Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Wildlife filmmaking plus early Hawks blogathon

Film Studies For Free will return later today, hopefully, with some more substantial electronic enlightenment (and, indeed, campaigning!), but a couple of quick items first, just to get the blog-juice flowing nicely.

Over the course of the next twelve days, from January 12 to January 23, I'll [...] be talking about Tiger Shark, along with all the other early Hawks films [1926-1936] I've been able to locate: the 1928 silent A Girl in Every Port plus the majority of his sound films made between 1930 and 1936. I hope that I'll have lots of company, too. I welcome contributions about specific films as well as more general posts discussing broader aspects of Hawks' early career. I especially hope, since I don't have access to most of Hawks' silents, that those who have seen them will take the opportunity to weigh in. Below is a full list of all the films that I consider eligible subjects for discussion, plus a compendium of various pre-existing posts on early Hawks. As new posts are submitted, I will add them to the master list below.If you have a post, simply comment here with a link or e-mail me, and I will add it to this post, which will serve as the central gathering place for the blog-a-thon. I really look forward to reading what everyone has to say, and hopefully participating in lots of lively discussions about these films.

DAY 1 (January 12): A Girl in Every Port at Only The Cinema; and Twentieth Century at Another Old Movie Blog

PRE-EVENT READING:Ceiling Zero & The Road To Glory at Greenbriar Picture Show; Come and Get It at DVD Talk; Come and Get It at Self-Styled Siren; The Criminal Code at Apocalypse Later; The Crowd Roars at Colet and Company; The Crowd Roars at Movie Classics; A Girl in Every Port at Senses of Cinema; A Girl in Every Port at Shadowplay; Scarface at Senses of Cinema; Scarface at Twenty Four Frames; Scarface at Only The Cinema; Tiger Shark & The Road To Glory at Auteurs Notebook; Today We Live at Apocalypse Later; Twentieth Century at Only The Cinema

THE FILMS: The Road To Glory (1926); Fig Leaves (1926); The Cradle Snatchers (1927); Paid To Love (1927); A Girl In Every Port (1928); Fazil (1928); The Air Circus (1928, w/ Lewis Seiler); Trent's Last Case (1929); The Dawn Patrol (1930); The Criminal Code (1931); Scarface (1932); The Crowd Roars (1932); Tiger Shark (1932); Today We Live (1933); The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933, w/ W.S. Van Dyke); Viva Villa! (1934, w/ Jack Conway, William Wellman); Twentieth Century (1934); Barbary Coast (1935, w/ William Wyler); Ceiling Zero (1936); The Road to Glory (1936); Come and Get It (1936, w/ Richard Rosson, William Wyler)

Monday, 12 January 2009

Split Screens and Refractory Journal

a young American scholar of British cinema


News of the Open Access publication of an article by a colleague, friend, and fellow blogger, Sergio Dias-Branco, alerted Film Studies For Free to the existence of another excellent online Film and Media Studies periodical: Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media.

Refractory, is 'a refereed, peer-reviewed, e-journal that explores the diverging and intersecting aspects of current and past entertainment media.' The journal is published by the Cinema/Screen Studies Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

Sergio's excellent work on the Mosaic-Screen is the lead article in Volume 14, 2008: Double Trouble - a brilliant Special Issue of Refractory on Split and Double Screens, edited by Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet.

Full List of Refractory Volume 14 Contents:

  1. Double Trouble: Editorial - Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet
  2. The Mosaic-Screen: Exploration and Definition – Sergio Dias-Branco
  3. Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie – Ian Garwood
  4. The Embedded Screen and the State of Exception: Counterterrorist Narratives and the “War on Terror” – Cormac Deane
  5. “What Am I… Beloved or Bewitched?” Split Screens, Gender Confusion, and Psychiatric Solutions in The Dark Mirror – Tim Snelson
  6. Medusa in the Mirror: The Split World of Brian De Palma’s Carrie – David Greven
  7. The Double Side of Delay: Sutapa Biswas’ film installation Birdsong and Gilles Deleuze’s Actual/Virtual Couplet – Maria Walsh
  8. Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema – Bruno Lessard
  9. Four Cameras are Better than One: Division as Excess in Mike Figgis’ Timecode – Nadia Bozak
  10. The Aesthetics of Displays: How the Split Screen Remediates Other Media – Malte Hagener
  11. Double Take: Rotoscoping and the Processing of Performance – Kim Louise Walden

For a full list of articles from all the other volumes of Refractory FSFF heartily recommends that you click HERE. And click HERE for the useful Wikipedia entry on Split screen (film)

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Five Gold Links

Film Studies For Free wishes you a very happy 2009, just a little later than hoped... Over the holidays it moved office into a lovely new blog-cabin, and since has been somewhat distracted both by its breathtaking new views of the Sussex countryside as well as the customary broadband-connection 'teething troubles' often attendant upon such moves.

FSFF will be back up to full speed (indeed, up to new and improved speed...) very soon. But in the meantime, on this, the thirteenth day of Christmas - were there such a thing - here are five gold links it wished it could have brought you just a tad earlier:

Martin Barker, (Editor): 'Editorial Introduction' Selected Articles □ Barbara Klinger, : 'Say It Again, Sam: Movie Quotation, Performance and Masculinity' □ Yiu Fai Chow & Jeroen de Kloet: 'The Production of Locality in Global Pop - A comparative study of pop fans in the Netherlands and Hong Kong' □ Joost de Bruin: 'Young Soap Opera Viewers and Performances of the Self'
  • Most interesting YouTube playlist discovery: Screening Room with Robert Gardner including clips from interviews with Jean Rouch (see below), Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Yvonne Rainer, Les Blank and Caroline Leaf
    Screening Room was a 1970s Boston television series that for almost ten years offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. The series was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner (Dead Birds, Forest of Bliss), who was Chairman of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard for many years. This unique program dealt even-handedly with animation, documentary, and
    experimental film, welcoming such artists as Jan Lenica, John and Faith Hubley, Emile DeAntonio, Jean Rouch, Ricky Leacock, Jonas Mekas, Bruce Baillie, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow. Thirty episodes have been edited for release as DVDs. Visit Robert Gardner's personal website for further information:
    www.robertgardner.net)

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

Wong Kar-wai Links: To Faye Wong (and David Bordwell), Thanks For Everything

Faye Wong sings her fabulous Cantonese cover of 'Dreams' by the Cranberries in Wong Kar-wai's Chung Hing sam lam/Chungking Express

Film Studies For Free was so inspired by David Bordwell's great recent post (Ashes to Ashes (Redux)) on Kar Wai Wong/Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux (2008) (also see Bordwell's Years of being obscure), and so (eternally) grateful to Faye Wong for lending her iconic classiness to FSFF's upper regions, that its festive gift to its readers this year is some extensive, scholarly, Wong Kar-wai linkage - see below. Oh and, as a little extra stocking-filler, do please check out the wonderful new issue of World Picture Journal on 'the obvious':

Derek Attridge and Henry Staten, Reading for the Obvious: A Conversation; Scott Durham, "The Center of the World Everywhere": Bamako and the Scene of the Political'; Rosalind Galt, The Obviousness of Cinema; Sandra Gibson + Luis Recoder Cinema/Film; Christian Keathley, Otto Preminger and the Surface of Cinema' David Farrell Krell, The School for Stupefaction; Scott Krzych, Kino Ex Nihilo; Ernesto Laclau in conversation with Brian Price and Meghan Sutherland, Not a Ground but a Horizon; Sam Lipsyte, A Pimple on the Ass of Drew Barrymore Speaks; Karen Pinkus, Nothing from Nothing: Alchemy and the Economic Crisis; Angelo Restivo, The Obvious: Three Reminiscences; Stephen G. Rhodes, Interregnum Reanimated: The Living Cemetery; Jeffrey Sconce, Circuit City Unplugged.

Warm seasons greetings to every one of FSFF's readers, many thanks for a fun first six months of blogging-life, and see you all again after a short break!

  • Acquarello on Wong Kar-wai at Strictly Film School
  • Matt Bautch, 'The Cultural Aesthetic of Wong Kar-wai', Latent Image 2003
  • Felicia Chan, 'In Search of a Comparative Poetics: Cultural Translatability in Transnational Chinese Cinemas', PhD E-thesis, Nottingham University 2007, (chapter 3 - p. 147-201 - treats Wong Kar-wai)
  • Ethel Chong, 'In the Mood for Love: Urban Alienation in Wong Kar Wai’s Films', Kinema Spring 2003
  • Jeremy Cohen, 'Lonely Hearts: Wong Kar-Wai's Obscure Objects of Desire', Eye Candy Winter 2006
  • Christopher Doyle & Wong Kar-wai interview for Interview Magazine on Ashes Redux
  • Wendy Gan, "0.01cm: Affectivity and Urban Space in Chungking Express." Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, November 2003
  • John Christopher Hamm, 'Review of Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time by Wimal Dissanayake', MCLC Resource Publication, October 2005
  • Ian Johnston, 'Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046', Bright Lights Film Journal, vol. 47, February 2005
  • Kent Jones, "Of love and the city." Film Comment, Jan/Feb 2001. Vol. 37, Issue 1; p. 22
  • Daniel Kälberer, 'Reference Literature on Wong Kar-wai', Film Bibliography 2006
  • Anthony Leong, 'Meditations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar Wai', Asian Cult Cinema 1999
  • Toh Hai Leong, 'Wong Kar-wai: Time, Memory, Identity', Kinema Spring 1995
  • Trish Maunder, 'Interview with Tony Leung', Senses of Cinema 2001
  • Andrew O’Hehir, 'Wong Kar-wai's blueberry-pie America', Salon.com 2008
  • Robert M Payne, 'Ways of seeing wild: the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai', Jump Cut 44, 2001, text version HERE
  • Effie Rassos, 'Everyday Narratives: Reconsidering Filmic Temporality and Spectatorial Affect Through the Quotidian,' PhD E-thesis, University of New South Wales, 2005
  • Tony Rayns, 'The Innovators 1990-2000: Charisma Express', Sight and Sound January 2000
  • Quentin Tarantino on Chungking Express on YouTube
  • Stephen Teo, 'Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love: Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time', Senses of Cinema 2001
  • Stephen Teo, '2046: A Matter of Time, a Labour of Love', Senses of Cinema 2005
  • Stephen Teo, 'Local and Global identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?' Senses of Cinema 2007
  • Fiona A. Villella (symposium ed.), 'The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai - A 'Writing Game', Senses of Cinema 2001 (entries on Backside; Blue; Creation; Dali-esque Time' Desire; Emotion; Look; Love; Possibility; Repetition; Space; Third-World; Time; Wrongheaded)
  • Elizabeth Wright, 'Profile of director Wong Kar-wai', Senses of Cinema 2002

Miscellaneous:

Thursday, 18 December 2008

On film-thinking: Daniel Frampton's Filmosophy

L’Enfant / The Child (Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2005)

For what are hopefully self-evident reasons, Film Studies For Free chooses very rarely to focus on papercentric (© Gary Hall) Film Studies. But today (The Day That UK Academia Stands Still) it opts for the purposeful casting of its beady e-eye on the digital and freely accessible manifestations and repercussions of just one such item.

The book of which FSFF speaks is by an author - Daniel Frampton - who is the true pioneer of Open-Access Film Studies, initially through his founding (in November 1996) of the magnificent, online salon-journal Film-Philosophy. Thanks to his Filmosophy, Frampton has also come to be of those (nowadays) very rare authors who have succeeded in founding a significant school of thought.

Filmosophy (London: Wallflower Press, 2006) - Frampton's book - describes itself thus (hyperlinks added, as ever, by FSFF):

Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. The book coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of ‘film-thinking’, arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic ‘intent’ about the characters, spaces and events of film. With discussions of contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr, Michael Haneke and the Dardenne brothers, this timely intervention into the study of film and philosophy will stir argument and discussion among both filmgoers and filmmakers alike.

As for his book's central concept of the 'filmmind', Frampton writes:

Film seems to be thinking right in front of us. Consider the empathetical framings of The Child, the questioning movements of Magnolia, the egalitarian images of Time of the Wolf. The point is that both the daytime chatshow and the video news report also involve this choice, this belief about what they show (or do not show, as in the lack of images from Helmand). If we begin to understand how film "thinks" we will start to
understand how moving images affect our life and being.

If you would like to know more about Filmosophy, or, if you already know more, but would like to read about it online for free, below are some hot, hot, hot filmosophical links:

Daniel Frampton's online writing about Filmosophy:

Open Access Articles Referring to Filmosophy:

  • Daniel Yacavone, 'Towards a Theory of Film Worlds', Film-Philosophy, 12.2, 2008 ('Daniel Frampton has recently attempted to provide a less reductive account of film. worlds (as experienced by viewers) within his broader ‘filmosophy’. ...')
  • Sarah Cooper, 'Mortal Ethics: Reading Levinas with the Dardenne Brothers', Film-Philosophy, 11.2, 2007 ('Frampton equates with the consciousness of the ‘filmmind’')
  • Davina Quinlivan on Lars Von Trier, Film-Philosophy, 12. 1, 2008 ('Frampton’s envisioning of the ‘filmmind’ (Frampton, 2006, 147), a cinematic consciousness. whose form embodies the very ideology that it diegetically ...')

Open Access, English-language Reviews of Filmosophy:

  • Review for Film-Philosophy by Philipp Schmerheim (12.2, 2008) ('Frampton wants to establish a terminology which redirects scholarly attention to the experience rather than analysis of film ... [H]is attempt to reform writing about film, away from what he conceives of as ‘technicist’ rhetoric to a more poetic way of writing, ultimately does not live up to its promises')
  • Review of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture by Sylvie Magerstädt (vol. 5 no. 3, September 2008).
  • Review for Scope by Ils Huygen ('Filmosophy is about this mutually productive encounter between cinema and ... In filmosophy "film style is now seen to be the dramatic intention of the film')
  • Review for Senses of Cinema by Tony McLibbin
  • Review for Frieze Magazine by Roland Kapferer ('Filmosophy is representative of this Postmodernist dethroning. The neologism ‘filmosophy’ is in itself highly revelatory. Philosophy – philo-sophia...')

Also see:

Other citations listed on Filmosophy.org:

  • Asbjørn Grønstad, 'Downcast Eyes: Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion', Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 1, pp. 133-144 here
  • Ils Huygens, 'Deleuze and Cinema: Moving Images and Movements of Thought', Image & Narrative, Issue 18. Thinking Pictures, here
  • Mark Goodall's text about 'Crash Cinema' here
  • Mark Richardson, 'The Importance of Paracinema in the Cyberspace Era ', The Film Journal, here
  • Richard Camilleri on Korean cinema, To Taste: Aesthetics, Politics, Bodies (November 7 2007) here
  • Eric Henderson's text on Chris Marker for Slant Magazine here
  • Owen Hatherley's text on cinema here
  • Some Iranian texts here & here & here & here