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Vertigoed! The film scholarly value of mash-up?

Tue, 01/17/2012 - 13:49
Last updated January 20, 2012
FSFF's entry for Press Play's VERTIGOED Contest.
Still three more days to submit your own entry!A psychosexually obsessed man wanders the streets of 1950s San Francisco; he spies [on] seemingly unavailable blonde women; he makes a woman fall from a height; she drops into water; the scene is filled with circle imagery, especially circles within circles.....  [See the original sequence]As Film Studies For Free's readers may have heard, Kim Novak, co-star of Vertigo, took out an ad in trade magazine Variety to protest about the recent use of an excerpt from Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film in Michel Hazanavicius’s 2011 modern silent film The Artist. "I want to report a rape," went the headline. "I feel as if my body - or at least my body of work -- has been violated by the movie, The Artist," Novak wrote. She went on to criticise the “use and abuse [of] famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what they were intended.”

There was quite a strong international reaction to Novak's intervention. Some were dismayed by her recourse to the lexicon of rape; others were more sympathetic to her stance and background as someone very much not from the digital age of remix and creative appropriation; still others remind us that, in 'Scene d'Amour', the musical Vertigo theme in question, Herrmann was, of course, inspirationally reworking some of Richard Wagner's motifs from his Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. Good artists copy; great artists steal?

Enter the story the PRESS PLAY blog which launched a contest inviting readers to re-use Herrmann's "Scene d'Amour" music in their own mash-up, inspired by the idea that "Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score is so passionate and powerful that it can elevate an already good scene -- and a familiar one at that -- to a higher plane of expression."

Film Studies For Free's author was only too happy to have a go, joining the legions of those who, like Hazanavicius, have used Herrmann's music in their work, in large or very small ways. Her choice of film sequence? One borrowed from The Sniper, Edward Dmytryk's 1952 film noir, with its own, obsessed, wandering male protagonist and San Francisco setting.

The Sniper was one of the films that probably directly inspired Vertigo, as well as Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho -- see critic Dave Kehr's thoughts on this. The above mash-up chooses, then, to marry Herrmann's lush Wagnerian romance with the key 'amusement park' sequence from Dmytryk's brilliant film, with its astonishing performance of overt misogyny by Arthur Franz as Edward "Eddie" Miller -- perhaps the perfect, filmic, mirror-image of James Stewart's unforgettable, unconsciously misogynist, John "Scottie" Ferguson.

FSFF's author was excited to experience at first-hand the scholarly possibilities of remixing film clips in this way (the contest rules state that the original film sequence cannot be re-edited in any way -- except, if you choose to, by removing its sound -- in order not to cheat with the creative re-juxtaposition process).

Remixing is an astonishingly good (and amazingly easy) way of really -- almost literally -- getting inside a film sequence. It is thus a truly great exercise for all students of film with access to the right digital tools. Analysing just how the mash-up adapts the meaning of the original music and original sequence is rather educational and fun, too!

If you get your skates on with the Vertigo score exercise, there are still three days left for Press Play's contest entries. Click here to watch the (over 60) entries at present.

FSFF's favorite entry to the contest, so far, is a mash-up which, rather like its own, plays on the conscious or unconscious connections between an earlier film and Vertigo. It's Matthew Cheney's wonderful work with Mädchen in Uniform (the brilliant 1931 film by Leontine Sagan). But there are loads of other imaginative and highly satisfying remixes that you will enjoy checking out. UPDATE: the videographic legend that is Steven Boone just added a late Vertigoed entry which is FSFF's new favourite: a scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

If you want to see even more brilliant, Vertigo mash-up work -- actually, a work of remix in a completely different, utterly sublime class -- you simply must check out The Vertigo Variations by remarkable critic-filmmaker B. Kite.

And, for more vertiginous sublimity, don't forget FSFF's very own Study of a Single Film: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo entry.


The Sniper's amusement park sequence without Herrmann's music
The original 'Scene d'Amour' sequence from Vertigo
The mash up video at the top of the post was made according to principles of Fair Use/Fair Dealing, with non-commercial scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License in January 2012. 
Categories: blogs

Latest issues of KINEMA: von Trier, Czech cinema, Romanian cinema, Woody Allen, cult cinema, de Mille, Schnabel, Practice vs. Theory

Tue, 01/10/2012 - 14:52
So bad it's good? Framegrab from The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003). Read Rod Stoneman's study of cult cinema "Inside The Room and Beyond"
Film Studies For Free continues to catch up with (fairly) recently published issues of online Film Studies journals. Below are links to the articles from the Spring and Fall 2011 issues of Canadian journal Kinema.

Lots of good stuff here, and even some good stuff on bad stuff, but FSFF especially recommends Mette Hjort's wonderful article on Lars von Trier.

Fall 2011
Spring 2011
Categories: blogs

40+ Essays on Film, Moving Image, and Digital Media in the Sarai Readers

Fri, 01/06/2012 - 12:33
Framegrab image of early action heroine "Fearless" Nadia (née Mary Ann Evans) in Miss Frontier Mail (Homi Wadia, 1936). Read Rosie Thomas's 2007 article on this film.
Today, Film Studies For Free focuses on, and links to, some remarkable film and digital media studies essays commissioned and edited by the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi.

The Sarai Programme was initiated in 2000 by a group consisting of internationally renowned cinema scholar Ravi S. Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram (both fellows at CSDS) and the members of the Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta), a Delhi based group of media practitioners, documentarists, artists and writers.
Sarai's mission is to act as a platform for discursive and creative collaboration between theorists, researchers, practitioners and artists actively engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces and cultures in South Asia. Its areas of interests include media research and theory, the urban experience in South Asia: history, environment, culture, architecture and politics, new and established media practices, media history, cinema, contemporary art, digital culture, the history and politics of technology, visual/technological cultures, free and open source software, social usage of software, the politics of information and communication, online communities and web-based practices.The below collection of articles -- painstakingly drawn from the numerous, openly accessible Sarai Readers produced by the collective -- reflect the above interests, but have been curated here by FSFF because of their particular, potential relevance to scholars of cinema and related moving image and digital media studies.

    Categories: blogs

    FILM VERSUS FILM Series with Dustin Morrow, Chris Cagle, David Cooper Moore and Matt Prigge

    Thu, 01/05/2012 - 15:35
    The Film Versus Film crew tackles the question, "Who's the best drunk character in all of film?" Is it the antihero from Red Lights or the matriarch from La Cienaga? The panel raises issues of gender representation as they discuss the characters from Sex and the City, and discuss such functional drunks as Paul Newman in The Verdict and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke also comes up, as does Dudley Moore's Arthur.
    Film Studies For Free is a big fan of the work of film scholar and blogger Chris Cagle (see his website Category D: A Film and Media Studies blog) and so was curious about the below press release when it landed in its inbox.
    Lively New Web Series Focuses on Film DiscussionFilm versus Film is an exciting new web series centering on the discussion of popular cinema. The show’s panel is made up of filmmakers, professors, film critics and film scholars. The panel’s discussions stem from tongue-in-cheek, pop culture-oriented “categories” like Best Use of a Pop Song in Film, Film Failure that Should Have Spawned a Great Franchise, Most Unpleasant Christmas Movie, and Hammiest Performance Ever by a Film Actor.       The series was the brainchild of Portland filmmaker and professor Dustin Morrow, who thought there might be an audience for the funny, passionate, good-natured arguments he was having at the pub with his fellow cinephiles over such film-obsessive questions as What’s the best film ever made starring an animal?, What’s the most uncomfortable nude scene on film?, and What films have actually been elevated by the performances of Keanu Reeves?       The series is shot in Philadelphia, and features in addition to Morrow, professor and film scholar Chris Cagle, media educator and documentarian David Cooper Moore, and journalist and film critic Matt Prigge. The series is directed and edited by filmmaker Matt Boyle. Each Monday’s webisode tackles one question, and runs five to ten minutes. The series can be seen on YouTube, Vimeo, and at filmversusfilm.tumblr.com. The series can also be followed on Facebook and Twitter.      For more information, the Philadelphia Daily News recently ran a full page interview with series producer Dustin Morrow in both its print and web editions. Having now enjoyed a few of the Film Versus Film panel discussions, FSFF (who, when it's not bringing you quality film scholarly links, is almost always down the pub having discussions like these with its mates -- slightly less dudecentric ones, it must be said ...) was only too happy to convey the news about this fun and lightly informative web series to its readers.
    Categories: blogs

    Repulsive Film Studies? New issue of FILM-PHILOSOPHY on Cinematic Disgust

    Tue, 01/03/2012 - 17:09
    Life's Work: The Films of Roman Polanski - Chapter 5: Repulsion, the Dark Art of Desire written and narrated by Kim Morgan and edited by Matt Zoller Seitz. Video Essay Series hosted by PressPlay at IndieWire
    [Tarja] Laine’s insights on disgust have important implications for thinking about the aesthetic paradox of unpleasure. In her assessment, [Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)] offers a particularly pertinent limit-case in which disgust is not readily convertible into pleasurable cognitive satisfaction. Ultimately, her reading of the film suggests that we may need to re-think theories that construct unpleasure as antithetical to aesthetic experience. In this, she joins Korsmeyer and other thinkers who have recently suggested that we may need to abandon the pleasure-unpleasure binary, in favor of thinking about disgust as ‘modifier of attention, intensifying for a host of reasons some experience that the participant would rather have continue than not’ (Korsmeyer 2011, 118). Indeed, as Laine puts it, it is possible that what we value in cinematic renderings of disgust is precisely the ‘vivid and immediate experience’ that it offers us, ‘regardless of its non-pleasurable, non-rewarding features’. [Tina Kendall in her editor's 'Introduction: Tarrying with Disgust' for the Film-Philosophy special issue on Disgust, discussing Tarja Laine's brilliant article for that issue, as well as citing Carolyn Korsmeyer's Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)]Many of you will already have heard about the new issue of Film-Philosophy that came out in late December, but Film Studies For Free is obsessively completist in its mission to bring you news of notable, open access, film studies, hence this, otherwise possibly superfluous, entry.

    Besides, it's a brilliantly provocative special issue which successfully takes explorations of filmic disgust well beyond the, to date, canonical or entrenched Film Studies approaches to film horror. Despite some of the attractions of these approaches, for those of us marking undergraduate essays on horror cinema and television from time to time, this greater plurality of conceptual pathways into these topics is a Very Good Thing - that is, in FSFF's ever so humble view.

    Thanks so much for that, and more, Film-Philosophy!

    Vol 15, No 2 (2011): The Disgust Issue

    Guest Editor: Tina Kendall

    Articles
    Book Reviews
    • Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones and Belén Vidal (2010) Cinema at the Periphery PDF Rowena Santos Aquino
    • Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds. (2010) Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead PDF Caroline Walters
    • Joseph Mai (2010) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne PDF R. D. Crano
    • Boaz Hagin (2010) Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema PDF Richard Lindley Armstrong
    • Peter Lee-Wright (2010) The Documentary Handbook PDF Wes Skolits
    • William Brown, Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin (2010) Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe PDF Alison Frank
    • Richard Misek (2010) Chromatic Cinema PDF Robert Barry
    • Alain Badiou (2010) Cinéma PDF Manuel Ramos
    • Annie van den Oever, ed. (2010) Ostrannenie PDF Lara Alexandra Cox
    • David Martin-Jones (2010) Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities PDF John Marmysz
    Categories: blogs

    New Issue of CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

    Tue, 01/03/2012 - 16:21
    Jeff Wall's photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993 (courtesy of Wikipedia)
    Today, in its continuing series of catch up posts on new offerings from open access film e-journals, Film Studies For Free brings you links to the contents of the latest issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image.

    Of particular interest, this time, are Tom McClelland's clear-eyed account of the respects 'in which the medium of film and the discipline of philosophy can intersect', Agustín Zarzosa's detailed evaluation of Rancière’s criticism of Deleuze, and Temenuga Trifonova's terrific discussion of the ways in which contemporary photography, like that of Jeff Wall mentioned above, 'seeks to reclaim the cinematic within the photographic from within the twilight of indexicality'.

    Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 2 (2011)

    Abstracts and Contributors

    Articles
    Interview
    • Questions for Jacques Rancière around his book Les écarts du cinéma (English version and French version): Conducted by Susana Nascimento Duarte
    Conference Report
    In Portuguese: 
    Translation
    Categories: blogs

    New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

    Mon, 01/02/2012 - 16:59
    Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here
    Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

    Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

    There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

    Links to all items are set out for you below.

    This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.
    Categories: blogs

    New WORLD PICTURE on 'Wrong'

    Mon, 01/02/2012 - 16:23
    David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on VimeoA Fire in My Belly is an awkward work that at first glance can appear to be both hyperbolic or overreaching and inconsistent or contradictory. This short film resembles a travel log, an illustrated lecture, or an educational slide show that mixes the unpitying gaze of a mondo cane film (unwrapped mummies with gaping mouths, unusually disabled bodies performing daily tasks, animals forced into fighting by their human captors) with the deliriously overwrought expressionism of 1980s music videos (spinning eyeballs aflame, strobed flashes of milk splashes). The film also recalls major moments in the visual avant-garde of the twentieth century by invoking 1920s surrealist iconography, aping Eisenstein’s clunkier intellectual montages, and echoing the idolatry of Kenneth Anger’s films which themselves borrow from the formal idioms [of] religious and exploitation films. A Fire in My Belly overtly conflates symbolic registers and gains momentum by joining documentary footage of workers performing precarious tasks or snakes devouring their prey to staged studio shots of symbolic transactions involving leaking blood, throwing money, spinning globes, or torched marionettes.  [from Karl Schoonover's essay 'David Wojnarowicz's Graven Image: Cinema, Censorship, and Queers'; hyperlinks added by FSFF]
    Following its much appreciated seasonal break, a rather bleary-eyed but well-rested Film Studies For Free wishes its readers a very happy new year.

    Its first few posts of 2012 will be devoted to catching up with some new issues of online film and moving image studies related journals, starting with a listing of links to a new collection of work from one of the most original of such journals: World Picture on the concept of 'wrong'.

    FSFF particularly liked Schoonover on Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly, (as above), Schwartz's riff on Pasolini, Malsky on dystopian sound, and Manon and Temkin on glitch art.

    WORLD PICTURE 6, 2011: Table of Contents
    Categories: blogs

    FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

    Tue, 12/20/2011 - 16:05
    Insightful interview (in English) with filmmaker and academic Clio Barnard about her experimental documentary The Arbor on the life and work of Andrea Dunbar, British writer of the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob, too. The Arbor was one of Film Studies For Free's author's favourite films seen in 2011 (interview December 5, 2011)
    Not since its December 2008 blog entry A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs has the otherwise intrepid Film Studies For Free ventured into the rather crowded, online territory of end-of-year lists.

    But, as it signs off on its seasonal break until the first few days of 2012, FSFF thought the time was right for a listing of links to its favourite, openly accessible, online Film Studies resources in 2011.

    Thanks so much to all who worked hard to bring you these openly accessible treasures in the first place. And thanks also, dear readers, for being there to appreciate them.

    FSFF very much looks forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
    1. Top seven film and moving image studies history resources online in 2011: 
      1. The Colonial Film Project archive plus two freely accessible chapters by those involved in the project: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 32 sample pages; and Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 25 sample pages
      2. Media History Digital Library
      3. The Turconi Project
      4. EU Screen
      5. European Film Gateway
      6. The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories
      7. The Kracauer Lectures website
    2. Top five, most consistently brilliant Film Studies bloggers:
      1. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson for Observations on Film Art
      2. Luke McKernan for The Bioscope (also see McKernan's two new ScoopIt! projects: The Bioscope and Screen Research)
      3. Roland-François Lack for The Cine-Tourist, The Daily Map and The BlowUp Moment (also see The Autopsies Group website) and also on Twitter
      4. Dan North for Spectacular Attractions (also see The Cinema of Puppetry) and also on Twitter
      5. Tie between Michael J. Anderson and Lisa K. Broad for Tativille and Ten Best Films; and  Omar Ahmed for Ellipsis
    3. Best new Film Studies blog: Katherine Groo's Half/Films
    4. Best 'media studies approaches to film and moving image studies' blog - tie between:
      1. Just TV by Jason Mittell (also on Twitter)
      2. Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style by Anne Helen Petersen (also on Twitter)
      3. The Chutry Experiment by Chuck Tryon (also on Twitter)
      4. The Negarponti Files by Negar Mottahedeh (also on Twitter and Facebook)
    5. Most consistently original, Film and Moving Image Studies writer active online - a tie between: 
      1. Adrian Martin (e.g. see all the links here)
      2. Nicholas Rombes (e.g. see here and here)
      3. Amanda Ann Klein (also see here)
      4. David Bordwell
      5. Kristin Thompson (also see here and here)
      6. Jeffrey Sconce (also see here)
    6. Best Film Studies informed, commercial film criticism website: Alternate Takes
    7. Best new online film journal in 2011 - a tie between:
      1. LOLA edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu
      2. ALPHAVILLE edited by Laura Rascaroli and others at the University of Cork
      3. JOAN'S DIGEST edited by Miriam Bale
    8. Best recently established online academic Film Studies journal: MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism
    9. Top twelve established, online, (mostly) English language, Film Studies journals:
      1. Screening the Past
      2. Film-Philosophy
      3. SCOPE
      4. Jump Cut
      5. Senses of Cinema
      6. MEDIASCAPE
      7. Participations
      8. Bright Lights Film Journal
      9. CINEPHILE
      10. Offscreen
      11. La Furia Umana 
      12. World Picture Journal
      13. For links to one hundred more journals (including some brilliant, primarily non-English language journals, like Transit: Cine..., see here)
    10. Most generous, Open Access Film Studies author: Thomas Elsaesser for the below freely accessible e-books and for the hundreds of further resources linked to from his website:
      1. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), A Second Life : German Cinema's First Decades (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
      2. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
      3. Elsaesser, Thomas,  Jan Simons, Lucette Bronk (eds), Writing for the Medium: Television in transition (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
      4. Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
      5. Elsaesser, Thomas, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
      6. Elsaesser, Thomas, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
    11. Best online cinephile news and criticism site: MUBI Notebook (thanks so much to David Hudson and Daniel Kasman for their brilliant work)
    12. Best cinephile salon site - a tie between:
      1. Dave Kehr's place
      2. Girish Shambu's place
    13. Best seven multimedia/multiplatform/multichannel-style film and moving image studies websites:
      1. FlowTV
      2. In Media Res 
      3. Moving Image Source 
      4. Screen Machine 
      5. Screen Culture
      6. Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture 
      7. Critical Studies in Television
    14. Most impactful online Film Studies work in 2011 - a tie between:
      1. Tim Smith's work on how movie viewers watch, showcased here as well as on his blog Continuity Boy and his research site.
      2. Matthias Stork's video essays on Chaos Cinema (see FSFF's original post on this)
      3. Aitor Gametxo's video essay: Variation: THE SUNBEAM, David W. Griffith, 1912
      4. Steven Shaviro's work on Post-Cinematic Affect: see here for lots of links
    15. FSFF's favourite Film Studies academic links on Twitter: @filmdrblog (also see the Film Doctor's actual blog)
    16. FSFF's favourite non-academic, film studies-informed, online film critics - a tie between:
      1. Srikanth Srinivasan (also on Twitter)
      2. Matt Zoller Seitz (also on Twitter
      3. Kevin B Lee (also on Twitter here and here)
      4. Jim Emerson (also on Twitter)
      5. Jonathan Rosenbaum (also on Twitter)
      6. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (also on Twitter)
      7. Farran Smith Nehme (also on Twitter)
      8. Marilyn Ferdinand and Roderick Heath (also on Twitter here and here) and see Rod's blog
      9. Anne Billson (also writing for the Guardian and on Twitter)
      10. David Cairns (also on Twitter)
    17. FSFF's ten favourite FSFF blogposts (and blogpost clusters) in 2011: 
      1. On 'Affect' and 'Emotion' in Film and Media Studies
      2. Double Vision: Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend and ¡Viva Raúl Ruiz!
      3. V.F. Perkins on FILM AS FILM and More Victor Perkins Video Interviews Online from Saarbruecken 
      4. The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey 
      5. The Tree of Links: Terrence Malick Studies 
      6. Ingmar Bergman Studies 
      7. Viewing Modes and Mise en Scene: 50 YEARS ON by Christian Keathley and The Obscurity of the Obvious: On the Films of Otto Preminger 
      8. On Figural Analysis in Film Studies 
      9. Liquid Atmospherics: On the cinema of Wong Kar-wai 
      10. Its own video essay posts: Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE (1944); Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love; Links on videographical film criticism, editing, 'intensified continuity', 'chaos cinema', 'hapticity' and (post) cinematic affect; and Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film Studies 
    18. FSFF's most read post in 2011 by some distance was "An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011
    19. Most popular resource at FSFF: Open Access Film E-books List
    20. Best search engine for Open Access Film Studies (and other Arts and Humanities resources): JURN (thanks, as ever, to the indefatigable David Haden)
    Categories: blogs

    Cambridge Film Studies Videos: Godard, Renoir, Literature and Film, Film and Forgetting, Representation of War in Film

    Tue, 12/20/2011 - 10:48
    Framestill from Scénario du film "Passion"/Script for the film "Passion" (Jean-Luc Godard, 1982). This film is discussed by Libby Saxton in her paper on gesture in Godard's filmsToday, Film Studies For Free joyously tips the wink to its readers about the online availability of video recordings of papers from research events held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. 

    These valuable online resources will clearly be added to in the coming months and years so while FSFF will keep its beady eye trained for the appearance of future recordings of note, its readers might like to do the same with their own beady eyes.
    Categories: blogs

    Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance

    Mon, 12/19/2011 - 12:29
    Actress Nicole Kidman at the 2011 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Photograph by Caroline David, shared under a  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at Wikipedia. Listen to Pam Cook's brilliant talk about Kidman's "commodity stardom" here.
    Film Studies For Free was thrilled to discover that audio files of the talks from the conference on Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance, which took place on December 9, 2011 at Birkbeck College, London, are now available online for listening and download.

    The talks are of a very high calibre indeed, so several hours of truly worthwhile, scholarly listening await you. Links and a description of the event are given below. Enjoy!
    Organisers' description of the event:

    Diane Keaton has just published her memoirs. Reflecting on becoming a mother at 50 and kissing Jack Nicholson at 57, Keaton is ageing in her own unique way. On Friday 9 December Birkbeck, University of London, [held] a major research symposium exploring how stars including Keaton, Brigitte Bardot, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Taylor aged in the public eye.
      This one-day research symposium, organised by Dr Janet McCabe and Dr Deborah Jermyn, [debated] two significant (and interlinked) issues; performance and ageing. Encompassing both historical and topical case studies, speakers [considered] a range of celebrities, stars and case studies drawn from different national and industrial contexts. The keynote speaker w[as] Professor Ginette Vincendeau (King’s College, University of London).   The co-organisers believe the time is right for new scholarship focussing on ageing and celebrity and for us to think anew about how we think about growing old. We hear endless reports of how age is becoming increasingly relative, ‘60 is the new 40’ and so on’. With the baby boomer generation going into retirement and being reluctant to be written off as ‘old’, there is a heightened demand for positive representations of ageing. At the same time, stars like Helen Mirren are re-writing the rules for older women working in Hollywood, says Jermyn. The symposium addresse[d] some of these issues and ask[ed]s just how much things are really changing, since women stars are still subjected to a much more critical eye as they age than are their male co-stars. ‘Growing old, and I do mean growing’ writes Diane Keaton, ‘requires reinvention’. I like this quote, says McCabe. We must adjust our ideas about how we age without talking exclusively about how we defy the ageing process. This symposium adopt[ed] different perspectives [...] about how celebrity is changing our perceptions and attitudes toward ageing and getting older. Panel 1
    Panel 2
    Keynote
    Categories: blogs

    "Global Cinema: Cinéma Engagé or Cinéma Commerciale?" Special Issue of SITUATIONS

    Thu, 12/15/2011 - 16:11
    Framegrab from Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu , 2006)Babel sets out to be a new sort of film that attempts to create a “world cinema” gaze within a commercial Hollywood framework. I examine how it approaches this and ask whether the film succeeds in this attempt. I explore the tensions between progressive and conservative political agendas, and pay particular attention to the ways “other” cultures are seen in a film with “Third World” pretensions and U.S money behind it. I frame my analysis around a key question: does the Iñárritu-led outfit successfully create a paradigmatic “transnational world cinema” text that de-centers U.S. hegemony, or is this a utopian project doomed to failure in a film funded predominantly by major U.S. studios? I examine the ways in which the film engages with the tourist gaze and ask whether the film replaces this gaze with a world cinema gaze or merely reproduces it in new ways . [Deborah Shaw, "Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze", Situations, 4.1, 2011]
    Film Studies For Free is delighted to announce the publication of a new film issue of the Open Access journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. The special issue is entitled "Global Cinema: Cinéma Engagé or Cinéma Commerciale?" and it contains ten essays on modern international films and cinemas, including those of Iran, Nigeria, Mexico, Romania, France, China, Argentina, and India as well as on contemporary film festivals and on films documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    As the editors write:
    The issue has a global reach in its coverage of countries and regions of the world ranging from Hollywood’s own “Global Gaze,” to a placement of Nigerian Cinema as the equal of Africa’s modernist cinema, to Venezuela’s difficult negotiation of a Bolivarian cinema in a neoliberal context, to a questioning of the radical othering of Eastern European cinema whose concerns now seem much closer to those of the West, and, finally, to a tracing of a complex multiperspectival fashioning of the image of the Chinese peasantry in a moment when the distinction between city and country are rapidly fading.  The global reach of the issue extends as well to the range of theoretical positions used to examine contemporary global cinema, be it:  structural-materialist aspects of the questioning of the Israeli-Palestinian problematic; the integration of economic and aesthetic methodologies in a post-Adornian examination of the Cannes Film Festival; feminist and subaltern theory utilized to critique the patriarchal aspects of what is sometimes viewed as India’s most politically progressive cinema; a rereading and deconstruction of French radical workerist post-1968 cinema; and a linking of feminist and anti-colonial perspectives to highlight the way that in Iran Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten spotlights Muslim women's emancipation.Below are direct links to the contents, as per usual here at FSFF.

    Situation homepage  Archives

    Vol 4, No 1 (2011) Table of Contents PDF
    • Terri Ginsberg, Dennis Broe, "Whither Globalization? An Idea Whose Time Has Come or Whose Time Has Come and Gone?" PDF
    • Deborah Shaw, "Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze" PDF
    • Dennis Broe, "The Film Festival as Site of Resistance: Pro or Cannes" PDF
    • Hossein Khosrowjah , "Neither a Victim nor a Crusading Heroine" PDF
    • Jonathon Haynes , "African Cinema and Nollywood: Contradictions" PDF
    • Terri Ginsberg, " Radical Rationalism as Cinema Aesthetics: The Palestinian–Israeli Conflict in North American Documentary and Experimental Film" PDF
    • Paul Douglas Grant, "Just Some of the Ways to Shoot a Strike: Militant Filmmaking in France from Arc to the Groupe Medvedkine" PDF
    • Noah Zweig, "Villa del Cine (Cinema City): Constructing Bolivarian Citizens for the Twenty-First Century" PDF
    • Ping Fu, "Encircling the City: Peasant Migration in Contemporary Chinese Media" PDF
    • Gayatri Devi, "Between Personal Cataclysms and National Conflicts: The Missing Labor Class in Malayalam Cinema" PDF PDF
    • "Eastern European Cinema on the Margins" by Meta Mazaj PDF
    • Contributors, Film Issue PDF
    Categories: blogs

    Film Studies with added awesomeness

    Thu, 12/15/2011 - 09:49
    He knows his stuff...Hey readers.... A really quick link today, one specially for the end of a long and tiring teaching term. Film Studies For Free loves this Tumblr by girldetective and hopes that you will find it stimulating, too.
    It’s all part of the Hey Girl/Ryan Gosling Tumblr meme (the origins of which can be found here). In a nutshell, following the success of Danielle Henderson’s blog, Feminist Ryan Gosling (which, in turn, was a derivative of the blog F[***] Yeah Ryan Gosling), many other bloggers rehashed the format using references to different fields of study, including Typography, International Development and Rhetoric. Being the nerdy cinephile that I am, I kept hoping that somebody would create a Film Studies version of the meme, but when that didn’t happen, I decided to just make one myself. [girldetective's mission statement] Also, must read: Anne Helen Petersen of Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style on the Gosling meme.

    Hat tip to Nelson D. (aka @nelly061) for passing the link onto FSFF.
    Categories: blogs

    Screen Attachments: new Issue of SCREENING THE PAST

    Wed, 12/14/2011 - 12:00
    Framegrab from Nuovo cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988), a film which is the starting point of film theorist Francesco Casetti in his new article "Cinema Lost and Found"
    Film Studies for Free rushes you the wonderful news that a special issue (no. 32) of Screening the Past has just gone online. The issue treats the topic of Screen Attachments and is edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci. 

    The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti, but a quick glance at all the other articles indicates a very high quality issue indeed. FSFF's own favourite is Fowler and Voci's study 'Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments Outside the Movie Theatre', with its compelling use of Sara Ahmed's notion of orientation.

    The Classics and Reruns section also has some real gems.

    Screen Attachments
    Classics and Reruns Reviews

      Categories: blogs

      Dynamic Views at FILM STUDIES FOR FREE?

      Thu, 12/08/2011 - 14:23
      An all too telling image of the messy wondrousness of Film Studies For Free?
      It is a truth almost certainly universally acknowledged that, in so far as Film Studies For Free is known at all, it is known for its content rather than for its distinctly generic design. But some (long-overdue) design and layout changes are definitely on the horizon in the new year.

      This website will almost certainly be adopting what's known in Blogger's jargon as a 'Dynamic Views' format, just as soon as some of the gremlins and limitations of this new system are ironed out. The most pressing issue to resolve first will be to find out how to accommodate the veritable riches of FSFF's standalone pages and sidebar content in the new format.

      In the meantime, FSFF would like to offer its readers the chance to express a preference for any of the basic options that it is considering for its makeover. If you click on the links below, you can see how this blog would look in the different dynamic views on offer.

      Your own dynamic views on this matter would be most appreciated. So, if you have any preferences, or indeed any other thoughts to express about the future look and functionality of FSFF, please leave them in a comment below or email this blog.

      Thank you.
      • Classic: A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
      • Flipcard - Site photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
      • Magazine - A clean, elegant editorial style layout 
      • Mosaic - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
      • Sidebar - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
      • Snapshot - An interactive pinboard of posts 
      • Timeslide  - A horizontal view of posts by time period

      Read more on the Dynamic View styles.
      Categories: blogs

      Film,Television and Media Studies articles in STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

      Tue, 12/06/2011 - 15:08
      Framegrab of Rooney Mara as 'final girl' Nancy Holbrook in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010). Read Kyle Christensen's article on this film's source text ('The Final Girl versus Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema'), and also check out Film Studies For Free's entry of links to 'Final Girl' Studies

      Below, Film Studies For Free links to the entire online contents, to date, of the excellent Open Access journal Studies in Popular Culture: a list of more than 60 great articles on film, television and media studies. 

      The journal of the US Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association in the South, SPC dates back, in its offline, print version, to 1977, making it one of the oldest, continuously published academic journals to treat audiovisual media.  

      SPC has been online since 2006 and is a wonderful example of how an online presence indicates no necessary lowering of the quality bar for a properly peer-reviewed journal. 


      29.1 October 2006 [Go here for an online table of contents)
      30.2 Spring 2008 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]
      31.1 Fall 2008 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]
      31.2 Spring 2009 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]
      32.1 Fall 2009 [Go here to find a PDF of the Entire Issue]
      32.2 Spring 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]
      33.1 Fall 2010 [Go here to find a pdf of the entire issue]
      33.2 Spring 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]
      34.1 Fall 2011 [Go here to find a PDF of the entire issue]
      Categories: blogs

      More Victor Perkins Video Interviews Online from Saarbruecken

      Sat, 12/03/2011 - 10:00
      Max Ophüls: Interview with Victor F. Perkins from Media Art and Design Studiengang on Vimeo.
      Casting: Interview with Victor F. Perkins.
      Death: Interview with Victor F. Perkins.
      Classicism: Interview with Victor F. Perkins.
      Orson Welles: Interview with Victor F. Perkins.
      Film Studies For Free very excitedly learnt of the posting of five more fascinating and hugely insightful extracts from the marvellous recorded interview with legendary film scholar V.F. Perkins which took place at the Kino 8 1/2 in Saarbrücken, Germany, and was filmed by Media Art and Design Studiengang. They are available online here.

      If you missed the earlier seven interview extracts you can find them in one handy place (and, let's say it: FSFF is one very handy place!) here.

      What more need FSFF say, than "Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy"!
      Categories: blogs

      Longtime Companion? HIV/AIDS in thirty years of cinema, media and culture

      Thu, 12/01/2011 - 07:30

      Images from two 'AIDS film dramas': above, Longtime Companion (Norman René, 1989), a film which, as Emmanuel Levy puts it, carried "the burden of being the first [widely distributed] theatrical movie to deal directly with AIDS"; below, a frame grab from Yesterday (Darrell Roodt, 2004), about a Zulu woman living with AIDS. Read Jean Stuart's and Olaia Cores Calvo's articles on this film. It was [30] years ago, in the summer of 1981, when society as a whole[, including] the scientific community[,] was faced with an unknown disease that came later to be known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Several films [...] reflected the initial fears and uncertainty, the responses of the different social groups, the fight against ignorance, the [demand for] access to treatment and the suffering of the infected individuals and their families [...] due to this disease. Taking into account that these movies were filmed when these epidemics took place they can actually be considered as [...] historical documents that deserve [to be] analysed by the generations to come. Films such as And The Band Played On; Longtime Companion; Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt; Les Nuits Fauves; Angels in America; Yesterday and My Brother... Nikhil have marked [30] years of AIDS history that should not be forgotten by the world. [Adapted from António Pais de Lacerda, 'Cinema as an Historical Document: AIDS in 25 years of Cinema', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2 (2006): 102-113; hyperlinks added by FSFF]Film Studies For Free today commemorates the twenty-third World AIDS Day in the thirtieth year since the identification of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. The Human immunodeficiency virus [HIV], the lentivirus which causes the syndrome, was identified two years later, in 1983.

      FSFF marks this anniversary year with the below entry of links to scholarly resources on the figuration of AIDS/HIV in cinema and culture.

      Today's posting was also inspired by a series of film screenings and discussions on 'AIDS and its Melodramas' that have been taking place at the University of Sussex, UK, organised by Michael Lawrence and John David Rhodes. These academic events will continue next term with screenings of Fatal Love (1991), And the Band Played On (1993), Philadelphia (1993) and, one of FSFF's favourites,  Boys on the Side (1995). Please email FSFF if you'd like more details.
          Categories: blogs

          Free Sample Chapters from 50+ New Palgrave Macmillan/BFI Film and TV Books

          Mon, 11/28/2011 - 13:30
          Professor Jon Lewis of Oregon State University on his BFI Film Classics book on The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972). See the 41 page sample from this book linked to below.

          Once again, Film Studies For Free celebrates the fabulous, free, Film and Television Studies book samples available for perusal and download at the Palgrave Macmillan website. 
          These are not properly Open Access works, but this blog chooses not to be purist when there are some amazingly generous PDF excerpts -- from soon-to-be as well as recently published works -- available online by scholars of the renown of those listed below. Thanks to the British Film Institute and Palgrave Macmillan! For an earlier list of great, free Palgrave Macmillan/BFI excerpts linked to at FSFF, click here.
              BFI Film Classics: 
              Categories: blogs

              "Pity we aren't madder": Ken Russell links in his magnificent memory

              Mon, 11/28/2011 - 10:37
              "I think we've all gone mad" [Jennie Linden as Ursula Brangwen]"Pity we aren't madder" [Alan Bates as Rupert Birkin]  Scene from Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969)
              An extract from one of Ken Russell's very first films, Amelia and the Angel (1958) 
              Film Studies For Free was saddened to hear of the death yesterday of the magnificent filmmaker Ken Russell. A monumental passing. But what a cinematic life he lived!

              Russell's weirdly, viscerally, brilliant Altered States (1980) was one of the first films genuinely to whet FSFF's author's off-beat cinematic appetite, and his adaptation of Women in Love (excerpted above) and his portraits of Elgar (1962), Delius (1968) and Mahler (1974) are several of her favourite British films.

              Below, FSFF has gathered some links to online scholarly studies of Russell's work, and to related  resources. Readers should also check out David Hudson's essential collection of tributes to, and other material about, the British filmmaker for the Mubi Notebook here.


                  Barry Keith Grant, 'The Body Politic: Ken Russell in the 1980s', in Lester D. Friedman (ed.) Fires were started: British cinema and Thatcherism (London: Wallflower Press, 2006)

                  Kevin M. Flanagan (ed.), Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's last mannerist (London: Scarecrow Press, 2009)
                  Categories: blogs