KOSMORAMA! Great online resources from the Danish Film Institute

Short films from a small nation - marketing postwar Denmark (13 Nov 2014)

Fifty years before Borgen hit British TV screens, Danish directors were making films for British audiences. Driven by the need to market Danish produce and culture abroad after World War II, the government funded hundreds of short films in many languages, encompassing topics from pensions to bacon to handicrafts.

As the Spring break in the UK beckons, Film Studies For Free sparks back into life with some shorter entries.

The first of these results from some correspondence with Claire Thomson of University College London (who features in the excellent videoed talk, embedded above). Dr Thomson very kindly wrote to FSFF to point it in the direction of the following two online resources from the Danish Film Institute. 

The Danish film journal Kosmorama was established in 1954, and since 2011 has been publishing 4-5 issues a year in online open access format, from its base at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen. Most of Kosmorama’s articles are peer-reviewed, but space is also reserved for writing accessible to a wide audience of cinephiles. 

The journal also tries to strike a balance between publishing in English for a global audience, and catering for Scandinavian readers, with articles in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. A clever feature of Kosmorama is its use of embedded film clips, images and documentation to illustrate arguments and analyses. The site also hosts a research blog, which is a place to share news on recent publications and upcoming workshops, lectures, conferences and call for papers, and readers can sign up to a newsletter so as not to miss a single issue. 

Recent content in English includes articles on media in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, metafiction in House of Cards, state-sponsored short films, Mormonism in early Danish cinema, and a theme issue on Body Language in the Moving Image. Article submissions of around 5000 words on any aspect of cinema and television are welcome, and information for potential contributors can be found via Kosmorama’s English homepage: http://www.kosmorama.org/ServiceMenu/05-English.aspx  

The Danish Film Institute is also home to an extensive web resource on the auteur Carl Th. Dreyer.  Carl Th. Dreyer: The Man and His Work combines a growing collection of essays on Dreyer’s life, work and style with an extensively annotated filmography, film clips, stills, posters, and a searchable database of the Dreyer Archive. Whether you want to read about aspects of Dreyer’s style or filmmaking practice, research his correspondence, watch his short films, or find out what  Lars von Trier inherited from Dreyer (answer: some stylistic tricks, and a tailor-made tuxedo), do visit the site here: http://english.carlthdreyer.dk/

Thanks very much to Dr Thomson for these. FSFF readers will be able to find lots of articles online at Kosmorama, but the ones in the latest issue have been listed and are linked to below.

ARTICLES / KOSMORAMA #258 – BODY LANGUAGE IN THE MOVING IMAGE

• BODY LANGUAGE AND MEDIA CONTEXT Lennard Højbjerg
• FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES Casper Tybjerg
• EXPRESSING SUPPRESSION Henry Bacon
• MAKING LOVE DETUMESCENTLY Mariah Larsson
• MOVIE STARS IN THE FLESH Helle Kannik Haastrup

Ingmar Bergman Studies

Updated September 19, 2011

Film Studies For Free brings you, below, a very long list indeed of links to online and openly accessible studies of the work of Ingmar Bergman. The list was especially inspired by hearing of the first of the three video studies above, via Adrian Martin, Corey Creekmur and Christa Fuller. This news led to the subsequent discovery of the rest of this amazing videographic trilogy on Bergman's films by Jonas Moberg. Update: FSFF has learned that these videos were devised by Thomas Elsaesser, during his year as Ingmar Bergman Professor at Stockholm University in 2007 in conjunction with the project "Ingmar Bergman in the Museum" (a summary of which is linked to below). Initially, seven of these videos were planned, to go with each of the chapters in the book Film Theory - An Introduction through the Senses. The research for all seven Bergman Senses Videos was carried out by Elsaesser, together with Anne Bachmann, a PhD student at Stockholm University, and Jonas Moberg then edited three of them. Sadly, time ran out on the project and the remaining four planned videos weren't completed.

Bergman scholars and fans should also know about Ingmar Bergman: Face to Face, the beautiful website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which showcases and links to numerous further resources. Sight and Sound has also just featured a fascinating essay by Lena Bergman on her father's viewing habits in his unique private cinema, a converted barn on Fårö, the Baltic island where he lived until his death in 2007. This year’s Bergman Week festival takes place in the cinema on Fårö from 28 June to 3 July. Television viewers in the UK might, in addition, like to hear that Film4 will show 16 Ingmar Bergman films in a series beginning next week. Yay!

If FSFF says so itself, the below list is probably one of its best ever (do scroll right down for all the videos). It was certainly one of the most rewarding to compile... It hopes you will find it in equal parts enjoyable and useful.

• 'Ingmar Bergman: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library'
• Michael Bird, 'Music as Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman', Kinema, Spring, 1996
• Pedro Blas Gonzalez, 'Smiles of a Summer Night', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, 'Review: Irving Singer (2007) Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on his Creativity. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010
• Michael Brashinsky, 'The Spring, Defiled: Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring and Wes Craven's Last House on the Left', Play it Again, Sam, ed. by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
• Amir Cohen-Shalev, 'Beyond Reconciliation: Filial Relationship as a Lifelong Developmental Theme in Bergman’s Films', Style: Volume 43, No. 1, Spring 2009
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Ingmar Bergman – Person and Persona: The Mountain of Modern Cinema on the Road to Morocco', European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005 - Scroll to p. 133 in PDF)
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Ingmar Bergman in the museum? Thresholds, limits, conditions of possibility', Journal of AESTHETICS and CULTURE Vol. 1, 2009
• Hamish Ford, 'Ingmar Bergman', Senses of Cinema, 23, 2002
• Hamish Ford, 'The Silence', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Ed Gallafent, 'Two Views Over Water: Action and Absorption in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries(1957)', in James Walters and Tom Brown (eds), Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory (2010)[scroll down in large PDF]
• Daniel Garrett, 'Dark Nights of the Soul: Themes in Irving Singer’s book Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Acts of Love Can Redeem Loneliness', Offscreen, December 31, 2010
• Daniel Garrett, 'Wild Strawberries: A Brief Note about Ingmar Bergman and Pauline Kael', Offscreen, 9.9, September 30, 2005
• Sarah W. Gilmartin , 'The Masks of Performance: Art’s Aesthetic and Social Representation in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1983)', Inter-Disciplinary.net, 1st Global Conference (2007)
• Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, 'The Fairy-Tale Theatre: Reception and Authorship at the Margins of the Ingmar Bergman Archive', Archives and Aueturs Conference, Stirling University, September 2009
• Ananya Ghoshal, '“Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t thought about death” - Ingmar Bergman', in Mortality, Dying and Death: Global Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by T. Chandler Haliburton and Caroline Edwards (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2008 - scroll to p. 338 in PDF)
• Erik Hedling, 'Shame: Ingmar Bergman’s Vietnam War', Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 2, pp. 245-259
• Erik Hedling,'[English Language review of] Birgitta Steene, Måndagar med Bergman: En svensk publik möter Ingmar Bergmans filmer. Stockholm: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 1996', TijdSchriftvoorSkandinavistiek, 1, 1999, pp. 174-179
• Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, 'Silence and Fury: Rape and The Virgin Spring', Screening the Past, 28, 2010
• Vreni Hockenjos, 'Strindberg through Bergman: A Case of Mutation', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1
• Poul Houe, 'Faces as Facts of Fiction', Scandinavian Canadian Studies/Etudes Scandinaves au Canada, 18, 2009
• Jesse Kalin, 'Preface', The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Jesse Kalin, 'Introduction: The Geography of the Soul', The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Ingmar Bergman, the biographical legend and the intermedialities of memory', Journal of AESTHETICS and CULTURE Vol. 2, 2010
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Everything Represents, Nothing Is": Some Relations Between Ingmar Bergman's Films and Theatre Productions', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 5.1
• Maaret Koskinen, 'From Short Story to Film to Autobiography: Bergman’s Intermedial Variations', Film International, January 14, 2011
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Ingmar Bergman', Swedish Institute, 2007
• Tarja Laine, 'Failed Tragedy and Traumatic Love in Ingmar Bergman’s Shame', in Kooijman, Jaap, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (eds), Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam University Press, 2008 - scroll to p. 60 in PDF)
• Marco Lanzagorta, 'Cries and Whispers', Senses of Cinema, 25, 2003 
• Kevin B. Lee, 'The Soul of the Megapixel: Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband and Scenes from a Marriage', Reverse Shot, June 9, 2008
• Rikard Loman, 'Bergman’s Vintersagan at the Royal Dramatic Theatre', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1
• Brian McIlroy, '[Review of] Steene, Birgitta. 2005. Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide', Scandinavian Canadian Studies/Etudes Scandinaves au Canada, 16, 2006
• Lloyd Michaels, 'Introduction', Ingmar Bergman's Persona (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 
• Karin Nykvist, 'Remembering and Creating Childhood in the Works of Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg', in Negotiating Childhoods, Edited by Lucy Hopkins, Mark Macleod & Wendy Turgeon (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2011)
• Darragh O’Donoghue, 'The Seventh Seal', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• John Orr, 'Camus and Carné Transformed: Bergman's The Silence vs. Antonioni's The Passenger', Film International, 3.5, 27, 2007
• S. Ruken Öztürk, 'Besieged and Liberated Woman in 'Art' Films: The Problem of Private Sphere', Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Dergisi, (hakemli dergi) 58 (2), 2003:153-176
• Arthur Rankin, 'The Child Archetype in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Thomas Redwood, '[Review of] Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Film and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick and Wong Kar-wai. New York: Lexington, 2007, Screening the Past, 23, 2008
• Daniel Ross, '[Review of works by Irving Singer]', Screening the Past, 25, 2009
• Steven Shaviro, 'Ingmar Bergman', The Pinocchio Theory, July 31, 2007
• Daniel Shaw, 'Woman as vampire: Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966)', Kinoeye, Vol 2, Issue 15, Oct. 2002
• Irving Singer, 'Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher' (video podcast), MIT World, November 2007 (embedded below)
• Murray Smith, '[Review of] Paisley Livingston, Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy', Notre Dame Philosophical Review, May 19, 2010
• Birgitt Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
• Birgitta Steene, 'The Transpositions of a Filmmaker: Ingmar Bergman at Home and Abroad', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, 20, no 1, 1999
• Birgitta Steene, 'The Sjöberg-Bergman Connection: Hets – Collaboration and Public Impact' TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1 
• Michael Stern. 'The Face as a Fingerprint: Mediation, Silence, and the Question of Identity in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona', Konturen, Vol. 3, 2010
• Sharon Lin Tay, 'On the Edges of the Authorial Voice: Liv Ullmann’s Faithless, Gendered Authorship, and Ingmar Bergman', Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practices (London: Palgrave, 2009) (excerpt)
• Egi Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
• Elsie Walker, 'An 'Incorrigible Music: Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata', Kinema, 2008
• Denise Ming-yueh Wang, 'Ingmar Bergman’s Appropriations of the Images of Death in The Seventh Seal', 제17권 1호 (2009): 41-62
• Thomas E. Wartenberg, 'Review of Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity', Notre Dame Philosophical reviews, May 23, 2008
• Lynn R. Wilkinson, 'Playful Performances: Ingmar Bergman’s Bildmakarna and Film Authorship', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 30 (2009), nr. 1
• Margareta Wirmark, 'Strindberg versus Bergman: The End of Spöksonaten', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1 
• Robin Wood, 'Call Me Ishmael [on Fanny and Alexander]', originally published in Canadian Forum, 41, 1983, republished in MOVIE, Issue 2, 2011 
• Rochelle Wright, '[Review of] Philip and Kersti French. Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället). London: BFI Film Classics, 1995. Pp. 77. And Margareta Wirmark. Smultronstället och dödens ekipage. Stockholm: Carlssons, 1998', TijdSchriftvoorSkandinavistiek, 20, 1999, nr. 1
• Rochelle Wright, '[Review of] Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Gender and Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman [Studies in Scandinavian Literature and Culture, eds. George C. Schoolfield and Robert E. Bjork], Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1  

Irving Singer, 'Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher' (video podcast), MIT World, November 2007

Liv Ullmann at the Bergman Week 2010, speaking about the filming of Face To Face with Ingmar Bergman. She talks about the relationship between a director and his actors, and specifically the scene when her character commits suicide in the film.

Wim Wenders talks about Ingmar Bergman

Agnes Varda talks about Bergman.

David Stratton talks about Ingmar Bergman.

Bergman Center interviews American director John Landis about Ingmar Bergman at Venice International Film Festival.

Bergman Center interviews French actor Jean-Marc Barr about Ingmar Bergman at Venice International Film Festival.

30+ articles from the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture

Frame grab from The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928). Read Bo Florin's article on this film

[Traditionally, aesthetics] has been based on national perspectives and contexts, as well as contained within the limits of specific disciplines. However, the changing society has made this focus all too narrow. Due to globalization, media and territories merge and move in new ways, where regional, national, international, and global perspectives increasingly integrate. New contexts and new aesthetic strategies are also created, and traditional boundaries and hierarchies become transgressed, for example, between high brow and popular culture, or between art and technology. Aesthetics as well as culture thus need to be discussed and interpreted across the disciplines, through different media, over territorial borders. Finally, this is also a strong argument for Open Access publishing: to constitute a global platform and an interface for interdisciplinary discourse—free for anybody to read. [from first JAC Editorial by Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Lars Gustaf Andersson and John Sundholm]

Film Studies For Free had been meaning to post something about the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture for quite a while. It's an online open access journal, hence one very much after this blog's's heart, with a high percentage of very good quality film-studies related articles that FSFF has frequently linked to on Twitter.

Today, JAC published an excellent dossier on Transnational Cultural Memory, an event which provided a wonderful prompt to gather together, in one place, links to everything that JAC has published to date. And below, that is just what you will find.

FSFF has also added JAC to its permanent listing of excellent, Open Access film and moving image studies journals. 

Vol. 1 (2009)

• Editorial by Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Lars Gustaf Andersson, John Sundholm  (PDF HTML XML)
• Sean Cubitt, Thinking filming thinking filming (PDF HTML XML)
• Thomas Elsaesser, Ingmar Bergman in the museum? Thresholds, limits, conditions of possibility (PDF HTML XML)
• Julia Creet, Calling on Witnesses: testimony and the deictic  (PDF HTML XML)
• Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Antichrist – Chaos Reigns: the event of violence and the haptic image in Lars von Trier’s film   (PDF HTML XML)
• Anu Koivunen, Confessions of a Free Woman: telling feminist stories in postfeminist media culture (PDF HTML XML)
• Tiina Rosenberg, On feminist activist aesthetics  (PDF HTML XML)
• Bo Florin, Confronting The Wind: a reading of a Hollywood film by Victor Sjöström (PDF HTML XML) 

Vol. 2 (2010)

• Editorial by Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Lars Gustaf Andersson, John Sundholm (PDF HTML XML) 
• Irina Aristarkhova, Hosting the animal: the art of Kathy High (PDF HTML XML)
• Maaret Koskinen, Ingmar Bergman, the biographical legend and the intermedialities of memory (PDF HTML XML)
• Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, Notes on metamodernism (PDF HTML XML)
• Anita Seppä, Globalisation and the arts: the rise of new democracy, or just another pretty suit for the old emperor? (PDF(high) PDF HTML XML)
• Tytti Soila, Passion at the threshold: Doctor Glas the flaneur in the films of Rune Carlstén and Mai Zetterling (PDF HTML XML)
• Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, Strategies of interactive art (PDF(high) PDF HTML XML)
• Michael Laurence Woods, What it is? A question on the derivation of musical meaning (PDF HTML XML)
• Matthew Mullane, The aesthetic ear: sound art, Jacques Rancière and the politics of listening (PDF HTML XML)
• Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Space, time, and the arts: rewriting the Laocoon (PDF HTML XML)
• Torkild Thanem, Louise Wallenberg, Buggering Freud and Deleuze: towards a queer theory of masochism (PDF HTML XML)

Vol 3 (2011)

• Lisbeth Söderqvist, Structuralism in architecture: a definition (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Per-Arne Bodin, The holy fool as a TV hero: about Pavel Lungin’s film The Island and the problem of authenticity (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Des O'Rawe, Towards a poetics of the cinematographic frame (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Erik van Ooijen, Cinematic shots and cuts: on the ethics and semiotics of real violence in film fiction (PDF HTML EBUB XML)

• Dossier on Transnational Cultural memory
• John Sundholm, Adrian Velicu, Introduction to the dossier on transnational cultural memory (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Astrid Erll, Traumatic pasts, literary afterlives, and transcultural memory: new directions of literary and media memory studies (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Steffi Hobuß, Aspects of memory acts: transnational cultural memory and ethics (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Adrian Velicu, Cultural memory between the national and the transnational (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• John Sundholm, Visions of transnational memory (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Julia Creet, Transnational archives: the Canadian case (PDF HTML EPUB XML)
• Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen, Transnational sense of place: cinematic scenes of Finnish war child memories (PDF HTML EPUB XML)