Thursday 28 May 2009

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


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)

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.

6 comments:

Matthew Flanagan said...

Wow - thanks, Catherine, for this exhaustive compilation of links!

Zach Campbell's blog entries on this might be worth adding to: Cinephile Business: Key Texts, The Tribalism of Cinephilia.

Catherine Grant said...

Thanks so much Matthew - I'll definitely add the two further entries you suggest.

Tom said...

Thanks for compiling this. I'm quite amazed! Cinephilia has always fascinated me and I was always surprised at the tiny amount of literature available on the subject.

I remember buying Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory when I was 18 and e-mailing Thomas Elsaesser and having a great discussion. I highly recommend that book. I also recommend Movie Mutations, which has somehow become a cult item in the film blogosphere.

And of course Postcards from the Cinema. Serge Daney, to my knowledge is the only critic who has attempted to chronicle his own cinephilia in so much depth. Quite beautiful in many ways and despite its informal nature it's probably the most accurate summation of cinephilia there is.

I can't wait to dive into all of this. It never occurred to me to search the web for material on the subject!

Adrian Mendizabal said...

This is a phenomenal post, a sort of gateway to a certain aspect of cinema i have been so curious about...

I hope you can also put up some links featuring Slavic Formalist movement: Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson because they sort of formed the NEOFORMALIST approach David Bordwell theorized.

Thanks!

Catherine Grant said...

Thanks Tom and Adrian for your comments. Adrian, I'll look into online resources on formalism and will hope to post something soonish - a great topic. I'm always happy to take requests.

Lesley said...

What a great list on cinephilia! But now I've got a question I'm hoping someone can answer. One of the texts often quoted in many of the texts listed here is Antoine De Baecque's "La Cinephilie ou L'Invention d'Une Culture." I've been dying to read it for some time, but my French just isn't strong enough. Any chance you've ever come across an English translation online (or in print)?