New World Picture 5: Varda, Solomon, Citron, Jacobs, Schneeman, Wisconsin Death Trip,

Image from Innocence and Despair (Phil Solomon, 2001). Experience Solomon's video at World Picture Journal 5: Sustainability

Film Studies For Free is a longstanding and ardent supporter of the online journal World Picture. Today, FSFF is thrilled to bring you news of the latest issue (no. 5) on Sustainability which has just gone online. There are plenty of wonderful film-related items, as usual, as well as some timely and important essays and interviews on sustainability from a number of other key perspectives for the Arts and Humanities.

Great work, WP!

Below, you can find the issue's  table of contents, and below that you can find the call for papers for the next World Picture conference, this time in Toronto, so do please scroll down for those.

Table of Contents

• Eugenie Brinkema Burn. Object. If.

• Tina di Carlo  Excess Sustainability, Sustainable Excess: A Dossier of Statements on Architecture and Sustainability Statements by Stefano Harney, Geoffrey West, Rem Koolhaas, Jeffrey Inaba, Bjarke Ingels, and Tomas Saraceno

• Michelle Citron in conversation with Brian Price and Meghan Sutherland The Ambiguous Archive

• Alexander García Düttmann The Life and Death of the University

• Ken Jacobs 3D is Intoxicating and Three 3D Poems: Lulu in Hollywood, Routine, The Story of a Devoted Couple

• Jennifer Johung Sustainably Dependent: Bio-Architectural Living Spaces

• Maebh Long The Hedgehog and Lord Browne: The “To Come” of the Humanities

• Ian MacKaye in conversation with Brian Price Records

• Timothy Morton Unsustaining

• Karen Pinkus and Cameron Tonkinwise Want Not: A Dialogue on Sustainability with Images

• Rebekah Rutkoff The Splatter Technique: An Interior Dialogue Between the Narrator and Carolee Schneeman

• Phil Solomon Innocence and Despair (2001): A Decade Later

• Allan Stoekl Agnès Varda and the Limits of Gleaning

CALL FOR PAPERS: 2011 World Picture Conference 
October 21-22 University of Toronto 
Lorenz Engell, Bauhaus University, Weimar Elizabeth Povinelli, Columbia University

The annual World Picture Conference gathers scholars from a range of different disciplines to address the relation between critical theory, philosophy, and aesthetics. For this year’s meeting we welcome papers on questions of distance. Such considerations might include (but are in no sense limited to):  

• Distance and mediation (technological and otherwise) 
• Distance as abstraction (or alienation, estrangement) 
• Travel Simultaneity
• Spatial allegories of distance
• Vision (as the prime sense organ of distance)
• Modes of translation
• Geopolitics (of distance)
• Distance and/as interval (distance as time, not just space) 
• Distance and unknowing/ignorance 
• Critique of proximity/propinquity 
• Ecology and distance (global footprints, carbon calculations, etc.) 
• Scale Emotion Critical distance/objectivity

Please submit proposals (250 words, plus brief bio) by June 17 to: brian.price@utoronto.ca

Federico Fellini Studies

Richard Dyer talks about his research project at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy (IKKM) Weimar. Period of fellowship: February 2009 – July 2009. Also see Richard Dyer's IKKM-Site.

“What is a movie, in the beginning? A suspicion, a hypothetic[al] story, a shadow of ideas, blurred feelings. And, still, [from that] first impalpable contact, it already seems to be itself, complete, vital, pure.” (Federico Fellini, Fazer um filme (“Making a Movie”). Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 2000., 204 and 205, translated by Marcelo Moreira Santos and cited by him in 'Cinema and Pragmatism: a Reflection on the Signic Genesis in Cinematographic Art', Signs, Vol. 3, 2009: pp. 30-40)

“The movie tells its worlds, its stories, its characters, through images. Its expression is figurative, like [that] of dreams. (...) The movie tries to reproduce a world, an environment, in a vital manner. It tries to remain in this dimension, trying to recreate the emotion, the enchantment, the surprise.” (Fellini, cited in op. cit. 139 and 154)

Inspired by the video, above, of the sublime Richard Dyer talking about "The Wind in Fellini" in simply one of the best Film Studies lectures currently available on the internet, Film Studies For Free today brings you some choice links to openly accessible, and high quality, studies of and further viewing on the work of director Federico Fellini, and of his collaborators, like Nino Rota (the subject of a wonderful new book by Dyer).

Just so you know, FSFF is off on a trip shortly and will be back, joyously labouring away to track down such wondrous links as these below, in just over a week. See ye efter!

• Lior Barshack, 'Intimate Enunciations: Carnival and Apocalypse in Fellini', Cardozo Law Review, 31.4, 2010

• John Baxter, 'Juliet of the Spirits', The Criterion Collection: Notes, March 11, 2002

• Peter Bondanella, 'Federico Fellini: A Life in Cinema' - excerpt, The Films of Federico Fellini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

• Peter Bondanella, 'Amacord', The Criterion Collection: Notes, November 22, 1999

• Robert Castle, 'Orchestra Rehearsal Reconsidered: In which "Fellini takes us beyond our frailties and chaos', Bright Lights, Issue 40, May 2003

• Adrian Danks, 'Roma', Senses of Cinema, February 2002

• Richard Dyer, 'The Ending of 8 ½ (1963)', in James Walters and Tom Brown (eds), Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory (2010)

• Richard Dyer, 'Tales of Plagiarism And Pastiche', Nino Rota: Music, Film and Feeling (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2010)  (27 free pages) Book info. 

• David Ehrenstein, 'La Strada', The Criterion Collection: Notes, March 7, 1988

• Federico Fellini, 'Nights of Cabiria', The Criterion Collection: Notes, September 6, 1999

• Federico Fellini, 'And the Ship Sails On', The Criterion Collection: Notes, September 27, 1999

• Manuela Gieri, 'Character and Discourse from Pirandello to Fellini: Defining a Countertradition in an Italian Context', QUADERNI d'italianistica Volume XHl. No. 1, 1992

• David Hannah (with Richard Dyer), 'Film composer Nino Rota's collaborations' (Viewing: 3:24), BBC website, August 31, 2010

• Tullio Kezich, '8¹⁄2: When "He" Became "I"', The Criterion Collection: Notes, December 3, 2001

• Marcia Landy, 'Introduction', Italian Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

• David Lavery, 'News From Africa: Fellini-Grotesque', originally published in Post Script 9.1 and 2 (1990): 82-98

• Tony Maraini, 'An Interview with Federico Fellini', Bright Lights Journal, Issue 26, November 1999

• Todd McGowan, 'Fantasy and Showing Too Much', The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (Albany: State University of New York, 2007)

• Pu Miao, 'The Two Themes: Settings in Fellini's Films', Places, 7.3, 1991

• Marcelo Moreira Santos and cited him in 'Cinema and Pragmatism: a Reflection on the Signic Genesis in Cinematographic Art', Signs, Vol. 3, 2009: pp. 30-40

• Gary Morris, 'Nights of Cabiria', Bright Lights, Issue 22, September 1998 

• Catherine O'Rawe, '‘"I padri e i maestri": Genre, Auteurs and Absences in Italian Cinema', Italian Studies, 63.2, 2008

• Tom Piazza, 'I Vitelloni: A Trip to the Station', The Criterion Collection: Notes, April 23, 2004

• George Porcari, 'Fellini Goes To The Beach', Cineaction, Issue 75, 2008

• Megan Ratner, 'Knocking on Modernity's Door: Fellini's I Vitelloni." Bright Lights Film Journal, vol. 41, August 2003

• Dana Renga, 'Irony and the Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Fellini, Zanzotto and Casanova's Redemption', QUADERNI d'italianistica, Volume XX, No. 1-2, 1999 

• Sam Rohdie, 'Amarcord: Federico of the Spirits', The Criterion Collection: Notes, September 4, 2006

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'The White Sheikh', The Criterion Collection: Notes, April 28, 2003

• Andrew Sarris, 'Variety Lights', The Criterion Collection: Notes, August 28, 2000

• Ajay Sekher, 'Ways of Seeing the Self, Subjectivity and History: Filmic Autobiographies, Biopics and Historicals', Academia.edu, date unknown

• Alexander Sesonske, '8¹⁄2: A Film with Itself as its Subject', The Criterion Collection: Notes, December 3, 2001

• Antonia Shanahan, 'Federico Fellini', Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, 2002

• Domenic Siracusa, 'Casanova, Marinetti and the Art of Seduction', Carte Italiane, 2.6, 2010

• 'Agnès Varda on Amacord', Viewing (10:49), BFI Live, May 5, 2010

• Marguerite Waller, 'Whose Dolce Vita is this anyhow? The Language of Feliini's Cinema', QUADERNI d'italianistica, Volume XI, No. 1, 1990

• Peter Wuss, 'Dreamlike Images in Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Tarkovsky’s The Mirror: A Cognitive Approach', Avila, Fall 2003

Open Access Film Studies

Not one but two big trumpets! Image from Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Film Studies For Free is a little embarrassed today. It is being called upon to blow its author's trumpet. It does hope that this won't happen too often, because it might have to protest...

Luckily, the embarrassment is mitigated by the fact that, at the same time, it is blowing the trumpet of a very worthy event on a subject so close to FSFF's heart -- Open Access Film Studies -- as to be almost indistinguishable from it. 

All of which is to say, please read the below announcement and, if you are in the very bonny vicinity of St. Andrews University next Wednesday, do consider coming along.

Open Access Film Studies

Wed 23rd March 2011 09:15 to 17:30
Parliament Hall, St Andrews University

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Our fifth annual study day (organised by Chelsea Wessels) will be devoted to the subject of the free dissemination of film studies work and resources via the internet. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, who runs the 'Film Studies for Free' website.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in postgraduate study at the Centre for Film Studies, or simply in finding out more about what we do, to meet staff and current students.

Programme

9:15 - 9:30 Welcome
9:30 - 11:00 Dr. Catherine Grant: 'Fast-forwarding Film Studies in the Digital Age?  Back to an experimental, multimedia future'
11:00 - 11:30 Tea and Coffee Break
11:30 - 1:00 Panel 1
Vera Ryzhik "That's What My Blog Says: Free Sharing in New Information Technology and The Post-Human Identity"
Yun Mi Hwang "Online Access to the Korean Film Archive: Promotion of a National Cinema in the 21st Century"
Dr David Martin-Jones "Film-Philosophy.com"
1:00 - 2:00 Lunch
2:00 - 3:45 Panel 2
Matthew Holtmeier "Karagarga: Piracy, or Public Archive?"
Fredrik Gustafsson "The web and the blog in a time of media turmoil"
Dr Tom Rice: "Colonial Film: Creating an online archive"
3:30 - 4:00 Tea and Coffee Break
4:00 - 5:30 Video Essays, Screening and discussion

For more information, contact Dr. Alex Marlow-Mann by email

Citizen Butler! Thank you for 20 great years of SCREEN-L!

Image from Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), one of the films studied in the 1982 PhD thesis "Toward a Theory of Cinematic Style: The Remake" by Jeremy Butler at Northwestern University.

One of Film Studies For Free's heroes is Jeremy Butler, professor of television, film, and new media at the University of Alabama, and the founder of Screen-L (an e-mail discussion list for film/TV educators and students, founded in 1991), ScreenSite (a website to facilitate the teaching and research of film/TV/new media) and ScreenLex (a pronunciation guide for film/TV students of all ages).

The former two ventures are some of the earliest Internet resources for film and TV studies teachers and students. Jeremy also served as the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ first information technology officer and was a co-founder of that organisation's website. And he also created a very cool website on Television Style.

Below is a message Jeremy sent out to members of the Screen-L list this week celebrating the remarkable 20 year anniversary of that email community. As well as setting out some essential issues for every scholar active in online publishing and research, he also thanks some people for Screen-L's success.

FSFF would like to join some of Screen-L's other subscribers in turning that gratitude right back at you, Jeremy! Thank you for everything you've done as one of the genuine innovators of the Film and TV Studies disciplines. It's been truly invaluable!

Twenty years ago, BEFORE THE WORLD WIDE WEB EXISTED, Screen-L was born. Its first  test message was launched out onto BITNET (the "Because It's Time" Network) on Friday, March 15, 1991, at 7:42 (and 11 seconds) pm, CST. It initially lived on UA1VM, the University of Alabama's #1 virtual machine--a mainframe computer... big iron!

1991 was the paleolithic era for networked computing. The Internet was not yet the standard platform for email delivery. (Anyone remember the horror that was cc:Mail?) The Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was principally used for services such as Gopher and file transferring via FTP). The World Wide Web had its public debut on August 6, 1991, but Web browsers that could handle images were still two years away.

So, in 1991, Screen-L was kinda cutting edge. I can remember leading workshops at the Society for Cinema Studies (before it added "Media" to its name) on how academics might use this new-fangled electronic mail thing for scholarly purposes.

One fun thing about Screen-L is that every message in its 20-year history is archived here:

http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html

The archive provides an interesting history of the field of media studies. And this archive makes me wonder: 20 years from now, will be able to look back at Facebook's and Twitter's data with the same ease? The short answer is, obviously not. Both of those services make it quite onerous to archive their material. And wouldn't it be interesting to have a crystal ball and see if such services will even exist 20 years hence?

A few thanks are in order:

I must thank the University of Alabama for hosting Screen-L since day one and thus making our longevity possible.

And thanks must also go to the hundreds of Screen-L subscribers over the years. As Screen-L's moderator, I've been grateful for the civility that (most) folks have shown.

On we go for another 20 years (and more?)!

Regards,

Jeremy Butler
Screen-L founder

On the Documentary Real - in Fiction and Documentary cinema and television

Stella Bruzzi, 'Plenary Lecture: Approximation: Mad Men, the death of JFK and nearly history' [NOTE: Presentation begins a few minutes in after a brief 'Blooper' Reel, with some profanities...!] (Audio: Stella Bruzzi: lecture ; Video: Stella Bruzzi: questions; Audio: Stella Bruzzi: questions)

A fairly self-explanatory post from Film Studies For Free today: a collection of brilliant videos, above and below, recorded at the Documentary Real symposium which took place at October 21st, 2010 at the 'Vooruit' in Ghent, Belgium.

The main participants were Cis Bierinckx (curator, artistic director Beurshouwburg Brussels), Stella Bruzzi (film theory, University of Warwick), Edwin Carels (curator, art theory, KASK), Marc De Kesel (Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, Artevelde Hogeschool Gent), Katerina Gregos (curator), Steven Jacobs (art history, KASK and Antwerp University), Vincent Meessen (artist), Jasper Rigole (artist), Avi Mograbi (Israeli filmmaker), and Duncan Speakman (artist).

So, with no further ado, here's the symposium introduction, and below that are the remainder of the videos: 

The symposium 'The Documentary Real invite[d] artists and theorists to interrogate the ambiguous relation between documentary film and reality. To what extent can a reel of film capture reality—if this is possible at all—and when can we say that it calls a new reality into being? Do not most films oscillate between ‘document’ and ‘argument’; that is, between representing, rewriting and creating reality? Moreover, what strategies do artists use to document our daily lives? Is the detour through alienation and animation perhaps the proper way to make an outright and truthful work? Do new developments in technological media provide new opportunities for documentary artists? Finally, how do these artistic experiments and their problems represent the culture we live in?

Robrecht Vanderbeeken, 'Introduction' to The Documentary Real Symposium.

Katerina Gregos, 'The Elastic Documentary' (Audio: Katerina Gregos: lecture); Video: Katerina Gregos: questions; Audio: Katerina Gregos: questions)

Edwin Carels, 'Re-animating Animation' (Audio: Edwin Carels)

Steven Jacobs, 'Framing Pictures' (Audio: Steven Jacobs)

Vincent Meessen, 'CLINAMEN Cinema - the Documentary Swerve: A Performative Lecture' (NOTE: The performative lecture of Vincent Meessen included a screening of unique footage of a famous modernist architect protected by copyrights. For this reason the presentation cannot be made available online. Only the introduction and questions after the performance are shown). Audio: Vincent Meessen

Duncan Speakman, 'Subtlemob' (Audio: Duncan Speakman)

Marc De Kesel, 'Hotel Holocaust: On "Shoah Documentary Real"' (Audio: Marc De Kesel: lecture; Video: Marc De Kesel: questions; Audio: Marc De Kesel: questions) 

Cis Bierinckx introduces two films '"Details 2 and 3" by Avi Mograbi' (Audio: Cis Bierinckx)