NECSUS Issue 5 on Traces: Kracauer, Carax, Farocki, Elsaesser, mobile interfaces, film sound and much more

Frame grab from Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2013). Read Saige Walton's article on this film "The beauty of the act: Figuring film and the delirious baroque in Holy Motors" in the Spring 2014 issue of NECSUS. Pt 1 of the LOLA
dossier of the film is here; pt 2 here.

Film Studies For Free had such a great time at the conference of the Network for European Cinema and Media Studies conference in Milan last week that it is a little delayed in bringing its readers news of the publication of the latest issue of this organisation's wonderful Open Access journal NECSUS. The great table of contents is given below.

More will be forthcoming from FSFF about the Milan conference in a few days (including the recording of a wonderful interview gathered there...). But one of the hottest news items from the conference is that video essayists Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López will develop and edit a new video essay section for NECSUS, to debut in the Autumn 2014 issue. More details about this very welcome development are given here.


Features:

• Siegfried Kracauer’s affinities by Thomas Elsaesser
• Mapping the rise of the iPhone: Between phones and mobile media by Ginette Verstraete
• Representations of Madrid in the (post-)transition to democracy by Vicente Rodriguez Ortega
• Empire is out there!?: The spirit of imperialism in the Pixar animated film ‘Up’ by Dietmar Meinel
• Representation or misrepresentation?: British media and Japanese popular culture by Perry Hinton

Special section: Traces

• The navigational gesture: Traces and tracings at the mobile touchscreen interface by Nanna Verhoeff and Heidi Rae Cooley
• Poetics and politics of the trace: Notes on surveillance practices through Harun Farocki’s work by Miriam De Rosa
• Webcams as cinematic medium: Creating chronotopes of the real by Paula Albuquerque
• Assembling traces, or the conservation of net art by Annet Dekker
• The Third Party Diary: Tracking the trackers on Dutch governmental websites by Lonneke van der Velden
• Microphysics of a rationalist utopia: Ruins, town plans, and the avant-garde documentary by Andrea Mariani
• The beauty of the act: Figuring film and the delirious baroque in ‘Holy Motors’ by Saige Walton
• Animated maps and the power of the trace by Giuseppe Fidotta
• Enhanced echoes: Digitisation and new perspectives on film sound by Jasper Aalbers

Book reviews (edited by Lavinia Brydon and Alena Strohmaier - NECS Publication Committee)

• Globalisation and television formats review by Jaap Kooijman
• Soundscapes, sound clash review by Nessa Johnston
• Shadow economies and digital disruption review by Chris Baumann
• The cinema of Béla Tarr: The circle closes review by Miklós Kiss
• Impossible dreams: Europe and love in cinema review by Fiona Handyside

Festival reviews (edited by Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist - Film Festival Research Network)

• Oberhausen: An interview with Lars Henrik Gass by Enrico Camporesi
• Brazil’s International Disability Film Festival Assim Vivemos review by Ana Gilbert
• Celebrating independence: 54th Thessaloniki International Film Festival review by Lydia Papadimitriou
• Initiating regional talents: 2013 Sarajevo Film Festival review by Ivan Velisavljević
• Past memories for a new future: 70th Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia review by Enrico Vannucci

Exhibition reviews:

• Fassbinder Frankfurt review by Senta Siewert
• The biennale as a device: 4th Athens Biennale review by Eva Fotiadi