Well, 'tis the season to be jolly, and
Film Studies For Free is indeed quite jolly as the holidays approach. It hasn't been an especially busy year, entry-wise, at this here
blog. But it has certainly been a lucky, busy and bountiful one for its author's film-studies-related activities away from it (including at
FSFF's
Twitter and
Facebook versions).
What customarily follows, to celebrate and give thanks for that fortune, are some links (including some choice ones not shared very much on any platform before) to openly accessible items of scholarly and critical interest.
FSFF hopes (as ever) to be back here with an update
very, very soon. But in the meantime, it would like to wish its faithful, patient and much appreciated readers very happy holidays if they are having them, and to send its warmest seasonal greetings to all!
- Daniel Reynolds (Emory University) presents: Execute Minute 47: on Star Wars Wars
- Joseph Moss (Georgia State University) presents: Wait, Where is the New Star Wars Trailer Premiering?
- Garret Castleberry (Oklahoma City University) presents: Prophetic Revisionist Paratextual Ontologies: Preparing the Way for The Force Awakens
- William Proctor (Bournemouth University) presents: Star Wars Detectives
- New NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Autumn 2015_‘Vintage’. The below contents are all accessible here: http://www.necsus-ejms.org/portfolio/autumn-2015_vintage/
Editorial Necsus; Articles: Temps mort: Speaking about Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) by Eric de Kuyper and Annie van den Oever; Agamben’s cinema: Psychology versus an ethical form of life by Janet Harbord; Richard Serra: Sculpture, television, and the status quo by Francesco Spampinato; Dredging, drilling, and mapping television’s swamps: An interview with John Caldwell on the 20th anniversary of Televisuality by Markus Stauff; Special section: Vintage, guest edited by Kim Knowles; Locating vintage by Kim Knowles; A theoretical approach to vintage: From oenology to media by Katharina Niemeyer; Technostalgia of the present: From technologies of memory to a memory of technologies by Tim van der Heijden; The way we watched: Vintage television programmes, memories, and memorabilia by Helen Piper; Retro, faux-vintage, and anachronism: When cinema looks back by Stefano Baschiera and Elena Caoduro; No time like the past?: On the new role of vintage and retro in the magazines Scandinavian Retro and Retro Gamer by Kristian Handberg; Death, beauty, and iconoclastic nostalgia: Precarious aesthetics and Lana Del Rey by Arild Fetveit; Audiovisual essays: edited by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin; Learning from popular genres – with help from the audiovisual essay by C. Álvarez López and A. Martin; Construction of a Heist by Henrike Lindenberger; Comedy Vitti Style by Pasquale Iannone; Book reviews: edited by Lavinia Brydon and Alena Strohmaier (NECS Publication Committee); The Lumière Galaxy by Francesco Pitassio; Beautiful Data / The Democratic Surround by Malte Hagener; Cinema of the Swimming Pool / Cinema as Weather by Adam O’Brien; Festival reviews: edited by Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist (Film Festival Research Network); Selling film in the summer of 2015: Midnight Sun, Il Cinema Ritrovato, and Karlovy Vary by Maria San Filippo; Made in Peru: Lima Film Festival comes of age by Sarah Barrow; Strong positioning on the international festival circuit: An interview with Diana Iljine of Filmfest München by Tanja C. Krainhöfer; Exhibition reviews: edited by Miriam De Rosa and Malin Wahlberg (NECS Publication Committee); Hollis Frampton’s ‘other work’ by Michael Zryd; Theaters: Cinematic vintage magnified by Miriam De Rosa; Arab Pop: Whose Gaze is it Anyway? by James Harvey-Davitt; Artists’ Film Biennial, ICA 2014 by Sophia Satchell-Baeza.
- New SENSES OF CINEMA!! Issue 77, 2015 - including tributes to and studies of Chantal Akerman: La Passion de L’Intime/An Intimate
Passion, the Legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Australian film history, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Quentin Tarantino and more...
- New Media Industries Journal, 2.2 2015. Online at: http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/issue/view/5
Articles: PR and Politics at Hollywood’s Biggest Night: The Academy Awards and Unionization (1929-1939) by Monica Roxanne Sandler; The Impact of Working Conditions and Personality Traits on the Job Satisfaction of Media Professionals by M. Bjørn von Rimscha; The Sony Hack: Data and Decision in the Contemporary Studio by J.D. Connor;
Hacking Radio History’s Data: Station Call Signs, Digitized Magazines, and Scaled Entity Search by Kit Hughes, Eric Hoyt, Derek Long, Kevin Ponto, Tony Tran; Cultural Diversity as Brand Management in Cable Television by Melanie Kohnen; TV Got Better: Netflix’s Original Programming Strategies and the On-Demand Television Transition by Chuck Tryon
- New at The Cine-Files: a great dossier on teaching film with contribution as follows:
- PROJECT ARCLIGHT! Charles Acland and Eric Hoyt have launched Arclight (http://search.projectarclight.org), a data mining and visualization tool for film and media history.
Arclight graphs how terms and entities trend across the nearly 2 million page collection of the Media History Digital Library (MHDL, http://mediahistoryproject.org), which includes lengthy runs of Variety (1905-1948), Broadcasting (1932-1963), Sponsor (1946-1964) Motion Picture News (1913-1930), Motion Picture Herald (1930-1948), Motion Picture Daily (1931-1964), and Photoplay (1915-1943), among many, many other publications. Arclight is integrated with the MHDL's search platform, Lantern, to allow for toggling between distant and close reading. You can find suggestions about how to use Arclight for research and teaching on our blog: http://projectarclight.org/arguments/
- The Open Library of Humanities, a major new open access journal platform, launched in 2015 and immediately published excellent film and media studies content:
Preface: M. Downing ROBERTS
1. Oshima in Retrospect(ives): The Question of Corporeality in Daitōa Sensō (1968) by Shota OGAWA
2. Ideology and Subjection in Ōshima Nagisa’s Kōshikei (1968) by Max WARD
3. Oshima is Dead: Proxy Wars, Security, and Cinematic Love by Phil KAFFEN
4. Ōshima Nagisa on Responsibility and Premonition: Shiiku (1961) and Amakusa Shirō Tokisada (1962) by M. Downing ROBERTS
5. The Voice of the Dead: The Image of the State and Postwar Democracy in Oshima Nagisa’s The Ceremony (1971) by Ryoko MISONO
- Anti-Christ: Tragedy, Farce or Game? PDF Jan Simons
- Laughter and the Death of the Comic: Charlie Chaplin's The Circus and Limelight in Light of the Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas PDF Moshe Shai Rachmuth
- Films Blancs: Luminosity in the Films of Michael Mann PDF Davide Panagia
- Cinematic Incorporation: Literature in My Life Without Me PDF Sarah Dillon
- Trying Truths: Dreyer, Bresson and the Meaning Effect PDF Brandon White
- Ambivalent Screens: Quentin Tarantino and the Power of Vision PDF Frida Beckman
- The Permeable Self: A Theory of Cinematic Quotation PDF Chelsea Crawford
- New Offscreen 19.7, 2015 Online at: http://offscreen.com/issues/view/volume-19-issue-7 (link via Girish Shambu)
Articles: The Maltese Falcon and the Case of the Mystery Square and other things lurking in the background by Donato Totaro; Nanarophelia and the danger of praising the mediocre by Simon Laperrière; London Made Me: Personal History, Film History and My Home Town by Paul W. Salmon; The Subject Was Rose Joseph Cornell and Rose Hobart by Elaine Lennon; Beautiful Light, Vibrant Things, Speaking Minds: Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder by Daniel Garrett
- Jason Mittell’s account of the project
- A post by participant Melanie Kohnen for Antenna, which also includes links to some of the work produced at the workshop
- Guest Presenter in Residence Catherine Grant's video essay Dissolves of Passion on Brief Encounter, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this winter.
- And participant John Gibbs' Three videographic exercises on Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946). including the video below:
- Below, Corey Creekmur's great video essay on 'intensified continuity' How to Read a File (How to Read a Film) [The 39 Steps]. Watch Corey's other videos here: https://vimeo.com/user41519424
- Film Theory Ch 3 The Face and the Mirror The below video essay, drawn from chapter 3 ('Cinema as Mirror: The Face and Close-Up'') of Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener's Film Theory: an Introduction Through the Senses (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2015), investigates elements of film theory that highlight the close-up and the face in the films of Ingmar Bergman. Premissed as the book is on the assumption that great films 'think' their own conditions of possibility, the video essay gives a meta-cinematic dimension to a filmmaker's apparently personal themes and private obsessions. For related video essays and texts, visit the book's companion website: http://www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9781138824300/
- A video essay on Lindsay's Anderson's film If, by Ella Finch, Dilyana Atanasova, Alex Brace, Yang Jiang
- PhD thesis by Anna Hurina (2015) Representations of Urban Spaces and Their Transformations in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s and 1960s, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11340/
List of
Cinematologists episodes Season 1 & 2
Episode 1: Repo Man (with Director Lucien
Busse) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/3/23/episode-1-repo-man Dario
and Neil introduce, screen and discuss Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic Repo Man in the context of independent v mainstream filmmaking. Neil's visit to the Berlinale
is reviewed plus we have an interview he conducted while in Berlin
with filmmaker Lucian Busse.
Episode 2: Bande À part (with Actors
Gillian Harker, Robert Dukes, Aisling M De’Ath & Adam Lannon) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/3/23/episode-2-bande-part Neil
and Dario discuss perhaps Godard's most accessible film and contextualise the
filmmaker’s legacy covering topics of filmic influence, homage and pastiche. We
also talk to four London based actors - Gillian Harker, Robert Dukes,
Aislinn M De'Ath & Adam Lannon - about their process of working with
directors and their own influences as actors. Episode 3: Whip it (with Prof. Linda Ruth
Williams & Dr. Shelley Cobb) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/3/23/episode-3-whip-it Introduction
and audience discussion of Drew Barrymore’s Whip It (2009) with guest speaker Dr Laura
Canning. The episode also analyses issues of gender with regards to the
film industry and academia and Dario interviews Prof. Linda Ruth Williams and
Dr Shelley Cobb about their AHRC funded research project investigating the
status and role of women filmmakers.
Episode 4: Yojimbo (with Director Mark
Herman) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/4/9/episode-4-yojimbo Neil
and Dario discuss the cinematic influence of Kurosawa particularly on American
New Wave filmmakers and explore the gaps in their own cinematic canons arguing
whether there can be any real, definitive criteria for judging a 'great' film.
Dario interviews British film Director Mark Herman about his career including
the films Brassed off (1996), Little Voice (1998) and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008).
Episode 5:
Bronson (with Dr. Johnny Walker) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/5/2/episode-5-bronson Neil
questions Dario about his article on Nicolas Winding Refn’s powerful Bronson
(2008) - entitled Punishing
Bodies: British Prison Film and the Spectacle of Masculinity - which analyses the prison as an
aesthetic space and suggests the (de)constructions of masculinity made possible
by the prison genre. Neil also interviews Dr Johnny Walker about his work on
the contemporary British Horror film. Episode 6: Goodbye Dragon Inn (Dr Sarah
Atkinson) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/5/13/episode-6-goodbye-dragon-inn Neil
and Dario discuss Tsai Ming-Liang’s 2003 ode to the cinema auditorium Goodbye Dragon Inn and discuss the
concept of the cinema experience and how this has been affected by the arrival
of the digital age. This theme also frames Dario's interview with Dr. Sarah
Atkinson on her recently published book Beyond the Screen: Emerging Cinema and
Engaging Audiences
Episode 7: Sci-fi Special (part 1) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/6/4/episode-7-sci-fi-special-part-1 In
the first of a sci-fi podcast double bill Neil and Dario discuss their
introductions to four films screened at the Poly, Falmouth as part of the BFI
season Days of Fear Wonder. The Fly (1986),
Demon Seed (1977), The Thing (1982) and Rollerball (1975) are all explored in the context of what
science fiction offers as a key cinema genre. Neil and Dario touch upon
the tropes of hard v soft sci-fi, artificial intelligence, the fear of
technology, metaphors of alien invasion and control of reproduction, along with
many other of the fundamental elements of the genre.
Episode 8: Sci-fi Special Part 2 (Pacific Rim) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/6/26/episode-8-sci-fi-special-part-2-pacific-rim In
what promises to be a no-holes-barred, apocalyptic battle of the ages Neil and
Dario face off in a cerebral clash of wills over a film that represents the
most overt disagreement: Pacific Rim (2013). Don't miss episode 2 of the sci-fi
double bill.
Episode 9a: Point Blank (Port Eliot
Special) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/8/21/episode-9a Dario
is on Holiday so Neil is joined by filmmaker and academic Mark Jenkin to
present and discuss John Boorman's 1967 classic Point Blank starring Lee Marvin. Point Blank was released in a zeitgeist year for crime cinema that
also included Arthur Penn's Bonnie &
Clyde, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le
Samourai and Seijun Suzuki's Branded
To Kill and it stands equal to those illustrious peers. This episode also
features an interview with writer Tom Shone about his latest book Woody
Allen: A Retrospective.
Episode 9b: Interviews from Port Eliot http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/9/9/episode-9b-port-eliot-special This
episode collects the diverse interviews collected by Neil across the weekend of
the festival. The conversations cover film costume with Oscar winner Sandy
Powell, music documentaries with television actress Caroline Catz, poetry
with Simon Armitage, extinct birds with Ceri
Levy and clouds
with Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Apprecation Society. Yes. Clouds. Neil also spent time with
one of his heroes, Ralph Steadman, and Neil and Dario discuss the place of
cinema at modern multi-arts festivals.
Port Eliot Festival websiteNextinction by Ralph Steadman and Ceri
LevyWalking Away by Simon Armitage
Episode 10: 12 Angry Men http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/9/26/episode-10-12-angry-men Season
2 of the podcast kicks off with a bumper freshers edition featuring a screening
of Sydney Lumet's 1957 social drama 12 Angry Men. A heavyweight cast of character actors
led by Henry Fonda argue over the evidence of what appears to be
straightforward guilty verdict. Neil and guest presenter Kingsley Marshall
introduce what is a canonical film studies text. Dario and Neil also discuss
their experiences of studying film and hopefully offer some helpful guidelines
to those who are coming into university to study what is a changing discipline.
Episode 11: Tony Manero (with Prof. Will
Brooker) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/10/4/episode-10-tony-manero Our
intense desire for, and identification, with film characters and stars comes under
the spotlight in this weeks' podcast. Neil is joined by filmmaker James Dean to introduce Pablo Larraín's unique and
brutal Tony Manero (2008)
about Chilean criminal who is obsessed with John Travolta's character from
Saturday Night Fever. It is simultaneously bleak, shocking and unsettling with
allusions to the darkest parts of human identity. Also on the podcast Dario
interviews Professor Will Brooker from Kingston University about the year
he is spending embodying the iconic David Bowie.
Episode 12: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
(with Jeanie Finlay) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/10/25/episode-12-planes-trains-and-automobiles Neil
is joined on stage at Falmouth by Kingsley Marshall to introduce John Hughes'
comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles
(1987). The influence and persona of John Candy and Steve Martin is discussed
along with the career of John Hughes as one the quintessential American 80s
directors. The podcast also features an interview with Jeanie Finlay on her
surprising and offbeat musical documentary Orion:
The Man Who Would Be King (2015).
Episode 13: Dead of Night (with Jez
Connolly) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/10/29/episode-13-dead-of-night The
Cinematologists go on the road again, this time to the University of Bristol,
to screen the Ealing produced British anthology horror Dead of Night (1945). Dario and Neil discuss the film with Jez
Conolly who has co-authored a book on the film with David Owain Bates as part
of Auteur’s ‘Devil’s Advocates’ series. Also discussed on the podcast is the
new book by friend of The Cinematologists, Dr. Johnny Walker. Contemporary
British Horror Cinema is
out now from Edinburgh
University Press.
Episode 14: Seconds (with journalist
Andy Bass) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/11/1/18p6jz74rsjn3od3azafzzkznn0fvo In
our first podcast from the University of Brighton's Hastings campus we screen the
strangely superb sci-fi thriller Seconds (1966). John Frankenheimer's key themes revolve
around paranoia and conspiracy with titles to his credit including The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964). This film
takes a faustian theme and links it to social contexts of mistrust in
government, consumerism and the increasing loss of identity in the modern age.
The episode also features an interview with writer and historian Andy Bass who
has recently written an article on the shooting of the film in his home town of
Scarsdale:
http://scarsdalenews.com/Scarsdale_Inquirer/8-21-15_NEWS__Rock_Hudson.html
Episode 15: The Hitch-Hiker (with writer
Jack Thorne) http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/12/2/episode-15-the-hitch-hiker-with-writer-jack-thorne Neil
is joined onstage at Falmouth by Kingsley Marshall to discuss Ida Lupino's 1953
film noir The Hitch-Hiker. Neil also
interviews writer Jack Thorne about, amongst other things, his up-coming
theatre adaptation of Harry Potter.Link to the Film Programme episode discussed
on the podcast
Link to the Senses of Cinema Ida Lupino
piece mentioned by Kingsley on the podcast Episode 16: In The Mood For Love http://www.cinematologists.com/podcastarchive/2015/12/2/episode-16-in-the-mood-for-love
In
one of the highlights of the year The Cinematologists screen Wong Kar-Wai's
stylish masterpiece as part of the BFI 'love' season in association with The
Poly, Falmouth. A veritable modern masterpiece In the Mood for Love stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in iconic
roles as lovers seeking refuge from disappointment, loneliness and the harsh
realities of their surroundings. Dario and Neil also discuss their cinematic
highlights of the year. The Guardian article by Peter Walker referred to in the
podcast can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/dec/19/in-the-mood-for-love