Film Studies For Free

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Corrected entry (February 12): FRAMEWORK: The Journal of Cinema and Media

'Snakes&Funerals' by Emily Jeremiah, James S. Williams and Gillian Wylde. Taking Jean-Luc Godard’s canonic film Le Mépris / Contempt (1963) as a starting-point, Snakes&Funerals set out to explore the queer possibilities of image and sound, especially of colour and of ‘straight’ repetition. First published in Frames, Issue 1, July 2012.

Film Studies For Free [thought it had] had a lovely surprise today. It found, through Google Scholar, that NINE full issues of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media (including the most recent five issues) were freely accessible through the Digital Commons of its publisher Wayne State University Press. It jumped to the pleasing conclusion (encouraged by the use of the word Commons + free access), that this great journal had turned to open access publishing.

Then, on February 11, FSFF received a very courteously worded email with the following message from a very nice representative of Wayne State University Press:

Unfortunately, this journal is not open access, and we have no plans to make it so at this time. I'm writing to you so that you have the correct information about Framework.

When you visited the site, BePress (administrator of Digital Commons) had not yet activated the toll-access barrier to the journal content. That was an error on our part, one that we have since rectified. Those who click on the links you have posted on your blog will not be able to download the article for free. Instead, a $5 fee is charged before access is granted. I apologize for the confusion [...].

$5 is much, much cheaper than most traditional "gated" online academic publication access, for sure. But FSFF must apologise to its readers -- who, up until a short while ago, will have been able to access contents for free -- for drawing a premature conclusion.

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Issue 35 of SCREENING THE PAST: Martin, Ruiz, Godard, Marker, Malick, Ophuls, and RIP Vikki Riley

Corrected edition! [Thanks AM!]

Screen cap from Petulia (Richard Lester, 1968). Read Adrian Danks's new article on this film and its director. And read Roger Ebert's fascinating review of the film at the time of its release.

It was somewhat remiss of Film Studies For Free to tweet the link to a new, and excellent, issue of Screening the Past, and then not to follow up with an entry here. This little oversight is corrected today with the below list of contents and links.

There are a huge number of film studies topics covered in the issue (although a fair few of them, in a variety of great contributions, by Adrian Martin!). FSFF particularly liked Lorraine Sim on the ensemble film and Roger Hillman on Malick.

This blog especially recommends, also, the dossier (introduced by Martin) dedicated to the work and memory of Vikki Riley, a highly original writer on film and a tireless political activist who tragically died in a road accident in Darwin, Australia, last September.

Screening the Past, Issue 35, 2012

Saturday, 12 January 2013

“How Motion Pictures Became the Movies”: A Video Lecture by David Bordwell

Not the actual Vimeo embed! For that you MUST visit David Bordwell's website...

Today something new has been added [to the Observations on Film Art website]. I’ve decided to retire some of the lectures I take on the road, and I’ll put them up as video lectures. They’re sort of Net substitutes for my show-and-tells about aspects of film that interest me. The first is called “How Motion Pictures Became the Movies,” and it’s devoted to what is for me the crucial period 1908-1920. It quickly surveys what was going on in cinema over those years before zeroing in on the key stylistic developments we’ve often written about here: the emergence of continuity editing and the brief but brilliant exploration of tableau staging.
The lecture isn’t a record of me pacing around talking. Rather, it’s a PowerPoint presentation that runs as a video, with my scratchy voice-over. I didn’t write a text, but rather talked it through as if I were presenting it live. It nakedly exposes my mannerisms and bad habits, but I hope they don’t get in the way of your enjoyment. [David Bordwell, ''What next? A video lecture, I suppose. Well, actually, yeah….", Observations on Film, January 12, 2013]

The above is, hopefully, self-explanatory. In other words you should head straight over to David Bordwell's website (also see here) to be reminded, if you really needed to be, of just what a valuable resource it is, and just what a global treasure he is (and, of course, Kristin Thompson, too!].

Film Studies For Free can't wait for more of these. Thank you, David!

Monday, 7 January 2013

New Issue of MEDIASCAPE Online on "History and Technology"

Frame grab from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), one of the subjects of Film Studies For Free's author's latest videographic film study in her new article 'Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies ', which you can find in the newly published issue of Mediascape.

The much awaited Winter 2013 issue of MEDIASCAPE, UCLA's Journal of Cinema and Media, has just been published. There are two very fine articles on historical film archives by Christina Petersen and Bryan Sebok, as well as two excellent columns on related historiographical themes. Meanwhile, the META section boasts some very good, new video essay work by Matthias Stork, Alexandra Schroeder, and Clifford James Galiher and reflections on videographic and other digital film studies practices by great luminaries, such as Yuri Tsivian and Daria Khitrova, alongside those of much more ordinary mortals! There's also a highly informative interview with filmmaker Thom Andersen and some very interesting reviews to catch up with.

All contents are listed and linked to below. But, also, do check out MEDIASCAPE's occasional, but very high quality blog which publishes between journal issue releases. A good place to start is this entry: 'Mastering "The Master"' by Vincent Brook

MEDIASCAPE, Winter 2013

Editorial by Andy Myers and Andrew Young

Features

The Crowd Mind: The Archival Legacy of the Payne Fund Studies’ Movies and Conduct (1933) by Christina Petersen
Headline Hollywood: A discourse analysis of the Variety archive by Bryan Sebok

Columns

Alex Haley’s Roots and Hyperreal Historiography by Randy Laist
Transmission: Considering New Media and the Online Histories of HIV/AIDS by Christopher Garland

META

What Happens When You Sleep? Multiple Layers of Voyeurism in the Paranormal Activity Trilogy by Alexandra Schroeder
Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies by Catherine Grant
The Three Fates of the Maltese Falcon: Hammet's Novel at Warner Bros. by Clifford James Galiher
Photography and Fictionality by Jens Schröter
Transmedia Synergies — Remediating Films and Video Games by Matthias Stork
In Retrospect: 2012 Los Angeles Animation Festival by Kelly Lake
“A Film is Alive During its Making” – An Interview with Filmmaker Thom Andersen by Matthias Stork
On Cinemetrics, Video Essays, and Digital Scholarship – An Interview with Dr. Yuri Tsivian and Dr. Daria Khitrova by Matthias Stork

Reviews

Total Archive: Picturing History from the Stereographic Library to the Digital Database by Brooke Belisle
All The World’s A Video Wall: Technology, Humanity, and the Things in Between. Reviewing Chris Salter’s Entangled by Judith Kohlenberger and Samuel Zwaan
Murder and Montage: Oliver Stone’s Hyperreal Period by Randy Laist
Review of Useful Cinema by Andrew Myers
Something Borrowed from the Past: Wedding Photography and Super 8mm by Paul Gansky

Holy LOLA! Issue 3 on MASKS Online

FSFF's montage of frame grabs from Les yeux sans visage / Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960) and Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012). Read Part One of LOLA's collective hailing of the latter film

Film Studies For Free is delighted to bring you the always lovely news that not only has a new issue of Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu's LOLA been published -- on Masks -- it has already been extended, as per the new rolling publication style of this wonderful online film journal.

There is one final roll-out for this issue coming soon. This will include texts on Jerry Lewis, Rivette and Carpenter compared, Sitges Film Festival, and the conclusion of 'Hail Holy Motors'. FSFF will add links to the below list of contents once these are online.

LOLA, Issue 3 (December 2012): Masks