Showing posts with label digital film studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital film studies. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 December 2017

12 Favourite Online Film Studies Items from 2017, and Other Links of Note!

Last updated January 2, 2018

NE ME QUITTE PAS - a new video assemblage focusing on Brief Encounter and Carol by Catherine Grant

To commemorate the somewhat sad and strange outgoing year -- and very much to welcome in 2018 --- Film Studies For Free has selected, below, twelve of its favourite online film studies items encountered (or re-encountered) in 2017 for your delectation and delight - in no particular order of category.

Some of these involved poignant encounters, associated with terribly untimely passings of pathbreaking scholars (see no. 1). Some are amazing new resources from (already) the most generous of brilliant scholars (see no. 2). All come with associated links, and are well worth your time exploring.

Wishing you a radically happy and active 2018!

With openly accessible love (and a brand new video, above) from FSFF xx

P.S. Remember to follow Film Studies For Free on Twitter and Facebook for frequent news and links.



1.
Favourite Online Lecture


Hannah Frank's brilliant illustrated lecture from 2014 "The Traces of Their Hands: Women’s Work at American Animation Studios, 1928-1961" at the Living Labor: Marxism and Performance Studies event, Department of Performance Studies New York University April 11–13, 2014. 

Dr. Frank tragically died on August 28, 2017, at the age of 33. She was one of the most original, accomplished and promising scholars of her generation. She will be hugely missed but much remembered.



See Hannah Frank's Vimeo account; and her Google Scholar citations;

Also see the following tributes to Dr. Frank:

2.
Favourite new website

http://www.filmcritic.com.au/


"Long awaited" doesn't even get close to describing film critic and scholar extraordinaire Adrian Martin's website project to gather much of his published film criticism work and offer it up for free! But it arrived in 2017, starting with over 2000 entries to amazing pieces of writing and thinking, which are being added to every week!

Titled FILM CRITIC: ADRIAN MARTIN, the website also points to a connected 'Patreon' campaign to raise some funds to help keep it maintained and regularly updated. FSFF's author has signed up to do just that.

It's not every day that one of the world's leading writers about film gives away quite so much of his lifetime's work to the public domain. Good on ya, and thank you, Adrian!

3.
Favourite Film and Media Studies Podcast

Film and Media Studies podcasts continued to delight us in 2017. The following three (listed in alphabetical order) tied for their place as FSFF's favourite.
http://www.aca-media.org

http://www.cinematologists.com


http://www.thecinephiliacs.net


Also, check out new podcast on the block:
Eavesdropping at the Movies by Jose Arroyo and Michael Glass



4.
Favourite longstanding website


http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/

January 2017 entries:
How LA LA LAND is made
My girl Friday, and his, and yours
Fantasy, flashbacks, and what-ifs: 2016 pays off the past
February 2017 entries:
Anybody but Griffith
Oscar’s Siren song 3: A guest post by Jeff Smith
LA LA LAND: Singin’ in the sun
All my objections to Trump won’t fit on one blog
March 2017 entries:
Going inside by staying outside: L’AVVENTURA on the Criterion Channel
My cover is blown
The Oscars’ Best Picture and other Best Picture
Waldo Lydecker, James Schamus, and 1910s movie storytelling
April 2017 entries:
Film noir, a hundred years ago
Wisconsin Film Festival: Cutting to the chase, and away from it
Wisconsin Fim Festival: An unexpected gem, a Zucchini, and a farewell
May 2017 entries:
Three women of Cannes: A guest entry by Kelley Conway
Ladies at all levels
Wayward ways and roads not taken
Good morning from Ozuland
June 2017 entries:
Ritrovato 2017: Drinking from the firehose
Grand motel
James Agee: Astonishing excellence: A guest post by Charles Maland
FilmStruck and Criterion: Now Roku-ready
Thrill me!
July 2017 entries:
MONSIEUR VERDOUX: Lethal Lothario
Books not so briefly noted
We do film, dammit: Charlie Keil interviews us
Ritrovato 2017: Many faces, many places
Ritrovato 2017: An embarrassment of riches
August 2017 entries:
Venice 2017: Early days
Fassbinder’s figures: Jeff Smith on ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL
Is there a blog in this class? 2017
DUNKIRK Part 1: Straight to the good stuff
DUNKIRK Part 2: The art film as event movie
September 2017 entries:
Mmm, M good
Lubitsch redoes Lubitsch
REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD: Out of the past
Venice 2017: Crimes, no misdemeanors
Venice 2017: Martel’s drama of expectations
Venice 2017: College days
Venice 2017: Hunting Golden Lions
Venice 2017: Sensory Saturday; or, what puts the Virtual in VR?
Venice 2017: Lubitsch and Pickford, finally together again
October 2017 entries:
Biomechanics goes to the Big House: BRUTE FORCE on the Criterion Channel
Women, Oscars, and power
REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD comes to Astoria
One last big job: How heist movies tell their stories
REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD: Post-partum downs and ups
THE LOST WORLD refound, piece by piece
November 2017 entries:
Taika Waititi: The very model of a modern movie-maker
Time-shifting: THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE on the Criterion Channel
Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: The 1910s tonight
The Fabulous Forties once more: REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD spreads out on the Net
The Celestial Arthouse: FilmStruck and Criterion Channel with an offer hard to refuse
Bill Morrison’s lyrical tale of loss, destruction, and (sometimes) recovery
Dreyer, and more, in Houghton
December 2017 entries:
The ten best films of … 1927
The Boy’s life: Harold Lloyd’s GIRL SHY on the Criterion Channel
Patchwork imagination: Lee Kwangkuk’s framed and frayed stories


5.
Favourite Online Film Studies Journal

http://www.thecine-files.com


https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/

A tie this year between The Cine-Files, which brings some truly wonderful material online, year after year, thanks largely to the amazing talents of Editor-in-Chief Tracy Cox-Stanton, and Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, similarly run by a passionate team of academics, which introduced a brilliant new audiovisual essay section!

Also see this list!

FSFF is very much looking forward to the publication of a new Jump Cut issue in Spring 2018 following on from the very sad loss of one of its pioneering editors, Chuck Kleinhans, to whom this blog dedicated its previous entry in tribute. 



6.
Favourite Video Essay on a Film Studies Topic

Chloé Galibert-Laîné's desktop documentary My crush was a superstar


This was at the the top of my top ten picks in the end of year Sight and Sound poll: "The best video essays of 2017" expertly and painstakingly gathered by Kevin B. Lee and David Verdeure.

Also check out this top 17 list curated by Jacob Oller for the ONE PERFECT SHOT (now FILM SCHOOL REJECTS) website. 


7.
Favourite video essayist

A two-way tie between:

Cristina Alvarez López and Adrian Martin for MUBI, Filmkrant, and themselves (see also this great video interview with them by Julia Vassilieva from Monash Film and Screen Studies);


Oswald Iten of FILMBULLETIN and other sites 




8.
Favourite video essay publisher/curator
(ahem...after [in]Transition and Audiovisualcy....)


Filmscalpel http://www.filmscalpel.com




9.
Best online scholarly collaboration between a filmmaker and a film scholar (who is also a filmmaker!)





10.
Best open access eBook appearing online in 2017

Two-way split between:

Farocki/Godard. Film as Theory by Volker Pantenburg

and


Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures 
edited by Laura Mulvey and Anna Backman Rogers


11.
Favourite online article:


Nina Menkes’s article "The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum," FILMMAKER Magazine’s most popular post in 2017. Menkes' brilliantly uses the work of Laura Mulvey. http://filmmakermagazine.com/103801-the-visual-language-of-oppression-harvey-wasnt-working-in-a-vacuum/


12.
Favourite Film Studies Related Instagram Account:

Fictitious Interiors Curated by Davide Rapp
https://www.instagram.com/fictitiousinteriors/



And finally...

Some very very very  honourable mentions

  • Best Facebook page for Film and Media Studies in 2017: Teaching Media 
  • For its continued brilliance and generosity: Shane Denson's medieninitiative website
  • Best historiographical video essay series: The Per una controstoria del cinema italiano/Towards a Counter History of Italian Cinema project organised by Filmidée and Chiara Grizzaffi with multiple videos and authors. Watch the trailer here.
More to follow as FSFF remembers further 2017 links of great note!

 UPDATES:

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Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Pandora's Box? On Digital Conversions and Rebirths

Open Lecture and Workshop by FSFF's very own author
First of all, Film Studies For Free wanted to toot on its own trumpet today.

On Friday, its author will present at an event exploring the rapidly increasing take up in scholarly and online film studies of the distinct research methods of the digital humanities.

In the lecture that will open the event, she will explore whether and, if so, how these contexts and methods with their digital, multimedia tools and techniques (such as online film and film culture archiving, mining and metrics, digital video essays, digital publishing and networking) may be enabling productive moves away from the existing paradigms of purely text-based, or 'traditional' offline research, scholarship and pedagogy.  The focus in the main workshop part of the event will be on the film studies video essay form, that is, on the practice of using film as the medium of its own study and criticism.

A written version of the talk will be published online later this year as part of a wide ranging edited collection, with contributions by world-leading scholars and critics, on related aspects of the same important topics. This collection, commissioned, assembled and guest-edited by FSFF's supremo, will form the inaugural issue of a brand new, Open Access journal hosted by a certain Film Studies department in one of the UK's oldest and most revered universities. FSFF will bring you more precise, less teasing, news of this in due course....

But, staying with the digital theme, today's FSFF post also brings you rather more immediately phenomenal news of and links to David Bordwell's recent and hugely important online series of studies of the transition to digital cinematic projection at his and Kristin Thompson's peerless film studies website Observations on Film Art.

Not only are these unmissable discussions in their own right but they make themselves even more indispensable by linking to numerous further essential resources on these questions.

Below the list of links to these entries, for your convenience, FSFF has re-embedded the great videoed discussion of digital conversion issues in the film distribution and exhibition contexts at the Vancouver International Film Festival to which Bordwell and other luminaries contribute brilliantly.

  1. Pandora’s digital box: In the multiplex December 1, 2011 
  2. Pandora’s digital box: The last 35 picture show December 15, 2011 
  3. Pandora’s digital box: At the festival January 5, 2012 
  4. Pandora’s digital box: From the periphery to the center, or the one of many centers January 11, 2012
  5. Pandora’s digital box: Art house, smart house January 30, 2012
  6. Pandora’s digital box: Pix and pixels February 13, 2012
  7. Pandora’s digital box: Notes on NOCs [Network Operations Centers] February 16, 2012
  8. Pandora's digital box:from Films to Files February 28, 2012

                     Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years
Event description:
The first few chapter headings in a film we did not program at this year's [Vancouver International Film Festival] VIFF are: “Technology Is Great”, “The Industry Is Dead”, “Artists Have the Power”, and “The Craft Is Gone.” To which celluloid-loving film festival organizers might ask: Is it? Do they? Where on earth are we headed? And why?
VIFF has come a long way in its 30 years and never has the future of cinema--and VIFF's future--been more uncertain. Will it be bright and splendid and fair or will it move so quickly that a great deal of what is valuable will be lost before we know it? There are now dramatically more “film festivals” and “films” being made than ever, yet some fear that the industry may be dead. Filmmakers are acutely worried for funding, yet need to operate on a growing number of fronts. Given that the numbers of hours in a day and the numbers of days in a life remain fixed, what limits should we council for our own appetites? Why might we miss the Hollywood Theatre and Videomatica? Given that cultural agencies seemingly have shrinking resources but more new media and film festival applicants every year, will the centres hold or is babble ascendant? Will VIFF's function as an annual international universalist festival be superseded by myriad niche events?

Technology is indeed great in that it has put the means of creative motion picture production in almost everyone's hands, but will the best artists be the ones to be recognized? The entrepreneurial spirit tends to favour change in hopes that it may profit from it, but will artists have the power? When entrepreneurs benefit, will consumers benefit? Will cultural institutions that have taken years to build remain viable? Will cinema, metrics of quality and craftsmanship and, ultimately, quality of life be improved or even be sustainable? What do you personally care about for the future of cinema to offer? What should VIFF 2020 aim to be?

Here to wrestle with these sorts of questions—and yours—will be a distinguished group of panellists including: David Bordwell, film critic, academic and author of numerous books on cinema; Simon Field, film producer and former Director, International Film Festival Rotterdam; Andréa Picard, film critic and programmer, formerly of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Ontario; Tom Charity, film critic and Vancity Theatre program coordinator; and Alan Franey, director, Vancouver International Film Festival.
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Tuesday, 20 December 2011

FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

Insightful interview (in English) with filmmaker and academic Clio Barnard about her experimental documentary The Arbor on the life and work of Andrea Dunbar, British writer of the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob, too. The Arbor was one of Film Studies For Free's author's favourite films seen in 2011 (interview December 5, 2011)

Not since its December 2008 blog entry A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs has the otherwise intrepid Film Studies For Free ventured into the rather crowded, online territory of end-of-year lists.

But, as it signs off on its seasonal break until the first few days of 2012, FSFF thought the time was right for a listing of links to its favourite, openly accessible, online Film Studies resources in 2011.

Thanks so much to all who worked hard to bring you these openly accessible treasures in the first place. And thanks also, dear readers, for being there to appreciate them.

FSFF very much looks forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
  1. Top seven film and moving image studies history resources online in 2011: 
    1. The Colonial Film Project archive plus two freely accessible chapters by those involved in the project: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 32 sample pages; and Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 25 sample pages
    2. Media History Digital Library
    3. The Turconi Project
    4. EU Screen
    5. European Film Gateway
    6. The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories
    7. The Kracauer Lectures website
  2. Top five, most consistently brilliant Film Studies bloggers:
    1. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson for Observations on Film Art
    2. Luke McKernan for The Bioscope (also see McKernan's two new ScoopIt! projects: The Bioscope and Screen Research)
    3. Roland-François Lack for The Cine-Tourist, The Daily Map and The BlowUp Moment (also see The Autopsies Group website) and also on Twitter
    4. Dan North for Spectacular Attractions (also see The Cinema of Puppetry) and also on Twitter
    5. Tie between Michael J. Anderson and Lisa K. Broad for Tativille and Ten Best Films; and  Omar Ahmed for Ellipsis
  3. Best new Film Studies blog: Katherine Groo's Half/Films
  4. Best 'media studies approaches to film and moving image studies' blog - tie between:
    1. Just TV by Jason Mittell (also on Twitter)
    2. Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style by Anne Helen Petersen (also on Twitter)
    3. The Chutry Experiment by Chuck Tryon (also on Twitter)
    4. The Negarponti Files by Negar Mottahedeh (also on Twitter and Facebook)
  5. Most consistently original, Film and Moving Image Studies writer active online - a tie between: 
    1. Adrian Martin (e.g. see all the links here)
    2. Nicholas Rombes (e.g. see here and here)
    3. Amanda Ann Klein (also see here)
    4. David Bordwell
    5. Kristin Thompson (also see here and here)
    6. Jeffrey Sconce (also see here)
  6. Best Film Studies informed, commercial film criticism website: Alternate Takes
  7. Best new online film journal in 2011 - a tie between:
    1. LOLA edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu
    2. ALPHAVILLE edited by Laura Rascaroli and others at the University of Cork
    3. JOAN'S DIGEST edited by Miriam Bale
  8. Best recently established online academic Film Studies journal: MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism
  9. Top twelve established, online, (mostly) English language, Film Studies journals:
    1. Screening the Past
    2. Film-Philosophy
    3. SCOPE
    4. Jump Cut
    5. Senses of Cinema
    6. MEDIASCAPE
    7. Participations
    8. Bright Lights Film Journal
    9. CINEPHILE
    10. Offscreen
    11. La Furia Umana 
    12. World Picture Journal
    13. For links to one hundred more journals (including some brilliant, primarily non-English language journals, like Transit: Cine..., see here)
  10. Most generous, Open Access Film Studies author: Thomas Elsaesser for the below freely accessible e-books and for the hundreds of further resources linked to from his website:
    1. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), A Second Life : German Cinema's First Decades (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
    2. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
    3. Elsaesser, Thomas,  Jan Simons, Lucette Bronk (eds), Writing for the Medium: Television in transition (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
    4. Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
    5. Elsaesser, Thomas, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
    6. Elsaesser, Thomas, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
  11. Best online cinephile news and criticism site: MUBI Notebook (thanks so much to David Hudson and Daniel Kasman for their brilliant work)
  12. Best cinephile salon site - a tie between:
    1. Dave Kehr's place
    2. Girish Shambu's place
  13. Best seven multimedia/multiplatform/multichannel-style film and moving image studies websites:
    1. FlowTV
    2. In Media Res 
    3. Moving Image Source 
    4. Screen Machine 
    5. Screen Culture
    6. Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture 
    7. Critical Studies in Television
  14. Most impactful online Film Studies work in 2011 - a tie between:
    1. Tim Smith's work on how movie viewers watch, showcased here as well as on his blog Continuity Boy and his research site.
    2. Matthias Stork's video essays on Chaos Cinema (see FSFF's original post on this)
    3. Aitor Gametxo's video essay: Variation: THE SUNBEAM, David W. Griffith, 1912
    4. Steven Shaviro's work on Post-Cinematic Affect: see here for lots of links
  15. FSFF's favourite Film Studies academic links on Twitter: @filmdrblog (also see the Film Doctor's actual blog)
  16. FSFF's favourite non-academic, film studies-informed, online film critics - a tie between:
    1. Srikanth Srinivasan (also on Twitter)
    2. Matt Zoller Seitz (also on Twitter
    3. Kevin B Lee (also on Twitter here and here)
    4. Jim Emerson (also on Twitter)
    5. Jonathan Rosenbaum (also on Twitter)
    6. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (also on Twitter)
    7. Farran Smith Nehme (also on Twitter)
    8. Marilyn Ferdinand and Roderick Heath (also on Twitter here and here) and see Rod's blog
    9. Anne Billson (also writing for the Guardian and on Twitter)
    10. David Cairns (also on Twitter)
  17. FSFF's ten favourite FSFF blogposts (and blogpost clusters) in 2011: 
    1. On 'Affect' and 'Emotion' in Film and Media Studies
    2. Double Vision: Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend and ¡Viva Raúl Ruiz!
    3. V.F. Perkins on FILM AS FILM and More Victor Perkins Video Interviews Online from Saarbruecken 
    4. The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey 
    5. The Tree of Links: Terrence Malick Studies 
    6. Ingmar Bergman Studies 
    7. Viewing Modes and Mise en Scene: 50 YEARS ON by Christian Keathley and The Obscurity of the Obvious: On the Films of Otto Preminger 
    8. On Figural Analysis in Film Studies 
    9. Liquid Atmospherics: On the cinema of Wong Kar-wai 
    10. Its own video essay posts: Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE (1944); Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love; Links on videographical film criticism, editing, 'intensified continuity', 'chaos cinema', 'hapticity' and (post) cinematic affect; and Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film Studies 
  18. FSFF's most read post in 2011 by some distance was "An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011
  19. Most popular resource at FSFF: Open Access Film E-books List
  20. Best search engine for Open Access Film Studies (and other Arts and Humanities resources): JURN (thanks, as ever, to the indefatigable David Haden)
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Sunday, 8 May 2011

Unstable Platforms? Film/Moving Image Studies Papers from MIT7 Media in Transition

Teaser image, courtesy of Warner Brothers, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 out on July 15  (David Yates, 2011). Read Debora Lui's paper on Harry Potter: The Exhibition.

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you links to film and moving image related papers from the conference proceedings of the seventh annual Media in Transition conference, which will take place next week, May 13-15, 2011, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Here's the conference's mission statement:
Has the digital age confirmed and exponentially increased the cultural instability and creative destruction that are often said to define advanced capitalism? Does living in a digital age mean we may live and die in what the novelist Thomas Pynchon has called “a ceaseless spectacle of transition”? The nearly limitless range of design options and communication choices available now and in the future is both exhilarating and challenging, inciting innovation and creativity but also false starts, incompatible systems, planned obsolescence. How are we coping with the instability of platforms? 
FSFF particularly liked "“Make Any Room Your TV Room:” Media Mobility, Digital Delivery, and Family Harmony" by film and media studies scholar and blogger extraordinaire Chuck Tryon, film and television scholar and media studies blogger extraordinaire Michael Z. Newman's paper 'The Television Image and the Image of the Television", and "Who Told You You Were Special Edition? The Commercialization of the Aura" by Justin Mack.

There are other great papers online connected to the conference theme of unstable platforms and the experience of mediatic transitions that don't treat moving image topics and you can access those here.

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Wednesday, 19 January 2011

A 'Borgesian' Film Studies Library?


Film Studies For Free shamelessly contemplates its own hypertextual, pedagogical, navel today, but it blushingly hopes, nonetheless, that the above embedded document will be of interest to some of its fellow educator readers. Just click on this link to transport yourself to a better-sized version for reading (and downloading).

The above document, authored by film researcher and filmmaker Charalambos Charalambous (Χαράλαμπος Χαραλάμπους) of the University of Kent's School of Arts (Film Studies) in 2010, describes itself as
A study of Web 2.0 as an actualization of the concept of the Borgesian Library: a critical evaluation of WEB 2.0 technology in reference to the academic blog Film Studies For Free authored by Dr. Catherine Grant.   
It was based in part on a research questionnaire filled in by FSFF's author, and, in the opinion of the latter, is a fascinating and very well-informed reflection on the pedagogical possibilities of the kinds of anthologizing, virtual librarianship (or digital curation) that this blog so adores, and which are completely made possible by Web 2.0 technology.

The study will shortly be permanently stored at FSFF's page dedicated to discussion of Open Access, Digital Scholarship and the Digital Humanities.

In the meantime, FSFF would like to thank Charalambos for his thoughtful words, which have made its little digital body swell with pride!
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