New issue of SCOPE: Nicole Holofcener, Realism, Self-Transformation Narratives, Károly Makk, the Feature Film as "Short Story" and More

Framegrab from Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener, 2001). You can read Rachel Lister's article about Holofcener's films here

Life is good, thinks Film Studies For Free: a new issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies has just been published. There's a small but well-edited selection of great articles, and an enormous number of hugely useful book reviews and conference reports. FSFF particularly liked Rachel Lister on Nicole Holofcener's "short story" films and Miklós Kiss on Károly Makk's Szerelem/Love.

All contents are listed and linked to below.

Scope: Issue 24 October 2012

Articles

• Self-Making as Public Spectacle: Bodies, Bodily Training and Reality TV Bree Hadley
• Rationalising the Irrational: Artistic Realism as Cognitive Reality in Károly Makk's Szerelem/Love  Miklós Kiss
• The Feature Film as Short Story: The "Little Disturbances" of Nicole Holofcener Rachel Lister
• Cinderella vs Barbie: The Battle for Postfeminist Performance in Teen Transformation Narratives Kendra Marston

Book Reviews

• All Book Reviews
• Jacques Rivette by Douglas Morrey and Alison Smith ; Alain Robbe-Grillet by John Phillips A Review by Jonathan L. Owen
• Music and Politics by John Street ; Wagner and Cinema edited by Jeongwon Joe and Sander L. Gilman  A Review by Nathan Waddell
• Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films by M. Keith Booker
• Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation by Chris Pallant
• A Review by Noel Brown
• Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel edited by Jeffrey Ruoff; Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement By Dimitris Eleftheriotis A Review by Sofia Sampaio
• Jerry Lewis by Chris Fujiwara ; Atom Egoyan by Emma Wilson ; Andrei Tarkovsky by Sean Martin A review by Adam Jones
• The Comedy of Chaplin: Artistry in Motion by Dan Kamin ; Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century by Matthew Solomon  A review by Bruce Bennett
• Von Sternberg by John Baxter ; Willing Seduction: The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich and Mass Culture by Barbara Kosta  A Review by Elaine Lennon
• Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since World War I by Yvonne Tasker ; A ‘Toxic Genre': The Iraq War Films by Martin Barker A Review by Jay Reid
• Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier by Homay King ; Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-Fantasy-Fighting-Philosophy by Paul Bowman  A Review by Lin Feng

Film and Television Reviews

• All Film and Television Reviews
• Dust (Polvo) A review by Miharu M. Miyasaka

Conference Reports

• All Conference Reports
• The Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese and Asian Cinema in the UK  A report by Jonathan Wroot
• Deleuze, Guattari and China Symposium A report by Yun-hua Chen
• The Cinema of Sensations: Fourteenth International Film and Media Studies Conference A report by Francesca Hardy
• NECS Conference 2012 - Time Networks: Screen Media and Memory A report by Nessa Johnston

Welcome to NECSUS, A New Open Access Film and Media Studies Journal

Frame grab from The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999). Read Anna Backman Rogers's article on this film at the new NECSUS journal.

Hot off the press! To coincide with its annual conference, taking place in Lisbon from tomorrow, the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) has just launched its new online and open access journal NECSUS. Feast your eyes on the marvellous contents of its first issue on Crisis below.

It has been added to Film Studies For Free's permanent listing of online and open access film and media studies journals. And now FSFF's author will read it! Yay!

Enjoy the conference, fellow NECS members!


Spring 2012: Launch Issue

• Editorial Necsus
• The gaps of cinema by Jacques Rancière
• Twitter as a multilingual space: The articulation of the Tunisian revolution through #sidibouzid by Thomas Poell and Kaouthar Darmoni
• Policing the people: Television studies and the problem of ‘quality’ by Sudeep Dasgupta
• The photo-novel, a minor medium? by Jan Baetens

Special Section: Crisis

• Sea-change: Transforming the ‘crisis’ in film theory by Robert Sinnerbrink
• A sideways view of the film economy in an age of digital piracy by Ramon Lobato
• Portraying the global financial crisis: Myth, aesthetics, and the city by Miriam Meissner
• Universal, Germany, and All Quiet on the Western Front: A case study in crisis historiography by Michael Wedel
• Ephemeral bodies and threshold creatures: The crisis of the adolescent rite of passage in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant by Anna Backman Rogers

Book Reviews:

• Crisis and capitalism in contemporary Argentine cinema reviewed by Fausto Appiolaza
• Towards a new media archaeology? A report on some books and tendencies reviewed by Petra Löffler

Conference Reviews:

• Moving image and institution: Cinema and the museum in the 21st century, University of Cambridge reviewed by Beatriz Bartolomé Herrera
• The impact of technological innovations on the historiography and theory of cinema, La Cinémathèque québécoise, Montreal reviewed by Trond Lundemo

Festival + Exhibition Reviews:

• Busan Cinema Forum 2011 reviewed by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck
• Atlas. How to carry the world on one’s back? reviewed by Teresa Castro

Studies of Long-Form Television, Part 1: THE WIRE

Last Updated: May 26, 2012 - please scroll right down
Erlend Lavik on 'Style in The Wire', April 2012


Jason Mittell, 'Serial Boxes: The Cultural Value of Long-Form American Television' [a Presentation given at the 'Serial Forms' conference in Zurich, June 2009] Also read Mittell's text about this presentation

Film Studies For Free begins a little series of entries that ... is... not ... on ... Film Studies ... as it is ... most narrowly ... defined. GASP! Choke. [Recovers characteristic composure].

It was inspired not only by that great, film and media studies, disciplinary leveller that is the DVD, but also, and especially, by Jason Mittell's hugely ground-breaking, open peer-reviewed, online, 'book-in-progress': Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, as well as by the publication today of Erlend Lavik's first online video essay, above, on the American television drama series The Wire. These are both, in their own ways, impressive and very in-depth studies that merit a wide viewership/readership, as do the other excellent resources listed below on this legendary television series.

If FSFF is missing any important, openly accessible studies, do please leave a comment to that effect with a link. Many thanks.

• Esther Addley, 'Unravelling The Wire: Academics dissect social science of cult TV show', Critical Studies in Television Online,November 27, 2009
• Rowland Atkinson and David Beer, 'The Ivorine Tower and The Wire', Network, Summer 2001 (also see here) 
• Stephen Armstrong, 'Under The Wire', Critical Studies in Television Online, 2009 (?)
• Susan A. Bandes, 'And All the Pieces Matter: Thoughts on The Wire and the Criminal Justice System' (October 4, 2010), Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2011; University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-19
• Simon Barker, 'From soft eyes to street lives: The Wire and jargons of authenticity', City, 14: 5, 545 — 557
• David Bordwell, 'Take it from a boomer: TV will break your heart', Observations on Film Art, September 9, 2010
  
• Alafair S. Burke, 'I Got the Shotgun: Reflections on The Wire, Prosecutors and Omar Little (October 21, 2010). Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Forthcoming; Hofstra Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-33
• I. Bennett Capers, 'Crime, Legitimacy, Our Criminal Network, and The Wire', Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 8 (2011) 
• Mark Chou, '"We like them bitches on the chessboard": Tragedy, Politics and The Wire', CTheory.net, January 20, 2011 
• New Dark Matter Journal - Issue: The Wire Files [4], April 2011 Editorial: ‘All the pieces matter’ – introductory notes on The Wire by Ash Sharma; “B5—it got all the dinks”: Schools and Education on ‘The Wire’ by Lawrence Blum; Short Circuiting the Power Grid: The Wire as Critique of Institutional Power by Sophie Fuggle; Who Loves Ya, David Simon? by Jane Gibb and Roger Sabin; The Life and Times of Fuzzy Dunlop: Herc and the Modern Urban Crime Environment by C.W. Marshall and Tiffany Pot; The Politics of Brisket: Jews and The Wire by Keith Kahn-Harris; White Negroes and The Wire by Daniel McNeil; Casting The Wire: Complicating Notions of Performance, Authenticity, and ‘Otherness’ by Lisa W. Kelly; A man’s gotta have a code: Identity, Racial Codes and HBO’s The Wire by Todd Fraley; No Such Thing as Good and Evil: The Wire and the humanization of the object of risk in the age of biopolitics by Angela Anderson; The Wire: Investigating the use of a Neoliberal Institutional Apparatus and a ‘New Humanist’ Philosophical Apparatus by Sara Taylor Commons; “Thin Line ‘tween heaven and here” (Bubbles): Real and Imagined Space in The Wire by Linda Speidel; The Subversion of Heteronormative Assumptions in HBO’s The Wire by Hillary Robbie; The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Serial Narrative on The Wire by Erika Johnson-Lewis;  “These Are Not Your Children”: The Wire’s eighth graders and their fate at Edward Tillman Middle School by Georgia Christgau; Common Ground: The Political Economy of The Wire by Judd Franklin
• Andrew Dignan, 'The Wire and the Art of the Credit Sequence', The House Next Door, September 22, 2006
• Sophie Fuggle, 'Short Circuiting the Power Grid: The Wire as Critique of Institutional Power', darkmatter Journal 4 (2009)
  
• Nelson George, 'Across Racial Lines The Wire: How white writers successfully explored black America', Moving Image Source, July 28, 2008 
• Alasdair McMillan, 'Dramatizing Individuation: Institutions, Assemblages, and The Wire', Cinephile, Vol. 4, Summer 2008
• Jason Mittell, 'All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling, and Procedural Logic', Electronic Book Review, March 18, 2011
• Andrew Moore, 'Teaching HBO’s The Wire', Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1, July 2011
• Pinewood Dialogue: Making The Wire Panel 
• Dana Polan, 'Invisible City The Wire: The cycles of urban life in television's most novelistic show', Moving Image Source, July 28, 2008 
• Kelly Quinn, 'The Heart of the City: A Conversation about The Wire', Places, 21.1, May 2009
• David Schwartz, 'Kings and Pawns. The Wire: Modern society as an elaborate chess game', Moving Image Source, July 28, 2008
• Peter S. Scholtes, 'George Pelecanos on 'The Wire' and D.C. pulp fiction', Citypages, July 19, 2006
• Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney,  'The wire and the world: narrative and metanarrative', Jump Cut, 51 (Spring 2009)
• David Alan Sklansky, 'Confined, Crammed, and Inextricable: What The Wire Gets Right', Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 473, 2011; UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 1856574
• R. Colin Tait, 'The HBO-ification of Genre', Cinephile, Volume 4: Post-Genre, Summer 2008  
• Video essays on The Wire's Credit sequences: Extra Credit, Part 1 by Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz; Extra Credit, Part 2 by Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz; Extra Credit, Part 3 by Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz; Extra Credit, Part 4 by Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz; Extra Credit, Part 5 by Andrew Dignan, Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz, All at Moving Image Source, July 28, 2008
• James Zborowski, 'The Rhetoric of The Wire', Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, No.1, 2010 
• Slavoj Žižek, 'The Wire or the clash of Civilizations in one country', Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, February 24, 2012 

Huge Update on April 6, 2012 provided by Steve Bennison (thank you, Steve!)

Will sort into FSFF order and format asap...

• Kent Jones: Down in the Hole Sight & Sound May 2008
• The Wire Files: 16-article special issue of Dark Matter Journal May 2009
• Eric Beck: Respecting the Middle: Omar Little as Neoliberal Subjectivity Rhizomes Summer 2009
• Julian McDougall: Wiring the Audience Participations May 2010
• Ioana Lyerat: Between Heaven & Here Mediascape Winter 2012
• Special issue of Criticism Summer 2010 on The Wire not freely available, but the following has been very widely circulated online: Fredric Jameson, 'Realism & Utopia in The Wire', Criticism 2010 
• Marc Singer: Heroin or the Economic Logic of Late Capitalism & open thread, I Am Not The Beastmaster blog May 2008 Part One and Part Two
• Chris Wisniewski: High Visibility Reverse Shot blog
• Ben Walter: The Wire for Tourists Film Quarterly Winter 2008
• Trevor Dodge: The Wire as American Noir Pop Matters Sept 2010
• Tim Anderson: Listening for ‘The Game’ in The Sound of Young America In Media Res April 2007
• Mike Dawson: Television Special: The Wire Left Field Cinema April 2009
• Jason Mittell: Rapping Up The Wire & The Limits of Plot Summary In Media Res Jan 2009
• Jason Mittell: Teaching The Wire with downloadable syllabus, Media Commons Feb 2009
• Jason Mittell/Middlebury Course blog
• Jason Mittell: Television and American Culture Textbook website
• Drake Bennett: This Will Be on the Mid-Term. You Feel Me? Slate March 2010
• Other people’s syllabuses found by Slate
• http://img.slate.com/media/8/WireSyllabus.pdf
• http://img.slate.com/media/42/wire%20syllabus%202008.pdf
• http://img.slate.com/media/4/CaseStudyWire.pdf
• Harvard Sociology course?
• David Simon: Frank Porter Graham Lecture at University of North Carolina 2011, I hr on Vimeo

Journal of European Television History and Culture

A new multi-media e-journal on the past and present of European television

Journal of European Television History and Culture is to be the first peer-reviewed, multi-media and open access e-journal in the field of European television history and culture. It will offer an international platform for outstanding academic research and archival reflection on television as an important part of our European cultural heritage. With its interdisciplinary profile, the journal is open to many disciplinary perspectives on European television – including television history, media studies, media sociology, cultural studies and television studies.

If only for pretty sound, nominal reasons, Film Studies For Free doesn't usually stray too far beyond the field of free film studies. Today is an exception, however, simply because of an exceptional, new, and also free to access, online publication.

The inaugural issue of the new Journal of European Television History and Culture is devoted to 'Making Sense of Digital Sources', a hugely important topic for all audiovisual forms and cultures. Its editors write,

In the past few years national broadcasting archives and audiovisual libraries have taken important steps in the digitisation of their sources. Consequently, some of their material has already become available online. But as access to television material online across national borders remains fractured and scattered, European funded projects such as Video Active (2006-2009) and EUscreen (2009-2012) try to tackle some of the main problems with transnational access:

• the lack of interoperability between archival data-bases both at the level of metadata and semantics;
• the non-existence of proven scenarios for the use of audiovisual material at a European level;
• the complexity of rights issues and the lack of contextualisation of digitised sources.

     At the FIAT/IFTA conference in Paris in 2004, the European Television History Network (ETHN) was launched, aiming at promoting the need for a transnational perspective on the history and culture of television in Europe. The archival situation and the accessibility for researchers vary considerably in the different European countries. That is why ETHN acknowledged the necessity of cooperation between archives and academics on a European scale in order to bridge academic research and archival initiatives. The Journal of European Television History and Culture builds on these initiatives and is closely related to EUscreen of which the e-journal is an important feature.[from Andreas Fickers and Sonja de Leeuw. 'Editorial']

FSFF salutes EUScreen, ETHN, and especially, on this the occasion of its birth, the Journal of European Television History and Culture.

It can only hope that European (and, indeed, non-European) archival film culture and studies will learn much (and quickly) from the wonderful and increasingly joined up examples of its televisual counterparts.

Vol 1, No 1 (2012):Table of Contents
Editorial

• Andreas Fickers, Sonja de Leeuw. 'Editorial' PDF

Articles

• Sonja de Leeuw, 'European Television History Online: History And Challenges' PDF  
• Lilian Landes, 'Building Platforms For Historians: Making Data Findable. A Critical Reflection On Some German Initiatives' PDF 
• Andreas Fickers, 'Towards A New Digital Historicism? Doing History In The Age Of Abundance PDF
• John Ellis, 'Why Digitise Historical Television?' PDF  
• Pelle Snickars, 'If Content Is King, Context Is Its Crown' PDF
• Luca Barra, Massimo Scaglioni, 'Making The Most Of The Archive: Commercial Exploitation Of The Digital Archive On Contemporary Italian Network TV' PDF  
• Alexander Badenoch, 'Translating ‘Liebeskummer’: Combo 1965' PDF  
• Andy O’Dwyer, 'Digitising Context: The Case Of The Radio Times' PDF  
• Dana Mustata, 'History In The Backstage Of Romanian Television Archives' PDF
• Matteo Treleani, Claude Mussou, 'Retelling the Past with Broadcast Archives: Context Makes Sense' PDF

Memory Screens: New Issue of IMAGE AND NARRATIVE

Frame grab from 1975 (Shaun Wilson, version 1 (2005), DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5mins). Visit Shaun Wilson's website here and read his article about 'home movies' here

The concept of memory screens is an overarching term exploring the relationship between forms of media, viewers, practitioners and memory. The notion of memory screens alludes to the ways in which memories become remembered, layered, forgotten and transformed. The range of articles in this volume reflects the relationship between memory and history, both public and personal. ['Thematic Cluster: Introduction' by Teresa Forde]

Film Studies For Free continues to be impressed by the excellence of the online journal Image and Narrative which has recently published a special issue entitled Memory Screens.

FSFF particularly appreciated film and video artist Shaun Wilson's essay on the art of vintage home movies, Jenny Chamarette's study of the dynamics of the ‘spectre’ or ‘spectral body’ of the auteurist figure of Agnès Varda, Peter Kravanja's exploration of narrative contingencies in Rohmer and Akerman and Teresa Forde and Erin Bell's discussions of memory and British television. But this is a very high quality issue throughout and, as always at I and N, particularly characterised by the thoughtful integration of close analysis and film and moving image theory.

Image and Narrative, Vol 12, No 2 (2011): Memory Screens

Table of Contents

• 'Thematic Cluster: Introduction' by Teresa Forde ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Remixing Memory through Home Movies' by Shaun Wilson ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Video Installation, Memory and Storytelling: the viewer as narrator' by Diane Charleson ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Spectral bodies, temporalised spaces: Agnès Varda's motile gestures of mourning and memorial' by Jenny Chamarette ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Television and memory: history programming and contemporary identities' by Erin Bell ABSTRACTPDF
• 'Television Dramas as Memory Screens' by Teresa Forde ABSTRACT PDF
• 'The Lives of Others: re-remembering the German Democratic Republic'  by Margaret Montgomerie and Anne- Kathrin Reck ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Nostalgic [re]remembering: film fan cultures and the affective reiteration of popular film histories' by Nathan Hunt ABSTRACT PDF

Various Articles

• 'Cinema, Contingencies, Metaphysics' by Peter Kravanja ABSTRACT PDF

Review Articles

• Hillary Chute's Ambivalent Idiom of Witness' by Charlotte Pylyser  ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Naissances de la bande dessinée de William Hogarth à Winsor McCay' by Pascal Lefèvre ABSTRACT PDF

Journal of the Moving Image: Indian and South Asian cinema and media studies

Image from Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Anil Sharma, 2001). 

For more on this film, read "Beyond Partition: The Political Horizons of Contemporary Indian and Korean War Films" by Bhaskar Sarkar

Film Studies For Free just came across a really good e-journal that it hadn't bumped into before: Journal of the Moving Image, an annual publication of the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. 

It was launched in print format in 1999, but its print and online versions now co-exist. As its mission statement puts it,

JMI seeks to represent critical work on the state of contemporary screen cultures. There are many regions in the world with large viewing populations, often with vast production infrastructures for film and television; but corresponding institutions or forums for critical engagement with such audio-visual regimes are still highly inadequate. JMI seeks to address a broad set of issues ranging from formal properties of the moving image to the social foundation of its production, transmission and reception. There will be a special focus on India and South Asia, and on issues of transnational media transactions, but we would like to offer a wider range of discussion on film and television from various parts of the world made from different perspectives.

FSFF wanted to share its contents with you promptly, so direct links to all items so far online are pasted in below, with the most recent issue first. The first three issues of JMI are also being prepared for online publication. 

There are some excellent items here (you might try out Ravi Vasudevan's The Meanings of ‘Bollywood’ just for starters). So FSFF heartily recommends that you subscribe to JMI ready for its next issue in December. 

(Also, please check out, if you haven't yet, FSFF's own related entry: "Bollywood" for Beginners and Beyond: Introductions to Popular Hindi Cinema Studies)

JMI, Number 8, December, 2009

• Editorial Note

• Preserving Film (on Film) in a Digital Age Josef Lindner

• Together against the Mafia: Godard, Scorsese, Bit Torrent Sebastian Lutgert

• Cinema’s Floating Point Matt Hanson

• Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship Nishant Shah

• Photoshop Landscapes: Digital Mediations and Bollywood Cities Madhija Mukherjee

• Special Feature Conjunction and Flow: The Gendered Temporalities of (Media) Disasters Kumkum Sangari

JMI, Number 7, December, 2008

• Editorial Note

• Querying the ‘Traditional’ Roots of Silent Cinema in Asia  Kaushik Bhaumik

• Beyond Partition: The Political Horizons of Contemporary Indian and Korean War Films Bhaskar Sarkar

• The Subject of Representation in Korean Cinema: Two Limit Cases  Earl Jackson, Jr.

• Meet John Doe’s Order: Piracy, Temporality and the Question of Asia  Lawrence Liang

• Missing in the Original: Twin Dragons Remade in India S.V. Srinivas

• Theorizing New Asian Cinemas: Problems of the Historicist Approach Manas Ghosh

• Student Paper New Urban Spaces: Films of Tsai Ming-liang Michelle Baitali Bhowmik

• Special Feature The Meanings of ‘Bollywood’ Ravi Vasudevan

JMI, Number 6, December, 2007

• Editorial Note

• An Aesthetic for Film Sound in India? Ashish Rajadhyaksha

• Communication and Signification: Voice in the Cinema M. Madhava Prasad

• Early Indian Talkies: Voice, Performance and Aura Madhuja Mukherjee

•  Musical Contests: Reflections on Musical Values in Popular Film Amlan Das Gupta

• Speaking through Troubled Times Moinak Biswas

• Seeing through the Sound: Certain Tendencies of the Soundtrack in Satyajit Ray's Films of the 1970s Anindya Sengupta

• Student Papers Sound Memories: In Search of Lost Sounds in Indian Cinema Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and  Sound of Horror: Sound and Dread in Hindi Cinema Shubham Roy Choudhury

• Special Feature  Space, Interiority and Affect in Charulata and Ghare Baire Supriya Chaudhuri

JMI, Number 5, December, 2006

• Editorial Note

• The Curious Case of Bombay’s Hindi Cinema: The Career of Indigenous ‘Exhibition’ Capital Ashish Rajadhyaksha

• Acceleration and Conflicts: Comments on the Cinematic Object in the 1990s and After Jeebesh Bagchi

• Persistence of the Feudal: Star and Film Form in Post 1970s Telugu Cinema S V Srinivas

• Mourning and Blood-Ties: Macbeth in Mumbai Moinak Biswas

• Live(li)ness and Network Publics in Post-Liberalization Indian Popular Films Abhijit Roy

• Memories of Development: The Fantastic Non-Presence of Kolkata in Post-Liberalization Bangla Cinema Sovan Tarafder

• The Middle Class: Consuming and Consumed: The Romance of Bombay Cinema Neha Chadha

JMI, Number 4, November, 2005

• Editorial Note

• The Apparatus and its Constituencies: On India’s Encounters with Television Abhijit Roy

• Panoramas of Asia and the Electronic Hearth: Michael Palin’s Connections John Hutnyk 

• The Subjects of News Television M. Madhava Prasad

• Kyunki Main Bhi Kabhi Tulsi Thi : Opening and Using the Black Box of Primetime Telereality Ipsita Chanda

• Media Trials and Courtroom Tribulations : The Battle of Images, Words and Shadows in the 13 December Case Suddhabrata Sengupta

• Television, Nationalism and Indian Cricket in the Era of Global Media Manas Ghosh

• Development (without) Communication: Viewing Doordarshan Methodologically Dipankar Sinha

• 'Reading' Television: Towards a Definition of Audio-Visual Literacy Nilanjana Gupta

• Remote Control Nationalism: Media politics in Guyana Atticus Narrain

Kinocultura: on Russian, Russo-Soviet, Eastern European, & Central Asian cinemas & television

Excerpt from the beginning of Nastroishchik/The Tuner (Kira Muratova, Russia/Ukraine, 2004)

Muratova’s tight and intricate narrative is punctuated by familiar cinematic devices, red herrings, and pranks immediately identifiable—even beyond cinema production—with Muratova’s sui generic style. [F]irst, her inclusion of a “cultural intermezzo” by an amateur artist-enthusiast.  [...]  In The Tuner, this device takes the form of a girl singer-songwriter performing on public transport and a number of other charmingly inept musicians (a clarinetist, two tuba players, random, elderly singers, and Andrei’s spontaneous “Uzbek” improvisation).  This is the utopian dimension of Muratova’s creative act: irredeemably unprofessional, yet utterly complete, self-sufficient in itself, the flawless conjuration of an inner hallucination. Nancy Condee, 'Kira Muratova, The Tuner [Nastroishchik] (2004)', Kinocultura, Issue 7  January 2005

(See also Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin Kinocultura, Issue 8, April 2005; Acquarello, 'The Tuner, 2004', Strictly Film School, July 27, 2006)

Film Studies For Free was alerted yesterday by David Hudson at The Auteurs Daily that the April 2010 issue of Kinocultura, the Open Access journal of New Russian Cinema, had just been published online.  

This journal has been appearing since July 2003, and that simple fact makes for a true wealth of freely accessible scholarly resources. With its editorial board of leading scholars in this field, Kinocultura is quite simply one of the best film studies e-journals, with its incredibly wide-ranging scholarly articles alongside wonderful film and book reviews and dossiers/reports/roundtable discussions/videos.  

Below, FSFF has copied and pasted in the index of all full-length articles and interviews published by the journal to date. Here also is a list of Kinocultura's special issues on particular countries:#1 Central Asia (2004); #2 Poland (2005); #3 Slovakia (2005); #4 Czech Rep. (2006); #5 Bulgaria (2006); #6 Romania (2007); #7 Hungary (2008); #8 Serbia (2009); #9 Ukraine (2009); #10 Estonia (2010). Note that there are forthcoming issues on Kazakhstan and Croatia.
 
Those of you interested in Russian and Soviet film studies should also know about the following great, online bibliography, too: University of Pittsburgh Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Kinocultura - Issue 28: April 2010

• Mariya Y. Boston: "Speaking in Tongues: Poetic Language in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun"

• Andrey Shcherbenok: "Asymmetric Warfare: The Vision of the Enemy in American and Soviet Cold War Cinemas"

Festival Report

• Birgit Beumers: " Restoring Images: Belye Stolby 2010"

Issue 27: January 2010

• David MacFadyen: Cinematic Abuse as Self-Affirmation: Russian Video Mash-ups, Illegal Social Networking, and the Rise of Bekmambetov’s “Office Plankton”

• Maria Vinogradova: Amateur Cinema in the Soviet Union and the Leningrad of Film Amateurs in the 1970s-1980s

Festival Reports

• Dar'ia Borisova: Kinoshok 2009: The Expiring Principle of Soviet Brotherhood

AAASS 2009 Roundtable on Young Kazakh Cinema

• Birgit Beumers: Waves, old and new, in Kazakh Cinema

• Jane Knox-Voina: Young Kazakh Filmmakers:  New “New Wave” on the Road

• Stephen M. Norris: The Gifts of History: Young Kazakh Cinema and the Past

• Eugénie Zvonkine: “Kazakhstan Rules the World:” Satybaldy Narymbetov’s Mustafa Shokai (2008) and the Rewriting of History

Issue 26: October 2009

• Evgenii Margolit: “Monumental Sculptures in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s”

Festival Reports

• Birgit Beumers: “A Return to Folklore?—Suzdal 2009”

• Birgit Beumers, “Kinotavr 2009: The Victory of New Drama”

• Christina Stojanova: “Characters and Circumstances: Notes on the Competition Program of the 31st Moscow International Film Festival”

Issue 25: July 2009

• Kristina Matvienko: With a Cine-Eye through Russia: The Festival “Kinoteatr.doc” 2009

• Irina Mel’nikova: (Re)presentation of The Metamorphosis: Valerii Fokin, Franz Kafka, René Magritte and the Issue of Cinematic Adaptation

• [Interview] Anton Sidarenka: Interview with Sergei Loznitsa. Conversations on Cinema: "A Master of Time"

Issue 24: April 2009

• Nikolai Izvolov: Designed Sound in the USSR

• Jane Knox-Voina: New ‘New’ Wave Filmmakers Welcome Their Audiences’ Discomfort: Kazakh and Kyrgyz Youth Films

• Gulnara Abikeeva: Central Asian Documentary Films of the Soviet Era as a Factor in the Formation of National Identity

Festival Report:

• Gulbara Tolomushova: The Secret Sense of the Tashkent Messages

Issue 23: January 2009

• Maria Belodubrovskaya: Understanding the Magic: Special Effects in Ladislas Starewitch's L'Horloge magique

• Larisa Maliukova: The State of the Art: Russian Animation Today

• Evgenii Margolit: The Image of Germans in Russian Cultural Space

Festival Reports:

• Birgit Beumers: New Voices and Old Images: Eurasia 2008

• Gulbara Tolomushova: Dushanbe Flights to Googoosh's Songs: Didor 2008

Issue 22: October 2008

• Klaus Eder: Moscow 2008: The Center of the Province

• Nina Tsyrkun: "Forward to the Past, or: What kind of millennium has begun?" (on the Russian Program of the Moscow International Film Festival)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: "Kinotavr 19"

• Aliya Moldalieva: "New Cinema in Kyrgyzstan"

Issue 21: July 2008
Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium 2008 — The Ideological Occult: Russian Cinema under Putin:

• Seth Graham: "Two Decades of Post-Soviet Cinema: Taking Stock of Our Stocktaking"
• Stephen Norris: "Packaging the Past: Cinema and Nationhood in the Putin Era"
• Marina Drozdova: "Tremors: Various Types of Unrest"
• Aleksandr Kiselev: " 'No Power Can Force Us to Live Badly' "
• Gregory Dolgopolov: “Liquidating the Happy end of the Putin-era”

• Birgit Beumers: "The 13th Open Russian Animation Festival Suzdal" (2008)

• Dina Goder: "Kinoteatr.doc 2008: Some Notes on the Cuffs"

• David MacFadyen: “The Presumed Threat of Digital Culture to Russian Cinema”

Issue 20: April 2008

• Tom Birchenough: The Koktebel Studio

• Dar'ia Borisova: The Forum of National Cinematographies Played at Being a Film School

• Barbara Wurm: The International Film Festival Rotterdam — A Festival of Significance for Russian Cinema; In Focus: Svetlana Proskurina

• Birgit Beumers: Returning to the Roots: Central Asia in Rottterdam

• [Interview] Inna Smailova: Interview with Abai Kulbai: The Keeper of Eternal Values in Cinema

Issue 19: January 2008

• [Interview] Giulia Marcucci: Interview with Aleksandr Mindadze: From Scriptwriter to Director

• Irina Shilova: Renata Litvinova: Actress and Persona

• Michael Rouland: A Tour through Kinostan

• Inna Smailova: Three Generations of Kazakh Cinematographers: Action - Reaction - Change of Reality

• Eugénie Zvonkine: "On a Motorbike or on a Horse?": The IV Eurasia International Film Festival 2007

Issue 18: October 2007

• Tom Birchenough: "Vladivostok 2007": The lnternational Pacific Meridian Festival

• Mihai Chirilov: "Phony Games: The Moscow International Film Festival 2007"

• Jeremy Hicks: “Reflections of Andrei Tarkovskii: The Zerkalo Festival and Conference”

• David MacFadyen: “Strike Up, Pipers! The Russian Program of the Moscow Film Festival, 2007”

• Kirill Razlogov: "Kinotavr: Caught in the Crossfire"

Issue 17: July 2007
Melodrama and Kino-Ideology: Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium Roundtable:

• Peter Bagrov: "Soviet Melodrama: A Historical Overview"
• Dawn Seckler: "Orphans of the Storm: Economic Destitution, Physical Lack, and Social Alienation in the Contemporary Russian Melodrama"
• Oleg Sulkin: "Melodrama as the Experience of the Moment"
• Dmitrii Savel'ev: "Out of Ideology: The Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• Mikhail Trofimenkov: "Origin of the Species: Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• David MacFadyen: "Ethical Masochism in Recent Russian Melodrama"
• Marcia Landy: "Melodrama: Short Reflections on a Long Subject"

• Kristina Matvienko: The Third Festival of Real Cinema: "Kinoteatr.doc" (2007)

Issue 16: April 2007

• Jose Alaniz: Cinema without Barriers

• Thomas Campbell: A Khakassian Sends a Postcard Home: The Strange Career of Evgenii "Debil" Kondrat'ev

• David MacFadyen: Changing Notions of Realism in Primetime Russian TV Drama

• Stephen Norris: In the Gloom: The Political Lives of Undead Bodies in Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch

Issue 15: January 2007

• Peter Bagrov: Ermler, Stalin, and Animation: On the Film The Peasants (1934)

• Birgit Beumers and Michael Rouland: Eurasia 2006: An International Festival?

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: The Kamenskaia Television Series and the Conventions of Russian Television

• Alena Solntseva: KINOTEATR.DOC: The First Three Years

Issue 14: October 2006

• Svetlana Khokhriakova: Starless, Prize-less: The Moscow International Film Festival 2006

• Adam Lowenstein: From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema (Lincoln Center Program, August 2006)

• Elena Plakhova: Victims of Euphoria: The 17th Open Russian Film Festival (Kinotavr 2006)

• Birgit Beumers: Cannes 2006: The Russian Presence

Issue 13: July 2006

• Natalia Lukinykh: Inspired by the Oscar, Hardened by the Marketplace. On the Everydays and Holidays of Russian Animation. (Suzdal Animation Festival)

• Eugenie Zvonkine: The Tenth Forum for National Cinematographies of the CIS and the Baltic States (Kinoforum)

• Aleksandr Deriabin: Judgment Day: Recreation and Stylization (On Ethics in Documentary Filmmaking and Other Matters)

Issue 12: April 2006

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: "The Eurasia-2005 Film Festival: Ambitions and Realities"

• Vladimir Padunov: Storing and Restoring History: Gosfil'mofond and the 10th Belye Stolby Archival Film Festival

• Thomas Campbell: Five Theses About Timur Bekmambetov's Day Watch

Russian TV-Serials: AAASS Roundtable 2005: "Russian TV: Past Issues of Present Concern"

• Birgit Beumers: "The Serialization of the War"
• David MacFadyen: "The Significance of Brezhnev for Russian TV Drama Today"
• Alexander Prokhorov: "Size Matters: The Ideological Functions of the Length of Soviet Feature Films and Television Mini-Series in the 1950s and 1960s"

Issue 11: January 2006

• José Alaniz: Moscow Conceptualism and the ArtKomiks of Gosha Ostretsov

• Thomas H. Campbell: The Bioaesthetics of Evgenii Iufit

• Seth Graham: Iusup Razykov and Contemporary Uzbek Cinema

Issue 10: October 2005

• Elena Stishova: There's No Point Arguing with the Marketplace: The Ninth KinoForum

• Aleksandr Shpagin: Newly Sprouting Seedlings in the Rustling Field of Domestic Cinema (Kinotavr 2005)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: Study, Study, Study: The Grand Prize of the 27th Moscow International Film Festival Went to Aleksei Uchitel''s Dreaming of Space  

Issue 9: July 2005

• Ian Christie: Iakov Protazanov: A Timely Case for Treatment

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: "Fedor Mikhailovich Lucked Out with Vladimir Vladimirovich": The Idiot

• Television Series in the Context of Putin's Culture

Issue 8: April 2005

• John MacKay:  The "Spinning Top" Takes Another Turn: Vertov Today

• Petre Petrov:  The Freeze of Historicity in Thaw Cinema

• Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin

• David MacFadyen: Literature Has Left the Building: Russian Romance and Today 's TV Drama

Issue 7: January 2005

• Special Feature: Dziga Vertov: John MacKay: Disorganized Noise: Enthusiasm and the Ear of the Collective

• KinoShock 2004: Gul'nara Abikeyeva: KinoShock: A Panorama of National Cinemas  

Issue 6: October 2004
"National Cinema": Pittsburgh Film Colloquium roundtable featuring:  

• Nancy Condee: Imperial Ectoplasm
• Marcia Landy: Frames or Frame Ups of National Cinema
• Adam Lowenstein: David Cronenberg and the 'Face' of National Authorship

Moscow International Film Festival 2004 : Susan Larsen: At the Intersection of Art, Commerce, and National Pride  

Issue 5:  July 2004

• Kinoforum 2004: Vladimir Padunov: Imperial Acorn -→ National Oaks: The Eighth KinoForum .

• Kinotavr 2004: Victor Matizen: Masses and Classes: Kinotavr 2004 .

Issue 4:  April 2004

• Josephine Woll: Exorcising the Devil: Russian Cinema and Horror.

Issue 3:  January 2004

• Vladimir Padunov: Stars Above Almaty: Kazakh Cinema Between 1998 and 2003 .

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: Demythologizing and Reconstructing National Space in the Kazakh "New Wave" .

Issue 1:  July 2003

• Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov: Subtropical Cinema: Kinotavr, Collective Heroes and Small Screens: The Fourteenth Annual Open Russian Film Festival (3-17 June 2003).

• Vladimir Padunov: Moscow's Silver Anniversary: XXV Moscow International Film Festival (20-29 June 2003).

On Avatar & Boss-zilla: a new issue of FlowTV

Sandra Bullock as Margaret Tate in The Proposal (Anne Fletcher, 2009). See '“Attack of Boss-zilla!” – Female Conflict and Generational Discord…' by Hannah Hamad

Film Studies For Free brings you glad tidings of the new issue of ever wonderful online journal Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. In this latest offering there are some great film related items: Charles R. Acland on Avatar and the media language of revolutionary change; and Hannah Hamad on the film and media popularity of female characters as terrorizing figures. Links to all articles are given below:

• Amanda Ann Klein ,"Window Dressing: Spectactular Costuming in MTV's The City" (An examination of how costume trumps narrative in MTV's The City)
  

• Zoe Druick, "A Married Couple: Reality TV's Progenitor Turns 40"  (A re-examination of A Married Couple in light of the current proliferation of reality-based TV)
  

• James Bennett, "The BBC Presenter Pay Scandal: The Political Economy of Television Fame"  (A look at the recent pay scandal surrounding BBC?s Jonathan Ross ? and what it tells us about the economics of fame today)
  

• Hannah Hamad, "'Attack of Boss-zilla!' ? Female Conflict and Generational Discord in Postfeminism?s New Monstrous Feminine" (An examination of film and TV series? treatment of postfeminist identities, especially the popularity of women as terrorizing forces, or '-zillas.')
  

• Nina B. Huntemann, "Irreconcilable Differences: Gender and Labor in the Video Game Workplace"  (A look at the labor politics of the game industry )
  

• Charles R. Acland, "Avatar as Technological Tentpole" (Is James Cameron's Avatar a "game-changer," or business as usual?)
  

• Vanessa Au, "Twitter Revolution" (A consideration of the Iranian elections and the potentially revolutionary aspects of social media)