler's Trade: A Midnight Train to Somewhere -- Carlos Ramet
The “Aquatic Zionist” in The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- Bennett Kravitz
“Tons of Useful Stuff”: Defining Wellness in Popular Magazines -- Carol-Ann Farkas

33.2 Spring 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

From the editor: Cultural Fragments, Cultural Flowers
My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, “Perfect” Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance -- Ananya Mukherjea
“Thou Shalt Not Crave Thy Neighbor” : True Blood, Abjection, and Otherness -- Sabrina Boyer
Mad Men 's Color Schemes: A Changing Palette of Working Women -- Katherine Gantz
The Revolution Will Be Soooo Cute: YouTube “Hauls” and the Voice of Young Female Consumers -- Laura Jeffries
Outsider Nostalgia in Dazed and Confused and Detroit Rock City -- Carey L. Martin
The Beatles and the Art of the Tambourine -- Steven Hamelman
Outsourced: Crime Stories, New World Horrors, and Genre -- Jonathan L. Crane

34.1 Fall 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]

From the editor: Art for Someone Else's Sake
Protecting a City’s Image: The Death of Las Vegas Beat, 1961 -- Larry Dale Gragg
The Final Girl versus Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema -- Kyle Christensen
“And I Started Wondering . . .”: Voiceover and Conversation in Sex and the City -- Ashli Dykes
Refrigerator Design and Masculinity in Postwar Media, 1946-1960 -- Paul Gansky
Pop Culture, Politics, and America's Favorite Animated Family: Partisan Bias in The Simpsons? -- Kenneth Michael White and Mirya Holman
Evaluating the Presence of Social Strain in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV -- Patrick Osborne

Longtime Companion? HIV/AIDS in thirty years of cinema, media and culture

2011-12-01T07:30:00.028Z

Images from two 'AIDS film dramas': above, Longtime Companion (Norman René, 1989), a film which, as Emmanuel Levy puts it, carried "the burden of being the first [widely distributed] theatrical movie to deal directly with AIDS"; below, a frame grab from Yesterday (Darrell Roodt, 2004), about a Zulu woman living with AIDS. Read Jean Stuart's and Olaia Cores Calvo's articles on this film.

It was [30] years ago, in the summer of 1981, when society as a whole[, including] the scientific community[,] was faced with an unknown disease that came later to be known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Several films [...] reflected the initial fears and uncertainty, the responses of the different social groups, the fight against ignorance, the [demand for] access to treatment and the suffering of the infected individuals and their families [...] due to this disease. Taking into account that these movies were filmed when these epidemics took place they can actually be considered as [...] historical documents that deserve [to be] analysed by the generations to come. Films such as And The Band Played On; Longtime Companion; Common Threads : Stories from the Quilt; Les Nuits Fauves; Angels in America; Yesterday and My Brother... Nikhil have marked [30] years of AIDS history that should not be forgotten by the world. [Adapted from António Pais de Lacerda, 'Cinema as an Historical Document: AIDS in 25 years of Cinema', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2 (2006): 102-113; hyperlinks added by FSFF]

Film Studies For Free today commemorates the twenty-third World AIDS Day in the thirtieth year since the identification of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. The Human immunodeficiency virus [HIV], the lentivirus which causes the syndrome, was identified two years later, in 1983.

FSFF marks this anniversary year with the below entry of links to scholarly resources on the figuration of AIDS/HIV in cinema and culture.

Today's posting was also inspired by a series of film screenings and discussions on 'AIDS and its Melodramas' that have been taking place at the University of Sussex, UK, organised by Michael Lawrence and John David Rhodes. These academic events will continue next term with screenings of Fatal Love (1991), And the Band Played On (1993), Philadelphia (1993) and, one of FSFF's favourites, Boys on the Side (1995). Please email FSFF if you'd like more details.

Free Sample Chapters from 50+ New Palgrave Macmillan/BFI Film and TV Books

2011-11-28T13:30:00.001Z

Professor Jon Lewis of Oregon State University on his BFI Film Classics book on The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972). See the 41 page sample from this book linked to below.

Once again, Film Studies For Free celebrates the fabulous, free, Film and Television Studies book samples available for perusal and download at the Palgrave Macmillan website.

These are not properly Open Access works, but this blog chooses not to be purist when there are some amazingly generous PDF excerpts -- from soon-to-be as well as recently published works -- available online by scholars of the renown of those listed below. Thanks to the British Film Institute and Palgrave Macmillan! For an earlier list of great, free Palgrave Macmillan/BFI excerpts linked to at FSFF, click here.

Mark Aldridge, The Birth of British Television: A History and 27 sample pages
Shakuntala Banaji, Reading 'Bollywood': The Young Audience and Hindi Films and 30 sample pages
Craig Batty, Movies That Move Us: Screenwriting and the Power of the Protagonist's Journey and 27 sample pages
Lucy Bolton, Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women and 16 sample pages
Matthew Boswell, Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film and 41 sample pages
Mark Thornton Burnett and Adrian Streete (eds), Filming and Performing Renaissance History and 29 sample pages
Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (eds), New Takes in Film-Philosophy and 12 sample pages
Bryony Dixon, 100 Silent Films and 71 sample pages
Christine Etherington-Wright and Ruth Doughty, Understanding Film Theory and 32 sample pages
Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski (eds), Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication and 44 sample pages
Vincent M. Gaine, Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann and 19 sample pages
Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film and 32 sample pages
Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire and 25 sample pages
Asbjørn Grønstad, Screening the Unwatchable: Spaces of Negation in Post-Millennial Art Cinema and 25 sample pages
Michael Hammond and Michael Williams (eds), British Silent Cinema and the Great War and 24 sample pages
John Hill, Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television and 30 sample pages
Jim Hillier and Doug Pye, 100 Film Musicals and 34 sample pages
Matthew Kerry, The Holiday and British Film and 26 sample pages
Elspeth Kydd, The Critical Practice of Film: An Introduction and 31 sample pages
Neal King, The Passion of the Christ (Controversies series) and 30 sample pages
Peter Krämer, A Clockwork Orange (Controversies series) and 34 sample pages
Vivian P.Y. Lee (ed.), East Asian Cinemas: Regional Flows and Global Transformations and 19 sample pages
Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (eds), The Chinese Cinema Book and 21 sample pages
Fran Mason, Hollywood Detectives: Crime Series in the 1930s and 1940s from the Whodunnit to Hard-boiled Noir and 36 sample pages
Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, 100 Cult Films and 37 sample pages
Ewa Mazierska, European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics and 34 sample pages
Kristi McKim, Love in the Time of Cinema and 37 sample pages
Steven Peacock, Hollywood and Intimacy and 28 sample pages
Laura Rascaroli and John David Rhodes (eds), Antonioni: Centenary Essays and 27 sample pages
Sue Short, Cyborg Cinema and 24 sample pages
Stevie Simkin, Straw Dogs (Controversies series) and 58 sample pages
Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood (eds), Reality Television and Class and 37 sample pages
J.E. Smyth (ed.), Hollywood and the American Historical Film and 19 sample pages

BFI Film Classics:

Michael Berry, Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy': Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures and 12 sample pages
Will Brooker, Star Wars and 12 sample pages
John Coldstream, Victim and 12 sample pages
John Gill, Far From Heaven and 17 sample pages
Barry Keith Grant, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and 8 sample pages
Amelie Hastie, The Bigamist and 6 sample pages
Noah Isenberg, Detour and 14 sample pages
Julian Jackson, La Grande Illusion and 7 sample pages
Sarah Kozloff, The Best Years of Our Lives and 18 sample pages
Peter Krämer, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 6 sample pages
Jon Lewis, The Godfather and 41 sample pages
James Naremore, Sweet Smell of Success and 11 sample pages
John David Rhodes, Meshes of the Afternoon and 5 sample pages
Amy Sargeant, The Servant and 10 sample pages
Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate, Back to the Future and 18 sample pages
Melvyn Stokes, Gilda and 10 sample pages
Matthew Tinkcom, Grey Gardens and 22 sample pages
Catherine Wheatley, Caché (Hidden) and 22 sample pages

"Pity we aren't madder": Ken Russell links in his magnificent memory

2011-11-28T10:37:00.017Z

"I think we've all gone mad" [Jennie Linden as Ursula Brangwen]
"Pity we aren't madder" [Alan Bates as Rupert Birkin]

Scene from Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969)

An extract from one of Ken Russell's very first films, Amelia and the Angel (1958)

Film Studies For Free was saddened to hear of the death yesterday of the magnificent filmmaker Ken Russell. A monumental passing. But what a cinematic life he lived!

Russell's weirdly, viscerally, brilliant Altered States (1980) was one of the first films genuinely to whet FSFF's author's off-beat cinematic appetite, and his adaptation of Women in Love (excerpted above) and his portraits of Elgar (1962), Delius (1968) and Mahler (1974) are several of her favourite British films.

Below, FSFF has gathered some links to online scholarly studies of Russell's work, and to related resources. Readers should also check out David Hudson's essential collection of tributes to, and other material about, the British filmmaker for the Mubi Notebook here.

Ken Russell at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
Savage Messiah – a Ken Russell site by Iain Fisher

Complete Filmography and bibliography: Tarek Krohn and Hans J. Wulff (eds), Medienwissenschaft / Hamburg: Berichte und Papiere 110 / 2010: Ken Russell (Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2010

German language book on music in Ken Russell's films: Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung, 7, 2011: Musik bei Ken Russell // 3- edited by Frédéric Döhl, Albrecht Riethmüller and Hans Jürgen Wulff

Barry Keith Grant, 'The Body Politic: Ken Russell in the 1980s', in Lester D. Friedman (ed.) Fires were started: British cinema and Thatcherism (London: Wallflower Press, 2006)

Kevin M. Flanagan (ed.), Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's last mannerist (London: Scarecrow Press, 2009)

New Todd Haynes' Masterclass

2011-11-27T12:45:00.002Z

Todd Haynes' masterclass given on November 12, 2011, on the occasion of a retrospective of his films at the XIIth Queer Film Festival MEZIPATRA in Prague. Coproduced by MEZIPATRA, MIDPOINT and FAMU. Todd Haynes speaks about all his films with the Variety critic Boyd Van Hoeij.

Film Studies For Free heard about the above, enjoyable and hugely insightful video thanks to San Francisco based film critic Michael Guillén.

FSFF has a longstanding soft spot for Haynes, a great filmmaker whose work has a compelling relationship with film theory, as well as with Film Studies as a discipline, as the above video indicates time and again.

Interested readers can find earlier FSFF entries on Haynes (with links to lots of online studies of his works) here and here, and also on queer film theory here.

Film and Television Studies Theses from the University of East Anglia

2011-11-26T12:53:00.003Z

Image from Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987). You can read about this film in '“There are a lot of things about me that aren’t what you thought”: Dirty Dancing and Women’s Liberation', Chapter Two in Oliver Gruner's 2010 PhD thesis: Public politics/personal authenticity: a tale of two sixties in Hollywood cinema, 1986-1994

A quickie entry from Film Studies For Free today: a list of links to eight, excellent quality, PhD theses in film and television studies (plus a related journal article) from the University of East Anglia Digital Repository.

These links have been added to FSFF's permanent listing of links to openly accessible, English-language, online film and moving studies PhD and MPhil from repositories all over the world. The list now exceeds 200 items.

PhD Theses:

Other items:

Snelson, Tim (2009) 'From grade B thrillers to deluxe chillers': prestige horror, female audiences, and allegories of spectatorship in The Spiral Staircase (1946). New Review of Film and Television Studies, 7

International cinema, comedy, and online film and media practices: audience research at PARTICIPATIONS

2011-11-25T10:33:00.003Z

Frame grab from A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971). You can read about audience responses to this film in Peter Krämer's excellent article '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72'

Film Studies For Free takes to the blogwaves today to shout out about a truly excellent issue of the Open Access, and openly refereed, international audience research journal Participations.

It's a bumper issue with 27 articles - an advantage of an online journal format over its offline, paper-bound relatives, as editor Martin Barker outlines in his interesting introduction to this issue.

FSFF particularly appreciated the section on international film audiences, and also especially enjoyed Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore's study 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer' and also Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith's article on 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series'.

Special Edition Contents

Editorial

Martin Barker (Joint Editor): 'Editorial Introduction: A Small Diatribe, and a Serious Challenge to Other Journals'

Articles

Adrian Athique: 'Diasporic Audiences and Non-Resident Media: The Cast of Indian Films'
Pietari Kääpä and Guan Wenbo: 'Santa Claus in China and Wu xia in Finland: Translocal reception of transnational cinema in Finnish and Chinese film cultures'
Tonny Krijnen: 'Engaging the Moral Imagination by Watching Television: Different Modes of Moral Reflection'
Kim Trager Bohley: '“Browsing Madness” and Global Sponsors of Literacy: The Politics and Discourse of Deterritorialized Reading Practices and Space in Singapore'
Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith: 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series' :

Special Section: Comedy Audiences

Sam Friedman, Brett Mills and Tom Phillips (Guest Editors - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction'
Lesley Harbidge: 'Audienceship and (Non)Laughter in the Stand-up Comedy of Steve Martin'
Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore: 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer'
Sharon Lockyer and Lynn Myers: '‘It’s About Expecting the Unexpected’: Live Stand-up Comedy from the Audiences’ Perspective'
Richard McCulloch: '‘Most People Bring Their Own Spoons’: The Room’s participatory audiences as comedy mediators'
Sophie Quirk: 'Containing the Audience: The ‘Room’ in Stand-Up Comedy'
Eve Smith: 'Selling Terry Pratchett's Discworld: Merchandising and the Cultural Economy of Fandom'
Simon Weaver: 'Definitions of the humorous in Chris Rock and Russell Peters fan blogs: A discussion of the problem of incongruity'
Nathan A. Wilson: 'Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power'

Special Section: International Film Audiences Conference

Ailsa Hollinshead (Guest Editor - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction'
Karina Aveyard: 'The Place of Cinema and Film in Contemporary Rural Australia'
Jacqui Cochrane: '16 Years of Alcohol: An Allegory of a Nation '
Elizabeth Jane Evans: 'Superman vs Shrödinger’s Cat: Taste, Etiquette and Independent Cinema Audiences as Indirect Communities'
Roberta Gregoli: 'Transnational Reception of City of God and Elite Squad'
Amy Hardie: 'Symbolic Cinema and Audience Engagement'
Ailsa Hollinshead: '“And I felt quite posh!” Art-house cinema and the absent audience – the exclusions of choice'
Peter Krämer: '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72'
Claire Monk: 'Heritage Film Audiences 2.0: period film audiences and online film cultures'
Tom Phillips: 'When Film Fans Become Fan Family: Kevin Smith Fandom and Communal Experience'
Pavel Skopal: '"It is not enough we have lost the war – now we have to watch it!" Cinemagoers' attitudes in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (a case study from Leipzig)'

Special Section: Approaching the Online Audience: New Practices, New Thinking

Craig Hight, Ann Hardy, Carolyn Michelle and Adrian Athique (Guest Editors - Special Section):'Editorial Introduction'
Charles H. Davis and Carolyn Michelle: 'Q methodology in audience research: bridging the qualitative/quantitative ‘divide’?'
Luke Goode, Alexis McCullough and Gelise O'Hare: 'Unruly publics and the fourth estate on YouTube'
Ann Hardy, Craig Hight and Carolyn Michelle: 'Reservoir Hill and audiences for online interactive drama'
Bevin Yeatman: 'Still seeking the audience'
Ruth Zanker: 'Child audiences becoming interactive ‘viewsers’: New Zealand children’s responses to websites attached to local children’s television programmes'

Reviews

Samantha Holland:Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment (Elke Weismann)
Michael V. Tueth: Laughter in the Living Room: Television Comedy and the American Home Audience (Tom Phillips)
Graeme Turner: Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (Simon Cross)
Richard O. Young: How Audiences Decide: a Cognitive Approach to Business Communication (Martin Barker)

On the myth of the frontier in cinema and culture

2011-11-21T10:15:00.005Z

'A whole new world that is nothing but frontier...': Richard Langley in the narration to his excellent short film, embedded above, American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters

This film concerns recent apocalyptic Hollywood blockbusters, which have utilised notions of the ‘frontier’ to develop ideas of American hegemony in the uni-polar era, even as they postulate a universal erasure of national boundaries. Largely, the non-human agents of apocalypse in such films are responsible for erasing boundaries, but in so doing they simultaneously establish the conditions of American renewal. Indeed, the frontier must be continually renewed; it is drawn in order to be effaced, redrawn and effaced again.

However, at the moment of effacement, when the boundaries between nations are broken down and a sense of universality seems triumphant, the dawning of a new world re-inscribes the frontier - the new world that is constructed is still American led; the mooted universality is both particular and parochial. Such films, which appear to posit un-American (or at least post-national) frontiers, actually achieve the inverse; the universal equality offered by apocalypse offers an American un-frontier, a site seemingly without boundaries, but which is simultaneously nothing but frontier, a re-dramatisation of America’s founding mythology.

The inspiration for today's Film Studies For Free entry -- on the (transnational) myth of the frontier in cinema and related culture -- was Richard Langley's excellent, highly persuasive, short documentary embedded above. That video also has a vivid, post hoc connection to this blog's popular list of "Links of Doom and Disaster! Apocalyptic Film and Moving Image Studies" posted but a few short weeks ago.

Like cinematic apocalypses, filmic frontier mythology turned out to be an incredibly rich vein of web scholarship. So, many thanks to Richard and all the below named scholars for making sure their very valuable work was openly accessible online.

Open Access is, after all, the real 'final [e-]frontier'.

And hopefully it won't turn out to be a myth...

Realism and reality, intermediality and film space, new waves: three volumes of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Film and Media Studies

2011-11-20T15:49:00.000Z

Frame grab from Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963). Read Ivo Blom's article on "Frame, Space, Narrative. Doors, Windows and Mobile Framing in the Films of Luchino Visconti"

Film Studies For Free is immensely indebted, as it so often is, to the hawkeye skills of legendary film critic and scholar Adrian Martin. He has discovered an online treasure trove of fabulous film and media studies at the Romanian, English language journal Acta Universitatis Sapientiae.

Three great volumes have been published to date: on issues of cinematic reality, intermediality and film space, and cinematic new waves. All the contents are linked to below, and ACTA has been added to FSFF's permanent listing of online film and moving image studies journals.

Keep 'em coming, Adrian! And grazie!

Contents of Volume 1 , 2009

M. Szalóky
The Reality of Illusion. A Transcendental Reevaluation of the Problem of Cinematic Reality
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 7-22 Full text in PDF
M. Sághy
Subborn realism. What Kind of Fiction is Reality?
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 23-33 Full text in PDF
I. Füzi
"Where is Reality?" Photographic Trace and Infinite Image in Gábor Bódy's Film Theory
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 34-46 Full text in PDF
Á. Pethő
(Re)Mediating the Real. Paradoxes of an Intermedial Cinema of Immediacy
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 47-66 Full text in PDF
Zs. Gyenge
Illusions of reality and Fiction on the Desired Reality of Fiction: Dogme 95 and the Representation of reality
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 69-79 Full text in PDF
A. Virginás
Between "Facts" of Genre and "Fictions" of Love. Happy Together (1997) and In The Mood for Love (2000)
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 80-91 Full text in PDF
A. É. Tóth
Appearance, Presence and Movement in Benedek Fliegauf's Milky Way
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 92-105 Full text in PDF
E. Buslowska
Cinema as Art and Philosophy in Béla Tarr's Creative Exploration of Reality
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 106-116 Full text in PDF
Z. Gregus
Images of Strangeness in András Jeles's Films
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 117-135 Full text in PDF
A. Szekfü
Reality and Fiction in Classical Hungarian Documentaries
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 136-148 Full text in PDF
M. Blos-Jáni
In and Out of Context. On the Reality Effect and Evidentiary Status of Home Videos
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 149-166 Full text in PDF
E. Szabó
The Official and Hidden Scenarios of Role-Playing in István Dárday's The Prize Trap (1974)
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 167-180 Full text in PDF

Contents of Volume 2 , 2010

Ginette Verstraete
Introduction. Intermedialities: A Brief Survey of Conceptual Key Issues
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 7−14 Full text in PDF
Jürgen E. Müller
Intermediality and Media Historiography in the Digital Era
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 15−38 Full text in PDF
Ágnes Pethő
Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 39−72 Full text in PDF
Annika Wik
Experiences. The Transmedial Expansion of the Matrix Universe
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 73−90 Full text in PDF
Ivo Blom
Frame, Space, Narrative. Doors, Windows and Mobile Framing in the Films of Luchino Visconti
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 91−106 Full text in PDF
Jens Schröter
The Politics of Intermediality
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 107−124 Full text in PDF
Klemens Gruber
An Early Staging of Media. Gustav Klutsis's Loudspeaker Stands
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 125−132 Full text in PDF
Jens Schröter
Volumetric Imaging as Technology to Control Space
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 133−144 Full text in PDF
Antonio Somaini
Visual Surveillance. Transmedial Migrations of a Scopic Form
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 145−159 Full text in PDF
Maaike Lauwaert
Intermedialities in Policy Making & Funding
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 161−166 Full text in PDF

Contents of Volume 3, 2010

Yvonne Spielmann
New and Novelty in Contemporary Media Cultures
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 7−18 Full text in PDF
Doru Pop
The Grammar of the New Romanian Cinema
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 19−40 Full text in PDF
Marco Grosoli
Hélas pour Nouvelle Vague
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 41−54 Full text in PDF
Daniel Fairfax
Birth (of the Image) of a Nation: Jean-Luc Godard in Mozambique
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 55−67 Full text in PDF
Ágnes Pethő
Intermediality as Metalepsis in the "Cinécriture" of Agnes Varda
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 69−94 Full text in PDF
Marco Grosoli
Moral Tales from Korea. Hong Sang-Soo and Eric Rohmer
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 95−108 Full text in PDF
Jacqui Miller
The French New Wave and the New Hollywood: Le Samourai and its American legacy
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 109−120 Full text in PDF
André Crous
True and False. New Realities in the Films of Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 121−131 Full text in PDF
Hajnal Király
Abbas Kiarostami and a New Wave of the Spectator
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 133−142 Full text in PDF
Thomas Schick
A "Nouvelle Vague Allemande"? Thomas Arslan's films in the context of the Berlin School
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 143−155 Full text in PDF
Maria Vinogradova
The Berliner Schule as a Recent New Wave in German Cinema
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 157−168 Full text in PDF
Zsolt Győri
Waves of Memory: Cinema, Trauerarbeit and the Third Reich
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 169− 181 Full text in PDF

"Between Past and Future": ROME, OPEN CITY Studies

2011-11-19T18:21:00.001Z

Updated November 19, 2011

Frame grab from Roma, città aperta/Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Projected on the war torn landscape for a weary people, Rome Open City poetically serves the goals of unification and restoration. In many respects, this film both conforms to and promotes an ideal image of a courageous, Resistant and unified population – from communist intellectuals, to catholic priests, to working class women and their children. Open City maintains the comfortable melodramatic schema of Rossellini’s earlier Fascist-era films in which the forces of good (the Italian people) struggle triumphantly against the forces of evil embodied in the Nazi general Bergmann and his deviant cronies. The director’s fondness for his people culminates in an apologetic portrayal of Italian fascists as either wretched or unwilling collaborators. However, in the end, Open City’s epic scope effectively precludes the possibility of another film like it: all the “fathers” (Manfredi, Pina, Don Pietro) are dead and the child soldiers are abandoned to the city, suspended “between past and future”. The conclusion, the partisan priest’s execution, witnessed by the children of his parish, forewarns of the fragmentation, destitution, and moral poverty to come. With his last words, “non è difficile morire bene, è difficile vivere bene” (it’s not difficult to die well, it’s difficult to live well”), Don Pietro intimates the struggles ahead. [Inga M. Pierson, Towards a Poetics of Neorealism: Tragedy in the Italian Cinema 1942-1948', PhD Thesis, New York University, January 2009 97-98]

Another teaching week beckons, and Film Studies For Free's author looks forward to pondering, for the umpteenth, pedagogical time, that intensely strange film Roma, città aperta/Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945).

There are some excellent resources on this film, and on related issues of (neo)realism, that are openly accessible online. So, andiamo felicemente with one of FSFF's regular studies of a single film.

Michael P. Rogin, 'Mourning, Melancholia, and the Popular Front: Roberto Rossellini's Beautiful Revolution', in Sidney Gottlieb (ed.), Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Jaimey Fisher, 'On the Ruins of Masculinity: The Figure of the Child in Italian Nerealism and the German Rubble Film', in Italian neorealism and global cinema, eds. Laura E. Ruberto, Kristi M. Wilson (Wayne State University Press, 2007)

Animation Studies: Three Fabulous Online Resources

2011-11-14T10:00:00.014Z

Updated with a call for papers on November 15

Lignes verticales/Lines Vertical (Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, 1960). Read Aimee Mollaghan's article on McLaren's Line Films here.

Pervasive Animation - Video of conference sessions.

The conference was held at the Tate Modern, London in 2007.

Animation has an unlimited potential to visually represent events, scenarios and forms that have little or no relation to our experience of the 'real' world. Implemented in many ways, in many disciplines, it is increasingly influencing our perception and experience of the world we live in. This timely and groundbreaking international conference unites speakers from a wide range of research agendas and creative practices. It facilitates much-needed dialogue centred on the ubiquitous and interdisciplinary nature of animation, its potentially radical future development, and its ethical responsibilities for spatial politics in moving image culture. The conference's contributors include Norman Klein, Michael Snow, Vivian Sobchack, Tom Gunning, Anthony McCall, George Griffin, Suzanne Buchan, Beatriz Colomina, Edwin Carels, Siegfried Zielinski, Lisa Cartwright, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie. Especially since the digital shift, the uses of animation are no longer exclusive to cinema, and animation's origins in pre-cinematic optical experiments through avant-garde experimental film continue to evolve in fascinating ways. Artists increasingly incorporate animation in installations and exhibitions, architects use computer animation software to create narratives of space in time, and scientists use it to interpret abstract concepts for a breadth of industries ranging from biomedicine to nanoworlds. Pervasive Animation provides a dynamic international forum to explore animation's myriad forms and applications across a wide band of creative and professional practice. Organised by Suzanne Buchan, Reader in Animation Studies and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University College for the Creative Arts, and Stuart Comer, Curator of Film at Tate.

Film Studies For Free animatedly highlights three fabulous Animation Studies resources today. First up, through the second of the two videos embedded above, you can access the entire, recorded proceedings of a very high quality conference on animation held in 2007 at London's Tate Modern.

FSFF heard about those videos through the fantastic Experimental Animation website which houses, and links to, many more animation treasures, like Lignes verticales/Lines Vertical, Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart's brilliant 1960 opus embedded at the top of this post.

Finally, the third amazing resource du jour are the below contents of the volumes of Animation Studies, the online, Open Access and peer-reviewed Journal of the Society for Animation Studies (also on Twitter as @anistudies). See also the Society's Call for Papers for an upcoming conference at the foot of this post.

"Th-th-th-that's all folks!"

Animation Studies - the Journal of the Society for Animation Studies

Volume 6, 2011

Volume 5, 2010

Volume 4, 2009

Volume 3, 2008

Animated Dialogues, 2007

Volume 2, 2007

Volume 1, 2006
- Pierre Floquet – What is (not) so French in Les Triplet tes de Belleville
- Marina Estela Graça – Cinematic Motion by Hand

Call for Papers:
‘The Animation Machine’ - The 24th Society for Animation Studies Conference

Date: June 25-27, 2012

Hosted by: RMIT University
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Keynote speakers include:

•         Thomas Lamarre (McGill University, Canada)

•         Tomotaka Takahashi (The University of Tokyo, Japan)

The Society for Animation Studies (SAS) invites submissions of proposals for individual papers and panels for its 24th Annual Conference, which will be held in Melbourne, Australia at RMIT University, 25-27 June 2012.

Animation production and consumption has continued to grow as animation itself has become ever more prevalent and visible in recent years. In parallel, the field of animation studies has expanded excitingly and dramatically, bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines.

The theme of this year’s conference, ‘The Animation Machine’, reflects the wide range of processes, technologies, histories and structures in animation. As movement is an essential aspect of animation, whatever creates that movement may constitute an animation machine and one could conceive that animation is itself a machine. The animation machine can be considered from both the production process and the end product. Therefore, it refers to the machines of animation presentation, be these pre-20th century animation devices, movie or video screens, or even automata. The animation machine also relates to the multitude of animation production processes – from animating technologies (animation stands, cameras, computers), through to the animator’s individual creative practice. Ultimately, the animation machine can be described quite broadly and we welcome your own interpretations.

With the centenary of Australian animation approaching, the 2012 conference will also provide an opportunity to highlight some of Australia’s animation heritage. The conference will coincide with the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) and a number of crossover events are planned.

We invite proposals on a wide range of animation topics on all aspects of animation history, theory and criticism for 20-minute conference presentations. Proposals may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

•         Australian Animation

•         Animation and the Asia-Pacific Region

•         Animation Histories

•         Future Forms of Animation

•         Industrial Methods and Changes

•         Materiality of Animation

•         Algorithmic Animation (including Games)

•         Philosophy and Animation

•         Motion Graphics

•         Scientific Visualisation

•         Contemporary Art and Animation

•         Architecture and Animation

•         Drawing and Animation

•         Web Animation

•         Narrative and Non-Narrative Animation

•         Obsolescence and Questions of Materiality

•         Augmented Reality and Vision

•         Automata (including Robotics)

•         Animation and Pedagogy

•         Documentary and Animation

•         Animation Fringes and Counter-Cultures

•         Sound and Animation

Please include with your individual submission the following:

•         Title and abstract of no more than 250 words (suitable for publication).

•         A brief biographical statement (suitable for publication).

•         Complete contact information, including name, institutional affiliation (if any), postal address, e-mail address and telephone number.

•         A head shot photo of yourself that will be suitable for publication (optional).

For panel proposals of 3-4 presenters, the chair of the panel should submit the following:

•         Overall panel title/theme, plus a 100-word description suitable for publication.

•         Name and contact information for the panel chair.

•         Titles and abstracts for each paper (as noted above).

•         Biography statement for each member (as noted above).

•         Name and contact information for each member (as noted above).

•         Photo of each presenter suitable for publication (optional).

Submit abstracts to: animation.conference@rmit.edu.au
Submission deadline: December 12, 2011
Conference website: http://www.rmit.edu.au/sas2012
Conference Chair: Dr Dan Torre, RMIT University

Great Video Lectures by Friedberg, Dupin, Rodowick, Chateau, Nowell-Smith, Stewart, Grieveson, Furstenau, Zryd, and White

2011-11-13T11:00:00.047Z

Image from Grbavica: Land of My Dreams/Esma's Secret: Grbavica (Jasmila Žbanić , 2006), an example of 'global women's cinema' as explored by Patricia White in a 2008 lecture and in a forthcoming book (you can see a clip from this film about 36 minutes into White's talk, and the film's website is here)

Thanks to the website of the Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory, which Film Studies For Free featured yesterday, FSFF heard about another highly worthwhile online resource (although one that appears not to be being updated, currently): the website of Advanced Research Team for the History and Epistemology of Moving Image Study (ARTHEMIS).

ARTHEMIS is dedicated to the study of the evolution of film studies as a discipline. Based at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Concordia University and initiated by Martin Lefebvre, it gathers scholars from Canada, the United States and Europe. The group organizes, among other things, monthly seminars related to the different axes of research. [Some] are available on this site. We invite you to listen to the conferences and submit your comments. In addition, you will find on this site an evolving bibliography and book reviews.

The ARTHEMIS project also investigates the study of film and moving images by looking at three of its most important 'possibility conditions': Conceptual conditions; Institutional conditions; Material Conditions.

There are plenty of items worth exploring at ARTHEMIS. But FSFF was most struck by the series of online lectures from 2008/9 that are archived at the site. Here's the list of links to these - some truly wonderful items. FSFF particularly liked Patricia White's lecture on "Globalizing Women's Cinema".

Anne Friedberg, Conversation on her book "The Virtual Window" Video Lecture, 2008-09-23
Christophe Dupin, BFI (part 1) Video Lecture, 2008-09-24
D.N. Rodowick, An Elegy for Theory Video Lecture, 2008-09-24
Dominique Chateau - Do Film Studies Form a Discipline Video Lecture, 2009-06-18
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, BFI (part 2) Video Lecture, 2008-09-24
Jacqueline Stewart, The Politics of Film Archiving (part one) Video Lecture, 2009-04-14
Jacqueline Stewart, The Politics of Film Archiving (part two) Video Lecture, 2009-04-14
Keepers of the frame (J.Stewart presentation) Video Lecture, 2008-12-09
Lee Grieveson, Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct Video Lecture, 2008-09-24
Marc Furstenau, Design and Use Video Lecture, 2008-09-23
Michael Zryd, Experimental film as Pedagogical Cinema Video Lecture, 2008-10-21
Patricia White, Globalizing Women's Cinema Video Lecture, 2008-09-24

Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory

2011-11-12T14:41:00.005Z

Picture of Sergei Eisenstein, pioneering Soviet film director and theorist

Thanks to Michał Oleszczyk, Film Studies For Free found out about a truly fascinating, and highly promising, project: the Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory.

The Seminar is

an open network of film scholars interested in rediscovering and re-reading historical contributions and debates on film. Special attention is devoted to early writings on cinema, as well as more recent reconsiderations of film's role in the new media landscape. The Permanent Seminar is affiliated with the Film Theory in Media History book series published through the Amsterdam University Press.

The very high quality of the project is guaranteed by its coordinators -- Jane Gaines (Columbia University) and Francesco Casetti (Yale University & University of Milan) -- as well as by its scientific board: Dudley Andrew (Yale University); Chris Berry (University of London-Goldsmiths); André Gaudreault (University of Montréal); Vinzenz Hediger (University of Bochum); John McKay (Yale University); Markus Nornes (University of Michigan); David Rodowick (Harvard University); Philip Rosen (Brown University); Leonardo Quaresima (University of Udine); Maria “Masha” Salazkina (Concordia University, Montréal); and Petr Szczepanik (University of Brno).

There's not much up on the website yet as the project has just begun, but FSFF recommends that its readers take a look and then keep on going back for further film-theoretical delights of the kind linked to below.

Sergei Eisenstein, "Forthcoming] "Unpublished “Notes for a General History of Cinema” – New York, 2010

Francesco Orestano, "Motion Pictures and Scholastic Education" (Italy, 1914)

Giovanni Papini, "Philosophical Observations on the Motion Picture" (Italy, 1907)

Mario Ponzo, "Certain Psychological Observations Made During Motion Picture Screenings" (Italy, 1911)

Emilio Scaglione, "Motion Pictures in Provincial Towns" (Italy, 1916)

Enrico Thovez, "The Art of Celluloid" (Italy, 1908)

Giuseppe d’Abundo, "Concerning the Effects of Film Viewing on Neurotic Individuals" (Italy, 1911)

The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey

2011-11-10T12:24:00.004Z

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years

A very quick post at Film Studies For Free today to bring you a fascinating futurological film and film studies resource: the video of a very well informed panel discussion on where cinema is going.

It features, among others, film scholar extraordinaire David Bordwell, who, as a phenomenal researcher of (practically) the entirety of cinema's past and present, is definitely one of the best qualified people in the world to comment on cinema's future.

The video is a must see if you're interested in the future of film technologies of production and especially of distribution and exhibition. It is part of the 2011 Vancouver International Film Festival collection at Vimeo.

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years
Event description:

The first few chapter headings in a film we did not program at this year's [Vancouver International Film Festival] VIFF are: “Technology Is Great”, “The Industry Is Dead”, “Artists Have the Power”, and “The Craft Is Gone.” To which celluloid-loving film festival organizers might ask: Is it? Do they? Where on earth are we headed? And why?

VIFF has come a long way in its 30 years and never has the future of cinema--and VIFF's future--been more uncertain. Will it be bright and splendid and fair or will it move so quickly that a great deal of what is valuable will be lost before we know it? There are now dramatically more “film festivals” and “films” being made than ever, yet some fear that the industry may be dead. Filmmakers are acutely worried for funding, yet need to operate on a growing number of fronts. Given that the numbers of hours in a day and the numbers of days in a life remain fixed, what limits should we council for our own appetites? Why might we miss the Hollywood Theatre and Videomatica? Given that cultural agencies seemingly have shrinking resources but more new media and film festival applicants every year, will the centres hold or is babble ascendant? Will VIFF's function as an annual international universalist festival be superseded by myriad niche events?

Technology is indeed great in that it has put the means of creative motion picture production in almost everyone's hands, but will the best artists be the ones to be recognized? The entrepreneurial spirit tends to favour change in hopes that it may profit from it, but will artists have the power? When entrepreneurs benefit, will consumers benefit? Will cultural institutions that have taken years to build remain viable? Will cinema, metrics of quality and craftsmanship and, ultimately, quality of life be improved or even be sustainable? What do you personally care about for the future of cinema to offer? What should VIFF 2020 aim to be?

Here to wrestle with these sorts of questions—and yours—will be a distinguished group of panellists including: David Bordwell, film critic, academic and author of numerous books on cinema; Simon Field, film producer and former Director, International Film Festival Rotterdam; Andréa Picard, film critic and programmer, formerly of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Ontario; Tom Charity, film critic and Vancity Theatre program coordinator; and Alan Franey, director, Vancouver International Film Festival.

New Issue of SCOPE!

2011-11-08T12:50:00.001Z

Image of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982). Read Elizabeth Abele's article about transgendered fantasy films, including Tootsie, here

Film Studies For Free always loves it when a new issue of the high quality, Open Access, film and television studies journal SCOPE slips out online without any fuss.

That's just what happened with the latest issue - number 21 - so let FSFF toot out its own fanfare to yet another excellent collection of film and television studies work. All the contents are linked to below.

SCOPE Issue 21, October 2011

Articles

Becoming a Better Man as a Woman: The Transgendered Fantasy in 1980s-1990s Popular Films Elizabeth Abele
TV Similes: Language, Community and Comparative Poetics in Northern Exposure David Scott Diffrient
Let's Get Found: Music Sampling, Found Footage and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts David Laderman
Interracial Romance Revisited: Chinese Box and Tomorrow Never Dies Jing Yang
[ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

History by Hollywood by Robert Brent Toplin (plus Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush-Cheney Era) Reviewer: Brian Faucette
What Cinema Is! by Dudley Andrew (Plus The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay) Film Reviewer: Daniele Rugo
All about Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema by Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki (eds) (Plus Stephen King on the Big Screen) Reviewer: Edmund P. Cuev
Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema by Joanna Page (Plus Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru) Reviewer: Rowena Santos Aquino
Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies by Warren Buckland (ed) (Plus Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style and Ideology Since 1945) Reviewer: Steen Christiansen
The British Cinema Book by Robert Murphy (ed) (Plus A Short History of Film) Reviewer: Paul Quinn
100 Film Noirs (BFI Screen Guides) by Jim Hillier and Alastair Phillips (Plus Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the Cultures of Globalization) Reviewer: Keith James Hamel
Fame by Mark Rowlands (Plus American Idolatry: Celebrity, Commodity and Reality Television) Reviewer: Melanie Kennedy
Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel by Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis (eds) (Plus Film Sequels: Theory and Practice from Hollywood to Bollywood) Reviewer: Stuart Henderson
Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear by Julian Hanich (Plus Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd: A Post-Jungian Perspective) Reviewer: Flavia Monceri
[ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

I AM: Afia, Megha, Abhimanyu and Omar Reviewer: Rohit K Dasgupta
Phineas and Ferb Reviewer: Derek Jones
The Turin Horse Reviewer: Philip Phillis
The Monk Reviewer: Simon Dawes
That Girl in Yellow Boots Reviewer: Sukhmani Khorana
[ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

The Diasporic Family in Cinema, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 21 May 2011 Reporter: Deniz Günes Yardimci
NECS Conference 2011, King's College and Birkbeck, University of London, 23-26 June Reporter: Celia Nicholls and Richard Wallace Screen Studies Conference 2011: Repositioning Screen History, University of Glasgow, 1–3 July 2011 Reporter: Linda Hutcheson and Natália Pinazza
Images of Whiteness, InterDisciplinary.Net, Oxford University, 12–14 July 2011
Screen Studies Conference, July 2010 [File not yet accessible}
[ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]