Showing posts with label film history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film history. Show all posts

Friday, 4 March 2011

FILM MOMENTS and other free book excerpts from Palgrave Macmillan and BFI

Image from The Band Wagon ( Vincente Minnelli, 1953) starring Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire (above)

Today, Film Studies For Free celebrates the bountiful, free, Film Studies book samples available for perusal and download at the Palgrave Macmillan website. These may not be the Open Access works this blog normally labours to ferret out and champion. But there have been some astonishingly generous excerpts available online at Palgrave lately, perhaps most notably 72 pages from one of the most exciting of recent film publishing efforts, edited by and with stunning contributions from some brilliant former students, colleagues and friends of FSFF's author: James Walters and Tom Brown's remarkable collection Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory.

Full contents of the free sample pages are given below, together with numerous other references and links to Palgrave PDFs below those.

If you are in London tomorrow you may like to know that there will be a Film Moments launch event, with some fascinating-looking talks by a number of the contributors to the collection at 2pm at the BFI Southbank (full details here).
  • James Walters and Tom Brown (eds), Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory (2010) (72 free pages including the chapters below)
    • Preface
    • PART ONE: CRITICISM 
    • Shadow Play and Dripping Teat: The Night of the Hunter (1955); Tom Gunning 
    • Between Melodrama and Realism: Under the Skin of the City (2001); Laura Mulvey
    • Internalising the Musical: The Band Wagon (1953); Andrew Klevan 
    • The Visitor's Discarded Clothes in Theorem (1968); Stella Bruzzi
    • Style and Sincerity in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004); James Walters
    • The Moves: Blood (1989); Adrian Martin
    • The Properties of Images: Lust for Life (1956); Steve Neale
    • Two Views Over Water: Action and Absorption in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957); Ed Gallafent
    • Making an Entrance: Bette Davis's First Appearance in Jezebel (1938); Martin Shingler 
    • A Narrative Parenthesis in Life is Beautiful (1997); Deborah Thomas 
    • The End of Summer: Conte d'été (1996); Jacob Leigh
    • Enter Lisa: Rear Window (1954); Douglas Pye
    • Opening Up The Secret Garden (1993); Susan Smith
    • A Magnified Meeting in Written on the Wind (1956); Steven Peacock
    • 'Everything is connected, and everything matters': Relationships in I [heart] Huckabees (2004); John Gibbs 
    • The Ending of 8 ½ (1963); Richard Dyer 
    • Full book info.
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Sunday, 6 February 2011

"An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011

Last updated: February 14, 2011



Hollywood cinema was perceived, not just in the United States but in modernizing capitals all over the world, as an incarnation of the modern. [...]
American movies of the classical period offered something like the first global vernacular. If this vernacular had a transnational and translatable resonance it was not just because of its optimal mobilization of biologically hard-wired structures and universal narrative templates, but because this vernacular played a key role in mediating competing cultural discourses on modernity and modernization; because it articulated, brought into optical consciousness (to vary Benjamin), and disseminated a particular historical experience. [Miriam Hansen, “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism,” Film Quarterly 54.1 (Fall 2000): 10-22, 30]
[Miriam] Hansen’s argument [about “vernacular modernisms”] is that early “classical” or studio cinemas are inextricably intertwined with the experience of modernization and modernity. While this argument, as she claims, is in and of itself not incredibly radical, her argument provides significant [additions to] three areas of film scholarship: it enlarges the discussion of modernism to [include] other media affected by the process of modernization, it intervenes in the binary between psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches to classical Hollywood cinema, and it [...] speaks to the question of Hollywood cinema’s early global hegemony during the 1920s-40s. In this last discussion, Hansen speaks of Hollywood’s flexibility in appropriating an amalgamation of diverse domestic interests in its inauguration of mass audience. [Kirsten Strayer, Ruins and Riots: Transnational Currents in Mexican Cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh 2009, p. 49]
Miriam Hansen differentiates between the use of the terms “audience” and “spectator” not just as a theoretical or methodological distinction operative within viewer-oriented studies (as do Kuhn, Mayne, Staiger and others who posit the former as a “real” social collective and the latter as a hypothetical or ideal construct of the text); instead, Hansen argues that the emergence of the “spectator” (and concomitant suppression of the “audience” as such) is historically specific, marking a paradigm shift between early and later cinema (around 1909). [Melanie Nash, 'Introduction', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 14, n° 1, 2003, p. 7-19; citing Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1991 (pp. 23-24), p. 18]
The unprecedented acceleration of technological innovation and circulation have created conditions in which consciousness is more than ever inadequate to the state of technological development, its power to destroy and enslave human bodies, hearts, and minds. At the same time, new media such as video and the digital media have expanded the formal and material arsenal for imaginative practices and have opened up new modes of publicness that already enact a different, and potentially alternative, engagement with technology.
    This antinomic situation eludes the perspective of strictly media theory, especially in its ontological and teleological bent (for example, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler, Norbert Bolz), to say nothing of popular pundits' techno-pessimism. It requires understanding the practices, both productive and receptive, of technology in increasingly overlapping yet fractured, unequal yet unpredictable public spheres. It urges us to resume Benjamin's concern for the conditions of apperception, sensorial affect, and cognition, experience and memory—in short, for a political ecology of the senses.
    For us—teachers, scholars, intellectuals—to engage on both sides of this antinomy, we need theory, and we need aesthetics. The current reinvention of the aesthetic in the humanities would do well to heed Benjamin's lesson. The question of the fate of art in the age of technological reproducibility still maps a heuristic—and historical—horizon that no serious effort to refocus the study of literature and other traditional arts can afford to ignore. At the very least, awareness of that horizon should guard the renewed attention to formal and stylistic questions against illusory attempts to revive artistic autonomy, as an enclave protected against technical mediation and commodification. [Miriam Hansen, 'Why Media Aesthetics', Critical Inquiry, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2004-5]
When Film Studies For Free posted the above embedded video a week ago, in an entry on online film studies lectures at the University of Chicago, it couldn't have imagined the almost immediate and extremely sad circumstances in which it would be reposted. But word has come, via Tom Gunning and other film scholars, that Miriam Hansen, one of the true paradigm-shifters of our discipline, one of its most gifted historians and theorists, has passed away.

Miriam Hansen was Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she also taught in the Department of English and the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies. Her publications include a book on Ezra Pound’s early poetics (1979) and Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (1991). She was completing a study entitled The Other Frankfurt School: Kracauer, Benjamin, and Adorno on Cinema, Mass Culture, and Modernity. Her next project was to be a book on the notion of cinema as vernacular modernism.

Inspired by her lifelong study of the Frankfurt School, Hansen's work rethought cinema as a part of the public and counterpublic spheres, situating it within a larger discourse of popular culture, and thus opening up the essential study of such 'periphery texts' as fan magazines, gossip columns, movie reviews, and so on. But her development of the concept of vernacular modernism also completely set the scene for the field of world or transnational cinema studies; and her historical work on cinematic spectatorship and her highly original addressing of the sensual experiences of film and new media are likewise in the process of revolutionizing their field of study (as W.J. T. Mitchell argues in relation to 'Miriam Hansen’s urging that cinema and other media be regarded as a vernacular modernism in which new theoretical propositions might be articulated while the senses are being reeducated').

It is hard to think, then, of anyone who has made a more significant contribution to Film Studies (and, latterly, new media studies), in the context of the Humanities as a whole, than she did.

Film Studies For Free hopes that Hansen knew just how grateful we are for her research -- how changed we are by it -- as well as for her inspiring work as a teacher. Here is a link to a warm and touching tribute by one of Hansen's former students.

Links to some of Hansen's work, as well as to some of the work it inspired, are given below. Further links, including ones to online tributes to her, will be added here as they come to FSFF's notice.

Online Tributes to Miriam Hansen:

Work by Miriam Hansen online:
Other Scholars on aspects of Hansen's work:
      
    Posted by purnawan at 04:42 0 comments
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    Friday, 24 December 2010

    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.
    • 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:
    Posted by purnawan at 04:20 0 comments
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    Friday, 10 September 2010

    Screening 9/11 and its aftermath in film and media studies

    Image from In America (Jim Sheridan, 2002), the first film to be (partly) shot in New York after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Seán Crosson's article "‘They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever pa, ‘cause we're the people'..." (2008)
    The absence of the Twin Towers from the post-9/11 New York City skyline posed a number of dilemmas for the creators and producers of television shows and movies that were ‘symbolically’ set in New York City after 9/11. Whilst the World Trade Center towers had been destroyed, editors in studio lots in California faced the prospect of the late 2001 ratings season commencing with stock reels of New York City that prominently featured the Towers prior to 9/11. This posed an odd dilemma for the producers of television shows such as Friends, Sex and the City, and Spin City, programs in which the Twin Towers often appeared as a backdrop and a powerful signifier of being in New York City. The response seemed universal – the Twin Towers must be removed from the tele-visual pop-cultural locations. They needed to be purged, exorcised and air- brushed out of the shot. But by airbrushing out the Towers, the producers have purged post-9/11 television of more than just the steel and concrete of the iconic buildings. I suggest that this purging is powerful, a little odd, and deeply symbolic. In order to recover, perhaps some space – and some forgetting, if only temporary – was needed. But I argue that the missing Towers also represented a missing terror, a missing city. It was as though the creators and producers of some post-9/11 television believed that the world’s viewers would have no stomach for seeing images of a pre-9/11 New York City – a city that in many respects no longer existed. Perhaps the problem lies in how the destruction of the Twin Towers was witnessed – live on TV, in real-time, as heinous, immediate and real violence. It was ugly, sickening, horrific, terrifying. Yet it was also difficult to look away. [Luke John Howie, 'Representing Terrorism: Reanimating Post-9/11 New York City', International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol 3, No 3 (2009)]

    It is the eve of another anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America.

    Film Studies For Free respectfully remembers the tragic and traumatic events of nine years ago tomorrow, and other closely related ones since, with a list of links to important, insightful, and openly accessible studies of the cultural depiction and (re)media(tiza)tion of the 9/11 attacks, as well as of their aftermath.


    Posted by purnawan at 09:57 0 comments
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    Tuesday, 3 August 2010

    "Roots of Third Cinema" and other Michael Chanan films and videos online

    Roots of Third Cinema from Michael Chanan on Vimeo 
    (made available for teaching and private viewing only)

    As regular readers of this blog will know, Film Studies For Free is a fervent admirer of the work of filmmaker and academic writer Michael Chanan, Professor of Film at Roehampton University. Chanan has been making his work accessible online for a long time now. And now his professional website and his great blog Putney Debater have been joined by a Vimeo account where he is gradually archiving some marvellous audiovisual work from an impressive back catalogue.

    FSFF has embedded one of its favourite items above, Roots of Third Cinema which has been extracted and re-edited from Chanan's enormously important and influential documentary New Cinema of Latin America (Channel Four, 1983). This is an incredibly rich and useful scholarly resource, FSFF is sure you will agree.

    Written, produced, and directed by Chanan with photography by Peter Chappell, part I of New Cinema of Latin America traced the origins and development of the new cinema movement in the countries of Latin America from the early 1950s to the present and examines its political and social themes. In part II the political and cultural dimensions of the new cinema since the 1960s were explored in greater detail. The film examined the new cinema's political concerns, its desire to give expression to the traditional cultures, national identities, and everyday experiences of Latin Americans, and the growing prominence of feminist cinema. Both parts included commentary by directors and others active in the new cinema movement and excerpts from numerous films.

    [FSFF has devoted a number of previous entries to online and openly accessible resources on Third Cinema in the past. See especially this bumper post.]
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    Saturday, 12 June 2010

    Cinema Journal

    (For a good study of Waters' work in this film see Brian Herrera's blogpost on the actress)

    On and on and on it goes...


    Film Studies For Free continues its dogged exploration of the legions of free sample issues of subscription only journals. Lots more posts on that coming up over the next weeks, months, years... 

    But today's post flags up the online free sample issue of one of the best film studies journals in the world, the organ of the US based Society of Cinema and Media Studies

    Cinema Journal is a periodical to which academics in many anglophone countries frequently have automatic access, that is, if they are lucky enough to be able to use well-funded university libraries, or to be individual members of SCMS (as FSFF's author is proud and fortunate enough to be).

    This post, then, is dedicated to just about everyone else, in other words, to those who probably make up the majority of FSFF's international readership.

    46, Number 1, Fall 2006 


    CONTENTS
    • John Nichols, Countering Censorship: Edgar Dale and the Film Appreciation Movement [Access article in HTML] [Access article in PDF]
      Abstract:
      In 1933 Ohio State University education professor Edgar Dale published How to Appreciate Motion Pictures for use in high school film appreciation classes. Configuring the adolescent as a reformer, Dale's text offered an alternative to the Production Code's stark theory of film reception, which predicated censorship on immature film viewers.
    • Margaret T. McGehee, Disturbing the Peace: Lost Boundaries, Pinky, and Censorship in Atlanta, Georgia, 1949-1952
      [Access article in HTML] [Access article in PDF]
      Abstract:
      This article investigates the reasons behind Atlanta film censor Christine Smith's 1949 banning of Lost Boundaries (Alfred Werker) and her approval, with cuts, of Pinky (Elia Kazan), examining in particular the representations of segregation and integration in each film, the studio support behind the films, and the characterization of Pinky as a "woman's picture."
    • John Sedgwick, Cinemagoing in Portsmouth during the 1930s
      [Access article in HTML] [Access article in PDF]
      Abstract:
      This paper uses the recently discovered box-office ledger of the first-run cinema the Regent in Portsmouth, U.K., to test the POPSTAT methodology for measuring film popularity in the general absence of such data. In order to do this a dataset of the film programs of all twenty-one cinemas screening films in the city in 1934 has been constructed from which a clear picture of film distribution and popularity emerges.
    • Melanie Williams,"The most explosive object to hit Britain since the V2!": The British Films of Hardy Kruger and Anglo-German Relations during the 1950s
      [Access article in HTML] [Access article in PDF]
      Abstract:
      This article investigates the brief British career of the German actor Hardy Kruger during the 1950s. It examines his popularity with British audiences, focusing on his appeal to younger cinemagoers, especially women. It also discusses how his star persona and screen performances reflected wider tensions in contemporary Anglo-German relations.
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    Tuesday, 4 May 2010

    Film-Historia: Index to English language articles


    Over the years, Film Studies For Free has noticed that there were some excellent English-language articles on lots of different aspects of film history to be found at the (very difficult to navigate) website of the excellent Universitat de Barcelona-based film journal Film-Historia. 

    Until today, however, there was no easy way to access all of these articles, but ...  (drum roll) ... ta-da! Cast your eyes at the awesome list of direct links below, and, if you feel so inclined, thank your lucky stars that FSFF's author needed some distraction from her country's general election shenanigans this morning.
    Posted by purnawan at 06:36 0 comments
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    Friday, 16 April 2010

    Seeing the join: on film editing

    In memoriam Dede Allen  
    (December 3, 1923 – April 17, 2010)
    The below entry was originally published the day before Dede Allen died. Allen was the highly innovative editor of such notable films as Bonnie and Clyde, The Hustler, Rachel, Rachel, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Night Moves, Slap Shot, Reds, The Breakfast Club and Henry and June. 

    Dissolve by Aaron Valdez (2003): "Found footage film constructed of hundreds of dissolves taken from old educational films and reassembled to create a meditation on our own impermanence". 

    Film Studies For Free presents a much requested links list today, one to openly accessible, high quality scholarly studies of film editing. Without further ado, let's jump cut straight to it:

    • 'The Art of Film Editing', Special Issue of P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998 - PDF containing:
      • Søren Kolstrup, 'The notion of editing'   
      • Sidsel Mundal, 'Notes of an editing teacher'  
      • Mark Le Fanu, 'On editing'
      • Vinca Wiedemann, 'Film editing – a hidden art?'
      • Edvin Kau, 'Separation or combination of fragments? Reflections on editing'
      • Lars Bo Kimersgaard, 'Editing in the depth of the surface. Some basic principles of graphic editing'
      • Martin Weinreich, 'The urban inferno. On the æsthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver'
      • Scott MacKenzie, 'Closing arias: Operatic montage in the closing sequences of the trilogies of Coppola and Leone'
      • Claus Christensen, 'A vast edifice of memories: the cyclical cinema of Terence Davies',
      • Richard Raskin, 'Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard's Breathless'







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