Film as a Subversive Art: R.I.P. Amos Vogel

Paul Cronin's film about Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 Film as a Subversive Art (© Sticking Place Films Ltd. 2003)

Film Studies For Free was very sad to learn of the death yesterday of Amos Vogel. Austrian born Vogel was best known for his bestselling book Film as a Subversive Art (1974) and also as the founder of the New York City avant-garde ciné-club Cinema 16 (1947–1963).

David Hudson has gathered some great memorial links. And at the Sticking Place website you will find lots of links to excerpts from Vogel's writings as well as writing about him.

A Star Was Born... : Links in Barbra Streisand's Honour on her 70th Birthday!

Frame grab from A Star Is Born ( Frank Pierson, 1976)

Each version of A Star Is Born may detail the rise of an unknown, but does so through extremely well-known performers, albeit ones at different stages of their careers. [...] Barbra Streisand [...] was at the height of her career in 1976. Her domination of A Star Is Born (she contributed to the writing and even, as Kris Kristofferson, her co-star, saw it, the directing [(Burke, Tom. "Kris Kristofferson Sings the Good-Life Blues." Esquire 86 (December 1976): 126–28ff), 208-9]) was another manifestation of a desire to play out aspects of her own life. The credited director has recounted at length how, during preproduction, Streisand debated the degree to which her autobiography should be reflected in Esther Hoffman ([Pierson, Frank. "My Battles with Barbra and Jon." New York 9 (November 15, 1976): 49–60], 50). If James Mason's character in the 1954 film becomes through role reversal the "fictional counterpart of the neurotic, self-destructive person that Garland [had] become" ([Jennings, Wade. "Nova: Garland in 'A Star Is Born.'" Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4, no. 3 (summer 1979): 321–37], 333), then Streisand's Esther Hoffman directly fulfills everything that Streisand herself has become by 1976. Richard Dyer even suggests that among the "number of cases on which the totality of a film can be laid at the door of the star" the case can be made "most persuasively" for Streisand's A Star Is Born (Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979], 175) [Jerome Delamater, '"Once More, from the Top": Musicals the Second Time Around', in Horton, Andrew, Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, p. 84]

Film Studies For Free wishes a very happy 70th birthday to Barbra Streisand, actor, singer, songwriter, film director, producer, and queer feminist icon extraordinaire.

Below, you can find a tiny little celebration in related scholarly links - the only gift that (rather besotted Barbra fan) FSFF knows how to give.

If anyone knows of any other good items (and it is far too short and unworthy a list so far...), please leave a comment and FSFF will add them to the list.

• Zohar Altman Ravid, 'The star as a Creation and the Star as a creator: The Case of Barbra Streisand' in History of Stardom Reconsidered, edited by Kari Kallioniemi, Kimi Kärki, Janne Mäkelä and Hannu Salmi. Turku: International Institute for Popular Culture, 2007
• Henry Bial, 'How Jews Became Sexy, 1968–1983', Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (University of Michigan, 2005)
• Jerome Delamater, '"Once More, from the Top": Musicals the Second Time Around', in Horton, Andrew, Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, c 1998 1998
• Brett Farmer, 'Stage Door Jennies: Interview with Stacy Wolf about her New Book, A Problem Like Maria Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical', Genders.org, Issue 38, 2003
• Rachel Garfield, 'Towards a Re-Articulation of Cultural Identity: Problematising the Jewish Subject in Art', originally in Third Text, Vol. 20, Issue 1, January, 2006, 99–108
• Stephen Godfry, 'The Way We Were', Pro Tem, November 29, 1973 (scroll down in PDF to p. 8)
• Elisa Klapheck, Toby Axelrod, 'My Journey Toward Regina Jonas', Fräulein Rabbiner Jonas: The Story of the First Woman Rabbi (Wiley, 2004)
• Evyatar Marienberg, 'Jews Have the Best Sex: The Hollywood Adventures of a Peculiar Medieval Jewish Text on Sexuality', Journal of Religion and Film, 14.2, 2010
• Arthur Laurents, 'Emotional Reality: Interview by Pat McGilligan', in McGilligan, Patrick. Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)
• Joel Rosenberg, 'Jewish Experience on Film: An American Overview', American Jewish Yearbook, 1996
• Jérôme Segal and Monika Kaczek, 'Molly Picon and the Cinematic Archetype of a Jewish Woman', CinemaScope, 14, Jan-Jul. 2010
  
• Greg M. Smith, 'Streisand Shops the Museum Store: Consuming Art on Television', Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30.1 (Spring 2002) 63-68
• Jon Stratton, 'Introduction', Jews, Race and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2009)
• Stacy Wolf, 'Barbra’s “Funny Girl” Body', SandF Online, Double Issue: 3.3 & 4.1
• Stacy Ellen Wolf, 'Introduction', A Problem Like Maria:Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (University of Michigan Press, 2002)

Sequence from Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968)

"Timeline of Historical Film Colors" now online

Frame grab from Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)

More than ever we need access to solid knowledge about historical film color processes in order to save our beautiful filmic heritage. [Barbara Flueckiger]

Film Studies For Free urges its readers to go and check out University of Zurich Institute of Cinema Studies professor Barbara Flueckiger's Database of Historical Film Colors and its amazing timeline of historical color processes.

Professor Flueckiger is certainly no stranger to making her important work freely accessible online for scholars all around the world to access. FSFF has previously covered some of her phenomenal sharing in its On Digital Cinema, Visual Effects, and CGI Studies entry, in which links were given both to a free download of 'Digital Bodies' (a chapter, translated into English, from Flueckiger's 2008 German-language book Visual Effects. Filmbilder aus dem Computer), as well as to her great online database on the history of CGI, VFX, and computer animation.

As of April 2012, the latest of the resources she is making available, the Historical Film Colors database consists of 290 entries. It comes in the form of a timeline that connects historical and bibliographical information with primary resources from several hundred original papers and more than 400 scanned frames provided by archives and scholars from all over the world.

In this current form the database is a nucleus for a much more advanced project which will be elaborated in the forthcoming months. It is Flueckiger's plan to develop a digital platform which allows experts and researchers to collaborate on a global scale.

To date, Professor Flueckiger has been solely responsible not only for gathering and analyzing all of the data, which derives from her studies of several hundred original papers and secondary sources at Harvard University in the fall term of 2011, but also for programming most of the database and organizing all the images and copyright clearances. Only to a very limited extent has she received financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation in the framework of her research project "Film History Re-mastered". She has therefore financed a major part of this project herself.

She has thus set up a crowd-funding campaign to invite you (or your institution) to support the further development of the project, either by sharing it or by contributing financially. The goal is to raise at least $10,000 in the upcoming 90 days. There are several contribution levels, starting at $25 for buying the rights for one image and extending to $5,000 for possible co-chairs of this project.

She will be very grateful for any kind of support and will be more than willing to give proper credit for conceptual or financial contributions. Many renowned scholars and institutions have contributed already.

Film Studies For Free hopes that its readers will support this project, either by contributing themselves, or by spreading the word.

Screen Heritage Goes App! The Curzon Memories Project

Engaging video about the Curzon Memories App, a practice-research project by Charlotte Crofts, funded by the Digital Cultures Research Centre and the University of the West of England. The video was made by Sy Taffel.

My thinking about locative media as a means of exploring screen heritage is informed by the “apparatus theorists" of the 1970s (Baudry, Comolli, Heath, Metz, Mulvey, Wollen, all collected in Philip Rosen’s seminal collection Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Reader, 1972), who were interested in the cinematic apparatus both in terms of the equipment of production and projection and in terms of the conditions of spectatorship (the engaged spectator in a darkened communal auditorium). At the [Curzon Memories App] project’s heart is a concern with both the culture and technologies of seeing: how we might use new screen media as a lens through which to understand the old cinematic apparatus and in turn historicise the new media. The idea is to use locative media to add depth to the everyday architecture of the cinema beyond that which is immediately apparent, and so enhance visitors’ experience and understanding of the cinema and the collection. In this sense, the project is centrally concerned with the interface between cultural memory and the technological imaginary of the moving image. [from Charlotte Crofts, 'Technologies of Seeing the Past: The Curzon Memories App', Paper published in the proceedings of the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, London 2011 pp. 163-4]

One of the cinemas cited [in David Bordwell's recent post about the threat of digital conversion to art house cinemas] is the Art House Cinema, in Champaign-Urbana, a University town in the middle of corn fields in the mid-West (where I happened to live for a short spell [...]) [...].  I think it might be where I first saw Terence Mallick’s Days of Heaven as a girl of nine, and have been haunted by it ever since. This, combined with my involvement with the Curzon, and indeed the Whiteladies Picture House campaign, made me feel how urgent it is to preserve screen heritage beyond the conservation of the films themselves – which is in itself incredibly important – but there’s something rather pressing about preserving the cinema-going experience in today’s multi-screen world: the apparatus of cinema, the built environment, the technologies; which is at the heart of the Curzon Memories App, and Projection Hero in particular. [Charlotte Crofts, '', The Curzon Project, January 31, 2012]

I hadn’t really thought I was making a documentary the whole time I was developing the app, but with hindsight, my experience as a filmmaker couldn’t help but inform the project and trying to articulate my work [...] really helped me to see that ‘experience design’ is essentially an extension of documentary practice – we all want to move people and make them see the world differently – I’m just excited about doing that in the actual place you are interested in exploring. [Charlotte Crofts, 'Curzon Memories App as interactive documentary', The Curzon Project, April 12, 2012]

[I]t is quite clear that printed works of reference are a thing of the past. I do not here mean, of course, the polders of misinformation contained in the poorly triangulated written texts of Wikipedia: rather I have in mind the breathtaking and illuminating elegance of Touch Publications and Charlotte Croft’s ‘Geo-spatial, Geo-temporal’ app to guide a tourist around a physical site. Why slap a guide-book around when your phone will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about what you are looking at. This will not destroy the publishing, on whatever platform, of unenhanced alphanumeric texts but it surely must transform the presentation of printed information. (And, ok, it’s the first major change in that since the codex started to replace the scroll in the 4th Christian century – this technicism stuff is easy to fall in with.) And Charlotte’s application isn’t going to make the tourist a citizen of the world but it will immeasurably improve their experience of travel. [Brian Winston on i-Docs 2012. Wikipedia link added by FSFF ! :)]

Like Brian Winston in the last of the above quotations, Film Studies For Free (an ever-upbeat Cassandra) has seen the future: it comes on little screens!! 

OK, so maybe that's not such an original (or all-encompassing) prophesy. But FSFF really has seen a remarkable, and original, slice of the future of 'pervasive' and 'locative', mobile Film Studies. 

The little screens in question here, with their "virtual-experience-design", are very much attached (in this particular project) to a very memorable, big screen, in three dimensions, with its associated history and real-world experiences.

The Curzon Memories App, the beautifully designed outcome of an innovative research project by Charlotte Crofts, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Video Production at the University of the West of England, provides a "locative media experience" designed to enhance visits to the Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, and its 'Living History' collection of cinema technology, through "context-aware oral history and dramatisation".

The above video sets out brilliantly the scope and functionality of the app. FSFF's favourite-sounding element is Projection Hero, a "miniature cinema installation which you can manipulate with your phone - open the curtains, dim the lights and play the movies - including the infamous Pearl and Dean 'Asteroid' theme and poignant interviews with retired projectionists". It looks forward to trying this out in the cinema itself.

The App is free. Just click on the relevant link, below, to access and download it. It's very much worthy of your exploration and support, even if you live nowhere near Clevedon - a lovely, little, English town not far from which FSFF's author happened to grow up, and in which she was forever traumatised by X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes... 

If you like it, please take time to rate it, and leave an appreciative comment, too, at the digital store of your choice. 

The further links below will take you to much more information about, as well as research consideration of, this wonderful project and will also tell you all about Crofts' latest, innovative, project. 

• The free Curzon Memories App is now out on Google Android and iPhone. 
• The Curzon Memories Project research blog
• Charlotte Crofts, 'Technologies of Seeing the Past: The Curzon Memories App', Paper published in the proceedings of the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, London 2011 
• Charlotte Crofts' videoed presentation about the "Curzon Memories App" at Postdigital Encounters: Creativity and Improvisation, Journal of Media Practice Annual Symposium, 24 June 2011, Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, UK.
• Charlotte Crofts, 'Geo-spatial and Geo-temporal. The Curzon Memories App documentary, The Curzon Memories App, and City Strata: The Cinemap Layer', slide presentation and document transcript, presentation at i-docs 2012
• City Strata: The Cinemap Layer Project

Four Issues of IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE: Antonioni, Malick, Nolan, Keaton, Russell, Haynes, Neo-Baroque, and more

Screen grab from Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell, 1988). Read Christophe Van Eecke's study of this film as "Baroque Performance". And also read Film Studies For Free's memorial listing of links to other studies of Russell's work

 

A more systematic way of understanding Russell’s work as baroque could be to simply read it as a contemporary reprise of a form of theatrical performativity associated specifically with seventeenth century baroque theatre. For literary critics one of the key innovations of the baroque stage was its self-reflexivity, its uncanny ability to point at itself in performance and say: look at me, I’m a play! Two important ways of generating this effect were the play-within-the- play and the so-called mise-en-abîme. These two procedures are related yet distinct. The play- within-the-play is a structural feature of baroque theatre, a conceit whereby several characters in a play become spectators of a play performed within the framing narrative, echoing the relationship between the original, framing play and the actual spectators in the theatre. The mise-en-abîme is a thematic trope and is quite literally a mirroring effect (Forestier 13). It refers to the potentially infinite self-reflection that emerges when a play starts mirroring its own action or begins to comment on it. The self-reflexive effect of baroque theatre is most overwhelming when the structural and the thematic self-reflexivity coincide. This happens when a play-within-the- play is used to reveal something about the characters or plot in the original framing story. This is the way the performance of the Mousetrap is used Hamlet. Russell has used the play-within-the- play as a revelatory mise-en-abîme in his film Salome’s Last Dance (1988), which is a play-within-the-film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1893). In this film Russell uses these tropes to reflect, through the play-within-the-film, on his own position as an artist. Therefore it would seem to be a very good place to start an investigation of whether and how Russell is ‘baroque’. The film is also one of the director’s most neglected efforts, which makes a critical discussion all the more timely. [Christophe Van Eecke, 'Moonstruck Follies. Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance (1988) as Baroque Performance', Image and Narrative, 13.2, 2012: pp. 6-7]

Film Studies For Free presents a little catch up entry today: links to all the contents of the latest four issues of the very good, Belgium-based, online journal Image [&] Narrative which treats "visual narratology and word and image studies in the broadest sense".

There are some excellent film studies articles, especially in the latest issue, on the "Neo-Baroque", which begins the below list. FSFF particularly liked the article on Russell's 1988 film, and also Peter Verstraten's article on Antonioni and Malick's "Cinema of Modernist Poetic Prose".

Image [&] Narrative, Vol 13, No 2 (2012): Neo-baroque Today 1

Thematic Cluster

• 'Introduction' by Ralph Dekoninck, Karel Vanhaesebrouck, et al Abstract PDF
• 'Moonstruck Follies. Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance (1988) as Baroque Performance' by Christophe Van Eecke Abstract PDF
• 'The Ambiguity of Weeping. Baroque and Mannerist Discourses in Haynes’ Far from Heaven and Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows' by Jack Post Abstract PDF
• 'Cinematic Neo-Mannerism or Neo-Baroque? Deleuze and Daney' by Sjoerd van Tuinen Abstract PDF  
• 'Re-visioning the Spanish Baroque: The Ekphrastic Dimension of Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins by Carlos Fuentes' by Reindert Dhondt Abstract PDF
• 'A Neo-Baroque Tale of Jesuits in Space: Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (1996)' by Daniel J. Worden Abstract PDF

Various Articles

• 'A Cinema of Modernist Poetic Prose: On Antonioni and Malick' by Peter Verstraten Abstract PDF
• 'Metaphors in Buster Keaton’s Short Films' by Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja Abstract PDF

Review Articles

• 'Charles Hatfield, Hand of Fire. The Comics of Jack Kirby' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF

Image [&] Narrative, Vol 13, No 1 (2012): Hauntings II: Uncanny, Figures and Twilight Zones

Thematic Cluster

• 'Introduction' by Fabio Camilletti Abstract PDF
• 'Staging the Uncanny: Phantasmagoria in Post-Unification Italy' by Morena Corradi Abstract PDF  
• 'Freud and Hoffmann, once again' by Tan Wälchli Abstract PDF  
• 'Phantasmagoria: A Profane Phenomenon as a Critical Alternative to the Fetish' by Christine Blaettler Abstract PDF  
• 'Engführung as a Case Study of Paul Celan’s Poetics of the Uncanny' by Vita Zilburg Abstract PDF
• 'Impassively true to life' by Claudia Peppel Abstract PDF
• 'Medial Techniques of the Uncanny and Anxiety' by Michaela Wünsch Abstract PDF 

Various Articles

• 'From Thought to Modality: A Theoretical Framework for Analysing Structural-Conceptual Metaphors and Image Metaphors in Film' by Maarten Coëgnarts, Peter Kravanja Abstract PDF

Review Articles

• 'Inception and Philosophy: Ideas To Die For' by Martin Rosenstock Abstract PDF
• 'Curious Visions of Modernity. Enchantment, Magic, and the Sacred' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF

Image [&] Narrative, Vol 12, No 4 (2011): Introduction to The Story of Things: reading narrative in the visual (part 2)

Thematic Cluster

• 'Introduction' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF 
• 'Rephrased, Relocated, Repainted: visual anachronism as a narrative device' by Gyöngyvér Horváth Abstract PDF
• 'Lost Children, the Moors & Evil Monsters: the photographic story of the Moors murders' by Helen Pleasance Abstract PDF
• 'Read You Like A Book: Time and Relative Dimensions in Storytelling' by Mike Nicholson Abstract PDF
• 'The Pre-Narrative Monstrosity of Images: how images demand narrative' by William Brown Abstract PDF
• 'Towards Ephemeral Narrative' by Gavin Parry, Jacqueline Butler Abstract PDF

Various Articles

• 'Portrait of the Opportunist as Circus Acrobat: Félicien Champsaur's Entrée de clowns' by Jennifer Forrest Abstract PDF
• 'Depardon, le DATAR et le paysage' by Raphaële Bertho Abstract PDF
• 'Historicising achronism. Some notes on the idea of art without history in David Carrier's The Aesthetics of Comics' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF

Review Articles

• 'Compte rendu de Myriam Watthee-Delmotte, Littérature et ritualité. Enjeux du rite dans la littérature française contemporaine' by Laurence van Nuijs Abstract PDF

 Image [&] Narrative, Vol 12, No 3 (2011): The Story of Things: reading narrative in the visual

Thematic Cluster

• 'Introduction' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF
• 'Relating the Story of Things' by Patricia Allmer Abstract PDF
• 'Scrapbook (a visual essay)' by Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller Abstract PDF
• 'Seeing the Past/Reading the Past' by Karen Bassi Abstract PDF
• 'Ephemeral Art: Telling Stories to the Dead' by Mary O’Neill Abstract PDF
• 'European Locations Dreamed with a Limited Imagination' by Samantha Donnelly Abstract PDF

Various Articles

• 'Belgian Photography: Towards a Minor Photography' by Jan Baetens, Hilde Van Gelder, Mieke Bleyen Abstract PDF
• 'The surrealist book as a cross-border space: The experimentations of Lise Deharme and Gisèle Prassinos' by Andrea Oberhuber Abstract PDF
• 'The Power of Tableaux Vivants in Zola: The Underside of the Image' by Arnaud Rykner Abstract PDF
• 'Spitting Image and Pre-Televisual Political Satire: Graphics and Puppets to Screens' by Kiene Brillenburg Abstract PDF

Review Articles

• 'Sarah Sepulchre, dir. Décoder les séries télévisées' by Jan Baetens Abstract PDF

All That Film Pastiche Allows: Fifty+ Online Studies

All That Pastiche Allows by Catherine Grant

"[Pastiche] can, at its best, allow us to feel our connection to the affective frameworks, the structures of feeling, past and present, that we inherit and pass on. That is to say, it can enable us to know ourselves affectively as historical beings."
Richard Dyer, Pastiche (London and New York: Routledge, 2007)

Film Studies For Free today presents a whole host of links to studies of cinematic pastiche. It begins with the above video -- the latest in FSFF's experiments in videographic comparison -- which is designed to afford its viewers a space for real-time co-contemplation of the opening titles sequences of All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955) and its 'pastiche' Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002).

• Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, The Price of Heaven: Remaking Politics in All That Heaven Allows, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and Far From Heaven', in The Ethnic Turn: Studies in Political Cinema from Brazil and the United States, 1960-2002, PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2009 (scroll to p. 194)
• Deborah Allison, 'Novelty title sequences and self-reflexivity in classical Hollywood cinema', Screening the Past, 20, 2006
• Lee Barron, 'Droogs, electro-voodoo and kyborgs: pastiche, postmodernism and Kylie Minogue live', Nebula, 2009  
• Tilman Baumgärtel, 'Imitation, Indigenization, Assimilation? No, Globalization!: The Cinema of Bobby Suarez', Asia Culture Forum, 2006
• Katherine Biber, 'The Threshold Moment: Masculinity at Home and on the Road in Australian Cinema', Limina, Vol. 7, 2001
• Norman Bryson, 'Todd Haynes's Poison and Queer Cinema', Invisible Culture - An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture Issue 1, Winter 1999
• Cüneyt Çakirlar, 'Cinephilic Bodies: Todd Haynes's Cinema of Queer Pastiche', KÜLT: A Journal of Cultural Studies 1:1, April 2011
• Brigid Cherry, 'From Cult to Subculture: Re­imaginings of Cult Films in Alternative Music Video' Scope, 15, 2010
• Simon Chia-rong Wu, 'Gender Pastiche: Thai Queerness in Beautiful Boxer', Cultural Studies Monthly, 78, 2008
•  E. Anna Claydon, 'British South Asian Cinema and Identity II:'When did Mr Collins become the 'Ugly American'? Representing America in the films of Gurinder Chadha'', South Asian Cultural Studies, 2009, 2 (2)
• Amelia DeFalco, 'A Double-Edged Longing: Nostalgia, Melodrama, and Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven,' Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, No. 5
• Cynthia Duncan, 'Reading Angeles Mastretta's Arráncame la vida through the Lens of Mexico's Golden Age of Cinema', Rocky Mountain Review, 63.2, 1997
  
• Richard Dyer, 'Tales of Plagiarism And Pastiche', Nino Rota: Music, Film and Feeling (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2010)  (27 free pages) Book info. 
• Darren Elliott, 'Queering the Cult of Carrie: Appropriations of a Horror Icon in Charles Lum's Indelible', Scope, 15, 2010
• Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood(Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
• Thomas Elsaesser, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
• Laura E. Felschow, Todd Haynes: the Public, the Private, and the Performative, PhD Thesis, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, February 1, 2009 
• T Ferrero-Regis, 'Cinema On Cinema: Self-reflexive Memories in Recent Italian History Films', transformationsjournal.org, Issue 3, 2002 
• Lucy Fischer, 'Modernity and Postmaternity: High Heels and Imitation of Life', in Horton, Andrew Horton (ed.), Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)  
• Caryl Flynn,The New German Cinema: Music, History, and the Matter of Style. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004
• Catherine Grant, 'In authenticity: Douglas Sirk and the Sirkian Melodrama', Film Studies For Free, September 21, 2010
• Catherine Grant, 'On Todd Haynes: Happy Independence Day!', Film Studies For Free, July 4, 2010 
• Catherine Grant, New Todd Haynes' Masterclass', Film Studies For Free, November 27, 2011
• Catherine Grant, 'Storytelling sans frontières? On Adaptation, Remaking, Intertextuality, and Transmediality', Film Studies For Free, November 21, 2009
• Val Hill, 'Postmodernism and cinema', in S. Sim (ed.), The Routledge companion to postmodernism (Lndon: Routledge, 2000)
• Dom Holdaway, 'Da fatti realmente accaduti: Performing History in Contemporary Italian Cinema', New Readings 11 (2011)
• Marlie Centawer Huisman, ' Representations of Swinging London in 1960s British Cinema: Blowup (1966), Smashing Time (1967) and Performance (1970)', MA Thesis, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, May 2011
• Kate Ince, 'Francois Ozon's cinema of desire', in Ince (ed.), Five Directors: Auteurism from Assayas to Ozon (Manchester University Press, 2008)
• Shen Jiang, Nostalgia in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (1993-2008): A Reflection of China's Socio-Cultural Postmodernity, PhD Thesis, University of Canterbury, 2010
• Lynne Joyrich, 'Written on the Screen: Mediation and Immersion in Far from Heaven', originally published in Camera Obscura, 54, Volume 18, Number, 2003
• Jordan Lavender-Smith, 'Irony Inc.: Parodic-Doc Horror and The Blair Witch Project', Scope, 15, 2010
• James MacDowell, 'Beneath the Surface of Things: Interpretation and Far From Heaven', Offscreen Journal, Volume 10, Issue 5 (May 31, 2006)
• Norimasa Morita, 'Avant-garde, Pastiche, and Media Crossing: Films of Terayama Shūji', Waseda Global Forum No. 3, 2006
• Chi Hyun Park, Orientalism in U. S. Cyberpunk Cinema from Blade Runner to The Matrix, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, May 2004
• Jack Post, 'The Ambiguity of Weeping. Baroque and Mannerist Discourses in Haynes’ Far from Heaven and Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows', Image and Narrative, 13.2, 2012 
• James Ricci, Attractions and Negotiations of Film Noir in American Cinema and Culture, PhD Thesis, University of South Florida, April, 2008
• Niall Richardson, 'Poison in the Sirkian System: The Political Agenda of Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven', Scope, Issue 6, October 2006
• Timothy Robinson, 'Cultural Value in Historical Pastiche: Reclaiming the Past as Modern ‘Parody’ and Postmodern ‘Pastiche’ in The Hours and Marie Antoinette', Honors Thesis, The College of William and Mary, 2008
• Richard Rushton, 'Douglas Sirk’s Theatres of Imitation', Screening the Past, Issue 21, 2007
• Rebecca Scherr, '(Not) queering “white vision” in Far from Heaven and Transamerica', Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008 
• Robert Stam, 'Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Garbage: the Case of Brazilian Cinema', E.I.A.L. ESTUDIOS INTERDISCIPLINARIOS DE AMERICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE, Vol. 9, No. 1, enero-junio 1998 (Cultura visual en América Latina, Editor invitado: John Mraz)
• Sunny Stalter, 'Down With Love/Far From Heaven', Scope, May 2004  
• Will Straw, 'Mannerism in Recent Cinema', Cultural Studies, 1987
• Margaret M. Toscano, 'Homer Meets the Coen Brothers: Memory as Artistic Pastiche in O Brother, Where Art Thou?', Film and History, Volume 39.2, Fall 2009
• Michael Töteberg, 'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul: All That Fassbinder Allows', The Criterion Collection, June 23, 2003
• Mary Traester, 'Hysteria and Ruin: Feminine Immobility And the Problem of Representation in Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven', COLT Symposium, April 15, 2008 
• Keith Uhlich, 'Todd Haynes', Senses of Cinema, July 2002
• Tony Veale, and M. T. Keane (1997). A Computational Treatment of Metaphoric Blends with Special Regard to Cinematic "Borrowing", in the proceedings of Mind II: Computational Models of Creative Cognition, Dublin, Ireland, 1997
• Sharon Willis, 'Politics of Disappointment: Todd Haynes Rewrites Douglas Sirk', originally published in Camera Obscura, 54, Volume 18, Number, 2003 
• Chris Wisniewski, 'Far from Heaven', Reverse Shot, - Proposition 24: Defining a New Queer Cinema', 2009
• Jonathan Wright, '[Review of] Re-remembering History in Contemporary Film: Pam Cook (2005) Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema', Film-Philosophy, 10.1, 2006
• Neelam Sidhar Wright, Bollywood eclipsed : the postmodern aesthetics, scholarly appeal, and remaking of contemporary popular Indian cinema. PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2010
• Neelam Sidhar Wright, '"Tom Cruise? Tarantino? E.T.? ...Indian!": Innovation through Imitation in the Cross-cultural Bollywood Remake', Scope, 15, 2010
• Rie Yamasaki, 'The films of Mitani Kōki: Intertextuality and comedy in contemporary Japanese cinema', New Voices, Volume 4, January 2011

The "Godard Is" Issue of the new VERTIGO

Image from Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-99)

Film Studies For Free had a nagging doubt that it was omitting something BIG from its recent entry of links to Godard studies. And, boy, it was!

It really should have waited....

Some time back, the very kind people at the great Close Up film centre were in touch to announce their relaunch of excellent film magazine Vertigo as an online publication.

The (just published) reboot issue -- Godard Is. -- is astonishingly, mouth-wateringly good! The luscious links are below.

A très contrite FSFF has added the link to Vertigo to its permanent listing of online Film Studies journals.

Close Up Films is on Facebook and Twitter. Follow them. Like them. Thank you.


VERTIGO, Issue 30 | Spring 2012: Godard Is.

• EDITORIAL: A Double Bind By Damien Sanville

Contents

• Jean-Luc Godard: Vivre sa Vie By Frieda Grafe
• The Interventions of Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker into Contemporary Visual Art By David Brancaleone
• “Elpenor, Unburied”: Ezra Pound, Jean-Luc Godard And the Descent of Dwelling By Corin Depper
• King Lear By James Norton
• "I am playing leapfrog with myself" By Jürgen E. Müller
• Scénario du Film Passion: Writing Video at the End of Cinema By Duncan White
• Entering the Desert: The Book of Film Socialisme by By James S. Williams
• Godard in the Gallery: Story of a Ruination By Adrian Martin
• "Tensional Differences": The Anxiety of Re-Mediation in Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave Films By Ágnes Pethő
• For a Reconsideration of Soft and Hard By Jerry White
• It's Not Blood, It's Red: Colour(s) of Jean-Luc Godard By Robert Barry
• A Photograph and a Camera: Two Objects in Film Socialisme By Roland-François Lack

From the Archive

• An Old Place By Cyril Neyrat

The Road to Digital - New AUP eBooks on Film Archives and Mobile Screens and a Video Lecture on Digital Cinematic Attractions

• Digital Cinema Essay-Film-Lecture (for Film History and Criticism, University of Roehampton, 29 March 2012) by William Brown
• Films mentioned in William Brown's essay-film-lecture, above: Arabesque (John Whitney, USA, 1975); TRON (Steven Lisberger, USA, 1982); Terminator 2: Judgement Day (James Cameron, USA, 1991); Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, USA, 1993); Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, USA, 1994); The Incredibles (Brad Bird, USA, 2004); A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France/USA, 2004); Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, Mexico/USA, 2008); Day Watch (Timur Bekmambetov, Russia, 2006); The Host (Joon-ho Bong, South Korea, 2006); Panic Attack! (Fede Alvarez, Uruguay, 2009); O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen, UK/USA, 2000); Making Of O Brother, Where Art Thou?; 300 (Zack Snyder, USA, 2006); Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis, USA, 2007); Singin' in the Rain Golf GTI Advert (Ne-o, 2005); Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, USA, 2008); Fight Club (David Fincher, USA, 1999); War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, USA, 2006); Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, USA, 2002); Avatar (James Cameron, USA, 2009); The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, USA, 2004); The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, USA, 1999); Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez, USA, 2007); The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, USA/New Zealand, 2003)
• Academic texts mentioned in the above lecture: Bordwell, David (2002). ‘Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film’, Film Quarterly, 55:3 (Spring), pp. 16-28; Brown, William (2009). ‘Man Without a Movie Camera – Movies Without Men: Towards a Posthumanist Cinema?’ in Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies (ed. Warren Buckland), Abingdon/New York: Routledge/AFI, pp. 66-85;  Buckland, Warren (2006). Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster, London: Continuum; Elsaesser, Thomas, and Warren Buckland (2002). Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis, London: Arnold; Gunning, Tom (1986). ‘The Cinema of Attraction, Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde’, Wide Angle, 8:3-4, pp. 63-70; Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Minnis, Stuart (1998). ‘Digitalisation and the Instrumentalist Approach to the Photographic Image,’ Iris, 25, pp. 49-59; Prince, Stephen (1996). ‘True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory,’ Film Quarterly, 49:3 (Spring), pp. 27-37; Wood, Aylish (2002). ‘Timespaces in spectacular cinema: crossing the great divide between spectacle versus narrative,’ Screen, 43:4, pp. 370-386

 

Film Studies For Free presents a delightfully digital trove of film studies treasure today. Above, a fabulously illustrated, highly informative, and very wide-ranging, first year university lecture on Digital Cinema by University of Roehampton film scholar (and filmmaker) William Brown.  

 

And, below, links to two wonderful, openly accessible, online "digital film studies" books published by Amsterdam University Press, the best academic publisher ever, in FSFF's admittedly, somewhat biased view: Giovanna Fossati's 2009 From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition; and, just published, Nanna Verhoeff's 2012 Mobile Screens The Visual Regime of Navigation.  

 

Both have been added to FSFF's continuously updated list of openly accessible film studies books.

• Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition (Amsterdam University Press: Amsterdam, 2009) Open Access PDF and To Purchase

Film is in a state of rapid change, with the transition from analog to digital profoundly affecting not just filmmaking and distribution, but also the theoretical conceptualization of the medium of film and the practice of film archiving. New forms of digital archives are being developed that make use of participatory media to provide a more open form of access than any traditional archive has offered before. Film archives are thus faced with new questions and challenges. From Grain to Pixel attempts to bridge the fields of film archiving and academic research, by addressing the discourse on film ontology and analysing how it affects the role of film archives. Fossati proposes a new theoretization of film archival practice as the starting point for a renewed dialogue between film scholars and film archivists.

• Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements 9
• Framing Film (in Transition): an Introduction    13

• part one practice and theory of (archival) film

• 1    Film Practice in Transition    33 
• 2    Theorizing Archival Film    103

• part two theorizing (archival) practice

• 3    Film Archival Field in Transition    149
• 4    Restoration Case Studies: Theorizing Archival Practice    211
• A New Mindset for (Archival) Film in Transition: a Conclusion    255 
• Notes 261 Glossary of Technical Terms    285 List of Illustrations    291 Filmography 293 Bibliography 297 Index 311

• Nanna Verhoeff, Mobile Screens The Visual Regime of Navigation (Amsterdam University Press: Amsterdam 2012) Open Access PDF and To Purchase

"Nanna Verhoeff’s new book is a must for anybody interested in visual culture and media theory. It offers a rich and stimulating theoretical account of the central dimension of our contemporary existence – interfacing and navigating both data and physical world through a variety of screens (game consoles, mobile phones, car interfaces, GPS devices, etc.) In the process of exploring these new screen practices, Verhoeff offers fresh perspectives on many of the key questions in media and new media studies as well as a number of new original theoretical concepts. As the first theoretical manual for the society of mobile screens, this book will become an essential reference for all future investigations of our mobile screen condition". – Lev Manovich

• Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements    9
• List of Illustrations    11
  Introduction    13

• 1. Panoramic Complex    27 Building Visions    28 Panoramic Desire    32 Movement in the Panorama    39 Modes of Viewing    42 The Gaze in Motion    44 A Panoramic Complex    46 The Windshield as Screen    48

• 2. Self-Reflection    51 The Point of Self-Reflection    51 Meanings of the Screen    56 Spatial Attractions and Visual Deixis    57 Navigating the Screen    65 Navigation as Narration    68 Boundary-Crossings    70

• 3. Theoretical Consoles    73 The Status of the Gadget: The Case of Nintendo DS    73 Portrait of the Gadget as a Theoretical Console    77 Touch Screen: Dirty Windows    82 Mobile Screen: Carrying, Sharing, Transporting    89 Double Screen: Split, Insert, Map    92 Gadgetivity    95

• 4. Urban Screens    99 Places of Transit    99 Screenspace    104 Urban Transformation    107 Screen Practices    114 Installation    116 Programming Hybridity    124 Responsive Presence    129

• 5. Performative Cartography Mobile Dispositif Contesting Cartography Performative Cartography Cartographic Interface Tagging, Plotting, Stitching Layering in Augmented Reality Haptic Engagement

• Epilogue: You Are Here!

• Notes Bibliography Index of Names and Titles Index of Terms

On Liberation Cinema and Raymundo Gleyser

Raymundo (2003) by Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina

This is a documentary film about the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer, Argentine filmmaker, kidnapped and murdered by that country’s military dictatorship in 1976.

Through Raymundo’s life, we follow the story of Latin American revolutionary cinema and the liberation struggles of the 60’s and 70’s. Raymundo was one of the major architects of the militant cinema, yet after his  "disappearance" he fell into oblivion.

It is essential that the new generation rediscovers his life and works which are a source of inspiration today more than ever. This documentary will bring back what the CIA and the Latin American dictatorships couldn’t destroy: the memory, the ideals and the courage to tell the truth.

We worked during four years on the research, recovery of archives and editing of the film, getting the support of Jan Vrijman Fund (IDFA - Netherlands), Fondation Altercine (Canada), and National Endowment of the Arts (Argentine). [Note by Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina; hyperlinks added by Film Studies For Free]

Film Studies For Free is delighted to present today a wonderful, full-length documentary about revolutionary Latin American cinema. It is a moving and hugely informative film about the inspirational life and filmmaking of Raymundo Gleyser, founder of the Cine de la Base movement. The Google translation of Spanish-language Wikipedia page about Gleyser may be read here. 

There's very little written about Gleyser in English, so this subtitled version of Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina's film is an incredibly valuable resource. Thanks so much to them for making it freely watchable online. A marvellous work of generosity in a number of ways. You can read a little about the documentary here.

Another, must-see film by Arduito and Molina that this filmmaking couple has just made available online for free, in an, as yet, unsubtitled version, is Nazión (2011) about the origins of the Argentine military dictatorship.

Below, FSFF has linked to its previous, related, entries of links to studies of Latin American and other radical and revolutionary cinema, together with some relevant full-length films viewable online. 

• Catherine Grant, 'Classic Latin American film studies in memory of Mario Benedetti', Film Studies For Free, May 19, 2000
• Catherine Grant, 'Studies of 'Third Cinema' and anti-Eurocentric film culture', Film Studies For Free, August 10, 2009
• Catherine Grant, 'On Popular Memory and Third Cinema: the work of Teshome Gabriel', Film Studies For Free, June 18, 2010
• Catherine Grant, "Roots of Third Cinema" and other Michael Chanan films and videos online', Film Studies For Free, August 3, 2010
• Catherine Grant, 'Obstinate Battles for Documentary Memory: Patricio Guzmán Resources Online', Film Studies For Free, November 27, 2009
• Catherine Grant, "Making films anyhow": On Glauber Rocha's DIY cinema', Film Studies For Free, April 1 2010
• Catherine Grant, 'Peruvian Cinema (in the age of transnational film finance)', Film Studies For Free, October 29, 2009

• Hour of the Furnaces: Notes and Testimony on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation. Part 1 Neocolonialism and Violence
• Hour of the Furnaces: Notes and Testimony on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation. Part 2: Act for Liberation
• Hour of the Furnaces: Notes and Testimony on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation. Part 3: Violence and Liberation

Godardian Greatness Galore!

Updated April 11, 2012

Godardloop, a multi-part video essay on the films of Jean-Luc Godard. Produced by Michael Baute and edited by Bettina Blickwede, this video explores a treasure trove of imagery found in dozens of Godard’s features and shorts, grouping them among several distinct themes. 47 films spanning 50 years of filmmaking are transformed into a stream of images that attest to an inimitable talent: an artist who can transform the world simply by the way he looks at it through his camera. Learn more and watch more Fandor videos 

Film Studies For Free catches up with some great, openly accessible or viewable, Godardian items, above and below, that have been circulating the interwebs for a little while now, together with some that haven't been!

• The most exciting news of all: Canadian publisher, and very good egg, Caboose has announced a release date of September 2012 for the English translation of Jean-Luc Godard’s Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television. Until then you can... 

• Read a free excerpt from Michael Witt’s essay “Archaeology of Histoire(s) du cinéma” about the talks by Godard that were transcribed and translated for this book.
• Read a free chapter (uncorrected page proofs) on the film Masculin Féminin (chapter 8 of 14). 
• Check out other great developments at Caboose (FSFF will cover some more in some upcoming posts) 

• Update: Then there is the (actually) equally (if not more) exciting news of the "Godard Is" Issue of the relaunched VERTIGO magazine with great new articles and essays on the French director's work by Adrian Martin, James S. Williams, Roland-François Lack and numerous stellar others.

• Laure Astourian, 'Bridging Fiction and Documentary in Godard's Notre Musique', Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, 21.2, 2008

• Michael Atkinson, 'The World According to God: The strange truths of Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma', Moving Image Source, December 12, 2011

• Samuel Bréan, 'godard english cannes: The Reception of Film Socialisme‘s “Navajo English” Subtitles', Senses of Cinema, issue 60, 2011

• Ryszard Dabek, 'Jean-Luc Godard: The Cinema in Doubt', M/C Journal, Vol. 14.1, 2011

• Stephen Forcer, 'Word games and space invaders: play, form and philosophy in Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville's Numéro deux (1975)', originally in Studies in French Cinema, 5: 2 (2005)

• Jehanne-Marie Gavarini, 'In the Still of the Museum: Jean-Luc Godard's Sixty-Year Voyage', Postmodern Culture, 17.1, 2006

• Catherine Grant, 'Home Movies: The Curious Cinematic Collaboration of Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard', pre-print of chapter in For Ever Godard (eds) Temple, Williams, Witt (London: Black Dog Press, 2004)

• Catherine Grant, '25 great Godard gifts!', Film Studies For Free, December 5, 2010

• Catherine Grant, On Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)', Film Studies For Free, November 20, 2010

• Catherine Grant, 'For Ever Godard', Film Studies For Free, September 6, 2008

• Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XVIII, No 2 (2010): Special Issue on Godard and Philosophy
• 'Philosophy as a Kind of Cinema: Introducing Godard and Philosophy' by John E. Drabinski
• 'Schizoanalyzing Souls: Godard, Deleuze, and the Mystical Line of Flight' by David Sterritt
  
• 'Happiness is Not Fun: Godard, the 20th Century, and Badiou' by Michael Walsh
• 'The Audible Life of the Image' by David Wills
• 'Shot and Counter-shot: Presence, Obscurity, and the Breakdown of Discourse in Godard’s Notre Musique' by Burlin Barr
• 'Pedagogy of the Written Image' by Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
• 'Modernism as a Misnomer: Godard's Archeology of the Image' by Gabriel Rockhill

• Anuja Madan, 'The Language of Emotion in Godard's Films', Cineaction, 80, 2010

• Daniel Morgan, ‘No Trickery with Montage’: On Reading a Sequence in Godard’s Pierrot le fou', Film Studies, Issue 5, Winter 2004

• Richard Morris, '"To Realise the Ideal": Miscellaneous Remarks on Godard's Conceptual Processes Apropos of Sauve qui peut (la vie)', Film Studies, Vol. 5, Winter 2004

• Richard Neer, 'Godard Counts', Academia.edu

• Glen W. Norton's Cinema = Godard = Cinema website

• Des O'Rawe, 'The Fraternity of Metaphors: Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme', Kinema, Fall 2010

• Ágnes Pethő, Jean-Luc Godard's Passages from the Photographic to the Post-Cinematic.Images in between Intermediality and Convergence, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film and Media Studies, 2011, vol.4.

• Ágnes Pethő, 'Introduction', Cinema and Intermediality: The Passion for the In-Between (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)

• David Phelps, 'Film Socialisme Annotated: A guided tour through Jean-Luc Godard's most allusive film', Moving Image Source, June 7, 2011

• Donald Reid, 'What We Learn We Teach Ourselves: Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme', N+1, Issue 2, March 16, 2012

• Gabriel Rockhill, Modernism as a Misnomer: Godard’s Archeology of the Image', Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XVIII, No 2 (2010) pp 107-129. 

• Sauve qui peut la vie/Every Man For Himself Resource Archive

• Libby Saxton, 'Passion, Energy and Matter: Godard's Gesture', Part of the Cambridge Screen Media Group series, 2011  

• David Wills, 'Introduction', Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)