On Cinematic Découpage

Opening paragraph from Timothy Barnard's new book Découpage (Montreal: caboose, 2014)

découpage
French term, untranslatable into English, for an EDITING “plan” of a (sometimes finished) film which is like a visual version of a “screenplay,” but not necessarily a “storyboard” or “shooting script” because these can’t include a precise conception of movement within and between shots. Most notably used by film theorist Noël Burch and director Robert Bresson. 

Peter Rist, 'Découpage' in Tim Barnard and Peter Rist 'Glossary of Film Terms', South American Cinema: A Critical Filmography 1915-1994, edited by Timothy Barnard and Peter Rist

Film Studies For Free is thrilled to present an entry on the concept of cinematic découpage to celebrate the online publication of the first half of the forthcoming volume on that topic in the Kino-Agora series (edited by Christian Keathley, author of some of the other works on découpage linked to below) published by the Canadian publisher caboose and written by Timothy Barnard. The full book will be published in Fall 2014. While you're visiting the caboose website, it's really worth having a good look around: this is one of the most generous of film publishers in offering free excerpts from its wonderful books.

FSFF will be back on Monday with a round up entry of open access goodies from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference on Seattle, at which [in]Transition, the new journal of videographic film and moving image studies was launched! So, if you have any items you'd like to share, please email them. Thanks!

REFRAME Seminar: "DÉCOUPAGE and Otto Preminger's CARMEN JONES" by Christian Keathley

The recording of a Film Studies research seminar given by Christian Keathley at the Centre for Visual Fields, University of Sussex, on December 4, 2013. For information about this video (and for an audio file version) please see here.

Keathley, Associate Professor of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College, USA, is the author of CINEPHILIA AND HISTORY, OR THE WIND IN THE TREES (Indiana University Press, 2006), and is currently working on a second book, THE MYSTERY OF OTTO PREMINGER (under contract to Indiana University Press). Professor Keathley’s research interest also focuses on the presentation of academic scholarship in a multimedia format, including video essays (see his Vimeo account here). Keathley is editor of caboose's kino-agora book series.

For links to numerous examples of Keathley's scholarly work online, including items he mentions in this talk, please see this earlier Film Studies For Free entry.

• Timothy Barnard, Découpage [online excerpt], Montreal: Caboose, 2014 

• 'The Art of Film Editing', Special Issue of P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998
• Lutz Bacher, 'Max Ophuls's Adaptation to and Subversion of Classical Hollywood Cinema and Their Effect on his European Filmmaking', Undercurrent | Fipresci, Issue 3, 2006
• Tim Barnard, '[Note on] Découpage', caboose [date unknown]
• Jean-Pierre Coursodon, 'Desire Roped In: Notes on the Fetishism of the Long Take in Rope', Rouge, 4, 2004
• Christian Keathley,  'Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of Découpage', MOVIE, 3, 2011
• Adrian Martin, 'The body has no head: corporeal figuration in Aldrich', Screening the Past, June 30, 2000  
• Girish Shambu, 'André Bazin & caboose', Girish, March 12, 2009
• Girish Shambu, 'A Cinema Haunted By Writing', Girish, May 3, 2009
• Donato Totaro, '“What is a Good Translation?” Bazin Revisited', Offscreen, February 29, 2009
  
• Jesús Urda, 'Baroque Glances at Society: the Appropriation of Decoupage, the Long Take and Depth of Field Photography in the Early Films by J.A. Bardem', Film Studies Postgraduate Forum, Trinity College Dublin, September, 2008