Celebrating Laura Mulvey: Or, Film Studies with Poetic License

 
A fascinating and informative excerpt from the audio commentary track on the British Film Institute's brand new Dual Format Edition of RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1977). You can find more information about this new video version of the film here and read a new interview with Mulvey about its making here.

Riddles of the Sphinx was made in 1976-7. The film used the Sphinx as an emblem with which to hang a question mark over the Oedipus complex, to illustrate the extent to which it represents a riddle for women committed to Freudian theory but still determined to think about psychoanalysis radically or, as I have said before, with poetic license. Riddles of the Sphinx and Penthesilea, our previous film, used ancient Greece to invoke a mythic point of origin for Western civilization, that had been critically re-affirmed by high culture throughout our history. [... S]ome primitive attraction to the fantasy of origins, a Gordian knot that would suddenly unravel, persisted for me in the Oedipus story, and its special status: belonging to very ancient mythology and to the literature of high Greek civilization, chosen by Freud to name his perception of the founding moment of the human psyche. My interest then concentrated on breaking down the binarism of the before/after opposition, by considering the story as a passage through time, a journey that could metaphorically open out or stretch the Oedipal trajectory through significant details and through its formal, narrational, properties. [Laura Mulvey, 'The Oedipus Myth: Beyond the Riddles of the Sphinx', PUBLIC, 2, 1989, FSFF's emphasis]

Film Studies For Free proudly presents an entry in honour of one the most important, most brilliant, most influential and hardest-working film and moving image scholars of all time: Laura Mulvey, professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy, and recently, co-founder of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. Mulvey is the author of: Visual and Other Pleasures (Macmillan, 1989; second edition, 2009), Fetishism and Curiosity (British Film Institute, 1996; 2nd ed. 2013), Citizen Kane (in the BFI Classics series, 1996) and Death Twenty-four Times a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (Reaktion Books, 2006). And she has made six films in collaboration with fellow film theorist and practitioner Peter Wollen including Riddles of the Sphinx (BFI, 1978) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (Arts Council, 1980) and with artist/film-maker Mark Lewis Disgraced Monuments (Channel 4, 1994)

FSFF's author has a pretty good record in celebrating Mulvey's influence on film studies already, having been lucky enough to take part, earlier this year, in a day devoted to this activity at Birkbeck's Institute of Humanities - an event recorded by Backdoor Broadcasting. The happy occasion for today's eFestschrift, however, is the British Film Institute's release of a new DVD/BluRay disk of Riddles of the Sphinx, the hugely significant and original feminist film Mulvey co-directed and produced in 1976/77 with her partner Wollen (the disk also contains their first film together: Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons [1974]).

To accompany this entry FSFF was honoured to be able to produce a short, exclusive extract of a sequence of its choice from the DVD audio commentary accompanied version (as embedded above). FSFF warmly thanks Laura Mulvey herself, as well as Hannah Maloco and the BFI, whose Production Board thankfully funded Riddles of the Sphinx, for kindly allowing this blog to create such a memorable and instrumental item of openly accessible film studies.

Beneath the BFI's own Riddles of the Sphinx clip (embedded below) -- a commentary free version of substantially the same sequence -- you can find a wonderful listing of links to openly accessible online scholarly work by and about Laura Mulvey. It provides ample testimony, were it needed, as to why she has been, is, and always will be, one of the true greats of our subject - as Michel Foucault probably would have put, a veritable 'founder of discursivity' for our discipline... 

Online written work by Laura Mulvey: 

• 'Between Melodrama and Realism: Under the Skin of the City (2001)', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• 'The Death Drive', Afterall Journal, 10, Autumn/Winter 2004  
• 'The Earrings of Madame de ...' Film Quarterly Summer 2009, Vol. 62, No. 4 
• '[On Fetishism and Curiosity] Reply to MacKinnon and Sorfa', Film-Philosophy, 5.6, February 2001
• 'The Oedipus Myth: Beyond the Riddles of the Sphinx', PUBLIC, 2, 1989  
• 'Unmasking the Gaze: Some Thoughts on New Feminist Film Theory and History', Lectora, 2, 2001
• 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen, 16.3, Autumn, 1975 pp. 6-18
• 'Plaisir visuel et cinéma narratif', Laura Mulvey (première partie); and 'Plaisir visuel et cinéma narratif', Laura Mulvey (seconde partie), Débordments, 2012 

Online written work by Peter Wollen about Mulvey/Wollen's joint work: 

• 'Knight's Moves', PUBLIC, 25, 2002
• 'The Field of Language on Film', October, 17, Summer 1981 [Lux Online version] 

Online video/audio work by or featuring Laura Mulvey:

• Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Celebrates Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck, University of London, February 7, 2013
• British Film Institute Researchers' Tale: Laura Mulvey on the Blonde, March 8, 2010 
• Cinemaphilia: Laura Mulvey at the 'Moving Image As Art' Symposium, TATE Modern, June 1, 2001 
• Added 'Death 24x a Second', PodAcademy, December 2012
• Jeff Wall: Six Works, TATE Modern,  December 2, 2005
• Jerwood Visual Arts lecture by Professor Laura Mulvey, 2013
• In Conversation: Film theorist Laura Mulvey talks to Director Mark Lewis (6 Parts), CineCity 2009 - Brighton Film festival 
• Iranian Women Filmmakers (2002) (Produced, directed by: Hamid Khairoldin, Majid Khabazan)  
• Itinerancy, Dislocation, Nomadic Subjects: Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami,1997),
  Birkbeck, University of London, June 25, 2013 [with Amber Jacobs and Rosalind Galt] 
• 'Laura Mulvey in conversation with Griselda Pollock', Studies in the Maternal, 2 (1) 2010
• Laura Mulvey – Love and Death in Three Films by Max Ophuls: Liebelei (Germany 1932), Letter from an Unknown Woman (US 1948) and Madame de… (France 1953), Royal Holloway University of London, June 2012
• London Critical Theory Summer School 2013 – Friday Debate II [with Stephen Frosh, Esther Leslie, Laura Mulvey and Costas Douzinas]
• Talking Film Laura Mulvey - Part 1, Stedelijk Museum, 2011
• Talking Film Laura Mulvey - Part 2, Stedelijk Museum, 2011 
• The Many Faces of Frida Symposium, TATE Modern, October 1, 2005
• Underwire Interview with Laura Mulvey, 2013 

Online writing about Laura Mulvey's work:

• Rakhee Balaram, Entry on 'Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen', Lux Online
• Katalin Bálint, 'Are Women Really Focalised? Overlap Between the Concepts of Male Gaze and Focalization in Film Theory', PsyArt, March 15, 2011
• Erika Balsom, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013)
• Michael Brooke, BFI Screenonline entry on 'The BFI Production Board: The Features'
• Eleanor Burke, BFI Screenonline entry on 'Laura Mulvey'
• Eleanor Burke, BFI Screenonline entry on 'Peter Wollen'
• Francesco Casetti, 'The City and its Moving Images: Hypertopia' (video), Afterall Journal, June 2013
• Franceso Casetti, 'The Relocation of Cinema', NECSUS,  
• Daniel Chandler, 'Notes on The Gaze', 2000; especially the section on Laura Mulvey on film spectatorship
• Ian Christie (ed.), Audiences: Defining and Researching Screen Entertainment Reception (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012)]  
• Matthew Croombs, 'Pasts and Futures of 1970s Film Theory', Scope, 20,  June 2011
  
• Charles Esche,'What does it mean to say that feminism is back? A reaction to Riddles of the Sphinx', Afterall Journal, 15, Spring/Summer 2007
• Chris Fennell, 'Laura Mulvey on Riddles of the Sphinx', BFI, October 1, 2013
  
• William Fowler, BFI Screenonline entry on 'Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974)'
• Monika Gagnon, 'Beyond Post-Feminism: The Work of Laura Mulvey and Griselda Pollock', Canadian Women's Studies, 11.1, 1990
• John Haber, 'Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', HaberArts, [date unknown]
• Daniel Herbert, 'Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image by Laura Mulvey ', Scope, Issue 10, Feburary 2008
• Stefan Jovanovic, 'The Ending(s) of Cinema: Notes on the Recurrent Demise of the Seventh Art, Part 2', Offscreen Journal, April 30, 2003
  
• Alexandra Kokoli, Entry on ‘Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)' in Diana Newall and G. F. Pooke (eds.), Fifty Key Texts in Art History (London: Routledge, 2012)
• Carolyn Korsmeyer, 'Feminist Aesthetics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) 
• Kendra Preston Leonard, 'Silencing Ophelia: Male Aurality as a Controlling Element in Olivier's Hamlet', Scope, 14, June 2009
• Katharina Lindner, 'Spectacular (Dis-) Embodiments: The Female Dancer on Film', Scope, 20, February 2011
• Lux Online  Entry on 'Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen'
• Kenneth MacKinnon, 'Curiously, Fetishism Can Be Fun', Film-Philosophy, 5.4, February 2001 
• Jennifer Proctor, '[Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema assignment:] Popcorn Maker for Film Studies', Nanoramas, February 25, 2013 
• Paula Quigley, 'Undoing the Image: Film Theory and Psychoanalysis', Film-Philosophy, 15.1, 2011
  
• Lucy Reynolds, BFI Screenonline entry on 'Riddles of the Sphinx (1977)'
• Eivind Røssaak (ed.), Between Stillness and Motion Film, Photography, Algorithms (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011) 
• Alison Rowley, 'Between Les Rendez-vous d’Anna and Demain on Déménage: m(o)ther inscriptions in two films by Chantal Akerman', Studies in the Maternal 2(1) 2010 
• Richard Rushton, 'Deleuzian Spectatorship', Screen, 50.1, 2009 
• Ellen Seiter, 'Re-vision: the limits of psychoanalysis', Jump Cut, no. 33, Feb. 1988, pp. 59-61 
• David Sorfa, 'Hieroglyphs and Carapaces: The Enigmatic Real in Laura Mulvey's Fetishism and Curiosity', Film-Philosophy, 5.5, 2001 
• Wanda Strauven, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam University Press, 2006)
• Marijke de Valck, Malte Hagener (eds), Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory (Amsterdam University Press, 2006)
• Griet Vandermassen, 'Woman as Erotic Object: A Darwinian Inquiry into the Male Gaze', The Evolutionary Review: Art, Science, Culture, eds. Alice Andrews and Joseph Caroll. New York: SUNY Press, 2010, pp. 69-75
• Belén Vidal, Figuring the Past: Period Film and the Mannerist Aesthetic (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012) 
• Maria Walsh, 'Against Fetishism: The Moving Quiescence of Life 24 Frames a Second', Film-Philosophy, 10.2, September 2006 
• Matt Wiley, 'Avoiding the Masculine “Gaze”: Frustrated Homosexual Desire and the Eroticized Role of the Camera In Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Antonioni’s Blow Up', Cinetext, 2003

New CINEPHILE 8.2 on Contemporary Extremism

Screenshot from 올드보이/Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)

What happens to the specificity of the films of the new European extremism and their self-conscious address to the spectator when the category of extremism is opened up, and takes on global dimensions? To what extent is it useful or important to retain this label of a “new extremism” in cinema across these disparate contexts? And how do we account for the many-faceted contexts in which this idea of extreme cinema manifests itself? [Tanya Horeck and Tina Kendall, 'The New Extremisms: Rethinking Extreme Cinema', CINEPHILE 8.2, 2012 - clicking on this link downloads a large PDF]

Film Studies For Free has just found that the latest issue of one of its favourite journals has just gone online: a special issue on Contemporary Extremism of the Canadian film journal CINEPHILE (8.2, 2012). Here is a link to the archive where you can find the issue. The extremely excellent contents are listed below.

Preface: 'The New Extremisms: Rethinking Extreme Cinema' by Tanya Horeck and Tina Kendall

Articles

• 'Rites of Passing: Conceptual Nihilism in Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Des filles en noir' by Tim Palmer
• 'Subject Slaughter' by Kiva Reardon
• 'Sacrificing the Real: Early 20th Century Theatrics and the New Extremism in Cinema' by Andrea Butler
• 'Cinematography and Sensorial Assault in Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible' by Timothy Nicodem
• 'Infecting Images: The Aesthetics of Movement in Rammbock' by Peter Schuck
• 'The Quiet Revulsion: Québécois New Extremism in 7 Days' by Dave Alexander

Report

• 'Extreme Vancouver' by Chelsea Birks and Dana Keller

LARGE PDF of whole issue

FILMICON: The New Journal That Will Launch a Thousand (Plus) Greek Film Studies

Film Studies For Free is delighted to announce the launch of Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies. A peer-reviewed, open access and cross-cultural project, its mission (excerpted from, below) is a refreshing, important and timely one, indeed.

The lively and original contents of its first issue are also linked to below. FSSF would particularly like to flag up Olga Kourelou's brilliantly useful English-language bibliography on Greek Cinema (2010-13), which contains links to numerous online and open access items of further interest, and Deb Verhoeven's excellent study of the Greek film circuit in Australia

FSFF wishes Filmicon the very best of luck: Καλὴ τύχη! 

Screen shot of Filmicon's mission

Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, Issue 1, September 2013 

EDITORIAL: Creating an Open-Access, Cross-cultural Home for Greek Film Studies


ARTICLES

• Banal or Extraordinary? Pedagogical Dilemmas in the New Audiovisual Environment Dimitris Eleftheriotis
• Twice Born: Dionysos Films and the Establishment of a Greek Film Circuit in Australia (updated) Deb Verhoeven (Γεννημένος δύο φορές: η Dionysos Films και η δημιουργία ενός ελληνικού κινηματογραφικού κυκλώματος στην Αυστραλία Deb Verhoeven [μετ: Μαρία Χάλκου]) 
• “Cinderella of Modern Greece”: Aliki Voyouklaki as National Romance Nick Potamitis
• From ‘Made in Greece’ to ‘Made in China’: a 21st Century Touring Revival of Golfo, a 19th Century Greek Melodrama Panayiota Konstantinakou

BOOK REVIEWS

• Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities, edited by Lydia Papadimitriou & Yannis Tzioumakis (2012) Maria Chalkou
• Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, vol. 37 1 and 2 (Special Issue on Greek cinema, 2011) Afroditi Nikolaidou
• New Greek Cinema 1965-1981: History and Politics by Stathis Valoukos (2011) Anna Poupou

FILM REVIEWS

• Wasted Youth (Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Jan Vogel, 2011) Angeliki Milonaki
• Amnesty (Bujar Alimani, 2011) Philip Phillis

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Greek-language Bibliography on Greek Cinema (2011-12) Dimitris Kalandidis
• English-language Bibliography on Greek Cinema (2010-13) Olga Kourelou

LOLA: Issue 4 on "Walks"; Tourneur, Hitchcock, De Palma, Pacino and much more

Screen shot from Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma, 1993). Read Adrian Martin's essay on this film in the new issue of LOLA .

Film Studies For Free is thrilled to hear that a new rolling issue of LOLA has launched. Issue 4 treats the very cinematic topic of 'Walks' and contains some items (Victor Bruno on lighting effects in Out of the Past, a fine translation of an Alain Bergala essay on Vertigo and Obsession, and several further excellent pieces on De Palma) that will very much repay a speedy stroll over there to check them out.

Over the coming weeks, LOLA will go on to present further articles on Kira Muratova, Frank Tashlin, the Cinema of Compassion, CinemaScope, The Grandmaster, and much more! Those enticing contents will slowly be added to the already delightful ones linked to below.

• Glittering Flares: Breaking the Darkness in Out of the Past Victor Bruno

• To the Passion Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin
• Time Denied: An Apotheosis of the Imaginary Alain Bergala
• A Walk Through Carlito's Way Adrian Martin
• Responsive Eyes and Crossing Lines: Forty Years of Looking and Reading Helen Grace

• Notes on Contributors

Cult Controversies! New CINE-EXCESS eJournal launches

Updated with further contents (September 6, 2013)!

Screenshot from The Last House on the Left (Dennis Iliadis, 2009). Read Claire Henry's article about this remake of Wes Craven's 1972 film here.

Film Studies For Free is scandalously excited to announce the publication of the new peer-reviewed eJournal Cine-Excess. Like the long-running conference and festival, directed by cult film scholar Xavier Mendik, to which it is related, the Cine-Excess journal brings together leading film critics and theorists "alongside international film directors and icons to discuss debates and traditions of global cult film activity".

The special launch issue of the Cine-Excess eJournal is entitled Subverting the Senses, Circumventing Limits and is edited by Mikita Brottman and John Mercer. It is described as follows:

[Issue 1] focuses on the theme of the controversial cult image in its political, historical and aesthetic contexts. With the resurgence of critical interest in the 1980s ‘video nasties’, as well as whole new generation of films being subject to official state control, the cult image is now becoming a crucial index between the censor and the censored. In order to explore the phenomenon fully, contributions to the launch issue considers a range of controversial cult case-studies,  with the creators of these unsettling images commenting directly on these critical interpretations.

The contents for the Subverting the Senses, Circumventing Limits are listed below and you can also read the abstracts of these papers here. There is a lot more of interest going on at the Cine-Excess website, though, so do be sure to take a good look around.

• A Cult Called Django: On The Controversial Tail Of A Transnational Bandito by Austin Fisher
• From Controversy To Cult: Franco Nero On Why Django Never Dies - Interview By Xavier Mendik
• The Last House On The Left: The Redemption Of The Remake By Claire Henry 
• The Last House(s) On The Left: A Response To Claire Henry’s Article By Marc Sheffler
• 'Til (Faces Of) Death Do Us Part by Nicolo Gallio
• The Face Of Death: A Response by Director John A. Schwartz 
  House-Cleaning: Or What Its Audiences Can Tell Us About Ruggero Deodato’s Film By Martin Barker 
• Debates On The Edge Of The Park: Ruggero Deodato And Giovanni Lombardo Radice Respond - Interviews By Giovanni Memola
• "People Who Think Outside The Box": British Audiences And Asian Extreme Films By Emma Pett 
• Distributing Outside The Box: Tartan’s Development Of Asia Extreme - A Response To Emma Pett’s Article By Paul Smith
• No Pain, No Gain: Strategic Repulsion And The Human Centipede By Steve Jones 
• More Than Just A Game: Breaking The Rules In The Bunny Game by Jenny Barrett
• My Monsterpiece: An Art Film By Rodleen Getsic
• An Official Afterword: The BBFC Responds To The Launch Issue Of The Cine-Excess eJournal 
• Hammer Has Risen From The Grave A.D. 2012 Conference Report By Mark Mckenna 
• The Cultural Mythology Of The Snuff Movie Conference Report By Mark Adams
• Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival Of Catalonia 4th-14th October 2012 Review By Xavier Mendik 
• • Notes On Contributors
  • Acknowledgements