Monday, 26 October 2009
Sensing cinema: phenomenological film and media studies
Film Studies For Free is using all of its searching senses today to bring you lots of links to perceptive film and media studies of the phenomenological kind, or to studies which at least touch meaningfully on issues of phenomenology, perception, and haptics.
Those especially interested in these topics might also like to experience the fascinating Cinesensory website once they've dipped into some of the wonderful, openly-accessible, scholarly resources below:
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Concordia cinema studies resources freely accessible online
The woman at the window: image from Jane Campion's Bright Star (2009); a trope explored in Julianne Pidduck's PhD thesis on the costume film now accessible online
Film Studies For Free was excited to hear last week that Concordia University has launched its online Institutional Research Repository Spectrum, with 6,000 full-text theses and dissertations. It was excited because it knows that based at Concordia is the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of the Faculty of Fine Arts, the largest, university centre for the study of film animation, film production and film studies in Canada.
FSFF also specifically knew that highly significant Canadian scholars, such as Julianne Pidduck (now a professor at the Université de Montréal) and André Habib (also at the Université de Montréal) had produced graduate theses there.
So, it is delighted to bring you the below links to the fabulous (mostly) Film Studies thesis resources accessible via the repository, including ones by Pidduck on the costume film (and also on contemporary film noir), Habib's brilliant francophone thesis on Jean-Luc Godard, and great work by other (now) well-known scholars such as Liz Czach.
- Babineau, Dan (2003) Stairs in cinema : a formal and thematic investigation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Ballantyne Tree, Tanya (1989) Formative evaluation of a documentary film on the effects of poverty on a Montreal family. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Bambic-Workman, Helen (1986) Development and evaluation of an instructional manual concerning the Nagra 4.2 film sound tape recorder. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Baric, Stephanie (2001) Yugoslav war cinema : shooting a nation which no longer exists. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Bird, Charles (1979) The making of 8mm film loops. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Black, Joel Elan (2003) 'Arrested for selling poetry!' or 'You wouldn't want your children reading this' : the historical significance of the "Howl" obscenity trial. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine (2003) Manufacturing culture in Cuba, an ethnography. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Brook, Glenn Leonard (2002) Canada, a people's history : an analysis of the visual narrative for a colonial nation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Bruce, Jean Marietta (2003) A melodramatic imagined nation : the unruly subject of Canadian cinemas. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Castiel, Élie (2003) Pour une esthétique du plan-séquence dans Le Voyage des comédiens de Theo Angelopoulos. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Chang, Sandra (2003) Children's pretend play with television and film-scripted character toys. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Cheryl., Dabreo-Ramharack (1998) Uplifting The Black Race - only males need apply : Black male militancy in Malcom X, Panther, Boyz n' the hood, and Get on the bus. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Clarke, Jocelyne (1989) Moving peripheries and marginal cultures : cinema and the "Dark Continent". Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Curcin, Nikola R (1983) Investing in Canadian feature films : production and evaluation of a video-tape for potential investors. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Czach, Elizabeth (2000) Home movies then and now. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- D'Amboise, Paul (2002) "Tinseltown as teacher" : a case study of historical feature films as interpretive sources of history within an educational context. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Dancsok, Michael (1998) Transcending the documentary : the films of Arthur Lipsett. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- De B'béri, Boulou Ebanda (2003) Africanicity in Black cinema : a horizontal labyrinth of trans-geographical practices of identity. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Deschamps, Lisa Anne (2002) The effects of popular culture on youth sub-culture and how it plays a role in the school environment. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Dorland, Michael (1991) The discursive economy of the emergence of the Canadian feature film : discourses of dependency and the governmentalization of a displaced national cinema, 1957-1968. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Dufour, Marianne (2000) Through the looking glass : the therapeutic potential of videotaping as an adjunct tool in non directive art therapy in an object relations perspective. Other thesis, Concordia University.
- Egan, Catherine M (1973) Films for art programmes at the secondary level. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Frigon, Martin (2003) La fonction historique de la figure du patriote dans le cycle abitibien de Pierre Perrault. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Gasher, Mike (1999) The Grey Fox meets Jumanji : the emergence of the feature-film industry in British Columbia. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Gilbert, Sylvie (2000) Sortir de table : les performances alimentaires de Carmen Miranda, Louise Mercille et des religieuses du Moyen Âge. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Gupta, Dipti (1998) Confronting the challenge of distribution : women documentary filmmakers in India. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Habib, André (2001) Origine et fin : Méthode(s). À partir et autour des Histoire(s) du cinéma de Jean-Luc Godard. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Jaafar, Nisrine (2001) The blue flame and the red flame: love and eroticism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Jordan, Randolph (2003) Starting from scratch : turntables, auditory representation, and the structure of the known universe in the films of David Lynch. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Katadotis, Katina (1995) Quebec's Cinema act : policy and practical perspectives. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Keightley, Keir (1996) Frank Sinatra, hi-fi, and formations of adult culture : gender, technology, and celebrity, 1948-62. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Kolomeir, Harriet T (1987) The neighbourhood movie house in Montreal, 1925-1929 : the harmonious whole. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Kristmanson, Mark (1999) Plateaus of freedom : nationality, culture and state security in Canada, 1927-1957. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Laakso, Hanna Maria (2002) DOGMAtic iconoclasm : performative aspects of realism and excess in Lars von Trier's Breaking the waves and The idiots. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Marsh, Susan (2003) As easy as 1,2,4-- : the space of ambiguity in art and teaching. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- McKee, Tracey L (2000) Good girls do it too! : a look at the representation of women who kill in made-for-TV movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University
- McLeish, Anna (2003) To recycle is to author is to create is to recycle : transitory film authorship, from popular European cinema to post-new Hollywood cinema. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Moen, Kristian (2001) "About as shapeless as the Man in the Moon" : the representation of desire and transition in six films of Charles Laughton. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Nagy, Judy (1996) Home grown remedies : in-house innovation in the film-making industry. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Nichols, Robert Darcey (2003) From monuments to cinema : the question of the counter-monument in two works by Mark Lewis. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Pidduck, Julianne (1997) Intimate places and flights of fancy : gender, space, and movement in contemporary costume drama. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Pidduck, Julianne (1993) The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Pinsonneault, Michael (1999) Social dimensions of Hollywood movie music. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Preville, Philip (1997) The effort to forget : collective memory and documentary film in Québec. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Primeau, François (2001) Enquête sur la représentation de la masculinité et la Méthode dans le cinéma états-unien des années mille neuf cent soixante-dix : vers une nouvelle conception de l'acteur cinématographique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Pycock, Elizabeth (1992) Memory and anger : teen films and the female body. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Read, Robert J (2003) The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Ryan, Cyril (1996) Black movie : five picture deal to make gun movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Schyngera, Wes (1993) Experiencing media : the resonance of post(modern) culture. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Shalinsky, Bernard (1977) Multi-sensory exploration of the natural environment : production and evaluation of a super 8 film-based videotape. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Simon, Cheryl Inez (1998) Gender, genre and globalization : discourses of "Femininity" in the popular culture of the 1990's. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Sinkinson, Susan (1999) The self as "other" : accessing issues of difference in Trinh T. Minh-Ha's Reassemblage. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Smith, Donna Lee (1989) Mombasa days : a feature-length film script. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Smith, Matthew (1996) Introducing a new medium : newspaper reviews of the first film screenings in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto and New York in 1896. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Spivak, Robert (1991) Christopher Durang : satire and beyond. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Stober, JoAnne (2001) That's not what I heard : synchronized sound cinema in Montreal 1926-1931. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Stoianova, Christina (1999) The Eastern European crisis of self-knowledge (1948-1989) : the relationship between state and society as reflected in Eastern European film : a genre approach. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Suchet, Simone (1994) Le cinéma rural et la société italienne des années soixante-dix : représentations idéologiques et impuissance politique : étude sur Novecento de Bernardo Bertolucci, Padre, padrone de Paolo et Vittorio Taviani, [et] l'Albero degli zoccoli de Ermanno Olmi. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
- Verma, Tina (1999) Re-imagining multiculturalism : how newness enters the world. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Weir, Jodi (1999) Performing gender : transgenderism as critique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Zhou, Hao (2003) Application of 3D facial animation techniques for Chinese opera. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
- Zielinski, Ger (1996) Towards the "Utopie film" : aspects of Adorno's thought in Alexander Kluge's antagonistic concept of realism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
Friday, 23 October 2009
Bellocchio, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Verga and beyond: Italian Cinema research from new look eScholarship.org/uc/

Image from I pugni in tasca/Fists in pocket (Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 1965).
See Deborah Young's short essay on this film here.
Here's another post to celebrate Open Access Week, just in the nick of time.
Film Studies For Free, tipping its jaunty e-hat to the fabulous weblog Open Access News for the information, has been delighted today to revisit the eScholarship archive of the University of California, which has had a makeover. Here's the explanation of the whys and wherefores. FSFF can happily testify that it is now even more user-friendly than before, so do please explore it.
To celebrate, here's a little crop of wonderful, openly-accessible articles on Italian cinema, all published in the UCLA journal Carte Italiane, that FSFF was able to harvest in a even shorter jiffy than usual.
- Sarah A. Carey, Before and After the Revolution: The Power(lessness) of the Image in I pugni in tasca, Buongiorno, notte, Prima della rivoluzione and The Dreamers, Carte Italiane, 2:4, 2008
- Brendan W. Hennessy, A Cinematic Premonition of Disorder: Social and Political Satire in Bellocchio's La cina è vicina (1967), Carte Italiane, 2:4, 2008
- Antonio Idini, Stealing Home: Flight from Exile in Il ladro di bambini, Carte Italiane, 1:14, 1994
- Peggy Kidney, Recent Publications in the Field of Italian Cinema, Carte Italiane, 1:7, 1986
- David Pendleton, Pasolini's Cinema of Regression, Carte Italiane, 1:12, 1992
- Dana Renga, Women's Place: Contradictory Models of Female Behavior in Italian Cinema (1932-1940), Carte Italiane, 1:16, 1999
- Robert Spiegel, Verga and the Realist Cinema, Carte Italiane, 1:2, 1981
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Film International for free - Lynch, Kieślowśki, Gomorrah, Brokeback Mountain, Tearoom, and Caché
A very busy Film Studies For Free has just got round to reading yet another of Intellect's freely accessible journal issues: Film International (Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 February 2009). This was an excellent, highly stimulating read indeed. Below are links to all the main articles. FSFF particularly enjoyed the essays by Orr, Supanick, Sharrett and Ogrodnik.
- 'McMafia rising [on Gomorrah, the Camorra, Roberto Saviano, deregulation, free trade, Naples, Italy, Matteo Garrone]' Rajko Radovic
- 'Last Year at Mansfield: William E. Jones's Tearoom' Jim Supanick
- 'Death of the Strong, Silent Type: The Achievement of Brokeback Mountain' Christopher Sharrett
- 'Performative Radicalism in contemporary Canadian documentary film' William Anselmi and Sheena Wilson
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
An Index to SCAN Journal of Media Arts Culture
Frame grab from All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999) from an image-essay by Ryland Walker Knight) - see also Fiona Jenkins' wonderful SCAN essay, Grief’s Testimony: On Almodóvar’s All About My Mother
It's Open Access Week this week, and while every Film Studies For Free blogpost brings you links to openly accessible Film and Media Studies resources, FSFF thought it was a good moment to celebrate one of the most consistently excellent OA e-journals, the Australia-based SCAN: Journal of Media Arts Culture. Below, then, is a complete and convenient one-stop index of live links to all the refereed articles on film and media that SCAN has published in its five and a half years of online existence.
FSFF's highlights are: the Film as Philosophy and Screenscapes Past Present Future special issues; the fantastic Cinematic Scriptwriting issue, edited by Kathryn Millard; Elizabeth A. Wilson's brilliant reflections on artificial intelligence; Justine Toh on Batman Begins; Christopher Hayton on Charlton Comics' Monster Movie Adaptations; Darrin Verhagen on audiovision; and Ahu Paköz on Persepolis.
- Vol 6 Number 2 September 2009 on Sound.Music.Design
The Expanded-contracted Field of Recent Audio-Visual Art Ian AndrewsDeveloping the Practice and Theory of Stream-based Sonification Stephen Barrass
Captured Space Philip Samartzis
Audiovision, psy-ops and the perfect crime: Zombie Agents and sound design Darrin Verhagen
Body≈Sounds: an emergent sonic practice Danielle Wilde
- vol 6 number 1 June 2009 Reading Between the Panels (Part II)
Considering comics as medium, art, and culture - the case of From Hell Simon Locke
Remasters of American Comics: Sequential art as new media in the transformative museum context Damian Duffy
Fantastic Giants: Charlton Comics' Monster Movie Adaptations Christopher Hayton
Reading Comics Rhetorically: Orality, Literacy, and Hybridity in Comic Narratives Bobby Kuechenmeister
- vol 5 number 3 December 2008 Biopolitics of the senses: touch, sound and embodied being
Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva: Written in and translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite
"When the grinding starts": Negotiating touch in rehearsal Kate Rossmanith
Sound, touch, the felt body and emotion: Toward a haptic art of voice Yvon Bonenfant
Interactive instrumental performance and gesture sonification Kirsty Beilharz
Critical Dialogues 1 David Chapman and Louise K. Wilson, with Anne Cranny-Francis
Sonic Assault to Massive Attack: touch, sound and embodiment Anne Cranny-Francis
- vol 5 number 2 September 2008 Reading Between the Panels (Part I)
(Re)Constructing History: Italy's Post-War Resistence Movement in Contemporary Comics Laura Perna
Too Cruel: The Diseased Teens and Mean Bodies of Charles Burns's Black Hole James Zeigler
"His greatest enemy – intolerance!" The Superman radio show in 1946 Michael Goodrum
Out of Africa: The Saga of Exiled Cartoonists in Europe John A. Lent
A Reawakening of Memories in Comic Form: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Ahu Paköz
The Cultural Biographies and Social Lives of Manga: Lessons from the Mangaverse Mio Bryce, Jason Davis and Christie Barber
If Walls Could Talk: Spatialising Narrative in the Museum Peter Doyle
- vol 5 number 1 May 2008 Screenscapes Past Present Future
For a History of Black Sean Cubitt
YouTube: the New Cinema of Attractions Teresa Rizzo
S.M.L.XL: Feature film across the Screenscape Alex Munt
Voice, Image, Television: Beckett’s Divided Screens Julian Murphet
James Ellroy's Cinematic Crime Writing: From 'Stephanie' to My Dark Places Rodney Taveira
Surveillance Screens and Screening in Code 46 Peter Marks
From Big to Little Screens: Recurring Images of Democratic Credibility and the Net Mark Rolfe
- vol 4 number 3 December 2007 Mobile Media/Public Spaces
Uncertain Spaces: Artists’ Exploration of New Socialities in Mediated Public Space Maria Miranda
Dead to the World: The future of hand-held art Darren Tofts
iApparatus or How the Culture of Personalised Media Creates Millions of iOperators Andreas Ströhl
- vol 4 number 2 august 2007 Film as Philosophy
A phenomenology of tragedy: illness and body betrayal in The Fly Havi Carel
Grief’s Testimony: On Almodóvar’s All About My Mother Fiona Jenkins
A Play of Memory: Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil Catherine Summerhayes
Grace and Violence: Questioning Politics and Desire in Lars von Trier’s Dogville Robert Sinnerbrink
Even Better than the Real Thing: Sadism and Real(ity) T.V. Matthew Sharpe
The cinematic condition of the politico-philosophical future Daniel Ross
- vol 4 number 1 April 2007 e-Performance: Post-disciplinary contexts and theorisation
soundAFFECTs: transcoding, writing, new media, affect Hazel Smith
Performing the Network Maria Miranda and Norie Neumark
Sonic Immersion: Interactive Engagement in Real-Time Immersive Environments Garth Paine
Performing Posthuman Perspective: Can You See Me Now? Rosemary Klich
e-Collaborations in Sixties America: 9 Evenings, the Dancer’s Body, and Electronic Technologies Meredith Morse
- vol 3 number 3 December 2006 Technological Interventions
Somatechnics, or Monstrosity Unbound Nikki Sullivan
Somatic Technologies: Embodiment, New Technologies and the Undead Anne Cranny-Francis
Cyber Disobedience: Gandhian Cyberpunks Cynthia Townley & Mitch Parsell
Deus est Machina: Technology, Religion and Derrida’s Autoimmunity Nick Mansfield
(De)constructing Technologies of Subjectivity Nicole Anderson
Border Trouble: photography, strategies, and transsexual identities Sara Davidmann
Grow Your Own - Angiogenetic Body Adornment Norman Cherry
- vol 3 number 2 October 2006 Cinematic Scriptwriting (edited by Kathryn Millard)
Kind of a Revolution, and Kind of Not: Digital Low-Budget Cinema in Australia Today Adrian Martin
Writing for the Screen: Beyond the Gospel of Story Kathryn Millard
Re-telling History in the Digital Age: The Scripting Of Hunt Angels Alec Morgan
Digital Kiarostami & The Open Screenplay Alex Munt
Writing the 'Real'/ Really Writing Maree Delofski
Writing on the screen John Grech
- vol 3 number 1 June 2006 News and the Net: Convergences and Divergences
Wikinews: The Next Generation of Alternative Online News? Axel Bruns
Disaggregating Online News: The Canadian Federal Election, 2005-2006 Greg Elmer, Zach Devereaux & David Skinner
Democracy & Online News: Indymedia and the Limits of Participatory Media Lee Salter
The Daily Show, Crossfire, and the Will to Truth Megan Boler
- vol 2 number 3 December 2005 Shadows of the Dead: Mediating the Archive Photograph
The Utilitarian Photographer Lindsay Barrett
Doomed streets of Sydney 1900-1928: Images from the City Council's Demolition Books Sue Doyle
Haunted by a Vitality that is No More - Interpreting the Photograph in the Crime Archive Caleb Williams
Public eye, private eye: Sydney police mug shots, 1912-1930 Peter Doyle
- vol 2 number 2 September 2005 Memory, Media, and Embodied Cognition
"Can you think what I feel? Can you feel what I think?": Notes on affect, embodiment and intersubjectivity in AI Elizabeth A. Wilson
"The Chain of Memory": Distributed Cognition in Early Modern England Evelyn Tribble
Tangkic Orders of Time: an anthropological approach to time study Paul Memmott
Body Memory in Muscular Action on Trapeze Peta Tait
The Dynamic Body Image and the Moving Body: revisiting Schilder's theory for psychological research Francine Hanley
The Mutation of "Cognition" and the Fracturing of Modernity: cognitive technics, extended mind and cultural crisis Andrew Murphie
Indexing Audio-Visual Digital Media: the PathScape prototype Mike Leggett
Seeking self-consistency with integrity: an interdisciplinary approach to the ethics of self and memory Russell Downham
On the Likely Form of 'Autobiographical Memory' for Aristotle James William Ley
- vol 2 number 1 April 2005 "The Glittering Tart": Imaging Sydney
The Enigma of Arrival James Donald
SYD: the city as airport Gillian Fuller & Ross Rudesch Harley
Morphings and Ur-Forms: From Flâneur to Driveur Sherman Young
Drawing Sydney: Flatlands and the Chromatic Contours of a Global City Stephanie Hemelryk Donald & John Gammack
"I’d rather take Methadone than Ken Done": Branding Sydney in the 1980s Susie Khamis
Blue Murder: a RE-IMAGINED history Greg Levine & Stephen McElhinney
- vol 1 number 3 November 2004 BODILY (Trans)Formations
Body Politics in Post-Soviet Russia Dmitry Mikhel
'It's as plain as the nose on his face': Michael Jackson, modificatory practices, and the question of ethics Nikki Sullivan
Fleshly Impressions: The Work of Paddy Hartley Paddy Hartley
The Monster Body of Myra Hindley Cathy Hawkins
Producing Identity: Elective Amputation and Disability Harminder Dosanjh Kaur
Queering Performativity: Disability After Deleuze Margrit Shildrick
Better dicks through drugs? The penis as a pharmaceutical target Petra Boynton
Digital memories, analogues of affect Robert Payne
“Pagan Poetry”, Piercing, Pain and the Politics of Becoming Greg Hainge
The Christological Imperative: notes towards a speculative re-interpretation of Catholic martyrdom Daniel Nourry
- vol 1 number 2 June 2004 Ghost & Their Machines: Magic, Technology and the Uncanny
Contingency on the Island of Ghosts Stephen Muecke
Machine Love and the Uncanny Object: A Children's Story Annette Hamilton
The Ghost In/On The Machine: Magic, Technology And The "Modest Witness" Anne Cranny-Francis
Dream Cities: The Uncanny Powers of Electric Light Scott McQuire
Seeing Impossible Bodies: Fascination as a Spatial Experience Patricia Pringle
Technology and Magick Steve Collins
- vol 1 number 1 January 2004 Ludic Moments
Co-Creative Media: Online Multiplayer Computer Game Culture Sue Morris
The Experience of Information in Computer Games
Patrick CroganPlaying in the Zone: Thirdspace in Jet Set Radio Future and Shenmue II Brett Nicholls & Simon Ryan
Games, Simulation & Serious Fun: An Interview With Espen Aarseth Patrick Crogan
Neither gaze nor glance, but glaze: relating to console game screens Chris Chesher



