Showing posts with label queer cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer cinema. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 June 2017

Richly Resourceful! On B.Ruby Rich's Work, plus A Roundup of Recent Open Access Screen Studies Items

The above video treats the ending of Lucrecia Martel's La niña santa / The Holy Girl (2004), using insights about the film from Deborah Martin's book The Cinema of Lucrecia Martel (Manchester University Press, 2016) and Sophie Mayer's chapter 'Gutta cavat lapidem: The sonorous politics of Lucrecia Martel's swimming pools', in The Cinema of The Swimming Pool, eds. Christopher Brown and Pam Hirsch (Peter Lang, 2014). For Study Purposes Only - No Significant Spoilers.
The video is dedicated to pioneering queer and feminist film curator and critic B. Ruby Rich, one of the foremost advocates of the work of La niña santa's director, and much other queer New Argentine, and Latin American Cinema. 
Rich's career is justly being celebrated at a screening and discussion event taking place between June 21-25, 2017, at the Barbican Cinema (and other London venues) as part of its 2017 Film in Focus season. The event is entitled ‘Being Ruby Rich’ and is co-sponsored by Film London and co-curated by Club des Femmes, the queer-feminist film curating collective. La niña santa (a film championed by Rich, alongside Martel's other films) will be screened with an introduction by Sophie Mayer at the Barbican Cinema on Sunday, June 25, at 6pm.
For further information about these events, see here. 

Today, Film Studies For Free celebrates the much-awaited visit to London of B. Ruby Rich (foundational film critic, festival programmer, cultural theorist, and chronicler of social trends on screen and off), on the occasion of a magnificently merited celebration of her career at the Barbican and other venues, organised by Club des Femmes, the queer-feminist film curating collective (check out their interview about their work here).

The entry celebrates, as usual, in film studies links, beginning with a new video resource (above) on one of the films to be screened in this celebratory programme, and then lots of other rich Rich-related resources (below), followed by a roundup of recent Open Access Screen Studies Items, including numerous new journal issues online.

FSFF also wanted to share the great news that, from September 1, 2017, its author will be taking up the post of Professor of Digital Media and Screen Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, an institution with a longstanding and wonderful record of supporting open access publishing and widening educational access, in part through film curating study and practice! Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image is also co-host of one of the free events celebrating Ruby Rich's work, taking place on June 21, 2017.

 By (or Featuring) B. Ruby Rich:



On Rich's work:


 Other news and recent open access screen studies links:
  1. Cinephile aggregator extraordinaire David Hudson has taken his expertly unmissable daily round-ups of cinephile links, news and events (formerly of Keyframe Daily) to the Criterion Collection "Daily" website: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts?category=The+Daily.
  2. Tiago Baptista's open-access PhD thesis on the digital audiovisual essay (supervised by Laura Mulvey and externally examined by Adrian Martin)! http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/215/.
  3. Rob King's great new book Hokum! The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture is available in open access formats at Luminosoa here: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520288119.
  4. Nicholas Mirzoeff's new free e-book The Appearance of Black Lives Matter (NAME Publications) is available here: http://namepublications.org/item/2017/the-appearance-of-black-lives-matter/.
  5. Out now: Issue 45.2 of Film/Literature Quarterly, a highly esteemed and long-established journal now available in an online open access version!! https://www.salisbury.edu/lfq/.
  6. Just out: Issue 7 of MOVIE: Journal of Film Criticism, with new features on Opening Shots and audiovisual essays: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/.
  7. Just out: Issue 12 of The Cine-Files: a special commemorative issue on Chris Marker and Jacques Rivette, featuring so many delightful and insightful pieces... including an essay by Rivette himself! http://www.thecine-files.com and http://www.thecine-files.com/dossier-rivette-marker/.
  8. Issue 11 of FRAMES Cinema Journal - The Future of Horror is now available online at http://framescinemajournal.com/.
  9. A NEW issue of #openaccess journal NECSUS on #TRUE! with a great new AV essay section curated by Kevin B. Lee! http://www.necsus-ejms.org/portfolio/spring-2017_true/.
  10. Three new contributions to "Ghetto Films and their Afterlife", in the #openaccess journal APPARATUS: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus/issue/view/3.
  11. New issue of Film-Philosophy (21, 2, 2017) now published and fully open access: http://www.euppublishing.com/toc/film/21/2. ARTICLES: Memories of the Unlived Body: Jean-Louis Schefer, Georges Bataille and Gilles Delouse by Patrick ffrench; A Body Without a Face: The Disorientation of Trauma in Phoenix (2014) and New Holocaust Cinema by Olivia Landry; Intra-Diegetic Cameras as Cinematic Actor Assemblages in Found Footage Horror Cinema by Rødje Kjetl; Fearsome Acts of Interpretation: Audiovisual Historiography, Film Theory and Gangs of New York by Mike Meneghett.
  12. New issue of Media Industries (Vol. 4, No. 1) now available. It features articles by Nora Draper, Darrell Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, Patryk Galuszka and Katarzyna Wyrzykowska, and Justin Wyatt. The issue also contains a Special Section curated by Annette Hill and Jeanette Steemers that focuses on Media Industries and Engagement, featuring a dialogue between industry and academic researchers: http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/.
  13. A new international peer-reviewed open access journal of James Bond Studies, shaken not stirred: http://jamesbondstudies.roehampton.ac.uk.
  14. New issue of INTENSITIES: A JOURNAL OF CULT MEDIA: https://intensitiescultmedia.com/issue-9-spring-2017/.
  15. New issue of the Journal of Lusophone Studies features a special dossier on Portuguese Cinema: https://jls.apsa.us/index.php/jls/issue/view/23.
  16. A great new #openaccess practice-research publication: O A R Platform! Check out Issue 1: "Sites of Research" here: http://www.oarplatform.com/issue/issue-1/.
  17. On David Lynch: a new virtual special issue of the esteemed journal Screen freely accessible until end August 2017: https://academic.oup.com/screen/pages/david_lynch_virtual_issue.
  18. Laura Ivins' great video and text on Maya Deren's Film-Philosophy: http://blogs.iu.edu/aplaceforfilm/2017/05/23/maya-derens-film-philosophy/.
  19. New essay by Adrian, Martin for Photogénie, on 'play' in American screen comedy from the early sound era to the 50s and beyond: thttps://cinea.be/game-space-and-play-time-a-partial-history-american-screen-comedy/?language=en.
  20. Peter Labuza of the Cinephiliacs podcast interviews cinephile par excellence Girish Shambu: http://www.thecinephiliacs.net.
  21. Further great, recent, scholarly-related cinema podcasts available at The Cinematologists: http://www.cinematologists.com.
  22. Check out 'Edit shots' - a free for personal use (or pay what you want) resource: http://learnaboutfilm.com/editshots/.
  23. ‪Check out Professor Ian Christie's new research blog on cinema pioneer Robert Paul, the "undersung hero of early British filmmaking": https://paulsanimatographworks.wordpress.com.
  24. Attention Hitchcock Fans: there will be a free online, interactive course with multi-media course material, games and more from Ball State University. It is in conjunction with TCM running one of Hitchcock's greatest films every Wednesday and Friday night in July. You can enroll here: https://www.canvas.net/browse/bsu/tcm3/courses/hitchcock50.
  25. Great interview with Laura Mulvey at Issue 8 of  Four by Three Magazine, part of an amazing issue of the magazine on DEATH, with other contributions by luminaries on a wide range of essential specific topics.
  26. The international, Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Filmmaking Research Network has designed a survey to gather data about filmmaking research. The aim of this survey is to compare and contrast examples of filmmaking research through producing case studies and a register of films as research outputs. It is also intended to build capacity through networking members via research themes, curating content from the film register for international dissemination and creating a Phd examiner list. Though the survey is primarily aimed at UK and Australian academics we welcome contributions from colleagues in other countries particularly those who have films to register. Please participate by completing the online survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/filmmakingresearch. For further information about the network and to join the e-list visit: http://filmmakingresearch.net.
  27. Martin Scorsese on standing up for cinema in the Times Literary Supplement: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/film-making-martin-scorsese/.
  28. Great interview with Laura Mulvey at Four by Three Magazine: http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/issue/death/laura-mulvey-interview.
  29. The latest issue of Learning on Screen/BUFVC journal VIEWFINDER has published a conversation between Catherine Grant, Amber Jacobs and Ian Magor about the use of audiovisual essay in film and moving image studies.
http://bufvc.ac.uk/publications/viewfinder-archive

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Almodóvar Studies for Free

Last updated with more links August 25

MATCHES - On similarly flammable moments in Ray and Almodóvar
(Intertextual ignition by Catherine Grant)


Experience has taught me that the more honest and personal my work is,
the more successful I am.
(Pedro Almodóvar)


It costs a lot to be authentic, ma’am.
('Agrado' in All About My Mother)


Film Studies For Free is delighted to celebrate its eighth birthday with a tiny new video essay (above) and a whole entry (below) devoted to a wide-ranging collection of links to online and open access studies of the work of one of its favourite filmmakers of all time: Pedro Almodóvar.

Thanks so much to all FSFF's readers for being (t)here over the years! It's been a 'fount of pleasure' (as José Arroyo writes of Almodóvar's films), and an authentic joy.


Online written studies of Almodóvar's work


Added Online audio about Almodóvar's work


 Online videos about Almodóvar's work


Full length BAFTA interview with Almodóvar online here (50 minutes): http://bcove.me/vprjzlwm
























vvv


In Spanish/Unsubtitled

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, 24 December 2012

A Stocking Full of eReading and Viewing: Happy Holidays!

Updated December 31, 2012
Frame grab from Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986). Read Keeley Saunders' article about the tableaux vivants in this film

'Tis the season to be jolly, apparently, and so Film Studies For Free is happy to oblige with some extremely jolly, serious, and completely free eGifts for the festive season, ones from wise men and women around the world. You can find them liberally scattered in list form, below, under the six headers in bold.

This bountiful blog will be back early in the New Year with its list of Best Online (and Open Access) Film Studies Resources in 2012. So, if you haven't taken part in the readers' poll for that yet, you still have a little time.

In the meantime, FSFF wishes you very happy holidays indeed!


SEQUENCE 1.1, 2012

The first array of eBook publications from SEQUENCE Serial Studies in Media, Film and Music has just been launched — a central element in REFRAME and SEQUENCE’s particular model of academic ePublishing.

You can now read SEQUENCE 1.1 — Steven Shaviro’s magisterial and open access article about a film about the end of world (‘MELANCHOLIA, or, The Romantic Anti-Sublime‘) — in a variety of free eBook formats. Just click here to check them out and download them to your devices.


  

RE.FRAMING ACTIVISM: Creating the Witness

 Leshu Torchin's current research focuses on how screen media bear witness to human rights abuses and genocide in order to mobilise audiences. In her guest post for RE.FRAMING ACTIVISM, Torchin introduces some of the issues that are central to her new book, Creating the Witness: Documenting Genocide on Film, Video, and the Internet. Thanks to Torchin and the book’s publishers University of Minnesota Press, REFRAME has been granted the permission to share the extensive introduction to the book online. You can read it here.


ALPHAVILLE, Issue 4, Winter 2012

Open Theme Edited by Stefano Odorico and Aidan Power
Book Reviews Edited by Pierluigi Ercole
Reports Edited by Ian Murphy

NETWORKING KNOWLEDGE: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN, Vol 5, No 3 (2012): The Biographical Narrative in Popular Culture, Media and Communication

Editorial The Biographical Narrative in Popular Culture, Media and Communication: An Introduction PDF  Matthew Robinson

Articles

PGN Matters

THE CINE-FILES: A Scholarly Journal of Cinema Studies, Issue 2, 2012 
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 13 August 2012

Our Beautiful Wickedness: On Reading Films Queerly. In Memory of Alexander Doty

An audiovisual collage made by Catherine Grant in memory of Alexander Doty, 
brilliant author of numerous key texts in LGBT and queer film and cultural studies, 
including the one quoted from in this video: Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon 
(London and New York: Routledge, 2000)

[C]lassic [film] texts and personalities actually can be more queer-suggestive than “openly” gay, lesbian, or bisexual texts. That is, the coding of classic or otherwise “mainstream” texts and personalities can often yield a wider range of non-straight readings because certain sexual things could not be stated baldly—and still cannot or will not in most mainstream products—thus often making it more difficult to categorize the erotics of a film or a star. Of course, if you aren’t careful, this line of thought can begin to sound like an argument valorizing the closet, for understanding queerness as always something “connotated” or suggested (and never really there “denotatively”), for “subtexting,” and for “subcultural” readings. But since I don’t see queer readings as any less there, or any less real, than straight readings of classic or otherwise “mainstream” texts, I don’t think that what I do in this book is colluding with dominant representational or interpretive regimes that seek to make queerness “alternative” or “sub” straight. [Alexander Doty, Flaming Classics, pp. 1-2]
In short, my whole life had led me to that piece on The Wizard of Oz. Only by drawing together aspects of autobiography, fandom, pedagogy, and academic training could I express (and, for some, justify) my “queer reception” love for the film, while also recognizing its ideological lapses–largely centered on the butch Elmira Gulch/the Wicked Witch of the West, I might add. [Alexander Doty,  in Henry Jenkins et al, 'Acafandom and Beyond: Alex Doty, Abigail De Kosnik, and Jason Mittell (Part One)', Confessions of an Acafan, September 28, 2011]

Film Studies For Free was shocked and very saddened at the news, just over a week ago, of the untimely death of Alexander Doty, a truly trailblazing film and media scholar.

Doty, Indiana University Professor of Gender Studies and Communication and Culture (and chair of the latter department) was the author of two classic and highly enjoyable books in queer audiovisual cultural studies: Making Things Perfectly Queer (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (Routledge, 2000). He also co-edited, with Corey Creekmur, the hugely important collection Out in Culture: Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture (Continuum, 1995) and edited two special issues of Camera Obscura on divas.

While Doty didn't claim to have invented queer cultural reading as a scholarly practice, he wowed us with the brilliance, daring and sincerity of his interpretations, ones often deeply rooted in his personal, affective experiences of the cultural forms he was studying. In so doing, he succeeded in showing countless other students of film and media texts why it is so vital to engage in these critical practices in public, why it is essential to be good at them, as well as what is seriously at stake in many identity or, indeed, existence-based scholar-fandoms, like those often engaged in by LGBT subjects.

If, as the Wizard of Oz tells us, 'A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others', the many tributes to Doty that have appeared in the last week prove, beyond any doubt, that he had an excellent heart. He certainly had a very courageous one. He, his unique voice, and the work he would have gone on to produce, had his life not been so cruelly cut short, will be hugely missed.

As well as putting together the video collage at the top of this entry, which introduces Doty's compelling justification for queer reading, if not the (possibly even more compelling) details of his actual queer reading of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), FSFF has also assembled a list of links in Doty's memory to online studies which perform queer readings of films and moving image culture, as well as openly accessible studies of some films that perform their own queer readings. Two further FSFF video essays are embedded--on Elizabeth Taylor and on "queer Hitchcock", both of which intersect with, and were partly inspired by Doty's own work on these and other themes.

That long list is preceded by a growing collection of links to the online tributes to Doty that have appeared since his death (this will be kept updated), as well as to his own, openly accessible, scholarly work online. FSFF's author very gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Anthony Bleach and the Facebook group Friends of Alexander Doty in assembling the first two of these three lists. Although she only knew Doty through his published work, she would like to convey her condolences for his loss to all those whose lives were graced, as so many evidently were, by knowing him personally.

Finally, at the very foot of today's entry is a call for contributions to a new website for the Global Queer Cinema project (to be launched in September). It will seek to live up to the high standards that Doty's work set for queer cultural critique as it aims to provide a new, openly accessible, internationalist resource for queer film and cultural studies. FSFF will update its readers about this exciting project in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, FSFF is sad that one of those who have most inspired LGBT film studies scholarship will not be around to witness his influence on this project.

Rest in queer peace, Alexander Doty.


Online tributes to Alexander Doty
Online work by Alexander Doty 
Online studies, or performances, of queer reading

Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE by Catherine Grant


Skipping ROPE (with audio commentary) by Catherine Grant. First published in Frames, 1, 2012. Transcript available.



Call For Queer Reading/Writing Contributions 
to the new Global Queer Cinema website


Contributions are invited to the Global Queer Cinema website, hosted by the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex, UK. The site will be launched in early September 2012. 
The website forms part of the Global Queer Cinema project, an international academic research network project funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council and based at the University of Sussex. The project is led by Rosalind Galt (University of Sussex) and Karl Schoonover (University of Warwick). The network held its first event in May of this year.
The project website will be run in conjunction with Catherine Grant (University of Sussex and Film Studies For Free) and Laura Ellen Joyce, GQC Project Co-ordinator, and will continue beyond the length of the project, acting in part as an open access archive and news filter for project-generated material, and related queer film studies resources. 
We welcome contributions from researchers interested in queer (and queering) cinema, cultural studies, media, global studies, gender and sexuality, filmmakers, artists, writers and interdisciplinary scholars, or those with an interest in the practice, exploration and dissemination of film. The below list of topics and frameworks. 
  • Queer frames
  • Queer uncanny
  • Queer sounds and music
  • Queer illusions
  • Queer film festivals
  • Queer decades
  • Queer directors
  • Queer avant garde and DIY
  • New Queer Cinema
  • New releases
  • Classic films
  • Androgyny and pandrogyny
  • Queer cosmetics and prosthetics
  • In-depth essays on single films
  • Short essays on single images

We therefore invite short takes of 250 - 300 words, or longer essays (MLA style) of around 1500-2000 words for more in-depth analysis. Multimedia work (non-copyright infringing - using fair use/fair dealing principles) is very welcome. The above list of topics is not exhaustive, and we invite contributions on any topic or theme which you feel would may (queerly) fit our general ethos. Please correspond with us about any proposals for content by email at GQCproject[at]gmail[dot]com, on Twitter at @g_q_c, and do please 'like' us on Facebook. Thank you.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

A Star Was Born... : Links in Barbra Streisand's Honour on her 70th Birthday!

Frame grab from A Star Is Born ( Frank Pierson, 1976)
Each version of A Star Is Born may detail the rise of an unknown, but does so through extremely well-known performers, albeit ones at different stages of their careers. [...] Barbra Streisand [...] was at the height of her career in 1976. Her domination of A Star Is Born (she contributed to the writing and even, as Kris Kristofferson, her co-star, saw it, the directing [(Burke, Tom. "Kris Kristofferson Sings the Good-Life Blues." Esquire 86 (December 1976): 126–28ff), 208-9]) was another manifestation of a desire to play out aspects of her own life. The credited director has recounted at length how, during preproduction, Streisand debated the degree to which her autobiography should be reflected in Esther Hoffman ([Pierson, Frank. "My Battles with Barbra and Jon." New York 9 (November 15, 1976): 49–60], 50). If James Mason's character in the 1954 film becomes through role reversal the "fictional counterpart of the neurotic, self-destructive person that Garland [had] become" ([Jennings, Wade. "Nova: Garland in 'A Star Is Born.'" Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4, no. 3 (summer 1979): 321–37], 333), then Streisand's Esther Hoffman directly fulfills everything that Streisand herself has become by 1976. Richard Dyer even suggests that among the "number of cases on which the totality of a film can be laid at the door of the star" the case can be made "most persuasively" for Streisand's A Star Is Born (Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1979], 175) [Jerome Delamater, '"Once More, from the Top": Musicals the Second Time Around', in Horton, Andrew, Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, p. 84]
Film Studies For Free wishes a very happy 70th birthday to Barbra Streisand, actor, singer, songwriter, film director, producer, and queer feminist icon extraordinaire.

Below, you can find a tiny little celebration in related scholarly links - the only gift that (rather besotted Barbra fan) FSFF knows how to give.

If anyone knows of any other good items (and it is far too short and unworthy a list so far...), please leave a comment and FSFF will add them to the list.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)