On Cinematic Découpage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Great Film Studies PhD Theses from the University of Edinburgh

Framegrab from Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1952)

The classically idyllic, carefree world of childhood would appear to be diametrically opposed to the horrors of war and world-wide conflict. However, throughout film history, filmmakers have continually turned to the figure of the child as a prism through which to examine the devastation caused by war.
This thesis will investigate the representation of childhood experience of the Second World War across six fiction films: Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1947), René Clément’s Forbidden Games (1952), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985). [Pasquale Iannone, Childhood and the Second World War in the European fiction film PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011: 11; hyperlinks added by FSFF]

Film Studies For Free went a-hunting at the research repository at the University of Edinburgh and found that seven great full-text PhD theses have been archived there.

Each of these works of original research has a huge amount to offer any student of cinema, and so it's really great that their authors and their university have made them publicly available online.

FSFF hopes its readers will join it in saluting them!

• Bruns, Christina, Contemporary German documentary cinema (1999 – 2007): the rural represented, the regional defamiliarised and Heimat revived PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2010
• Iannone, Pasquale, Childhood and the Second World War in the European fiction film PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011
• Makrygiannakis, Evangelos, Films of Theo Angelopoulos: a voyage in time PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009
• Russell, Michael, Soviet montage cinema as propaganda and political rhetoric PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009
• Salzberg, Ana Beyond the looking glass: the narcissistic woman reflected and embodied in classic Hollywood film 2010
• Valcke, Jennifer, Static films and moving pictures: montage in avant-garde photography and film PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009
• Yam, Chi-Keung, Study of popular Hong Kong cinema from 2001 to 2004 as resource for a contextual approach to expressions of christian faith in the public realm after the reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2008

Seeing the join: on film editing

In memoriam Dede Allen  

(December 3, 1923 – April 17, 2010)

The below entry was originally published the day before Dede Allen died. Allen was the highly innovative editor of such notable films as Bonnie and Clyde, The Hustler, Rachel, Rachel, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Night Moves, Slap Shot, Reds, The Breakfast Club and Henry and June. 

Read Matt Zoller Seitz's wonderful tribute to Allen: Dede Allen: The woman who turned film violence into poetry; as well as Julia Wright's informative article, 'Making the Cut: Female Editors and Representation in the Film and Media Industry', CSW Update Newsletter, March 2009, which mentions Allen.

Dissolve by Aaron Valdez (2003): "Found footage film constructed of hundreds of dissolves taken from old educational films and reassembled to create a meditation on our own impermanence". 

Read also Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004

Film Studies For Free presents a much requested links list today, one to openly accessible, high quality scholarly studies of film editing. Without further ado, let's jump cut straight to it:

• 'The Art of Film Editing', Special Issue of P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998 - PDF containing:
• Søren Kolstrup, 'The notion of editing'   
• Sidsel Mundal, 'Notes of an editing teacher'  
• Mark Le Fanu, 'On editing'
• Vinca Wiedemann, 'Film editing – a hidden art?'
• Edvin Kau, 'Separation or combination of fragments? Reflections on editing'
• Lars Bo Kimersgaard, 'Editing in the depth of the surface. Some basic principles of graphic editing'
• Martin Weinreich, 'The urban inferno. On the æsthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver'
• Scott MacKenzie, 'Closing arias: Operatic montage in the closing sequences of the trilogies of Coppola and Leone'
• Claus Christensen, 'A vast edifice of memories: the cyclical cinema of Terence Davies',
• Richard Raskin, 'Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard's Breathless'

• André Bazin, 'Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?' (1953), Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 2, January 2002
• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, 'CHAPTER 1: Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business', Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 2010, 9th ed.)
• Marina Burke, 'Eisenstein and the challenge of sound', Kinema, (date unknown)
• Noël Carroll, 'Cognitivism, Contemporary Film Theory and Method: A Response to Warren Buckland', Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Spring 1992
• Tom Conley, 'Review of Sam Rohdie, Montage', Screening the Past, Vol. 23, 2008
• Roger Crittenden, 'The historical perspective: how the function of editing has evolved', from The Thames and Hudson Manual of Film Editing (London: Thams and Hudson, 1981)
• Mary Debrett, 'Review of Valerie Orpen. Film editing: the art of the expressive. London and New York: Wallflower. 2003', Screening the Past, 2004
• Barry Dornfeld, 'Chronicle of a Summer and the Editing of Cinéma vérité', Visual Anthropology, Vol. 2, 1989
• Sarah Hatchuel, 'Leading the Gaze: From Showing to Telling in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Hamlet', Early Modern Literary Studies, 6.1, 1999
• Ils Huygens, 'Deleuze and Cinema: Moving Images and Movements of Thought', Image [and] Narrative,  Issue 18, September 2007
• James S. Hurley, 'David Bordwell's Iron Cage of Style', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 26, 1998
• Gal Kirn , 'Kuhle Wampe: Politics of Montage, De-montage of Politics?', Film-Philsophy, 11.1, 2007
• Martin Lefebvre and Marc Furstenau, 'Digital Editing and Montage: The Vanishing Celluloid and Beyond', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies Volume 13, Number 1-2, Automne 2002, p. 69-107 (for other articles on montage and editing in the same journal issue in French see here)
• Jason Lindop, 'Eisenstein: ‘Intellectual Montage’,  Poststructuralism, and Ideology', Offscreen Journal, Volume 11, Issue 2 (February 28, 2007)
• Gabrielle Murray, 'Knowing Icons and Transforming Experience: Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva México! (1932)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 52, 2009
• Christine E. Nothelfer, Jordan E. DeLong and James E. Cutting, 'Shot Structure in Hollywood Film', Indiana Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science 4 (2009) 103-113, 2009
• Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004
• William D. Routt, 'Poubelle, ma belle, Rouge, 6, 2005
• Tim J. Smith, 'An Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing', PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2005 (see also descriptive statement here) 
• Murray Sperber, 'Eisenstein’s October', from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977, pp. 15-22
• Martin Stollery, 'Review of Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive by Valerie Orpen', Scope, Issue, February 2005
• Donato Totaro, 'Sam Rohdie on Montage', Offscreen Journal, January 2008
• Yuri Tsivian, 'What is wrong with the beard : Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible as an eccentric tragedy',  Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 11, n° 2-3, 2001, p. 255-270
• Mike Wayne, 'Review of Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice by Don Fairservice and Film Production Theory by Jean-Pierre Geuens', Scope, August 2003
• Julia Wright, 'Making the Cut: Female Editors and Representation in the Film and Media Industry', CSW Update Newsletter, March 2009

Flânerie and (Post)Modernity: Links in memory of Anne Friedberg

Slavko Vorkapić's original montage sequence "The Furies" (created for the film Crime Without Passion, 1934; music by Ludwig van Beethoven). While Vorkapić had complete creative freedom in writing, designing, directing and editing his montage sequences for feature films, his work was often reduced to its bones in the released productions. In the 1930s, Vorkapić was dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. For more information about Vorkapić, see this great post at Bright Lights After Dark

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear last week of the untimely death, on October 9, of Anne Friedberg, a much loved and admired professor, and inspiring Chair of the Critical Studies Division, at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts (see her wonderful 2008 commencement speech here).

As her LA Times obituary put it so well (also see here), Friedberg expanded the study of film, emphasizing its relationship to other visual fields, including architecture, art history and digital media. She was author of the important book Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern and co-editor of an influential anthology of critical and theoretical writing about film, Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism.

In 2008, Friedberg was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an academy film scholar. It awarded her $25,000 to research and write a multimedia project about Slavko Vorkapić, a Serbian director and editor who achieved prominence in the 1930s for his montage work in such Hollywood films as Crime Without Passion (see above), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Good Earth.

Always a hugely innovative as well as generous scholar, last year Professor Friedberg launched a freely-accessible, interactive translation, or extension, of her most recent book (The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, 2006): The Virtual Window Interactive. It was through this latter project, as well as her brilliant work on cinema, culture, and (post)modernism, that FSFF's author became a fervent admirer of her work.

In memory of Anne Friedberg, and in honour of her important legacy for screen studies, here is a list of links to pieces of online and openly-accessible scholarship on the topic of flânerie, and the flâneur/flâneuse, in film and (old and new) media studies, all of which acknowledge their debt to the great Californian scholar's work:

• Chiara Armentano, '"The Image-Interface": New Forms of Narrative Visualization, Space and Time in Postmodern Cinema', Reconstruction, 8.3 (2008)
• Renate Brosch, 'Looking at Women Looking: Female Portraits in the Gender Crisis', Gender Forum, Imagendering, 11, 13, 2006
  
• Mikita Brottman, '"The Last Stop of Desire" Covent Garden and the Spatial Text of Consumerism', Consumption, Markets and Culture, Volume 1, Number 1, 1-95 (scroll down), 2000
  
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'The New Film History as Media Archaeology', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film StudiesVolume 14, numéro 2-3, Printe