C is for Cinephilia Studies (plus some telephilia, too)

Still from Jean-Luc Godard's Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinéma, 2004

A veritable labour of love, today, from Film Studies For Free: a list of links to freely available online resources devoted to the study of cinephilia, telephilia and videophilia - the putatively excessive love for whatever is projected (or broadcast or played) on screens large and small. Truth be told: FSFF can't really see what's excessive about that... (Updated June 1, 2009)

• Scott Balcerzak, 'Pleasures of Analysis/Pleasures of Film/Pleasures of Teaching', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, September 7, 2007
• David Bordwell, 'Games Cinephiles Play', Observations on film art and Film Art, August 3, 2008
• Peter Bosma, 'Cinephilia and the Institutional View on Film Culture', Some General Notes on Film Studies, Spring 2008, from p. 12 (23) - E-view, Vol 2009, No 1 (2009)
• Jodi Brooks, 'The Lure of the breach: invisibility and the dissolution of cinematic vision', Screening the Past, December 2007
• NEW Zach Campbell, 'Cinephile Business: Key Texts', Elusive Lucidity, December 18, 2005
  
• NEW Zach Campbell, 'The Tribalism of Cinephilia', Elusive Lucidity, June 23, 2007
  
• Paul Coughlin, 'Sublime Moments', Senses of Cinema, December 2000
• Dennis Cozzalio, 'Pleasures Worthy of Guilt: A Cinephile's Confession (2005), with Postscript (2009)', The House Next Door Online, January 12, 2009
• Serge Daney (interview with Bill Krohn), 'Les Cahiers du Cinéma 1968-1977', The Thousand Eyes, 1977, republished by Steve Erickson
• Serge Daney, 'The tracking Shot in Kapo', Originally published in Trafic, No. 4, Fall 1992
• Manohla Dargis, The 21st Century Cinephile', New York Times, November 14, 2004 (and continues here)
• Steve Erickson, et al. "Permanent Ghosts: Cinephilia in the Age of the Internet and Video." Senses of Cinema 4 (2000) and 5 (2000) (Essay 1 by Steve Erickson | Essay 2 by Theo Panayides | Essay 3 by David Sterritt | Essay 4 by Jeff Lambert | Essay 5 by Bryant Frazier)
• Bill Flavell, 'Cinephilia and/or Cinematic Specificity', Senses of Cinema, July 2000
• Mas Generis , 'Review of Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (eds), Cinephilia: movies, love and memory (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), Screening the Past, 2006
• NEW Asbjørn Grønstad, 'No one goes to the movies anymore:'Cinema and Visual Studies in the Digital Era Blue, Kinema, Fall 2008
• Tim Groves, 'CInema/Affect/Writing', Senses of Cinema, February 2003
• Tim Groves, 'Night Surfing: On Telefilia', Senses of Cinema, January 2004
• Benjamin Halligan, 'Against Cinephiliphobia: Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin', Senses of Cinema, May 2004
• Christian Haye, 'Steve McQueen', Frieze Magazine, Issue 28, May 1996
• Anthony Kaufman, 'The Vanishing: The demise of VHS, and the movies disappearing along with it', Moving Image Source, February 26, 2009
• Christian Keathley, 'A Whirlpool of Things [on critical commentary and Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool]', In Media Res, May 14 , 2007
• Christian Keathley, 'The Cinephiliac Moment', Framework, 42, Summer 2000
• Christian Keathley, 'Otto Preminger and the Surface of Cinema', World Picture Journal 2, Autumn 2008
• Christian Keathley, 'The Scholarship of Sound and Image: Producing Media Criticism in the Digital Age', MIT6 Stone Papyrus Storage and Transmission Conference, April 24-26, 2009
• Noel King, 'Manny Farber', Framework 40, Spring 1999
• Tony McKibbin, 'THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: High Mimetics in Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma', Experimental Conversations, Issue 3, Spring 2009
• Justus Nieland, 'Archives of Modernist Cinephilia [Review Essay on Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1894–1941]', Modernism/modernity 2007
• NEW Quintín, 'An Anorexic’s Case Against Uchida Tomo', Cinema Scope, No. 22,
  
• Nitesh Rohit, 'Cinephilia in India: a search for love and identity', Indian Auteur, February 1, 2009
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'The Missing Image - From Cinephilia to the World - The Trajectory of Serge Daney', originally published in The New Left Review, 34, July-August 2005
• Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin, 'Preface to Movie Mutations: The changing face of world cinephilia', Fipresci Documents, 2004
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Movie Love: Film-history tidbits in a monument to French cinephilia', Moving Image Source, March 5, 2009
• Catherine Russell, 'Cinephilia: The future of cinephilia', Filmreference.com, [date unknown]
• Matthew Salomon, 'Soft Cinema and the Soft Cinephiliac', golempoem, June 14, 2007
• Girish Shambu, 'The Cinephiliac Moment', girish, June 19, 2006
• Girish Shambu, 'Cinephile Accounting: Old vs. New ', girish, March 23, 2008
• Girish Shambu, 'An Alphabet of Cinema ', girish, May 4, 2008
• Ryan Shand, 'Review of Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory By Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (eds.) Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005', SCope: an online journal of film & TV studies, Issue 10, Fenruary 2008
• Steven Shaviro, 'Ingmar Bergman', The Pinocchio Theory, July 31, 2007
• So-young Kim, '"Cine-Mania" or Cinephilia, Film Festival and Identity Question', originally published in Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer, eds. New Korean Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005
• Susan Sontag, 'The Decay of Cinema', New York Times, February 25, 1996
• Jason Sperb, 'Sensing an Intellectual Nemesis', Film Criticism 32.1 (Fall 2007): 49-71
• Jason Sperb, 'Review of Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees by Christian Keathley (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006)', Scope: an online journal of film & TV studies, Issue 12, October 2008
• Jason Sperb, 'The Politics of Cinephilia', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, August 24, 2006
• Jason Sperb, 'Still a Cinephilia of Anticipation', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, November 15, 2006
• Jason Sperb, 'Bond [. . .] Interrupted', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, December 28, 2006
• Jason Sperb, 'The cinephiliac practice of everyday life', Jamais Vu, August 12, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'Scholars cannot write as cinephiles (but academics can)', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, March 23, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'While it's simply not that simple', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, March 28, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'Metz and Cinephilia', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, April 15, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'Cinephilia and Disappointment (review of Cinephilia: Movies, Love, and Memory. Eds. Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2005. 11-43)', Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-scope, May 22, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'Practising a cinephiliac practice', Jamais Vu, November 27, 2007
• Jason Sperb, 'Punch-Drunk Love', Jamais Vu, May 23, 2008
• Rick Swintice, 'The cinephilia of Le Mépris', Netribution Film Network, January 28th, 2000
• Harry Tuttle, 'Nomad Cinephilia (Adrian Martin)', Screenville, October 17, 2008
• Rashna Wadia Richards, 'Re-Viewing Cinephilia: The Movement and the Moment', Politics and Culture 1, 2006
• Gijs van Wiechen, 'Who Framed F.W. Murnau’s Faust? Intertextuality, Discourse & the Historical Film on DVD', Masters e-Thesis, RMA Media Studies, University Utrecht, August 31, 2008
• Paul Willemen, 'An Introduction to Framework', Framework 42, 1999
• Prakash Younger, 'What is Cinephilosophy? A Bazinian Paradigm, Part 1 & 2', Offscreen Journal, Volume 13, Issue 2 (Bazin Renewed), February 2009

To conclude, the normally parsimonious (Open Access championing) Film Studies For Free blog doesn't usually plug books that you have to pay for (even though its owner both writes and, of course, reads such papercentric objects) but it absolutely must flag up the fact that it is very much looking forward to Scott Balcerzak and Jason Sperb's forthcoming Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture, vol. 1, due to be published by Wallflower Press in June 2009.

This first volume in a twin-anthology project includes contributions by Robert Burgoyne, Zach Campbell, Tobey Crockett, Brian Darr, Kevin Fisher, Andy Horbal, Christian Keathley, Adrian Martin, Jenna Ng, Lisa Purse, Dan Sallitt and Girish Shambu, as well as by Sperb and Balcerzak.

As today's links list so amply testifies, so many of these authors have already tirelessly shared their work on this topic for free online. FSFF thinks this is very much a book worth having.

'Final Girl' Studies

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the final girl of Halloween

Film Studies For Free loves plucky female film protagonists (and false protagonists, for that matter) still fighting on in there at "The End".

It also loves Carol J. Clover’s 1987 essay 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,' (Representations [Number 20: Fall 1987, pp. 187-228] - later included by Clover in her hugely influential book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1992]), which was the first work to coin the resonant phrase 'Final Girl' to name climactic female survivors of slasher/horror/fantasy-sci-fi-horror films.

Clover's essay asked the following, rather fascinating, question: why, in these films which are supposedly principally aimed at male spectators, are the surviving heroes so often women characters?

It's a question that has been frequently addressed, since, in film, television, and now videogame studies, many of them freely available online. So here's Film Studies For Free's not-so-weak-and-feeble list of terribly-brave-and-resilient links to open-access "Final Girl" Studies, beginning with Clover's key essay, and then proceeding in an orderly alphabetical direction, by author surname:

• Carol J. Clover, 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film', in Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, e-Book, Edited and with a New Introduction by R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 continues here and here
• Holly G. Barbaccia, 'Buffy in the “Terrible House”', Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy Studies, 1.4, December 2001
  
• Arial Yuan-Jie Chou , 'On Horror Films: A Psychoanalytic Approach On A Nightmare On Elm Street Series' E-Thesis Providence University July 2006
• Celestino Deleyto Alcala, 'Masochism and Representation in Modern Horror: The Case of Alien 3' , Atlantis VVIII (1-2) 1996
• Sérgio Dias Branco, 'Being Her/She in ‘Who Are You?’”. It’s the End of the World. Again?!?: Why Buffy Still Matters, Conference at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, March 16, 2007
• Elizabeth Ezra, 'Resurrecting the Alien Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Hollywood', Stirling Online Research Repository, originally published in New Cinemas volume 1, no. 1 (2002): 54-60
• Robert Genter, 'Imagining murderous mothers: male spectatorship and the American slasher film', Studies in the Humanities, June 1, 2006
• Sara M. Grimes, '"You Shoot Like A Girl!”: The Female Protagonist in Action-Adventure Video Games', Digital Games Research Association - Level Up Conference Proceedings, November 2003
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part One)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 47, February 2005
• Andrew Grossman, 'Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two)', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Tamiko Southcott Hayter, 'Perverse Pleasures: Spectatorship, The Blair Witch Project,' E-Thesis, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2005
• Lacy Hodges, '"Scully, what are you wearing?": the problem of feminism, subversion, and heteronormativity in The X Files', e-Thesis University of Florida, 2005
• Irene Karras, 'The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Thirdspace, Vol. 1, Issue 2, March 2002
• Mikel J. Koven, 'The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film', Scope, May 2003
• Jenni Lada, 'Feminizing the Final Girl', Cerize Magazine, October 2007
• Colin Le Sueur, 'Misogynism and the Macabre: An Analysis of the Representation of Women in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses', Film Fortress, June 9, 2006
• Uel McMahan, 'The Alienation of Ripley and the Maturation of the Final Girl', Wiggledog's Song, June 21, 2008
• 'Mittens', 'Feminist Horror Film Theory', Everything2, [date unknown]
• Victoria Newsom, 'Young Females as Super Heroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon', Femspec, ('Girl Power' Issue) 5.2
• Marc Ouellette, '"When a Killer Body Isn't Enough": Cross-Gender Identification in Action-Adventure Video Games', Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)
• Iva Radat, 'Haute Tension: Lesbian Audience and the Slasher Film', Transgressing Gender Conference, Zagreb, Croatia, 2005 (scroll down to page 20/262)
• David Robinson, 'The unattainable narrative: identity, consumerism and the slasher film in Mary Harron's American Psycho', CineAction, January 1, 2006
• Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, 'Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism's Third Wave: "I'm Not My Mother", Genders Online Journal Issue 38 2003
• Steven Jay Schneider, 'Introduction - Psychoanalysis in/and/of the Horror Film', Senses of Cinema, July 2001
• Shweta Sharma, 'The Killer Father and the Final Mother: Womb-Envy in The Cell' Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 1, No 2 (2007)
• Elizabeth J. Silas, Abstract Themes of Awakening in Mainstream Films: Female Subjects and the Lacanian Symbolic, E-Thesis, Miami University, 2005
• Anneke Smelik, 'Feminist Film Theory', from Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, (eds), The Cinema Book, second edition. London: British Film Institute, 1999, pp 353-365
• Ashley Lorrain Smith, 'Girl Power, feminism, girlculture and the popular media', E-Thesis, University of North Texas, August 1999
• Donato Totaro, 'The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

FSFF also highly recommends that you visit Slayage: International Journal of Buffy Studies for lots of other relevant studies.

Classic Latin American film studies in memory of Mario Benedetti

Sequence from El lado oscuro del corazón (The Dark Side of the Heart, Argentina, 1992, directed by Eliseo Subiela) featuring Mario Benedetti's poem 'No te salves'/'Don't Save Yourself' (recited by Oliverio/Dario Grandinetti to Ana/ Sandra Ballesteros) and starring Benedetti himself as 'El poeta alemán'/'the German Poet' reading his poem 'Corazón coraza'

Film Studies For Free was just going to post today on three classic Latin American film studies texts that are now fabulously available as free e-books from the wonderful people at University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions:

• Julianne Burton, The Social documentary in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1990)
• Randal Johnson, The film industry in Brazil: culture and the state (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1987)
• Eva Paulino Bueno and Terry Caesar, Imagination beyond nation: Latin American popular culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1998)
  

But then FSFF's author heard of the sad death at 88 of the great Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti, who devoted his life to demonstrating, so beautifully, that 'the South also exists', in literature, politics, and the cinema.

As the BBC website reports: 'Born to Italian immigrants, Benedetti wrote more than 80 novels, poems, short stories and essays during a career spanning six decades. His 1960 novel [La tregua] The Truce was translated into 19 languages and made into a film', La tregua directed by Sergio Renán based on a script by Benedetti and Aída Bortnik (the film was also remade in 2003) .

While Renán's La tregua was probably the most important film based on Benedetti's writing (at least in terms of its political impact), he was, in FSFF's opinion, the most cinematic of South American poets, with over eighteen screenplays to his name. He had a particular association with the highly lyrical film work of Argentine writer-director Eliseo Subiela (an auteur on whose work FSFF's author has published), especially the films El lado oscuro del corazón (1992, sequence embedded above; also see here) and Despabílate amor (aka Wake Up Love, 1996).

Below, as is FSFF's wont, are links to some online and freely accessible studies of the 'Benedettian' films of Subiela, as well as of Uruguayan and Southern Cone cinema more generally.

Nunca te salvaste, Mario... Gracias.

• Michael Chanan, Cinema in Latin America (1930-1960) and New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995) both essays from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996
  
• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90s. Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema', E.I.A.L, Vol. 9, no. 1, Enero-Junio, 1998
• Michael Chanan, The Changing Geography of Third Cinema (Screen Special Latin American Issue, Volume 38, number 4, Winter 1997) The history of the concept of Third Cinema, from the introduction of the term by Solanas and Getino in 1968 to the 1990s.
• Tamara L. Falicov, 'Film Policy under MERCOSUR: The Case of Uruguay', Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 27, No 1 (2002)
• Catherine Grant, 'Giving up Ghosts: Eliseo Subiela's Hombre mirando al sudeste and No te mueras sin decirme a dónde vas', Changing Reels: Latin American Cinema against the Odds, ed. Rob Rix and Roberto Rodríguez-Saona (Leeds: Leeds Iberian Papers - Trinity and All Saints/University of Leeds, 1997), pp. 89-120
• Gustavo Iribarne, 'El último tren: Uruguayan cinema for the new millenium?, El Ojo Que Piensa, 2002
• Geoffrey Kantaris, 'The Last Snapshots of Modernity: Argentine Cinema after the '"Process"' Bulletin of Hispanic Studies [Glasgow] (April 1996)
• Geoffrey Kantaris, "The Repressed Signifier: the Cinema of Alejandro Agresti and Eliseo Subiela". Originally published in Identity and Discursive Practice. Ed. Francisco Domínguez. London: Peter Laing Publishers, 2000
• Geoffrey Kantaris, "Holograms and Simulacra: Bioy Casares, Subiela, Piglia". Web resource based on a seminar paper given at the Science and the Creative Imagination conference, Institute of Latin American Studies, London (22-Mar-2001). Includes video clips
• Jill S. Kuhnheim, Spanish American Poetry at the End of the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004, via Google Books preview - on the sequence embedded above)
• David Oubiña, 'Between Breakup and Tradition: Recent Argentinean Cinema', Senses of Cinema, March 2004
  
• Joanna Page, 'Postmodernism, history and social critique in post-dictatorship Argentine cinema: a reading of Eliseo Subiela's El lado oscuro del corazon', The Modern Language Review, 2001; 96 (2)
  

A Heart of Gold: Pakeezah and the Hindi Courtesan Film

Click on the image of Meena Kumari, above, to link to the 'Chalte Chalte' sequence in Pakeezah (music by by Ghulam Mohammed, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kaifi Azmi, Kamal Amrohi, Kaif Bhopali, sung by Lata Mangeshkar).

One of the favourite films of Film Studies For Free's author is Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah/Pure Heart (1971), a magnificent Hindi melodrama and one of the most accomplished and beautiful films in the transnational 'courtesan with a heart of gold' film genre.

As one of FSFF's favourite scholarly film weblogs is Michael J. Anderson's Tativille, you can possibly imagine how delighted it was to find that the centrepiece feature of Indian Auteur's third issue is Anderson's remarkable essay on Pakeezah. (IndianAuteur is an excellent online journal edited by Nitesh Rohit, Supriya Suri and others).

What better way to celebrate the felicitous conjunction of all of these elements, then, or to encourage FSFF readers to explore them all, than a little list of Friday links to online and freely accessible studies touching on Pakeezah, Kamal Amrohi, Meena Kumari (pictured above) and the Hindi Courtesan Film.

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Body and Soul: Pakeezah and the Parameters of Classical Indian Cinema', IndianAuteur, Issue 3, May 2009
• Bart Barendregt, 'The changing art of seduction: ritual courtship, performing prostitutes, erotic entertainment', International Institute for Asian Studies, Newsletter 40, Spring 2006
• Anustup Basu, Mantras of the Metropole: Geo-televisuality and Contemporary Indian Cinema, PhD e-thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2005
• Jolanda Djaimala Boejharat, 'Indian courtesans: from reality to the silver screen and back again', International Institute for Asian Studies, Newsletter 40, Spring 2006
• Gregory D Booth, 'Making a Woman from a Tawaif: Courtesans as Heroes in Hindi Cinema', New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 9, 2 (December, 2007): 1-26
• Gregory D Booth, 'Traditional Content and Narrative Structure in the Hindi Commercial Cinema', Asian Folklore Studies, Volume 54, 1995: 169-190
• Wendy F. Hsu, 'Between Narrative and Expressive, Fantasy and Melodrama in Bombay (Bollywood) Film', Virginia Review of Asian Studies, July 2003
• Anandam P. Kavoori and Christina Joseph, 'Nagina Conversations with a snake', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000, pp. 86-91
• Coonoor Kripalani, 'What's Love Got to Do WIth It? – Bollywood Courtesans & Hollywood Prostitutes', Inter-Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2002 (Scroll down to Chapter 6)
• Neepa Majumdar, 'Doubling, stardom, and melodrama in Indian cinema: the "impossible" role of Nargis', Post Script, June 22 2003
• Vijay Mishra, 'Bollywood Cinema: A Critical Genealogy', Asian Studies Institute, 2006
• Aswin Punathambekar, We Are Like This Only: Desis and Hindi Films in the Diaspora, MSc e-thesis, MIT, 2003
• Anjali Ram, 'Framing the feminine: diasporic readings of gender in popular Indian cinema', Women's Studies in Communication, March 22 2002
• Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
• Sangita Shresthova, 'Strictly Bollywood? Story, Camera and Movement in Hindi Film Dance', MSc e-thesis, Princeton, 2003
• Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, 'The Prostitution Questions(s): (Female) Agency, Sexuality and Work', re/productions: Issue#2, April 1999
• Valentina Vitali, 'The Families of Hindi Cinema: A Socio-Historical Approach to Film Studies', Framework, Vol. 42, 2000
• Leda Ward, 'Images of a Decolonizing India: Bollywood’s Tawai’f and the Postcolonial Muslim', e-Thesis, Barnard College, Dance Department, Columbia University, Fall 2008

More on the video essay: Jim Emerson's Close Up: the movie/essay/dream

Janet Leigh's eye from Jim Emerson, 'Close Up: The movie/essay/dream', Scanners, October 17, 2007

Lots of correspondence after yesterday's post on the video essays of Matt Zoller Seitz and Kevin B Lee has prompted Film Studies For Free to research the online work of a number of other film artists/academics. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts about this shortly.

FSFF would also love to hear from any of its readers who can point in the direction of further examples of good-quality, freely-accessible, scholarly online video essays to check out.

But, in the meantime, here are some great links to the online video essay work of a highly notable film critic who has very successfully experimented with this form: Jim Emerson, film critic and creator of Scanners (a movie blog and home of the Opening Shots Project) and founding editor of/contributor to RogerEbert.com, Roger Ebert`s web site.

• Jim Emerson, 'Close-Ups: A free-association dream sequence', Scanners, October 14, 2007
• Jim Emerson, 'Close Up: The movie/essay/dream', Scanners, October 17, 2007
• Jim Emerson, 'Written in the flesh: a crash course in David Cronenberg', November 2, 2007
  
• Jim Emerson, 'Your User's Guide to Movie Violence', Scanners, March 12, 2008

See more of Emerson's movie clips HERE.

Fabulous Films about Films: Homage to Matt Zoller Seitz's Video Essays

Al Pacino in Carlito's Way (or a young Matt Zoller Seitz, who wrote on CW for Reverse Shot?)

'The video essay is often described as a form of new media, but the basic principles are as old as rhetoric: the author makes an assertion, then presents evidence to back up his claim.'
Matt Zoller Seitz, 'The Video Essay' (2009)

As regular readers of Film Studies For Free know, this blog has championed the Video Essay as one of the most important and promising developments in online Film Studies. One of the most outstanding proponents of this internet form currently at work is critic and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz.

One of the other most notable online video-essayists, of course, is filmmaker and writer Kevin B Lee, whose work FSFF has hailed on a number of previous occasions, and with whom Seitz frequently collaborates. Recently, Lee has posted several videos of himself discussing the video essay format; he was invited to talk about his projects by the the Kino Arsenal in Berlin as part of their programme: “Kunst der Vermittlung: Aus den Archiven Filmvermittlung Films,” or “The Art of Mediation: Films About Films.” The programme, which began in October and concludes in July, is part of a project to catalogue all existing films about other films, on all formats: DVD extras, films, video essays, etc. As Lee reports, 'organized by Stefan Pethke, Michael Baute, Volker Pantenburg, Stefanie Schlüter and Erik Stein, the project has already catalogued an impressive number of films about films, including just about every video essay that I’ve produced to date.'

Anyway, for today, back to Seitz: the online film community knows of him mostly as the founding editor and leading contributor to the blog The House Next Door. There's a great interview with him about his blogging HERE. According to the New York Film Critics' Circle website, however, Seitz has has been film critic for NYPress and a TV critic and columnist for The Newark Star-Ledger and Newhouse Newspapers since 1995. His articles on film, TV and popular culture have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, IFC Rant, Scenario Magazine, Details, Sound and Vision, Forbes FYI and Dallas Observer, where he was a film critic and feature writer from 1991-1995. In 1994, while working at the Observer, Seitz was named one of two finalists for the Pulitzer prize in criticism. He also wrote and directed the feature film Home (2005 - also see HERE).

Below is a list of links to freely available online video essays made by Seitz and to collaborations between him and Lee, as well as some tip-offs about upcoming video essay projects of his to look out for in the near future. And HERE is a link to a really interesting and useful essay that Seitz produced about his video essay work for the great 'Films About Films' project mentioned above.

At Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures:

• 'The Outlaw Josey Wales (feat. Matt Zoller Seitz)', Shooting Down Pictures, May 25 2008
• 'They Died with Their Boots On' feat. Matt Zoller Seitz (two essays), Shooting Down Pictures, March 30 2008 (introductory essay HERE; sequence analysis HERE)

At Film in Focus: Media Room:

• With Kevin B Lee: 'Rewatch: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', May 7 2009 (embedded below)

At the The L Magazine:

• 'Vulcan: The Soul of Spock, The L Magazine, May 6 2009

Note: In less than two weeks, Seitz will post his next L Magazine video essay on Steve McQueen.

At Moving Image Source:

• 'Present Tense: Benjamin Button and a passive hero's route toward happiness', Moving Image Source, Moving Image Source, May 8, 2009
• 'The Substance of Style, Pt 1: Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Schulz, Welles, Truffaut)', Moving Image Source, March 30, 2009
• 'The Substance of Style, Pt 2: Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Scorsese, Lester, Nichols)', Moving Image Source, April 3, 2009
• 'The Substance of Style, Pt 3: Examining the Wes Anderson–Hal Ashby connection', Moving Image Source, April 6, 2009
• 'The Substance of Style, Pt 4: Examining the Wes Anderson–J.D. Salinger connection', Moving Image Source, April 9, 2009
• 'The Substance of Style, Pt 5: The prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums, annotated by Matt Zoller Seitz', Moving Image Source, April 13, 2009
• 'Straight Shooting: The righteous heroes and human villains of Budd Boetticher's West', Moving Image Source, December 4, 2008

(Note: Rumour has it that the next Seitz five-parter at Moving Image Source will be on the films of Michael Mann).

At Moving Image Source by Kevin B Lee with Matt Zoller Seitz:

• 'Oliver Stone Pt. 1: Patriotism and propaganda in Born on the Fourth of July,' Moving Image Source, October 14, 2008 (lead credit: MZS)
• 'Oliver Stone Pt. 2: JFK and the power of counter-myth', Moving Image Source, October 15, 2008 (lead credit: KBL)
• 'Oliver Stone Pt. 3: Nixon and the unmaking of a president', Moving Image Source, October 16, 2008 (lead credit: MZS)
• 'Oliver Stone Pt. 4: War and civilization in Alexander, and an epilogue on W.', Moving Image Source, October 17, 2008 (lead credit: KBL)

Note: See Lee's discussion of these videos HERE.

On YouTube, as Insomniacdad:

• 'A Little Love. The Art of Bill Melendez,' (US 2008)
• 'Berkeley(esque)', (US 2009)
• 'Review: Sharky's Machine', (US 2008)
• 'Short Film: "The Explanation"', (US, 2008)
  

Below is a video Seitz made with Kevin B Lee for Film in Focus: 'Rewatch: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', May 7 2009

So you want to study television? Free sample introductions to TV and 'Small Screen' studies

As a follow up to yesterday's post on online introductions to film studies (and to a positive flurry of email responses to it), Film Studies For Free (a veritable addict of screens of all sizes) brings you a list of links to exemplary, freely-available, online essays, sample book chapters, and other resources, all of which give a very rich sense indeed of what it is like to study different kinds of television and related media at university or college. The list begins with the most accessible resources.

• Museum of Broadcast Communications - 'Television Studies' Guide
• Jason Mittell, ' Introduction: Why Television?', Television and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Companion Website/Resource Center. See Mittell's blog Just TV HERE; and also see Henry Jenkins' great interview with Mittell part one HERE and part two HERE.
  
• Glen Creeber, Toby Miller and John Tulloch (eds), The Television Genre Book (BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan, 2e, 2009): Chapter on DRAMA (including Studying Television Drama (G.W.Brandt/J.Tulloch) – Robin Nelson; The Single Play (The Wednesday Play/Play for Today) – Glen Creeber; The Western (Alias Smith and Jones) – William Boddy (Deadwood– Glen Creeber); The Action Series (Man from UNCLE/Avengers) –Toby Miller (24– Glen Creeber); The Crime Series (Hill Street Blues) – Lez Cooke (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) (The Sopranos– Glen Creeber) ; Hospital Drama (ER) – Jason Jacobs; Science Fiction (Star Trek) – Luke Hockley(The X-Files– Catherine Johnson),(Doctor Who– Matt Hills); Drama–Documentary (Cathy Come Home/The Day After) – John Corner; The Mini-Series (Roots/The Singing Detective) – Glen Creeber; Costume Drama (Jane Austen Adaptations) – Robin Nelson; The Teen Series – Rachel Moseley (Buffy the Vampire Slayer– Cathy Johnson); Postmodern Drama (Twin Peaks) – Adrian Page (Ally McBeal – Robin Nelson),(Heroes– Glen Creeber) note: a large file so slow to download but well worth the wait)
• Jeremy G. Butler, 'Chapter 13: Television Studies: Alternatives to Empirical Approaches', Television: Critical Methods and Applications, 3rd Edition (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, September 2006) and Companion Website
• Paul Bowman,'Introduction: Deconstructing "the Popular"’, Deconstructing ‘the Popular' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies For Small Screen Fictions - Resources Website
• John Caldwell, 'Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the culture of conglomeration (excerpt) from Lyn Spigel and Jan Olson (eds), Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Duke University Press, 2004)
• Susan Holmes, "'The Only Place Where ''Success'' Comes before ''Work'' Is in the Dictionary...?': Conceptualising Fame in Reality TV." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). 11 May. 2009
• Maire Messenger Davies, 'Chapter 1: Children and Broadcasting in the 1990s', 'Dear BBC' Children, Television Storytelling and the Public Sphere (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
• Tania Modleski, 'The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas - Notes on a feminine narrative form' from Charlotte Brunsdon and Lyn Spigel (eds), Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader (Open University Press/McGraw Hill, 2007)
• Nitesh Rohit, 'Cinema/Television in India- a story of images', IndianAuteur.com - Winds from theEast, November 30, 2008
  

If there any other relevant websites or sample introductory book chapters out there that FSFF has inadvertently omitted from this list, please feel free to email with information. (last updated May 12 2009)

So you want to study cinema? Free sample introductions to Film Studies

Today, for those of you who may be thinking of taking the educational plunge into Film Studies (as well as for those seeking to guide potential film students), Film Studies For Free brings a list of links to high-quality, freely-available online essays, sample book chapters, and other resources, all of which all give a very rich sense of what it is like to study this highly rewarding subject.

• Richard Barsam, Looking at Movies. 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2007) (including chapters on 'Film Genre', 'Story, Plot, and Time', 'The Biopic', 'Movies and Morality', Bicycle Thieves, and Breathless)
• David Bordwell, 'Studying Cinema', 2000
• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ''Doing Film History', September 2008
• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, 'CHAPTER 1 Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business', Sample chapter from Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 8e, 2008)
• David Bordwell, 'But what kind of art?', Observations on Film Art and FILM ART, April 20, 2007
• Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction (Bedford/St Martins, 2004) companion website and preview of chapters 3 (on mise-en-scene) and 10 (on genres) in 2e here (thanks to cinetrix)
  
• Nick Lacey, 'Chapter 1: Film Language', Introduction to Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Also see Nick Lacey's blog HERE
  
• Greg M. Smith, ''It's Just a Movie:" A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes', first published in Cinema Journal 41.1 (Fall 2001) 127-134
• Suzanne Speidel, 'Film Form and Narrative', Chapter 3, Introduction to Film Studies (ed. Jill Nelmes, Routledge, 4e, 2007)
• Kristin Thompson, 'Is there a blog in this class, Observations on Film Art and FILM ART, September 6, 2007
• YALE FILM STUDIES: Film Analysis Web Site 2.0

If there any other relevant websites or sample introductory book chapters out there that FSFF has inadvertently omitted from this list, please feel free to email with information.

Star Trek Studies Online

Film Studies For Free (its mission: to explore strange new academic worlds, to seek out Open Access film and media studies scholarship) brings you its Enterprising link list of freely-accessible, online Star Trek studies. Live long and prosper ('strike up the theme tune, Scotty...'). Last updated May 26, 2009

• Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard, 'The Conversations: Star Trek', The House Next Door Online, May 1, 2009
  
• Daniel Bernardi, 'Star Trek in the 1960s. Liberal-Humanism and the Production of Race', Science Fiction Studies #72 = Volume 24, Part 2 = July 1997
  
• Daniel Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future (Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998 -Limited Preview via Google Books)
• Francesca Coppa, 'Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish vidding', Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 1 (2008)
• Anne Cranny-Francis, 'Different Identities, Different Voices: Possibilities and Pleasures in Some of Jean Lorrah's Star Trek Novels', Science Fiction Studies, #72 = Volume 24, Part 2 = July 1997
• Marie A Dean , Star Trek and Sacred Ground (review)', Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 1, Spring 2002
• Scott K. Duchesn, 'Play vs. Presence in Star Trek ', Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007
• H. Bruce Franklin, 'Star Trek in the Vietnam Era', Science Fiction Studies #62 = Volume 21, Part 1 = March 1994
• Valerie Fulton, 'An Other Frontier: Voyaging West with Mark Twain and Star Trek's Imperial Subject', Postmodern Culture, Volume 4, Number 3 (May, 1994)
• Lincoln Geraghty, 'Telling Tales of the Future: Science Fiction and Star Trek's Exemplary Narratives', Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 3.2, Spring 2003
• Lincoln Geraghty, '‘Help When Times Are Hard’: Bereavement and Star Trek Fan Letters', Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, Volume 5, 2004
• Lincoln Geraghty, Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe (London: IB Tauris, 2007 - Limited preview via Google Books)
• Lincoln Geraghty and Rebecca Janicker, '"Now That's What I Call a Close Encounter!": The Role of the Alien in Science Fiction Film, 1977 - 2001', Scope: An On-line Journal of Film Studies, November 2004
• Jonathan Gray, 'Mommy, Is That a Boy Text or a Girl Text?', Flow TV, May 18, 2007
• Lee E. Heller, 'The Persistence of Difference: Postfeminism, Popular Discourse, and Heterosexuality in Star Trek ', Science Fiction Studies #72 = Volume 24, Part 2 = July 1997
• Veronica Hollinger, 'Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction Criticism, 1980-1999', Science Fiction Studies, #78 = Volume 26, Part 2 = July 1999
• David Hudson, 'Star Trek' links, The Daily @ IFC.com, May 7, 2009
  
• Henry Jenkins, 'Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching', (first published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication, June 1988)
• Henry Jenkins, 'Of Trek and TiVo', Technology Review, January 2002
• Henry Jenkins, 'Five Ways to Start a Conversation About the New Star Trek Film, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, May 12, 2009
  
• Michael Jindra, 'Star Trek fandom as a religious phenomenon', Sociology of Religion, Spring 1994
• Daniel Kälberer, 'Reference Literature to Star Trek', Film Bibliography, 2008
• Tama Leaver, '"Your appeal to my humanity is pointless": The Borg and Radical Performativity in Star Trek', Outskirts: Feminisms Along the Edge, 9 , May/August 2002,
• John Kenneth Muir, 'Star Trek: the motion picture (1979)', JKF's Reflections, April 29, 2009
• Janet Murray and Henry Jenkins, 'Before the Holodeck: Transferring Star Trek into Digital Media' (first published in Greg Smith (ed.), On a Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technology (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
• Arika Okrent, 'There's No Klingon Word for Hello', Slate, May 7, 2009
  
• Juli J. Parrish, Inventing a Universe: reading and Writing Internet Fan Fiction (e-thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2007)
• Hannah Pok, "To boldly go where no man has gone before": Star Trek as a reflection of American imperialism', Hannah's Deep Field Space: Science Fiction Essays, 1999
• Hannah Pok, 'Negotiating Outcast States: Liminal Identities and Difference in Star Trek', Hannah's Deep Field Space: Science Fiction Essays, 1999
• Sean Redmond, 'The Science Fiction of Whiteness', Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, October 2006
• Steve Roby, The Complete Starfleet Library: Analysis and Criticism, November 2008
• Bernd Schneider, 'Star Trek Clichés', Ex Astris Scientia
  
• Science Fiction Studies Special Issue on Star Trek, #72 = Volume 24, Part 2 = July 1997
• Jason Sperb, 'On Trek', Jamais Vu, May 4 2009
• Justine Walden, 'The Political Aesthetic: Nation and Narrativity on the "Starship Enterprise', Cinemaspace, UC Berkeley, 1994
  
• Wikiquote on Star Trek
  
• J. Emmett Winn, 'Highly Offensive Ferengi: Racial Issues and Star Trek's Multicultural Deep Space Nine in Film', Kinema, Spring 2003
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Vulcan: The Soul of Spock - A Video Essay', The L Magazine, May 6, 2009

And watch great quality, full-length, original series' Star Trek episodes at the CBS website for free HERE.

Some May Must-Reads

Film Studies For Free is back from its travels with some brief but essential recommendations for reading. Consider yourselves compassionately instructed to enjoy the following gems from the brilliant film-blogosphere:

• Michael J Anderson at Tativille has just posted a stunning take on the palimpsestic texture of the tremulously gripping film Cloverfield (an FSFF digi-horror favourite along with Rec). Equally unmissable is Tativille's preceding post: a full-length footnoted essay by Anderson called 'What is Cinema? More than Cinema: The Ontological Discourse of Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees (1994)'
• Dan North at Spectacular Attractions continues his wonderful experiments with scholarly film blogging with an insightful and almost live critical analysis of Don't Look Now. Also see his great recent post on She... North concludes each of his posts with rich links lists on the films, to boot.
• Fascinating and highly informed discussion over at Jonathan Rosenbaum's site about the new edition of André Bazin's What is Cinema? (translated by Timothy Barnard) - 'What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, What is Film Study?)'. Also see Girish's compelling thread on this edition.
  
• Thanks to Chris Cagle's (in itself) thought-provoking post 'Theory-Praxis Divide', FSFF got to read Tim Burke's amusing and highly lucid enquiry into why (sometimes/most times) those who teach (theory) can't do (creative practice), 'Why Can’t You?'
• A (customarily) beautifully written and illustrated post from Luke McKernan at The Bioscope : 'An excellent dumb discourse' treats Shakespeare in early cinema.
• Finally (for today), Benjamin Wright's site Aspect Ratio has moved bloghost: the move is accompanied by a lovely post on approaches to music in film, 'Hearing Beyond Words'. There seem to FSFF to be a few teething problems with the new server but you can access the post still at the Wordpress site.

P.S. Let's actually finish with a Call For Papers for an annual conference hosted by an Open Access film and visual studies periodical much loved by FSFF: World Picture Journal.

The 2009 World Picture Conference

October 23-24, 2009
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, Oklahoma

Style

Keynote Speakers

Edward Branigan
(University of California, Santa Barbara)

&

Alexander García Düttman
(Goldsmiths College)

We believe the question of style is in need of new thinking, across media, disciplines and modes of thought. We hope, therefore, to receive abstracts that reflect or extend out of any number of approaches to the question of style (theoretical, philosophical, historical, formal, generic, etc.). Our conference (like our journal) is inflected by a strong interest in the intersection of political and aesthetic questions concerning cinema, visual art, and visual theory, but we encourage the submission of abstracts that do not necessarily occupy themselves with the cinema and/or the visual.

Proposals (250 words), including a brief bio, should be sent to Brian Price at brian.price@okstate.edu by June 1