New SENSES OF CINEMA

Image from Guest (José Luis Guerin, 2010)

Film Studies For Free took a little break and caught up with some reading. A mini flurry of posts will issue as a result over the next few days, including this first one listing links to the excellent contents of the latest issue of Melbourne based online journal Senses of Cinema.

FSFF particularly liked the interview with the remarkable filmmaker José Luis Guerin about his most recent film Guest, Pedro Blas Gonzalez on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Jiwei Xiao on the films of Jia Zhangke.

Senses of Cinema, Issue 59 Contents

• Editorial 

Feature Articles

• Moira Sullivan Lars von Trier’s Other Comments at Cannes
• Jean-Baptiste Thoret The Seventies Reloaded: (What does the cinema think about when it dreams of Baudrillard?)
• Pedro Blas Gonzalez The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or, Socrates in the Desert
• Graham Daseler Lost Treasure: Trouble in Paradise
• The Celluloid Liberation Front Auschwitz­–Harlem: Post-Traumatic Economy in The Pawnbroker
• Lorraine Mortimer Something Against Nature: Sweet Movie, 4, and Disgust 
• Journey to Galveston: An Interview with Catherine Berge on King Vidor by Peter Tonguette
• Peter Tonguette King Vidor: The Editor’s Director 
• Accidental Cinema and the YouTube Sublime: An Interview with Joe Swanberg by Brigitta B. Wagner
• Jiwei XiaoThe Quest for Memory: Documentary and Fiction in Jia Zhangke’s Films
• Flannery Wilson Filming Disappearance or Renewal? The Ever-Changing Representations of Taipei in Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema 
• On Reality and Imagination: An Interview with Documentarian Dai Sil Kim-Gibson by Tammy Kim
• Imed Labidi Welcome: An Insight into the Landscape of Contemporary French Consciousness
• Kafi Kareem Trinbagonianness in Film: National Identity in Trinidad and Tobago Cinema 
• Defeating the Irremediable Solitude of the Guest: An Interview with José Luis Guerin by Rolando Caputo

Melbourne on Film

• Adrian Danks on On the Beach
• Stephen Gaunson on Marvellous Melbourne: Queen City of the South
• Deb Verhoeven on Melbourne Wedding Belle
• David Nichols on Your House and Mine
• Federico Passi on The Cleaners
• Jake Wilson on Flinders Street
• Ben Goldsmith on Ghost Rider

Festival Reports

• Chris Berry on Far East Film Festival
• Marc Saint-Cyr on Nippon Connection
• Rachel Thibault on Independent Film Festival of Boston
• Sirkka Moeller on Short Film Festival Oberhausen
• Catherine Simpson on Istanbul Film Festival
• Neil Young on CPH PIX
• Sally Shafto on Panorama des Cinémas du Maghreb
• Daniel Fairfax on Cannes
• Bérénice Reynaud on Images Festival
• Tom Redwood on Adelaide
• Bérénice Reynaud on Pan African
• Cerise Howard on Fribourg

Book Reviews

• Robert von Dassanowsky on Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films
• John Fidler on The Apartment Plot
• Peter Tonguette on Steven Spielberg: A Biography
• Burke Hilsabeck on Machine-Age Comedy
• Jay Daniel Thompson on Darwin's Screens
• Chris Yogerst on The Philosophy of the Western
• Daniel Eisenberg on Real and Reel: The Education of a Film Obsessive and Critic

Cteq Annotations

• Julian Savage on Fear Eats the Soul
• Colin Browne on Fox and His Friends
• Adam Bingham on Veronika Voss
• Darragh O'Donoghue on The Third Generation
• Rebecca Harkins-Cross on In a Year with Thirteen Moons
• Serena Bramble on In a Lonely Place
• George Kaplan on They Live by Night
• David Sanjek on Johnny Guitar
• J. David Slocum on Rebel Without a Cause
• Dan Harper on Assassination
• Alain Silver on Samurai Spy
• Anne Rutherford on Double Suicide
• David Melville on Death of a Cyclist
• Lee Hill on Viridiana

A Cinematic World? On Jean Baudrillard and Film Studies

Image from Stop-Loss (Kimberly Peirce, 2008). Read Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, 'Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11', which treats this and other contemporary war films.

We are no longer the actors of the real but the double agents of the virtual.

Jean Baudrillard, Fragments: Cool Memories III (New York: Verso, 1997):125

On the occasion of an excellent new issue of online journal Film-Philosophy on "Baudrillard and Film-Philosophy" (Vol 14, No 2, 2010), Film Studies For Free is proud to present a long list of links to openly accessible Baudrillardian film studies. These are set out below the embedded video of the late Baudrillard in action himself. This list incorporates links to the FP articles.

It's so nice to have things in a simulacrum of one tidy place, FSFF thinks. And it hopes you will agree.

Jean Baudrillard thinking and talking about the violence of the image, the violence to the image, aggression, oppression, transgression, regression, effects and causes of violence, violence of the virtual, 3d, virtual reality, transparency, psychological and imaginary. Open Lecture given by Jean Baudrillard after his seminar for the students at the European Graduate School, EGS Media and Communication Program Studies Department, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, in 2004

By Jean Baudrillard

• Jean Baudrillard, 'Virtuality and Events: The Hell of Power', [Translated by Chris Turner], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 2 (July 2006)

• Jean Baudrillard, 'Violence of the Virtual and Integral Reality', [Translated by Dr. Marilyn Lambert-Drache], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Jean Baudrillard, 'The Matrix Decoded:  Le Nouvel Observateur Interview With Jean Baudrillard', [Translated by: Dr. Gary Genosko and Adam Bryx], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (July 2004) 

• Jean Baudrillard video lectures at EGS 

Engaging with Baudrillard's work:

• Stuart C. Aitken and Deborah P. Dixon, 'Imagining Geographies of Film', Erdkunde, Band 60/2006

• Chiara Armentano, '"The Image-Interface": New Forms of Narrative Visualization, Space and Time in Postmodern Cinema', Reconstruction, 8.3 (2008)

• Jon Baldwin, 'Introduction - White Magic: Baudrillard and Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Melanie Chan, 'Virtually Real and Really Virtual: Baudrillard’s Procession of Simulacrum and The Matrix', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies,Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Alan Cholodenko, The ‘ABCs’ of B, Or: To Be and Not to Be B', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Alan Cholodenko, 'The Nutty Universe of Animation, The “Discipline” of All “Disciplines”, And That’s Not All, Folks!', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 1 (January 2006)

• Alan Cholodenko, '“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR”: The Virtual Reality of Jurassic Park and Jean Baudrillard', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005) 

• Alan Cholodenko, '“The Borders of Our Lives”: Frederick Wiseman, Jean Baudrillard, And The Question of The Documentary', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (July 2004) 

• Alan Cholodenko, '(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix - Part II: A Difficulty in the Path of Animation Studies', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007

• Alan Cholodenko, 'The Spectre in the Screen', Animation Studies – Vol.3, 2008

• David B. Clarke, Dreams Rise in Darkness: The White Magic of Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Gerry Coulter, 'Jean Baudrillard and Cinema: The Problems of Technology, Realism and History', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Anton Escher, 'The Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World', Erdkunde, Band 60/2006

• Scott Forsyth, 'Marxist Film Theory: From the Barricades to Postmodernism' , The Socialist Register, 1997

• Anne Friedberg, 'Urban mobility and cinematic visuality: the screens of Los Angeles – endless cinema or private telematics', Journal of Visual Culture, Vol 1(2), 2002: 183-204

• John Frow, 'Australian Cultural Studies: Theory Story, History', Australian Humanities Review, Issue 37, December 2005

• Michael Hemmingson, 'Auto/Ethnography and Tinsel Town: Nathaniel Kohn's Pursuing Hollywood and How it Relates to My Own Experiences Chasing the Dream of Creating Culture Through Cinema', Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research,  Vol 9, No 3 (2008)

• Mark Hobart, 'Just Talk? Anthropological Reflections on the Object of Media Studies in Indonesia', A.J.S.S. 34:3 (492–519)

• Mark Hobart, 'The Subject of the Subject: Philosophical background to a critical reconsideration of the problems in studying non-Western media', Position Paper to the Workshop on The Subject of the Subject in Media Studies, Media Research Group SOAS, 2nd. December 1997

• Russell J.A. Kilbourn, 'Re-Writing "Reality": Reading The Matrix', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 9.2, Fall 2000, pp 43-54

• Marc J. LaFountain, 'Obscene Ethics: A Baudrillardian View of Spurlock’s Super Size Me', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008) 

• Jon Lindblom, 'Toward an Ontology of the Image: Deleuze and the Aura of Simulation', Movement Editions, 2010

• Scott A. Lukas, 'Fragments of The World Thinking Me, Or How The Digital Facilitates Human Separation', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 2 (July 2006)

• Chris Lukinbeal, 'The map that precedes the territory: An introduction to essays in cinematic geography', GeoJournal 59: 247–251, 2004

• Christopher Macallister, 'The Changing British Sensibility Towards War and the Reimagining of World War Two in the Cinema', War, Virtual War and the Challenges to Communities Oxford 16th – 18th July 2002

• Russell Manning, 'Taking Baudrillard to the Movies (To Talk About Death)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 7, Number 1 (January, 2010)

• Erik Marshall, 'Fatal Strategies and Film Studies', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 44, November 2002

• William Merrin, 'Speculating to the Death: Machinic Integration and Transformation Within A Virtualized Reality', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 2 (July, 2007)

• William Merrin, 'Total Screen: 9/11 and the Gulf War Reloaded',International Journal of Baudrillard Studies,  Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Paula Murphy, 'The Simulacra of Global Conflict', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Pamela Nilan, 'Applying Semiotic Analysis to Social Data in Media Studies', Jurnal Komunikasi Massa Vol. 1, No. 1, Juli 2007, 60-74

• Benjamin Noys, 'Crimes of the Near Future: Baudrillard / Ballard', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 1 (January, 2008) 

• William Pawlett and Meena Dhanda, 'The Shared Destiny of the Radically Other: A Reading of  The Wizard of Oz', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Richard Pope, 'Baudrillard’s Simulacrum:  Of War, Terror, and Obituaries', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 3 (October, 2007)

• James Rovira, 'Subverting the Mechanisms of Control: Baudrillard, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Future of Religion', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Kenneth Rufo, 'Obscenity with a View: Baudrillard's  Revenge of the Crystal and Film Studies', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 43, November 2002

• Marita Ryan, 'Answering the Question: “What is Intermission?” – An Exploration of Intermission as a Postmodern Film', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 1 (January, 2008) 

• Alan N. Shapiro, 'Baudrillard and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005) 

• Mark Shiel, 'Cinema and the City in History and Theory', Cinema and the City (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)

• Jonathan Smith, Jean Baudrillard’s Philosophy of Magic', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 2 (July, 2007)

• Richard G. Smith, 'Lights, Camera, Action: Baudrillard and the Performance of Representations', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005)

• Paul Taylor, 'Baudrillard's Resistance To the Ob-Scene As the Mis-en-scene (Or, Refusing to Think Like a Lap-Dancer’s Client)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Paul A. Taylor, 'The Pornographic Barbarism of the Self-Reflecting Sign', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 1 (January 2007)

• Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, 'Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Hunter Vaughan, 'The Paradox of Film: An Industry of Sex, a Form of Seduction (Notes on JeanBaudrillard’s  Seduction  and the Cinema)', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

Agnès Varda on gleaning, plus other free public open video lectures from the European Graduate School

Agnès Varda, French director, photographer and filmmaker discussing filmmaking and her film Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse/The Gleaners and I, 2000, at the European Graduate School, in 2004 (video 1 of 6). See also 'Beautiful Trash: Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse' by Virginia Bonner at Senses of Cinema

As 'gleaning' is this blog's favourite activity, Film Studies For Free was happy to explore the European Graduate School (EGS) video channel at YouTube. The channel offers access to videos and video clips of great lectures, sessions, and interviews with well-known guest professors, including many filmmakers and film/media academics at the EGS Media and Communication Studies Department, Saas-Fee in Switzerland. You can access another list of older, shorter guest-lecturer, videos/clips (streamed using RealPlayer) at the EGS website, too. See below for the film and media studies highlights (in FSFF's opinion) of both EGS video-lists:

• Slavoj Zizek - Rules, Race, and Mel Gibson. 2006


• Peter Greenaway. Filming and Directing Night Watch 2006


• Sophie Calle - About Sophie Calle 2004


• Atom Egoyan - Citadel 2007


• John Waters - Filth 101. Film, Taste and Philosophy 2000


• Jean-Luc Nancy + Claire Denis. L'Intrus/The Intruder 2007


• Morgan Fisher - About Film and the Richness of Life. 2007


• Agnès Varda. The Things We Leave Behind. 2004 (embedded above)


• Jean Baudrillard. Violence of the Image. 2004


• Chantal Akerman + Catherine Breillat. Film and Theory. 2001


• Peter Greenaway - The Slavery of Music and Sound. 2002


• Peter Greenaway. Opera, Film, and Death. Video 2001


• Slavoj Zizek - On Belief and Otherness. 2002


• Volker Schlöndorff. Circle of Deceit False Witness. 2004


• Barbara Hammer. Film, Creativity and Process. 2004


• Barbara Hammer. Resisting Paradise. Discussion 2005


• Pierre Alferi. Films, Novels and Poetry. 2008

See also the following, shorter, film/media studies-related videos from 1999-2001, archived at the European Graduate School website . Just click on the lecture titles to open RealPlayer files:

• Giorgio Agamben (University of Verona, Italy) "On the State of Exception"


• Claire Denis Film Director "Cinema as Cultural Anthropology"


• Peter Greenaway Film Director "Cinema for the New Millennium"


• Agnes Varda Film Director "On Cléo from 5 to 7"


• Chantal Akerman Film Director "Crossing Cinematic Borders"


• Alain Badiou (Collège International de Philosophie in Paris) "On the Construction of a Truth"


• Jean Baudrillard 'Finalities of Change' (2002)


• Victor Burgin Goldsmiths College, University of London, and University of California, Santa Cruz "Creativity and Unknowability"


• Claude Lanzmann Film Director "On the Destruction of Destruction"


• Slavoj Zizek (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) "On Happiness"


• Wolfgang Schirmacher (European Graduate School) "Philosophy and Media"


• Michael Schmidt "Globalization of Music"


• Peter Greenaway, Film Director "Have We Seen Any Cinema Yet?"