Now ONLINE! Jacques Rancière's Lecture on ‘Cinema and the Frontiers of Art’ at CFAC, University of Reading

Jacques Rancière Lecture on ‘Cinema and the Frontiers of Art’ at CFAC, University of Reading, May 2, 2014

Private Q & A Session with Jacques Rancière, preceding his Lecture on ‘Cinema and the Frontiers of Art’ at CFAC, University of Reading, May 2, 2014

The above videos provide the sole focus for a fairly self-explanatory -- and wonderful -- entry at Film Studies For Free today: they present the recording of a lecture and discussion on cinema by the hugely eminent French philosopher Professor Jacques Rancière at the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading, UK.

Rancière's abstract for his lecture, which took place on May 2, 2014, reads as follows:

Ars gratia artis, the three words written on the scroll surrounding the head of the roaring lion at the beginning of the MGM movies may sum up the singularity of cinema. Cinema has blurred in many ways the frontiers separating pure art from the activities of the everyday and the forms of popular performance and entertainment. By the same token, it may have questioned the very unity of what we call art. Through examples borrowed from the history of film and from the history of cinephilia I wish to examine some aspects of this subversion of the frontiers of art.

Jacques Rancière, born in Algiers (1940) is Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris VIII, where he taught Philosophy from 1969 to 2000, and visiting professor in several American universities. His work deals with emancipatory politics, aesthetics and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. His books translated into English include notably: The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991), Disagreement (1998) , The Politics of Aesthetics ( 2006) , The Future of the Image ( 2007), The Emancipated Spectator (2009), Proletarian Nights (2012) and Aisthesis (2013). He has authored three books dedicated to cinema (Film Fables, 2006; Bela Tarr. The Time after, 2013; The Intervals of Cinema, forthcoming, 2014)

Thanks to Professor Lúcia Nagib and the other faculty at CFAC for making this event happen and, especially, for making the recording accesible online for everyone to watch it. Rancière's lecture begins about fifteen minutes into the first video.

Thanks to Hoi Lun Law for the tip-off that these recordings had gone online. FSFF can't wait to watch them!

Emperor of the Senses: RIP Nagisa Oshima 1932-2013

Last updated January 22, 2013

Screen capture of a scene from 愛のコリーダ/Ai no Korīda/In the Realm of the Senses/L'Empire des sens (Nagisa Oshima, 1976)

Compelling tension in this way is my dramaturgy (doramatsurujii). I compel tension in everyone. It is fine to compel tension in one person, but to compel tension in a great number of people, to increase it by ten-fold, that kind of tension is, I think, what life (seimei) is about.

Nagisa Oshima in 1993. Cited by Isolde Standish, 'Night and Fog in Japan: Fifty Years On', Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 1.2, 2009

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear news of the death of one of the very greatest Japanese filmmakers Nagisa Oshima (大島 渚, Ōshima Nagisa). Links to tributes and to online studies of his work will continue to appear here over the next hours and days.

Online tributes

• David Hudson, 'DAILY | Nagisa Oshima, 1932 – 2013', Keyframe blog at Fandor, January 15, 2013
• Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 'NagisaOshima (1932-2013), a Tribute...', Film Studies For Free, January 22, 2013
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Sun Also Sets (in memory of Nagisa Oshima, March 31, 1932 — January 15, 2013) at JonathanRosenbaum.com, January 15, 2013
• Ronald Bergan, 'Nagisa Oshima Obituary', The Guardian, January 15, 2013 
• Dennis Lim, 'Nagisa Oshima, Iconoclastic Filmmaker, Dies at 80', New York Times, January 15, 2013 
• 'Nagisa Oshima', Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2013

Online studies

• James R. Alexander,'Obscenity, Pornography, and the Law in Japan:Reconsidering Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses', Asian-Pacific Law and Policy Journal, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (Winter 2003)
• Michael Atkinson, 'Be My Knife', Moving Image Source, 2008 
• Nöel Burch, To the distant observer: form and meaning in the Japanese cinema (University of Michigan Press, 1979)
• Case Study on "L'Empire Des Sens (In The Realm Of The Senses)", Students British Board of Film Classification
• Joshua M. Ferguson, 'Queer Japanese cinema : a rich and diverse cultural history’s challenge to hegemonic ideologies of gender and sexuality', MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010
  
• Freda Freiberg, 'The Unkindest Cut of All? Some Reflections on the Recent Cinematic Release of the Uncut Version of Nagisa Oshima's Ai no corrida', Senses of Cinema, Issue 12, Feb-Mar 2001
• Chris Fujiwara, 'The Struggle to Believe', Moving Image Source', 2008
• Andrew Grossman, 'Gohatto-or the End of Oshima Nagisa?', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 33, 2001 July  
• Oliver Hansen, 'Cruel Story of Youth', Midnight Eye, September 2012 
• Go Hirasawa, 'Underground Cinema and the Art Theatre Guild', Midnight Eye, August 2005 
• Hikari Hori, 'Representing a Woman’s Story: Explicit Film and the Efficacy of Censorship in Japan', Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts
• Alexander Jacoby, ''In the Realm of Oshima', Sight and Sound, September 2009 
• Nelson Kim, 'Nagisa Oshima', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
• Joshua Land, 'Criminal Minded', Moving Image Source, 2008
• G. C. Macnab, updated by Guo-Juin Hong , 'Nagisa Oshima', Filmreference.com (date unknown)
• Kate Moran, 'Gohatto (Taboo)', Scope, November 2003
• Michael R. (Mike) Mosher, 'A Visit to Ogawa Productions', Leonardo Digital Reviews, July 2005
• Rob Nelson, 'His Will on Film', Moving Image Source, 2008
• Rob Nelson, 'Forty Years Ago Today: Oshima in ‘68', Walker Magazine, 2008
• David Phelps, 'Oshima: Artists and Lovers, Take One (of Four)', MUBI Notebook,  December 2008 (Prologue, Take Two, Take Three, Take Four)  
• David Phelps, 'The Closed World: The Films of Shinoda Masahiro – Surface play and subterfuge in the movies of a modern classicist', Senses of Cinema, Issue 61, 2011
• James Quandt, 'In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshim', Walker Magazine, 2008
• Tony Rayns, ' A Samurai Among Farmers: Nagisa Oshima', Film Comment, September/October 2008
• Tony Rayns, 'Empire of Passion: Love’s Phantom', Criterion Film Essays, April 27, 2009 
• Donald Richie, 'In the Realm of the Senses: Some Notes on Oshima and Pornography', Criterion Film Essays, April 30, 2009
• Kari L. Shepardson, 'Fists, Youth, and Protest: Oshima Nagisa's Filmic Rebellion in 1960', MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, December 2002
• Isolde Standish, 'Night and Fog in Japan: Fifty Years On', Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 1.2, 2009 
• Philip Strick, 'Love, honour and obey: Film of the Month: Gohatto', Sight and Sound, August 2001
  
• Hai Leong Toh, 'Sex in Asian Cinema', Kinema, Fall 2000 

Also see Film Studies For Free's other, related entries on Japanese Cinema, Kazuo Hara and Japanese Documentary Film, Japanese cinema and animation, Satoshi Kon (1963-2010).

Chronicle of an Auteur: More Antonioni Goodness!

Frame grab from Cronaca di un amore / Story of a Love Affair (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950)

Film Studies For Free presents the second of its celebrations of the centenary of the birth of Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni. Below are embedded the video recordings of a number of unmissable talks at Antonioni and the Arts, an event held at Royal Holloway, University of London, in October to mark the anniversary. 

Thanks to Royal Holloway's School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures for hosting the talks, as well as taking the trouble to record them and make them freely available online.

This latest entry coincides with Cronaca di un autor: Convegno dedicato a Michelangelo Antonioni nel centenario della nascita, a marvellous conference, with an amazing array of speakers, taking place between December 11-13, 2012, merely the latest in a series of brilliant, celebratory events in Ferrara, Antonioni's birthplace.

Who knows? Maybe there'll be some more videos to embed here at FSFF! Hope so! In any case, You can see the first FSFF Antonioni anniversary celebration here: Sculpting the Real: Michelangelo Antonioni Studies in the Centenary Year of his Birth.

Part 1.a, Arts Building - Antonioni and the Arts @ Royal Holloway, University of London from SMLLC, Royal Holloway, London on Vimeo.

Dr. Laura Rascaroli's lecture and discussion. In conversation with Dr. Giuliana Pieri.

A study day devoted to the late Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) took place on Friday, 26 October, in Egham, co-sponsored by HARC, SMLLC, Media Arts, and the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni.

The centenary of the birth of this master of European modernist cinema was a chance to bring together a number of scholars and curators who have a particular interest in the interdisciplinary aspects of Antonioni’s oeuvre. Dr Laura Rascaroli (U. of Cork) and Dr John David Rhodes (U. of Sussex), who edited the 2011 volume, Antonioni: Centenary Essays, offered a novel perspective on the work of the Italian film-maker by focusing on the influence of art and architecture respectively. The two talks were preceded by a screening of two rare Antonioni documentaries: Gente del Po (1943-7) and Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo (2004). Documentaries are a very important but often less studied aspect of Antonioni’s production. They also ideally frame his career since Antonioni began as a documentary film maker and ended his cinematic career with his tribute to the master of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo Buonarroti, in a short film of extreme beauty which helped the audience to reflect upon art and tradition. The general discussion that followed covered a number of fascinating topics relating to Antonioni’s practice, including his consistently ‘open’, physical engagement with the human figure, as compared, for example, with that of Jean-Luc Godard.

Part 1.b, Arts Building - Antonioni and the Arts @ Royal Holloway, University of London from SMLLC, Royal Holloway, London on Vimeo.

Dr. John David Rhodes's lecture, discussion and round table with Dr. Laura Rascaroli, Dr. Giuliana Pieri and Prof. James Williams.

Part 2.a, Windsor Lecture - Antonioni and the Arts @ Royal Holloway, University of London from SMLLC, Royal Holloway, London on Vimeo.

Prof. Dominique Païni's presentation of the retrospective 'Antonioni And The Arts. The Gaze of Michelangelo' and lecture. Introduction by Prof. Williams James.

The second part of the study day was a lecture by film scholar and curator, Professor Dominique Païni (École du Louvre, Paris), who presented with slides his plans for the forthcoming centenary exhibition on Antonioni in his home-town of Ferrara. Prof. Païni revealed that the physical challenge of the exhibition space, the Renaissance Palazzo dei Diamanti, created the opportunity to present Antonioni’s work as a series of contrasts arising from the idea that cinema is, after all, narrative sculpture in movement, and that shapes are born out of the most basic contrast, that of light and dark. Both the lecture and ensuing discussion brought into focus a series of important characteristics of the work of Antonioni: the identification of women and the nation, ideal masculinity and Italian art and tradition, the critique of humanism and the classical heritage, and the ambiguous relationship between Antonioni and Italy’s post-war tradition of social and political engagement (impegno) which characterised the work of many of his contemporaries working in film and literature.

Part 2.b, Windsor Lecture - Antonioni and the Arts @ Royal Holloway, University of London from SMLLC, Royal Holloway, London on Vimeo.

A few reflections with Professor Dominique Païni. Translation in English by Alix Agret.

New issue of SCOPE: Nicole Holofcener, Realism, Self-Transformation Narratives, Károly Makk, the Feature Film as "Short Story" and More

Framegrab from Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener, 2001). You can read Rachel Lister's article about Holofcener's films here

Life is good, thinks Film Studies For Free: a new issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies has just been published. There's a small but well-edited selection of great articles, and an enormous number of hugely useful book reviews and conference reports. FSFF particularly liked Rachel Lister on Nicole Holofcener's "short story" films and Miklós Kiss on Károly Makk's Szerelem/Love.

All contents are listed and linked to below.

Scope: Issue 24 October 2012

Articles

• Self-Making as Public Spectacle: Bodies, Bodily Training and Reality TV Bree Hadley
• Rationalising the Irrational: Artistic Realism as Cognitive Reality in Károly Makk's Szerelem/Love  Miklós Kiss
• The Feature Film as Short Story: The "Little Disturbances" of Nicole Holofcener Rachel Lister
• Cinderella vs Barbie: The Battle for Postfeminist Performance in Teen Transformation Narratives Kendra Marston

Book Reviews

• All Book Reviews
• Jacques Rivette by Douglas Morrey and Alison Smith ; Alain Robbe-Grillet by John Phillips A Review by Jonathan L. Owen
• Music and Politics by John Street ; Wagner and Cinema edited by Jeongwon Joe and Sander L. Gilman  A Review by Nathan Waddell
• Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films by M. Keith Booker
• Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation by Chris Pallant
• A Review by Noel Brown
• Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel edited by Jeffrey Ruoff; Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement By Dimitris Eleftheriotis A Review by Sofia Sampaio
• Jerry Lewis by Chris Fujiwara ; Atom Egoyan by Emma Wilson ; Andrei Tarkovsky by Sean Martin A review by Adam Jones
• The Comedy of Chaplin: Artistry in Motion by Dan Kamin ; Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century by Matthew Solomon  A review by Bruce Bennett
• Von Sternberg by John Baxter ; Willing Seduction: The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich and Mass Culture by Barbara Kosta  A Review by Elaine Lennon
• Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since World War I by Yvonne Tasker ; A ‘Toxic Genre': The Iraq War Films by Martin Barker A Review by Jay Reid
• Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier by Homay King ; Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-Fantasy-Fighting-Philosophy by Paul Bowman  A Review by Lin Feng

Film and Television Reviews

• All Film and Television Reviews
• Dust (Polvo) A review by Miharu M. Miyasaka

Conference Reports

• All Conference Reports
• The Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese and Asian Cinema in the UK  A report by Jonathan Wroot
• Deleuze, Guattari and China Symposium A report by Yun-hua Chen
• The Cinema of Sensations: Fourteenth International Film and Media Studies Conference A report by Francesca Hardy
• NECS Conference 2012 - Time Networks: Screen Media and Memory A report by Nessa Johnston

Voyage to Cinema: Studies of the Work of Theo Angelopoulos

Framegrabs from Ταξίδι στα Κύθηρα/Voyage to Cythera ( Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1984)

The world needs cinema now more than ever. [Theo Angelopoulos, cited by Andrew Horton]

Realism? Me? I’ve not a damn thing to do with it. The religious attitude to reality has never concerned me. [Theo Angelopoulos, cited by Raymond Durgnat in “The Long Take in Voyage to Cythera: Brecht and Marx vs. Bazin and God.” Film Comment 26.6 (November/December, 1990): 43-46]

[Some] complain that Angelopoulos’ films are long, slow and boring, but that is exactly what they are not. They are too short (for the subject matters they cover [...]), quite fast (within the image or sound or the narrative, there is always something occurring) and always fascinating (in the multi-layered way they mix the personal with the political, the aesthetic surface with the deeper meaning, etc.). [Bill Mousoulis, "Angelopoulos’ Gaze', Senses of Cinema, Issue 9, 2000]

What is important, what has meaning, is the journey... [and] journeys are through history as well as through a landscape. [Theo Angelopoulos, quoted in Andrew Horton, The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation, 1997: 98]

Today, Film Studies For Free solemnly pays tribute to the monumental cinematic career of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, who very sadly died last week while near the set of his film The Other Sea.

David Hudson has collected a wonderful series of links to items of interest to anyone who has been touched by or is studying Angelopoulos's films. Below, as is its memorialising wont, FSFF points its readers in the online direction of a whole host of high quality academic studies of his work, including a number of freely-accessible, book-length items.

• Acquarello, 'Theodoros Angelopoulos', Senses of Cinema, Issue 27, 2003
• Maria Chalkou, Towards the creation of 'quality' Greek national cinema in the 1960s, PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008
• Hsin-Ning Chang, Viewing the Long Take in Post-World War II Films: A Cognitive Approach, MA Thesis,  Ohio University, 2008 
• Burcu Fikretoglu, 'Gazing at Decay in the Narratives of Theo Angelopoulos and W.G. Sebald', Academia.edu [date unknown]
• Andrew Horton, 'The Greek and Balkan Spirit of Comedy During the Journeys with the Films of Theo Angelopoulos', GreeceTravel.com, [date unknown]
• Smaro Kamboureli, 'Memory under Siege: Archive Fever in Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze', Paper at Performing Identity/Crossing Borders: The Cyprus Symposium: Cicac, 2007
• Angelos Koutsourakis, 'The Desire for History in Lars von Trier’s Europa and Theo Angelopoulos’ The Suspended Step of the Stork' , Kinema, Spring 2010
• Antonis Liakos, 'Historical Time and National Space in Modern Greece', Slavic Euroasian Studies, Hokkaido University “Regions in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present”, Sapporo, Japan, December 14-16, 2005
• Vangelis Makriyannakis, 'Angelopoulos’ Ulysses' Gaze: Where the Old meets the New', Forum, Issue 1 - Origins and Originality, Autumn 2005
• Evangelos Makrygiannakis, Films of Theo Angelopoulos: a voyage in time, PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009
• Bill Mousoulis, "Angelopoulos’ Gaze', Senses of Cinema, Issue 9, 2000
• Arthur J. Pomeroy, 'The sense of epiphany in Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze', Classical Receptions Journal Vol 3. Iss. 2 (2011) pp. 213–226
• Anne Rutherford, 'Precarious Boundaries: Affect, Mise en scène and the Senses in Angelopoulos’ Balkans Epic', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
• Irini Stathi, Eleftherios Tsouris, Nikos Soulakellis, 'Geography as Utopia. From the Rigas Pheraios Map to the Division and Establishment of Borders in the Balkans: An Intercultural Itinerary through the Geography of Ulysses's Gaze', Earth Conference, University of the Aegean, 2008
• Gonda A.H. van Steen, 'Playing by the Censors' Rules? Classical Drama Revived under the Greek Junta (1967-1974)', Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 27.1-2 (2001)
• Lasse Thomassen, 'Heterogeneity, Representation and Justice: Borders and Communities in Angelopoulos’s Balkan Trilogy', originally in D. Morgan and G. Banham (eds), Cosmopolitics and the Emergence of a Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 191-210 
• Paris Tsekouras, 'Narrative and historical accuracy in The Travelling Players', Academia.edu [date unknown]
• Katerina Zacharia, '"Reel" Hellenisms: Perceptions of Greece In Greek Cinema, in K. Zacharia (ed.), Hellenisms: Cutlure, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity (Ashgate 2008) 

Great Film Studies Theses from Texas Universities

Image from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). You can read about this film in Chi Hyun Park's 2008 PhD thesis: Orientalism in U.S. cyberpunk cinema from Blade Runner to the Matrix

Film Studies For Free brings you one of its regular reports from eRepositories. This time it's the turn of the institutes of higher learning located in the largest state of the contiguous U.S.A., the online theses of which are kindly and neatly hosted by the wonderful folks at the Texas Digital Repository.

Seek, and ye shall find, and FSFF did indeed seek and find some graduate work of excellent quality, and on an incredibly wide range of topics. Ye can find it linked to below.

The PhD theses, in particular, will shortly be added to FSFF's permanent listing of Online Film and Moving Image Studies PhD and MPhil Theses.

Ye all come back now! 

• Identity, place, and subversion in contemporary Mizrahi cinema in Israel by Yaron Shemer, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2008
• The rhetoric of postcolonialism : Indian middle cinema and the middle class in the 1990s by Radharani Ray, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, April 2011
• Globalization and hybridity of Korean cinema : critical analysis of Korean blockbuster films by Se Hee Han, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Re-charting French space : transnationalism, travel and identity from the postcolonial banlieue to post-Wall Europe by Michael Robert Gott, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• DEFA and East European cinemas : co-productions, transnational exchange and artistic collaborations by Mariana Zaharieva Ivanova, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• The children are always watching : violence, distressed children, and signs of hope in the cinema of Michael Haneke by Adam Wyatt Tate, MA, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Orientalism in U.S. cyberpunk cinema from Blade Runner to the Matrix by Chi Hyun Park, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2008
• Challenging European borders : Fatih Akın's filmic visions of Europe by Berna Gueneli, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• The second wave of Chinese art film : film system, film style, and alternative film culture of the 1990s by Li Yang, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, August 2010
• Cine-animé: adaptations of realistic lighting styles by Ellen Man Ngoc Trinh, M. S. Thesis, Texas AM University, November 2005
• Prestige and prurience : the decline of the American art house and the emergence of sexploitation, 1957-1972 by Daniel Curran Metz, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Cold cuts : visions of refrigerators in United States media, 1942-1968 by Paul Alton Gansky, MA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011
• Once upon a time in South Central Los Angeles : race, gender and narrative in John Singleton's Hood trilogy by Mark Douglas Cunningham, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2010
• Sensational genres : experiencing science fiction, fantasy and horror by Lisa Marie Schmidt, PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, October 2010
• Teen films of the 1980s : genre, new Hollywood, and generation X by Elissa Helen Nelson, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, May 2011

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.

New Issue of Scope!

Image from Good Bye, Lenin! ( Wolfgang Becker, 2003). Read Kevin L. Ferguson's fascinating article on the film: Home Movies: Historical Space and the Mother's Memory

Good Bye Lenin!, a film commonly read as a political fable of East German nostalgia, is rather for me a successful example of autobiographical narrative that balances maternal loss and a boy's coming to manhood, framing this transition in and through home movies. As such, it provides a much-needed positive model for cinema's use of mothers and memory. [Kevin L. Ferguson]

Film Studies For Free has been far too quiet lately, but that's about to change, people! Let us kick off the burst of activity with FSFF's usual update about one of its very favourite openly accessible, film-scholarly journals, SCOPE: And Online Journal of Film and TV Studies, run by those wonderful people at the Department of Culture, Film and Media, University of Nottingham. The full Table of Contents is reproduced below for your convenient reading pleasure.

Scope, Issue 18, 2010

Articles

Art Cinema as Institution, Redux: Art Houses, Film Festivals, and Film Studies
David Andrews
The Pinnacle of Popular Taste?: The Importance of Confessions of a Window Cleaner
Sian Barber
Walking the Line: Negotiating Celebrity in the Country Music Biopic
Molly Brost
Home Movies: Historical Space and the Mother's Memory
Kevin L. Ferguson
An Aristocratic Plod, Erstwhile Commandos and Ladies who Craved Excitement: Hammer Films' Post-War BBC Crime Series and Serial Adaptations
David Mann

[ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

"May Contain Graphic Material": Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Film By M. Keith Booker
Reviewer: David Simmons
Investigating Firefly and Serenity By Rhonda Wilcox and Tanya Cochran (eds.) & Special Issue on Firefly and Serenity
Reviewer: Ronald Helfrich
Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film By Adilifu Nama & Mixed Race Hollywood
Reviewer: Augusto Ciuffo de Oliveira
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright By Lucas Hilderbrand & From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video
Reviewer: Daniel Herbert
Stanley Cavell's American Dream: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Hollywood Movies By Lawrence F. Rhu
Reviewer: Áine Kelly
Scorsese By Roger Ebert
Reviewer: John Berra
Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror By James Leggott & Roman Polanski
Reviewer: Paul Newland
Cities In Transition: The Moving Image and the Modern Metropolis By Andrew Webber and Emma Wilson (eds.) & Cinematic Countrysides (Inside Popular Film)
Reviewer: Peter C. Pugsley
Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World By S. Brent Plate & Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics
Reviewer: Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City By Mark Shiel
Reviewer: Tom Whittaker
Independent Cinema (includes DVD of Paul Cronin's Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16) By D.K. Holm & Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production
Reviewer: Carl Wilson
Seventies British Cinema By Robert Shail (ed.)
Reviewer: Lawrence Webb
Photography and Cinema (Exposures) By David Campany  & Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography
Reviewer: Tom Slevin
Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image By Harlow Robinson & How the Soviet Man was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin
Reviewer: Brian Faucette
A Companion to Spanish Cinema By Bernard P.E. Bentley & Gender and Spanish Cinema
Reviewer: Abigail Keating
The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II By David Welky & The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film
Reviewer: Hannah Durkin
Neil Jordan By Maria Pramaggiore & The Cinema of Neil Jordan: Dark Carnival
Reviewer: Steve Masters
Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory By Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi
Reviewer: Omar Kholeif
The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy (Directors' Cuts) By Peter Hames & Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to Multiplex
Reviewer: Jonathan Owen
Movie Greats: A Critical Study of Classic Cinema By Philip Gillett  & Inventing Film Studies
Reviewer: Steven Rybin

[ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

Generation Kill
Reviewer: Sheamus Sweeney
Diary of the Dead
Reviewer: Sigmund Shen
Rich and Strange & Stage Fright
Reviewer: Judy Beth Morris
Blood: The Last Vampire
Reviewer: Kia-Choong Teo
Coraline
Reviewer: Alice Mills
Before and After
Reviewer: Clodagh M. Weldon

[ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

Bloodlines: British Horror Past and Present, An International Conference and Film Festival at De Montfort University and Phoenix Square, Leicester, 4 - 5 March 2010
Reporter: Michael Ahmed
IMAGEing Reality, University of Navarra, Spain, 22– 24 October 2009
Reporter: Stefano Odorico
The Moving Image: Reconfiguring Spaces of Loss and Mourning in the 21st Century, Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge, 26-27 February 2010
Reporter: Jenny Chamarette
NECS 2009 3rd Annual Conference: Locating Media, Lund, Sweden, 25 - 28 June, 2009
Reporter: Andrea Virginás
New Waves: XII International Film and Media Conference, Transylvania, Romania, 22 - 23 October 2009
Reporter: Hajnal Kiraly
Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, April 16 - 17 2010
Reporter: Darren Elliott-Smith
Re-Living Disaster, Birbkeck College, London, 29-30 April 2010
Reporter: Ozlem Koksal
SCMS @ 50/LA (Society for Cinema and Media Studies): Archiving the Future, Mobilizing the Past, Los Angleles, California, US, March 10-14, 2010
Reporter: Jason Kelly Roberts
SCMS @ 50/LA (Society for Cinema and Media Studies), Los Angeles, California, March 10-14, 2010
Reporter: Martin L. Johnson
Straight Outta Uttoxeter: Studying Shane Meadows, University of East Anglia, 15 - 16 April 2010
Reporter: Emma Sutton

[ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]

From Screen: essays on screen theory, art film and affect, and early Japanese and Chinese cinema

Image from The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) 

Film Studies For Free was ever so happy to discover that Screen, the leading international journal of academic film and television studies -- a journal with which FSFF's author has been proud to be associated as an editorial advisory board member since 1995 -- has a number of wonderful articles and reviews which have been made freely accessible online in full-text and pdf formats.  

This blog particularly liked the essays, linked to below, by Annette Kuhn (a great reflection on screen theorizing on the occasion of Screen's 50th anniversary) and by Barbara Klinger in which she revisits film theories of affect as well as the debates around Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano.

This blogpost won't mean too much to those readers who can take institutional subscriptions to Screen for granted, but FSFF knows it will be appreciated by many others, in lots of different parts of the world, who don't enjoy that particular scholarly benefit.
 
Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2009 (50th anniversary issue)

• Annette Kuhn, Screen and screen theorizing today Screen 2009 50: 1-12; doi:10.1093/screen/hjp001[FREE Full Text][PDF]

Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2006 (first fully digital issue)

• Charlotte Brunsdon, ‘A fine and private place’: the cinematic spaces of the London Underground' Screen 2006 47: 1-17; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl001 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

• Barbara Klinger, The art film, affect and the female viewer: The Piano revisited Screen 2006 47: 19-41; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl002 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

• Gregory A. Walle, Narrating the new Japan: Biograph's The Hero of Liao-Yang (1904) Screen 2006 47: 43-65; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl003 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF] 

• Laikwan Pang,Walking into and out of the spectacle: China's earliest film scene Screen 2006 47: 66-80; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl004[Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

Research note 

• Deborah Allison, Multiplex programming in the UK: the economics of homogeneity Screen 2006 47: 81-90; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl005[FREE Full Text][PDF]
  

Debate 

• Sylvia Harvey, Ofcom's first year and neoliberalism's blind spot: attacking the culture of production Screen 2006 47: 91-105; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl006[FREE Full Text][PDF] 

• Don Reddin, The non-democratic regulator: a response to Sylvia Harvey Screen 2006 47: 107-111; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl007 [FREE Full Text][PDF]

Report 

• Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Rune Waldekranz: Swedish pioneering film historian Screen 2006 47: 113-117; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl008[FREE Full Text][PDF]

Reviews 

• James Bennett, Inventing Television Culture: Men, Women and the Box • New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television and Digital Media in the United States Screen 2006 47: 119-124; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl009[FREE Full Text][PDF]

• John Corner, The Subject in Documentary Screen 2006 47: 125-128; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl010[FREE Full Text][PDF]  

• Julie Light, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC Screen 2006 47: 129-132; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl011[FREE Full Text][PDF] 
  

• Helen Piper, Understanding Reality Television • Reality TV – Audiences and Popular Factual Television Reality TV – Realism and Revelation Screen 2006 47: 133-138; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl012 [FREE Full Text][PDF]