Happy Holidays from FSFF!

Having a few days off! But back soon....

On Film Education and Appreciation

Updated January 13, 2011

British Film Institute library in Dean Street in 1950s

BFI Library today in Stephen Street

Film Studies For Free loves the British Film Institute. It's a remarkable cultural institution in many ways - one of the finest in the world. And its online film educational offerings are unrivalled, both at its main website and at Screenonline. 

Today, FSFF celebrates some newly published, online, BFI resources on the subject of film appreciation and education in the 1950s. As is its wont, FSFF has supplemented these links with its own curation of online items on international film education and appreciation. All links may be found below.

But FSFF has been dismayed to hear of proposed changes to the British Film Institute National Library (still going strong after 76 wonderful years) and the Viewing Service at the BFI. The proposals are outlined here. These changes are likely to have serious implications for the field and for research opportunities in film and television in the UK. If any of FSFF's readers are concerned about the proposals, you may like to make your views known to the BFI - possibly through the chairman Greg Dyke. If anyone knows of an online petition to register discontent about these changes please let FSFF know and it will happily publish the link. This has now been set up: Please sign!

Selected resources made available by the BFI in the 1950s to support film appreciation and education:

• 20 Films to use in Junior Film Societies (PDF, 34.3mb) compiled by A. W. Hodgkinson (British Film Institute and The Society of Film Teachers, 1953) Identifies key feature films suitable for studying with young people. Each record includes a summary of the film, examples of critical opinion and suggested discussion points.

• Are They Safe at the Cinema? a considered answer to critics of the cinema (PDF, 3.66mb) by Janet Hills (British Film Institute) Pamphlet examining the effects of cinema on young people. Questions the notion of a causal link between sensationalist or violent films and behaviour, and outlines the potential benefits of film education and appreciation.

• School Film Appreciation (PDF, 7.1mb) by A. W. Hodgkinson, John Huntley, E. Francis Mills and Jack Smith (King's College School and British Film Institute, 1950) Practical notes compiled by educators in the field, detailing appropriate film titles and books for study, with advice for teachers.

• The Artist the Critic and the Teacher (PDF, 1.9mb) (The Joint Council for Education through Art, 1959) Programme for a forum presented by The Joint Council for Education through Art on the relevance of the arts to education, held at the National Film Theatre. Participants included Lindsay Anderson, John Berger, Karel Reisz and Kenneth Tynan.

• Film Study Material (PDF, 850kb) (British Film Institute, 1955) Catalogue of films and extracts available from the British Film Institute for use in film study.

Other Resources on Film Education and Appreciation:

• Charles R. Acland, 'Patterns of Cultural Authority: the National Film Society of Canada and the Institutionalization of Film Education, 1938-1941' Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d'etudes cinematographiques, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2001
• Cary Bazalgette, 'Analogue Sunset. The Educational Role of the British Film Institute, 1979-2007', Comunicar, n. 35, v. XVIII, 2010, Scientific Journal of Media Literacy; ISSN: 1134-3478; pages 15-23 
• Richard Berger and Julian McDougall, 'Touching the Void?: Media Education Research in the Twenty-first Century', Media Education Research Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2010
• William J. Buxton, 'Rockefeller Support for Projects on the Use of Motion Pictures for Educational and Public Purposes, 1935-1954', Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online, 2001
• John Caughie, 'Authors and auteurs: the uses of theory', in Donald, J. and Renov, M. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies (London: Sage, 2007)
• Zoë Druick, 'International Cultural Relations as a Factor in Postwar Canadian Cultural Policy: The Relevance of UNESCO for the Massey Commission'Canadian journal of communication,Vol 31, No 1, 2006 
• Alexander Fedorov, 'Media Education around the World: Brief History', Acta Didactica Napocensia, Volume 1, Number 2, 2008 
• Caroline Jane Frick, Restoration Nation: Motion Picture Archives and “American” Film Heritage, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2005
• Gary Hoctor, The Irish Film Society from 1936 to 1956: An examination in the context of the Cultural Histories of Ireland, MA Thesis, 2006
• Elizabeth Lebas, 'Sadness and Gladness: The Films of Glasgow Corporation, 1922–1938', FilM Studies, Issue 6, 2005
• Toby Miller (ed), Dossier: 'In Focus: The British Film Institute', Cinema Journal 47, No. 4, Summer 2008
• Melanie Selfe, ‘"Doing the Work of the NFT in Nottingham" – or How to Use the BFI to Beat the Communist Threat in Your Local Film Society', Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2007
• Michelle Spinella, Cinema in Cuban National Development: WOmen and Film Making Culture, PhD Thesis, Florida State University, 2004

Film Studies and Aesthetics video and audio resources from the University of Kent

Image of a domestic interior in A Star is Born (George Cukor, 1954). Listen to John David Rhodes's talk on the encounter between cinema and modernist American domestic architecture, in relation to this film and others.

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you glad tidings of the very high quality, audio and video, Film Studies research resources that have been generously shared through the University of Kent website.  

As FSFF's author well knows, having been fortunate enough to work there for a decade, Kent is one of the largest and best university centres in Europe dedicated to Film Studies. Film research there, in both theory and practice (faculty include the world-leading scholars Murray Smith and Elizabeth Cowie, as well as the award-winning film-makers Clio Barnard and  Sarah Turner), is currently centred in four broad areas: national cinemas – form and history: North American, European, Latin American, Asian; the digital in film; the  documentary film; and, especially, film aesthetics, the latter often in collaboration with the interdisciplinary ‘Aesthetics Research Group’.

Some of these interests, and plenty more besides, are beautifully reflected in the amazing wealth of recordings of conferences, symposia and seminars directly linked to below. Just feast your eyes and ears on them.

Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and the Moving Image

Audio Resources

• "The Art of Not Playing to Pictures’ in British Cinemas, 1908-1914" Dr Jon Burrows (University of Warwick) Recent scholarship on musical practices in the silent era argues that by the end of the 1900s and throughout the 1910s the typical cinema musician was a lone pianist who occupied a subordinate position in relation to the projected image and provided forms of accompaniment which ignored traditional musical logic and obediently responded instead to the dictates of narrative logic. Using a variety of evidential sources available in the UK (cinema licensing records, police inspection files, trade paper debates) my paper will argue the contrary: that miniature orchestras were extremely common in British cinemas before the First World War, and that, well into the feature film era, careful synchronisation of music and image was probably the exception rather than the rule. Listen to the lecture here (mp3)

• "Theory and Practice in British Film Schools" Prof Duncan Petrie (University of York) Film and media education in the UK has long been characterised by a fundamental polarisation between theory and practice. This is most clearly manifest in the widespread separation between academic study and hands-on production training within University and College departments and programmes...Listen to the lecture here (mp3)

• "Easy Living: The Modernist House and Cinematic Space“ Dr John David Rhodes (University of Sussex) In this paper I will look at a series of encounters—both real and imaginary—between cinema and modernist American domestic architecture. The paper moves from the sets of A Star is Born (Cukor, 1954), to the short experimental film House (1954)...Listen to the lecture here (mp3)

• "World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism" Prof Lucia Nagib (University of Leeds) This paper will address world cinema through an unusual theoretical model, based on an ethics of realism. The juxtaposition of the terms ‘world cinema’, ‘ethics’ and ‘realism’ creates a tension intended to offer a productive alternative to traditional oppositional binaries such as popular vs art cinemas, fiction vs documentary films, Hollywood vs world cinema... Listen to the lecture here (mp3)

University of Kent Aesthetics Research Group

Audio and video resources:

Kendall Walton and The Aesthetics of Photography and Film (2007)

• Interview with Kendal Walton (pdf)
• Videos of all lectures  (flash format)

Jerrold Levinson: Key Concepts in Aesthetics (2008-09)

• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'The Aesthetic'(mp3 - 1hr 36s)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Beauty'  (mp3 - 1hr 14mins)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Art'  (mp3 - 1hr 13s)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'The Artwork' (mp3 - 1 hr 12m
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Artform'  (mp3 - 1hr 14m)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Artistic form'(mp3 - 1hr 20m)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Artistic expression' (mp3 - 1hr 04m)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Artistic Interpretation' (mp3 - 1 hr 25m)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson - 'Artistic Value'  (mp3 - 1hr 28m)

Research Seminars (ongoing)

• Audio - Cynthia Freeland: 'Why Some Art Should Be Censored'  (mp3 - 44mins 7secs)
• Audio - Aaron Meskin: 'Kinds of Multiples' (mp3 - 53mins 39secs)
• Audio - Howard Caygill: ‘Sun Pictures - Photography And The Astronomic Image’ (mp3 - 56mins 24secs)
• Audio - Noël Carroll: ‘The Problem with Movie Stars’ (Introduction by Murray Smith) (mp3 - 57mins 09secs)
  This paper is published in Scott Walden (ed.), Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, New York: Blackwell, 2008.
• Audio - Andrew Kania: ‘The Death of the Narrator: Fiction and Narrative in Literature and Film’ (mp3 - 1hr 33 secs)
• Audio - Jerrold Levinson: 'Defending Hypothetical Intentionalism' (excerpt - mp3 - 19m 28s)
• Audio - Jennifer McMahon: 'Aesthetic Autonomy: the Expression of Freedom (a Pragmatist Reading of Adorno) (mp3 - 1hr 4min 39s)
• Audio - Aaron Meskin: 'Authenticity in the Hybrid and Digital Arts' (mp3 - 50m 35s)

Art, Aesthetics and the Sexual (2009)

• Photos from the conference
• Video - Cain Todd (University of Lancaster): ‘Imagination, Fantasy, and Sexual Desire: the aesthetic and the pornographic attitude’
  Respondent: Jerrold Levinson (University of Maryland)
• Video - Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex): ‘What Pornography Can Tell Us About Imaginative Responses to Fiction’
  Respondent: Murray Smith (University of Kent)
• Video - David Davies (McGill University): ‘Is Pornography in the (Intended) Eye of the Beholder?’
  Respondent: Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University)
• Audio - Rob van Gerwen: ‘How to do Things with Pictures: Pornography and Real Sexuality’ (mp3 52m 40s) Response by Ted Nannicelli (mp3 19m 53s)
• Audio - Susan Dwyer: ‘Docusex: Display and Desire in Internet Pornography’  (mp3 45m 40s)
  Response by Elizabeth Cowie (mp3 19m 01s)
• Audio - Alex Neill: ‘The Pornographic, the Erotic, and the Charming: remarks on a Schopenhauerian theme’ (mp3 45m 36s)
  Response by Jerrold Levinson (mp3 12m 28s)

New from BBC Archive: Hollywood Voices interviews with over 70 Hollywood stars

Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth in a publicity still for Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946). Interviews with both actors can be found at the new BBC Archive Hollywood Voices collection.

A star-struck Film Studies For Free has one more item of important news to rush you today. Just feast your eyes on the below release from the BBC Archive.There may be some geo-blocking outside of the UK, unfortunately, but do please check to see if you can download these magnificent resources.

Hollywood Voices looks back at the Golden Age of American cinema with interviews with over 70 movie stars and film makers.

Radio broadcasts by Boris Karloff, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Charlie Chaplin are joined by previously unreleased interviews with Harold Lloyd, Gregory Peck, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and more. Plus - two galleries of photos show the moments when stars like Edward G Robinson, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire came to the BBC in London.

Originally scheduled for release in January, we're really excited to be able to bring this collection to you now, in advance of a new film season from Radio 4. In fact, make sure you have a listen to the new Radio 4 collection of interviews, which is also now available: 

On Spectatorship, Reception Studies, Fandom and Fan Studies: In Media Res and Flow

Picture from Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla via Flickr, used and altered under Creative Commons License permission.

Film Studies For Free wanted you to know you have to go with the new issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture on Fandom and Fan Studies.  Oh, and then you can join the party already started at In Media Res on issues of spectatorship. The great contents of these worthy e-journals are directly linked to below:


In Media Res December 13-17, 2010 (Theme week organized by Ian Peters [Georgia State University])

• Sarah Sinwell (Northeastern University) presents: The Art of Seduction: Film Spectatorship in the Age of the Cell Phone

• Ross Melnick (Emory University) presents: BIG News from India: BIG Cinemas and Diasporic Indian Moviegoing in the United States

• Sarah Hamblin (Michigan State University) presents: Puzzling Spectatorship

• Daniel C. Faltesek (University of Iowa) presents: The 3D Machine: An Experiment With Aura, Television, and Installation

• Jesse Schlotterbeck (University of Iowa) presents: DVDs Like LPs: The Official Websites of Musical Biopics and the Contemporary Film Collector

Flow: A Critical Forumon Television and Media Culture

• "Fandom In/As the Academy" by Paul Booth A look at the specific pedagogical value of fandom as an activity and how it can be appropriated in a variety of educational contexts.

• "We Have Met the Fans, and They Are Us: In Defense of Aca-Fans and Scholars" by Catherine Coker and Candace Benefiel  Fans hold their objects of study to a higher standard. How can the critical study of any text succeed without the passionate and knowledgeable participation of the scholar?

• "The Gathering of the Juggalos and the Peculiar Sanctity of Fandom" by Michael Dwyer The Gathering of the Juggalos is the scene of questionable fan practices contrary to the noble portrait of fandom elaborated by several scholars.

• "'We are all together:' Fan Studies and Performance" by Jen Gunnels and M. Flourish Klink Gunnels and Klink argue that fan studies parallels performance studies in discerning tensions between researcher and subject.

• "Stop Being an Elitist, and Start Being an Elitist" by David Jenemann Given how Aca-fandom has created its own canon and looks down its nose at certain cultural forms like sports broadcasting, we could use a little of Adorno's elitism in the discipline today.

• "Telling Tastes: (Re)producing Distinction in Popular Media Studies" by Eve Ng What we study and how we learn to talk about it is productive of our identities along mostly covert dimensions of power. How do scholars distinguish themselves from the mainstream critics?

• "Embracing the 'Overly Confessional:' Scholar-Fandom and Approaches to Personal Research" by Tom Phillips A scholar argues that embracing an "overly confessional" approach to his academic writing is integral to the fidelity of his research.

• "Revisiting Fandom in Africa" by Olivier J. Tchouaffe The application of fandom and its resources is not the same in all cultures, and African fans might not be recognized as legitimate fans. The point of this piece is to demonstrate that there is a unifying figure of American domination of mass culture.

New Senses of Cinema: Assayas, Ava Gardner, Haneke, Morin, Rouch, Epstein, African Francophone cinema, Citizen Kane, digital cinema

One Touch of Venus (William A. Seiter, 1948), starring Robert Walker and Ava Gardner. See Edgar Morin's essay on Gardner here.

As ever, Film Studies For Free rushes you the latest e-journal news. Today, the latest Senses of Cinema hit the e-newsstands. Without further bloggish ado, read the below links to contents and weep with film-scholarly joy!

Issue 57 Contents

• Editorial

Feature Articles

• An Interview with Olivier Assayas on Carlos by Genevieve Yue

• Introduction to Edgar Morin by Lorraine Mortimer

• Ava Gardner by Edgar Morin

• The America Endangered in The American by Joseph Natoli

• African Francophone Cinema in the French New Wave by Wes Felton

• Citizen Kane: Biography and the Unfinished Sentence by Pedro Blas Gonzalez

• The Older Grows the Body, the Faster Run the Machines by John Downie

• Making Space by Sean Cubitt

• The Cinemas of Interactions by Leon Gurevitch

• disney.go.com/fairies and Pixie Hollow MMOG by Allison Maplesden

• Feminism and Cinema in the Digital Age by Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon

Great Directors

• Mattias Frey on Michael Haneke

• Matt Losada on Jean Rouch

• Robert Farmer on Jean Epstein

Festival Reports

• Martha P. Nochimson on New York

• Gianluca Pulsoni on Lucca Film Festival

• Celluloid Liberation Front on Venice

• Vera Brunner-Sung on Pusan International Film Festival

• Libertad Gills on Festival de Cine Cero Latitud

• Huw Walmsley-Evans on Brisbane

• Bérénice Reynaud on Vancouver

Book Reviews

• Film, Theory and Philosophy

• John Fidler on The Tactile Eye and Moving Viewers

• Dean Brandum on Michael Winterbottom

• Chris Carter on >Re-Imagining Animation

• Adrian Danks on Humphrey Jennings

• David Melville on Beyond Paradise

Cteq Annotations

• Michael Walsh on Camouflage

• Marcin Wisniewski on Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease

• Pedro Blas Gonzalez on The Structure of Crystals

• Adrian Danks on Family Life

"The Greatest Disguise": On Cross-Dressing in Films, In Memory of Blake Edwards

James Garner and Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982). Read Véronique Fernández's article on this film: '"People Believe What They See": Clothing and Genders in Victor/Victoria', Lectora, 7, 2001

Police Inspector: You idiot! That's a man! 
Labisse: It can't be! 
Police Inspector: The person in that room was naked from the waist down, and if that was a woman, then she is wearing the greatest disguise I have ever seen! 

Victor Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982)

It's the day after the news emerged of the death of American screenwriter and director Blake Edwards at the grand age of 88, surrounded by his loved ones in a California hospital. David Hudson's customary gathering of links to tributes is a very good place to begin to find out, if you don't already know, about the warm esteem in which Edwards was held by critics and other filmmakers.

 

Today, Film Studies For Free presents its own little "cross-dressing-in-international-film"-links homage to its favourite Blake Edwards film, the cross-dressing comedy Victor Victoria. It may not be the queerest of queer films, certainly; it may not even be the queerest of Blake Edwards' queerish films... But it is one of the funniest, with plenty of treats for fans of Julie Andrews and James Garner. It thus stands as a fine testimony to Blake Edwards' gently subversive powers as a screenwriter and a director.

FSFF's author first saw this film, memorably, on its French repertory release in 1984, as a year-abroad student. Alone in a packed cinema, she had the doubly funny but also unsettling experience of laughing at the numerous verbal gags as they were delivered in English, and then waiting for the French audience to laugh as the subtitles unerringly delivered a belated punch, a curious case of comic différance.

• James Allan, 'Sissies, Leeches and Sidekicks: Fags and Hags in the ‘60s and the ‘90', Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Sheraton New York, New York City, NY, 2009-05-25
• Kay Armatage, 'Fetish and Fashion in Canadian Film', TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2006
• Concepción Bados Ciria, Political and cultural cross-dressing, and the negotiation of Cuban-American identities, REDEN, Número 19-20, 2000
• Kathleen Barbara, 'Masquerade: The Female Body in Post-Modern Films', MP: An Online Feminist Journal, December 21, 2004
• Kathleen Barbara,The Post-Modern Body, MA Thesis, Wichita State University, May 2006
• Mark Bernstein, 'Victor/Victoria: It's "Mary Poppins in drag"', from Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983
• David Boxwell, 'Wheeler and Woolsey Queered', Bright Lights Film Journal, 42, 2003
• Rong Cai, 'Gender Imaginations in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Wuxia World', positions, 13:2, Fall 2005
• Terrell Carver, ‘Sex, Gender and Heteronormativity: Seeing “Some Like it Hot” as a Heterosexual Dystopia’, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, Working Paper No. 03-07, 2007
• Bert Cardullo, 'An Afghan Is a Woman', The Hudson Review, Summer 2005
• Gilbert Gerard Castillo, Gender, Identity and Influence: Hong Kong Martial Arts Films, MA Thesis, University of North Texas, December 2002
• Cynthia C. Degnan, 'Living on Girlboy Time: Queer Childhood Temporality and Kinship in Ma Vie en Rose', MP: A Feminist Journal Online, June, 2007
• Richard Dyer, 'Less and More than Women and Men: Lesbian and Gay Cinema in Weimar Germany', New German Critique, No. 51, Special Issue on Weimar Mass Culture (Autumn, 1990)
• Tanfer Emin-Tunc, 'Glen or Glenda: Psychiatry, Sexuality, and the Silver Screen', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 41, August 2003
• Richard Ekins, 'Cross-dressing, sex-changing and film. Fragments from an analysis of screening male femaling', Trans-Gender Archive, University of Ulster, Gendys Conference, 1994
• Heather Erin Emmens, Domestications and Disruptions: Lesibian Identities in Television Adaptations of Contemporary British Novels, PhD Thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, May, 2009
• Brett Farmer, 'Interview with Stacy Wolf about her New Book, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical', Gender OnLine Journal, Issue 28, 2002
• Véronique Fernández, '"People Believe What They See": Clothing and Genders in Victor/Victoria', Lectora, 7, 2001
• Elizabeth Fox-Kales, 'Cinematic Cross-Dressing: Sexual Disguise vs. Gender Transformations', IPSA Conference Proceedings, 2004
• Andrew Grossman, 'Better Beauty Through Technology: Chinese Transnational Feminism and the Cinema of Suffering', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 35, January 2002
• Robert Hanke, 'The "Mock-Macho" Situation Comedy: Hegemonic Masculinity and its Reiteration', Western Journal of Communication, 62(1) (Winter 1998)
• Susan Hayward, 'Simone Signoret 1921-1985: the star as sign-the sign as scar', Modern Languages Publications Archive, 1995
• Mallory Jagodzinski, Of Bustles and Breeches; Cross-Dressing Romance Novel Heroines and the Performance of Gender Ideology, MA Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2010
• Nicholas R. Jones, 'Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night: Contemporary Film and Classic British Theatre', Early Modern Literary Studies, 8.1, May 2002
• M. Alison Kibler, 'Rank Ladies, Ladies of Rank: The Elinore Sisters in Vaudeville', American Studies, 38:1, (Spring 1997)
• Kelly McWilliam, Girl Meets Girl: Lesbian Romantic Comedies and the Public Sphere,PhD Thesis,
  University of Queensland, May 2006
• Deborah Mellamphy, 'The Paradox of Transvestism in Tim Burton's Ed Wood',Wide Screen, Vol 1, No 1 (2009)
• Olga Osinovskaya, 'Cross-Dressing in Soviet CInema: The Case of Hello, I am your Aunt', MA Thesis, Central European Unversity, Budapest, 2007
• Iva Paneva, A study of female aggression as represented in Patty Jenkins' fiction film Monster, e--PhD Thesis, University of Witswatersrand, December 2008
• Sonali Pattnaik, 'Outside the Frame: The Representation of the Hijra in Bollywood Cinema', Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 22, October 2009
• Robert M. Payne, 'The Crying Game: Crossed lines', from Jump Cut, no. 39, June 1994 
• Jay Poole, 'Psycho: Queering Hitchcock's Classic', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008
• Candida Rifkind, 'Screening Modernity: Cinema and Sexuality in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees', Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne, 2002
• Thibault Schilt, 'François Ozon', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
  
• Sarah Schulman,' Yidl Mitn Fidl: Yiddish fictional cinema from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986
• Jérôme Segal and Monika Kaczek, 'Molly Picon and the Cinematic Archetype of a Jewish Woman', Cinemascope, Issue 14, 2010
• Rose T Sengenberger, 'Ma vie en rose', Writing Portfolio,2009 (scroll down to p. 23-41 in PDF)
• Karen Serwer, 'Mariposas en el andamio: Imagining Utopia through Repetition and Excess', Sexuality and the Public Sphere, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (date unknown)
• Jamie Stuart, The Business and Pleasure of Filmic Lesbians Performing Onstage, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, August 2006
• Isabelle Stauffer, 'Heroines of Gaze. Gender and Self-Reflexivity in Current Espionage Films', Imagendering II, Genders Online Forum, Issue 13, 2006Georgette Wang and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, 'Globalization and Hybridization in Cultural Production: A Tale of Two Films', LEWI Working Paper Series, Paper Number: 36, April 2005
• K.E.Sullivan, 'Ed Gein and the figure of the transgendered serial killer', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000
• Chao-Jung Wu, Performing Postmoderm Taiwan: Gender, Cultural Hybridity, and the MaleCross-Dressing Show, PhD Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2007
  
• Simon Chia-rong Wu, 'Gender Pastiche: Thai Queerness in Beautiful Boxer', Cultural Studies Monthly, 78, 2008
• Niamh Thornton, 'Valentinas, Adelitas, Soldaderas: Explosive Women on Film', LASA, 2009
• Diane Torr and Stephen Bottoms, 'Introduction: Why Act Like A Man?', Sex, Drag, and Male Roles (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)
• Chun-Chi Wang, Lesbianscape of Taiwan: Media History of Taiwan's Lesbians, PhD Thesis, University of Southern California, August 2007
• Stacy Wolf, 'Preface', A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002)
• Barry Wurst II, 'Blake Edwards vs. Hollywood: Sunset and the Myth of Hollywood's Golden Age', Bright Lights Film Journal, 66, 2009

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

Image from Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981). Read Patricia MacCormack's article on the film here.

Film Studies For Free is delighted to pass on news of the launch of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. You can find the table of contents for its inaugural issue and links to all article PDFs below

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image is a refereed publication published online by the Philosophy of Language Institute of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon. The journal publishes original essays and critical articles, reviews, conference reports and interviews, and releases original art work in the field of philosophical inquiry into cinema. The term “cinema” is here taken in its broadest sense as moving image (and image that moves). Historically, cinema studies have centered on film, but with the digitization and proliferation of new means of production and distribution have also studied video, television and new media. This deep engagement with cinematic culture, so understood, can provide tools for a better understanding of contemporary visual culture. Cinema is particularly interested in philosophical approaches to the aesthetics of the moving image as well as in philosophical investigations on particular works and about the contexts in which these works are seen and produced. It accepts submissions in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish and it offers free access to its content.

Cinema aims at:

• disseminating philosophical investigations into cinema in the broadest sense, that is, including video, television, and new media;
• promoting the link between Portuguese and international scientific communities that develop work simultaneously within the fields of cinema studies and philosophy;
• providing a platform for a fruitful dialogue between various approaches, particular methodologies, topics and interdisciplinary contributions, within the scope of the journal.

The make up of the international editorial team bespeaks the very high quality of this new journal. And the star-studded line-up for its first issue, together with its extraordinarily interesting table of contents, shows just how thrilling those all too unusual 'analytic philosophy' and 'continental philosophy' juxtapositions can be!

FSFF really looks forward to reading more, and sincerely wishes CJPMI the very best for a long and always openly accessible life!

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

Issue 1 (December 2010) 

Contents: 

Editorial 

• Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco, Sérgio Dias Branco, Susana Viegas (New University of Lisbon) 

ARTICLES 

• A Care for the Claims of Theory D. N. Rodowick (Harvard University)

• Carroll on the Moving Image Thomas E. Wartenberg (Mount Holyoke College) 

• Deleuze: The Thinking of the Brain Raymond Bellour (CNRS/Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3)

• Mucous, Monsters and Angels: Irigaray and Zulawski’s Possession  Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University)

• Film Theory Meets Analytic Philosophy; or, Film Studies and l’affaire Sokal  Murray Smith (University of Kent)

INTERVIEWS 

• Georges Didi-Huberman: « .... Ce qui rend le temps lisible, c’est l´image»  Susana Nascimento Duarte, Maria Irene Aparício (New University of Lisbon)

CONFERENCE REPORTS 

• Cognitive Deleuze: Report on the SCSMI Conference (Roanoke, 2-5 June 2010) and the Deleuze Studies Conference (Amsterdam, 12-14 July 2010)  William Brown (Roehampton University) 

CFP for Issue 2 here.

CINEMA: JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE MOVING IMAGE

Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco, editor

Sérgio Dias Branco, associate editor

Susana Viegas, associate editor

www.fcsh.unl.pt/revistas/cjpmi

"European film-makers construct the United States"

Image from Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952). Read Hilaria Loyo's
Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952)

Thanks to the ever brilliant David Hudson, Film Studies For Free heard about a must-read item on American cinema, a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies entitled European film-makers construct the United States. Links to all the brilliant and openly accessible articles are given below.

European Journal of American Studies (1, 2010) Special issue on Film: European film-makers construct the United States

• Melvyn Stokes and Dominique Sipière
  Out of Many, One: European film-makers construct the United States 
  
  
• David Roche
  (De)constructing “America”: the Case of Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993) 
  
  
• Frank Mehring
  From Independence Day to Land of Plenty: Screening American Patriotism from German Émigré Perspectives before and after 9/11 
  
  
• Hilaria Loyo
  Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952) 
  
  
• Ian Scott
  “Don’t Be Frightened Dear … This Is Hollywood”: British Filmmakers in Early American Cinema 
  
  
• Yves Carlet
  Frank Capra and Elia Kazan, American outsiders 
  
  
• Vicente J. Benet
  Eldorado Revisited: Spanish Film-makers in Reagan’s America 
  
  
• Jeffrey L. Meikle
  Transatlantic Refractions: Ambivalence and Cultural Hybridity in the Euro-American Road Movie 
  
  

New Issue of Scope!

Image from Good Bye, Lenin! ( Wolfgang Becker, 2003). Read Kevin L. Ferguson's fascinating article on the film: Home Movies: Historical Space and the Mother's Memory

Good Bye Lenin!, a film commonly read as a political fable of East German nostalgia, is rather for me a successful example of autobiographical narrative that balances maternal loss and a boy's coming to manhood, framing this transition in and through home movies. As such, it provides a much-needed positive model for cinema's use of mothers and memory. [Kevin L. Ferguson]

Film Studies For Free has been far too quiet lately, but that's about to change, people! Let us kick off the burst of activity with FSFF's usual update about one of its very favourite openly accessible, film-scholarly journals, SCOPE: And Online Journal of Film and TV Studies, run by those wonderful people at the Department of Culture, Film and Media, University of Nottingham. The full Table of Contents is reproduced below for your convenient reading pleasure.

Scope, Issue 18, 2010

Articles

Art Cinema as Institution, Redux: Art Houses, Film Festivals, and Film Studies
David Andrews
The Pinnacle of Popular Taste?: The Importance of Confessions of a Window Cleaner
Sian Barber
Walking the Line: Negotiating Celebrity in the Country Music Biopic
Molly Brost
Home Movies: Historical Space and the Mother's Memory
Kevin L. Ferguson
An Aristocratic Plod, Erstwhile Commandos and Ladies who Craved Excitement: Hammer Films' Post-War BBC Crime Series and Serial Adaptations
David Mann

[ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

"May Contain Graphic Material": Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Film By M. Keith Booker
Reviewer: David Simmons
Investigating Firefly and Serenity By Rhonda Wilcox and Tanya Cochran (eds.) & Special Issue on Firefly and Serenity
Reviewer: Ronald Helfrich
Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film By Adilifu Nama & Mixed Race Hollywood
Reviewer: Augusto Ciuffo de Oliveira
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright By Lucas Hilderbrand & From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video
Reviewer: Daniel Herbert
Stanley Cavell's American Dream: Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Hollywood Movies By Lawrence F. Rhu
Reviewer: Áine Kelly
Scorsese By Roger Ebert
Reviewer: John Berra
Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror By James Leggott & Roman Polanski
Reviewer: Paul Newland
Cities In Transition: The Moving Image and the Modern Metropolis By Andrew Webber and Emma Wilson (eds.) & Cinematic Countrysides (Inside Popular Film)
Reviewer: Peter C. Pugsley
Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World By S. Brent Plate & Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics
Reviewer: Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City By Mark Shiel
Reviewer: Tom Whittaker
Independent Cinema (includes DVD of Paul Cronin's Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16) By D.K. Holm & Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production
Reviewer: Carl Wilson
Seventies British Cinema By Robert Shail (ed.)
Reviewer: Lawrence Webb
Photography and Cinema (Exposures) By David Campany  & Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography
Reviewer: Tom Slevin
Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image By Harlow Robinson & How the Soviet Man was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin
Reviewer: Brian Faucette
A Companion to Spanish Cinema By Bernard P.E. Bentley & Gender and Spanish Cinema
Reviewer: Abigail Keating
The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II By David Welky & The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film
Reviewer: Hannah Durkin
Neil Jordan By Maria Pramaggiore & The Cinema of Neil Jordan: Dark Carnival
Reviewer: Steve Masters
Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory By Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi
Reviewer: Omar Kholeif
The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy (Directors' Cuts) By Peter Hames & Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to Multiplex
Reviewer: Jonathan Owen
Movie Greats: A Critical Study of Classic Cinema By Philip Gillett  & Inventing Film Studies
Reviewer: Steven Rybin

[ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

Generation Kill
Reviewer: Sheamus Sweeney
Diary of the Dead
Reviewer: Sigmund Shen
Rich and Strange & Stage Fright
Reviewer: Judy Beth Morris
Blood: The Last Vampire
Reviewer: Kia-Choong Teo
Coraline
Reviewer: Alice Mills
Before and After
Reviewer: Clodagh M. Weldon

[ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

Bloodlines: British Horror Past and Present, An International Conference and Film Festival at De Montfort University and Phoenix Square, Leicester, 4 - 5 March 2010
Reporter: Michael Ahmed
IMAGEing Reality, University of Navarra, Spain, 22– 24 October 2009
Reporter: Stefano Odorico
The Moving Image: Reconfiguring Spaces of Loss and Mourning in the 21st Century, Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge, 26-27 February 2010
Reporter: Jenny Chamarette
NECS 2009 3rd Annual Conference: Locating Media, Lund, Sweden, 25 - 28 June, 2009
Reporter: Andrea Virginás
New Waves: XII International Film and Media Conference, Transylvania, Romania, 22 - 23 October 2009
Reporter: Hajnal Kiraly
Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, April 16 - 17 2010
Reporter: Darren Elliott-Smith
Re-Living Disaster, Birbkeck College, London, 29-30 April 2010
Reporter: Ozlem Koksal
SCMS @ 50/LA (Society for Cinema and Media Studies): Archiving the Future, Mobilizing the Past, Los Angleles, California, US, March 10-14, 2010
Reporter: Jason Kelly Roberts
SCMS @ 50/LA (Society for Cinema and Media Studies), Los Angeles, California, March 10-14, 2010
Reporter: Martin L. Johnson
Straight Outta Uttoxeter: Studying Shane Meadows, University of East Anglia, 15 - 16 April 2010
Reporter: Emma Sutton

[ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]

Media Fields Journal on Video Stores

Melonie Diaz, Jack Black, and  Mos Def  in Be Kind, Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008 - See FSFF's post on Gondry for some reading on this film)



Film Studies For Free is thrilled to be able to pass on news of the launch of MEDIA FIELDS JOURNAL: Critical Explorations in Media and Space, a new graduate online journal based in the University of California, Santa Barbara's Department of Film and Media Studies.

The first issue (1.1, 2010) on VIDEO STORES, edited by Joshua Neves and Jeff Scheible, is now available at http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/.

Neves and Scheible introduce their special issue as follows:

This new online journal represents the latest development in a research initiative launched in UCSB’s Department of Film and Media Studies in 2007. The goal of Media Fields is to provide a forum focused on the critical study of media and space, where we can dynamically present and openly debate the latest work from established and emerging scholars and practitioners. Each issue will have a theme—whether it is a topic of contemporary relevance; an exploration of a particular concept, media form, genre, or practice; or, as in this issue, a specific media space: the video rental store.
     We were compelled to focus on the space of the video store in this issue because it is a “media field” that at once allows for the kind of tangible, site-specific fieldwork that is at the heart of Media Fields and, at the same time, is a site where a range of important issues intersect: “new” media’s consequences for “old” media; uses, developments, and failures of media technologies; the cultivation of knowledge about cinema and television; global media distribution; piracy and the law; the circulation of pornography; configurations of cultural communities; relations between public and private space; and contemporary media reception. [read more]

The issue contents are linked to below. Also see the following great site mentioned by the special issue: Video Cultures.
Issue Contents:

• "Video Stores: Introduction" by Jeff Scheible and Joshua Neves
• "Home, Home (Video) on the Range: Reflections on Small-Town Video
• Stores in 2010" by Daniel Herbert
• "Things and Movies: DVD Store Culture in Fiji" by Nicole Starosielski
• "Exchange and Circulation: An Anthropological Perspective on Video
• Stores in Kinshasa" by Katrien Pype
• "A Business without a Future? The Parisian Vidéo-Club, Past and Present" by Brian R. Jacobson and Joshua Neves
• "The Death and Life of the Back Room" by Peter Alilunas
• "Mapping Hardcore Space" by J. Steven Witkowski
• "Riviera Adult Superstore" by Constance Penley
• "Pedagogical Spaces, or, What We’ve Lost in the Post-Video-Store Era" by Roger Beebe
• "Browsing for Dissonance: Paratexts, Box-Art Iconography, and Genre" by Kevin M. Flanagan
• "EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! An Interview with Future Schlock" by Jeff Scheible
• "Video Stores, Media Technologies, and Memory" by Rowan Wilken
• "Video Rental Store: An Interview with Suzanne Carte-Blanchenot and Su-Ying Lee" by Mél Hogan
• "The Long Tail of the Video Store" by Frederick Wasser
• "Free Lifetime Membership" by Matt Kaelin

Please also note that a call for submissions for an issue on DOCUMENTARY AND SPACE is now open and can be viewed here.