Liquid Atmospherics: On the cinema of Wong Kar-wai

ENVOI (2011) from Elaine Castillo on Vimeo. The above video is a ficto-biographical essay-film taking two looped scenes from two Wong Kar-wai films (HAPPY TOGETHER and DAYS OF BEING WILD) as its point of departure, arrival (also: non-departure, non-arrival). On grief, migration, the romantic, hyper-specificity, sentimental time, queer space, Asian celebrity gossip, fantasies involving Maggie Cheung, covers and translations, the writing body, the filmmaking body, readability, speakability.

Almost devoid of irony, Wong’s films, like classic rock and roll, take seriously all the crushes, the posturing, and the stubborn capriciousness of young angst. They rejoice in manic expenditures of energy. They celebrate the momentary heartbreak of glimpsing a stranger who might be interesting to love. The best comparison is surely not with Godard, whose romantic streak has a bitter edge. In Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong may have its Truffaut, the director who in Tirez sur le pianiste and Jules et Jim concentrated on not-quite-grown- up characters brooding on eternally missed chances. In any case, Wong stands out from his peers by abandoning the kinetics of comedies and action movies in favor of more liquid atmospherics. He dissolves crisp emotions into vaporous moods. For all his sophistication, his unembarrassed effort to capture powerful, pleasantly adolescent feelings confirms his commitment to the Hong Kong popular tradition.
David Bordwell, 'Avant-Pop Cinema Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express' in Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Second edition: e-book; Wisconsin: Irvington Way Institute Press Madison, 2011), pp. 178-179

Today, Film Studies For Free massively updates its existing entry on the cinema of Wong Kar-wai. 

There are two compelling reasons for this: the first is there are lots more scholarly resources available, or discoverable, now on this filmmaker's work that are worth listing, including some great items on video. 

The second is that this is the first of two posts in celebration of the online publication, as a PDF, of a full colour, second edition of the peerless David Bordwell's book Planet Hong Kong, an opus well worth its $15 pricetag, in FSFF's humble and, usually, frugal opinion.
 
FSFF doesn't normally celebrate, or promote, pay-to-own resources. But, apart from the fact that this is a highly interesting development in online Film Studies publishing in its own right, no one has given so generously online, either of his already published work or of his ongoing scholarly work, as David Bordwell. 

What is more, Bordwell's PHK chapter entitled 'Avant-Pop Cinema', with its lyrical and beautifully illustrated section on Wong's work: 'Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express', is worth the download price alone. If you need to save up to purchase Planet Hong Kong first, you can enjoy, in the meantime, several excellent posts at Observations on Film Art on Wong's work, including 'Ashes to Ashes (Redux)' and 'Years of being obscure'.

Video material:

• Brian Hu, 'Pop Music and Wong Kar-wai (visual essay)' Mediascape, Winter 2011
• Soraya Sélène, 'Decoding Wong Kar-wai', Vimeo, March 4, 2011
• Vicky Thai, 'Wing Kar-wai's Notion of Time', Vimeo, December 15, 2010
• Quentin Tarantino on Chungking Express on YouTube 

Written material:

• Acquarello on Wong Kar-wai at Strictly Film School
• Matt Bautch, 'The Cultural Aesthetic of Wong Kar-wai', Latent Image 2003
• Gary Bettinson, 'Wong Kar-wai and the Aesthetics of Disturbance', David C. Lam Working Paper Series, 105, November 2010 
• Giorgio Biancorosso, 'Romance, Insularity and Representation: Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and Hong Kong Cinema', Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures Volume 1, No. 1, 2007
• Allan Cameron, 'Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai', Jump Cut, 49, 2007
• Felicia Chan, 'In Search of a Comparative Poetics: Cultural Translatability in Transnational Chinese Cinemas', PhD, Nottingham University 2007, (chapter 3 - p. 147-201 - treats Wong Kar-wai)
• Ethel Chong, 'In the Mood for Love: Urban Alienation in Wong Kar Wai’s Films', Kinema Spring 2003
• Jeremy Cohen, 'Lonely Hearts: Wong Kar-Wai's Obscure Objects of Desire', Eye Candy Winter 2006
• Christopher Doyle and Wong Kar-wai interview for Interview Magazine on Ashes Redux
• Wendy Gan, "0.01cm: Affectivity and Urban Space in Chungking Express." Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, November 2003
• John Christopher Hamm, 'Review of Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time by Wimal Dissanayake', MCLC Resource Publication, October 2005
• Ian Johnston, 'Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046', Bright Lights Film Journal, vol. 47, February 2005
• Kent Jones, "Of love and the city." Film Comment, Jan/Feb 2001. Vol. 37, Issue 1; p. 22
• Jo C. Law, 'Time without end: exploring the temporal experience of wong kar-wai's 2046 through Walter Benjamin', In A. Benjamin and C. Rice (Eds.), Walter Benjamin and the architecture of modernity (pp. 159-173). Melbourne: re.press.
• Anthony Leong, 'Meditations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar Wai', Asian Cult Cinema 1999
• Toh Hai Leong, 'Wong Kar-wai: Time, Memory, Identity', Kinema Spring 1995
• Trish Maunder, 'Interview with Tony Leung', Senses of Cinema 2001
• Kathryn Millard, 'Writing for the Screen: Beyond the Gospel of Story', SCAN, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2006
• Martha Nochimson, 'Ashes of Time Redux', Cineaste,Vol.XXXV No.1, 2009
  
• Robert M Payne, 'Ways of seeing wild: the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai', Jump Cut 44, 2001, text version HERE
• Mark Peranson, 'The Numbers Game: Wong Kar-wai finally finishes 2046', Cinemascope, 19
• Effie Rassos, 'Everyday Narratives: Reconsidering Filmic Temporality and Spectatorial Affect Through the Quotidian,' PhD, University of New South Wales, 2005
• Tony Rayns, 'The Innovators 1990-2000: Charisma Express', Sight and Sound January 2000
• Mina Shin, 'Review of Planet Hong Kong', Framework, 42, 2000
• Stephen Teo, 'Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love: Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time', Senses of Cinema 2001
• Stephen Teo, '2046: A Matter of Time, a Labour of Love', Senses of Cinema 2005
• Stephen Teo, 'Local and Global identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?' Senses of Cinema 2007
• Donato Totaro, 'My Blueberry Nights: Love Drives Full Circle', Offscreen Journal, July 31, 2008
  
• Fiona A. Villella (symposium ed.), 'The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai - A 'Writing Game', Senses of Cinema 2001 (entries on Backside; Blue; Creation; Dali-esque Time' Desire; Emotion; Look; Love; Possibility; Repetition; Space; Third-World; Time; Wrongheaded) 
• Flannery Wilson,'Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, 2046, and Deleuze's Cinema', Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Volume 21, Number 1 (Spring 2009)
• Elizabeth Wright, 'Profile of director Wong Kar-wai', Senses of Cinema 2002
• Laurel Wypkema, 'Corridor Romance: Wong Kar-wai's Intimate City, Synoptique, August 1, 2005 
• Xuelin Zhou, 'On the Rooftop: A Study of Marginalized Youth Films in Hong Kong Cinema', Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol. 8, No. 2, 2008
• Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, 'Transcultural Sounds: Music, Identity and the Cinema of Wong Kar-wai', David C. Lam Working Paper Series, 69, November 2007 

New Issue of Screening the Past

Image from The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968). Read Charles Barr's article on this film, reprinted in issue 30 of Screening the Past

Film Studies For Free rushes you news, via Adrian Martin, that not only has Screening the Past, that wonderful, A* rated, online journal of screen history, theory and criticism, posted its latest issue, but it has changed URL, and is in the process of upgrading its website.

All the new contents are listed below. FSFF hasn't read everything yet, but is enjoying STP's tributes to Blake Edwards, as well as the Open Access reprint of Chris Berry's wonderful essay China’s New “Women’s Cinema”.

First Release

• “The China Film”: Madame Chiang Kai-shek in Hollywood
• Tokens of Exchange, or The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Lover: Marginal Asian Characters in 1920s Australian Cinema
• Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O’Hara
• Two Channels, Two Truths: Reporting the Iraq War in Control Room
• ‘Give It a Go You Apes’: Relations Between the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals, and the Early Australian Film Industry (1954–1970)

Tribute to Blake Edwards

• Introduction to Reprints of Two Essays on Blake Edwards
• Detecting, Defecting and Whistling in the Dark: The Films of Blake Edwards
• “Crazy World Full of Crazy Contradictions”, Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria
• On Blake Edwards
• The Bitter Essence of Blake Edwards
• Sophisticated Naturalism
• Ridicule and Panic: On Blake Edwards
• Blake Edwards, Switch, and the Price of a New Man
• Topping the Topper: Blake Edwards
• Strange Bodies: On The Great Race
• The Party
• You Can’t Keep A Good Auteur Down / Cruel To Be Kind
• The Party

Classics and Re-runs

• China’s New “Women’s Cinema”

Reviews

• Ford At Fox Part 3b
• Films by Gordon Ball (dvd review)
• Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, Maitland McDonagh
• Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince, Mark A. Vieira
• Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier, Homay King
• Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, James Kendrick
• The Last Silent Picture Show: Silent Films on American Screens in the 1930s, William M. Drew
• New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves, Darcy Paquet
• Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents, Tom Kemper
• British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, Laurel Forster and Sue Harper (eds)
• Casablanca: Movies and Memory, Marc Augé (Translated and with an Afteword by Tom Conley)
• English Filming, English Writing, Jefferson Hunter
• Calling All Cars: Radio Dragnets and the Technology of Policing, Kathleen Battles
• The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia, James M. Welsh, Gene D. Phillips, and Rodney F. Hill (eds)
• Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory – Visible Man and The Spirit of Film, (Edited by Erica Carter, Translated by Rodney Livingstone)
• Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, Patrice Petro (ed.)
• Wake in Fright, Tina Kaufman
• Neo-Noir, Mark Bould, Kathrina Glitre, and Greg Tuck (eds.).
• Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel, Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis (eds.)
• On Michael Haneke, Brian Price and John David Rhodes (editors)

30 Online Film Studies Books and PhD Theses from OhioLINK

Image from When Night is Falling (Patricia Rozema, 1995), a film discussed by Jamie L. Stuart

Film Studies For Free shakes itself out of an uncharacteristic, unseasonal, hot-weather related torpor to bring you one of its regular reports (and lists of links) from a University research repository. Today, it's the turn of the utterly brilliant repository at the OhioLINK ETD Center, gathering theses and books (in bold below) by film studies scholars at Ohio State University, Bowling Green State University, Ohio University, and Case Western Reserve University.

As usual, these links will be added in due course to FSFF's permanent listings of Online Film and Moving Image Studies PhD Theses and Open Access Film E-books List.

• Savas Arslan Hollywood alla Turca: A history of popular cinema in Turkey, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Dyrk Ashton, Using Deleuze: The Cinema Books, Film Studies and Effect, PhD, Ohio State University, 2006

• Rihab Kassatly Bagnole, Imaging the Almeh : Transformation and Multiculturalization of the Eastern Dancer in Painting, Theatre, and Film, 1850-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Holly Lynn Baumgartner, Visualizing Levinas: Existence and Existents Through Mulholland Drive, Memento, and Vanilla Sky, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Rebecca H. Bias, From golden age to silver screen: French Music-Hall Cinema from 1930-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Rose Mary Bremer, Screening gender and sexuality in contemporary Quebec film adaptation, PhD, Ohio State University, 2004

• Marie Katheryn Connelly, The films of Martin Scorsese: A critical study, PhD, Ohio State University, 1991

• Carolina Siqueira Conte, Bonds: A Theory Of Appropriation For Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice Realized In Film, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Stefan Hall, "You've Seen the Movie, Now Play the Game": Recoding the Cinematic in Digital Media and Virtual Culture, PhD, Ohio State University, 2011

• Cheryl Lynn Hindrichs, Lyric narrative in late modernism: Virginia Woolf, H.D., Germaine Dulac, and Walter Benjamin, PhD, Ohio State University, 2006 (available from May 19, 2011)

• Daniel O. Jones, The Soul That Thinks: Essays on Philosophy, Narrative and Symbol in the Cinema and Thought of Andrei Tarkovsky, PhD, Ohio University, 2007

• Se Young Kim, A Sociohistorical Contextual Analysis of the Use of Violence in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, MA thesis, Ohio State University, 2010

• Joanna Klein, Making Pictures: The Pinter Screenplays (1985)

• Yo-Hsin Cindy Liu, The Examination of the Appearance and Use of French Horn in Film Scores from 1977 to 2004, DMA Thesis, Ohio State University, 2005

• Cileine I. de Lourenco, Negotiating Africanness in national identity: studies in Brazilian and Cuban cinema, PhD, Ohio State University, 1998

• Judith Mayne, Kino and the Woman Question (1989)

• Denis Mueller, John Dewey and Documentary Narrative, PhD, Bowling Green State University, 2007

• James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (eds), Understanding Narrative (1994)

• Rob Prince, Say Hello to My Little Friend: De Palma's Scarface, Cinema Spectatorship, and the Hip Hop Gangsta as Urban Superhero, PhD, Bowling Green State University, 2009

• Barbara L. Romanczuk, Screening Zola’s women, PhD, Ohio State University, 2002

• John Edward Ryan, Ordinary people: The cinema of John Sayles, PhD, Case Western Reserve University, 1994

• Thibaut Schilt, Marginal pleasure and auteurist cinema: the sexual politics of Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Breillat and François Ozon, Ohio State University, 2005

• Lisa K. Stein, The Travel Narrative as Spin: Mitigating Charlie Chaplin's Public Persona in My Trip Abroad and "A Comedian sees the World", PhD, Ohio State University, 2005

• Jamie L. Stuart, The Business and Pleasure of Filmic Lesbians Performing Onstage, PhD, Bowling Green State University, 2006

• Joan Marie Titus, Modernism, socialist realism, and identity in the early film music of Dmitry Shostakovich, 1929-1932, PhD, Ohio State University, 2006

• Maruta Zane Vitols, From the Personal to the Public: Juris Podnieks and Latvian Documentary Cinema, PhD, Ohio State University, 2008

• Stacey A. Weber-Fève, There's no place like home: homemaking, making home, and femininity in contemporary women's filmmaking and the literature of the MÉTROPOL and the MAGHREB, PhD, Ohio State University, 2006

• Marilyn Yaquinto, Policing the World: American Mythologies and Hollywood’s Rogue Cop Character, PhD, Ohio State University, 2006

• Yi-hui Huang, An Interpretivist Study of Knowledge Provided by Seamless Digital-Synthesized Photographs, PhD, Ohio State University, 2008

• Rui Zhang, Feng Xiaogang and Chinese cinema after 1989, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005 

Paranormal cinematic activity: ghost film studies

Latest update: April 27, 2010

 Publicity still for The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). See an excerpt from this film in Nicolas Rapold and Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay 'Bad Seeds: Creepy Kids on Film', embedded towards the foot of this entry

Film Studies For Free has gone and spooked itself, today, with its own scary persistence in compiling a list of links to openly accessible, online, scholarly articles, chapters and theses on international ghost film studies. Oh, and there are two related video essays lurking at the bottom to scare the scholarly bejesus out of you for good measure, too (added April 27) .

Like all the best posts at this blog (IOHO), the list below owes its hefty materiality to its connections with FSFF's author's own (hauntological) research, some of which, hopefully, will be directly shared with her fearless readers very shortly. So do please be a revenant, won't you?

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Histoire de Marie et Julien: Jacques Rivette's Material Ghost Story', Senses of Cinema, Issue 32, 2004

• Guy Austin, '"In Fear and Pain": Stardom and the Body in Two French Ghost Films', Scope, Issue 7, February 2007

• Sarah M. Ball, The Uncanny in Japanese and American Horror Film: Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s Ring, MA thesis, North Carolina State University, 2006  

• Colette Balmain, '“Vengeful Virgins in White”: Female Monstrosity in Asian Cinema', in Niall Scott (ed), Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2004) [scroll down through pdf to p. 123]

• Colette Balmain, 'Inside the Well of Loneliness: Towards a Definition of the Japanese Horror Film', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Discussion Papers, 2006

• Caetlin Benson-Allott , '“Before you die, you see The Ring”: notes on the immanent obsolescence of VHS, from Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007

• Lesley Brill, 'M. Night Shyamalan: A Preliminary Report', Senses of Cinema, Issue 46, 2008

• Ture Bural, 'Endland Umpire: A placement of David Lynch's Inland Empire', Perforations, 29, 2007

• Jodey Castricano, 'Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the Strange Question of Trans-Subjectivity', Jung: the e-Journal of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies Volume 2, Number 3, April, 2006

• Brigid Cherry, 'Gothics and Grand Guignols: Violence and the gendered Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror', Particip@tions, Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2008

• Leah A.Cheyne, 'The Sixth Sense: Humanizing Horror', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• David Church, 'Return of the Return of the Repressed: Notes on the American Horror Film (1991-2006)', Offscreen Journal, Volume 10, Issue 10 (November 25, 2006)

• Michel Ciment, 'Kubrick and the Fantastic', (1982) The Kubrick Site, (date unknown)

• Robyn Citizen, 'Review of The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity by Linnie Blake', Senses of Cinema,Issue 51, 2009

• Ryan Cooke, 'Review of Jay McRoy, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2008', Screening the Past,Issue 23, 2008

• Lisa Coulthard, 'Uncanny Memories: Stan Douglas, Subjectivity and Cinema, Scope, 2000

• John Culbert, 'The Well and the Web: Phantoms of Community and the Mediatic Public Sphere', Postmodern Culture, 19.2, January 2009

• Jonathan Eig, 'A beautiful mind(fuck): Hollywood structures of identity', from Jump Cut, Issue 46, 2003

• Thomas Elsaesser, 'The Mind-Game Film' in Warren Buckland (ed), Puzzle Films (Blackwell 2009)

• Carolyn Erler, 'The Obama Code: Ghosts and Monsters in the Visual Datasphere', CTheory.net, Resetting Theory Issue, December 2009
  

• Mark Fisher, 'Home is where the haunt is: The Shining's hauntology', k-punk, January 23, 2006

• Mark Fisher, 'You have always been the caretaker': the spectral spaces of the Overlook Hotel', Perforations, 29, 2007

• Brian Grady, '"We're Engaged to Be Engaged": The Paranormal Activity of Trauma and Relationship', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 67, February 2010

• Catherine Grant, 'Giving up Ghosts: Eliseo Subiela's Hombre mirando al sudeste and No te mueras sin decirme a dónde vas', Changing Reels: Latin American Cinema against the Odds, ed. Rob Rix and Roberto Rodríguez-Saona (Leeds: Leeds Iberian Papers - Trinity and All Saints/University of Leeds, 1997), pp. 89-120  

• Coral Houtman, 'Questions of Unreliable Narration in The Sixth Sense', Scope, November 2004

• Wendy F. Hsu , 'Between Narrative and Expressive, Fantasy and Melodrama in Bombay (Bollywood) Film', Virginia Review of Asian Studies, vol. 5 (2003)

• Annamarie Jagose, 'Hollywood Lesbians [Interview with Patricia White about Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability', Genders, 32, 2000

• Fredric Jameson, 'Historicism in The Shining', (1981) The Kubrick Site, (date unknown)

• Brian Jarvis, 'Anamorphic allegory in The Ring, or, seven ways of looking at a horror video', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 3, 2007

• Bruce Kawin, 'Carnival of Souls', The Criterion Collection, Film Essays, 76

• Antonio Lázaro-Reboll , 'The Transnational Reception of El espinazo del diablo (Guillermo del Toro 2001)', Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, February 2007, 39–51

• John Lewis, '"Mother Oh God Mother …": Analysing the 'Horror' of Single Mothers in Contemporary Hollywood Horror', Scope, Issue 2, 2005

• Owen Livermore, 'Gun and Other Play: Takashi Miike and Fantasia Festival 2004', Synoptique, December 2004

• Li Zeng, Horror returns to Chinese cinema: an aesthetic of restraint and the space of horror ', from Jump Cut, No. 51, spring 2009

• Luo Hui, 'Chapter Four: Minor Discourses in New Peripheries', The Ghost of Liaozhai: Pu Songling's Ghostlore and its History of Reception, PhD Thesis,University of Toronto, 2009

• Nina K. Martin, 'Dread of mothering: plumbing the depths of Dark Water', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Ewa Mazierska, 'Between the Sacred and the Profane, the Sublime and the Trivial: The Magic Realism of Jan Jakub Kolski ', Scope, 2000

• Donna McRae, 'Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance', B for Bad Cinema, Colloquy, Issue 18, December 2009

• Thomas Mical, 'Introduction: Hauntology, or Spectral Space', Perforations, 29, 2007  

• Elizabeth Mullen, 'Synæsthetic Specters: Haunting Hill House on the Silver Screen', Image and Narrative, Vol. 10, Issue 1, 2009

• Lindsay Nelson, 'Ghosts of the Past, Ghosts of the Future: Monsters, Children, and Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema', Cinemascope, Issue 13, July-December 2009

• John Orr, 'The Trauma Film and British Romantic Cinema 1940-1960', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Eimi Ozawa , 'Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films, 49th Parallel, Conference Special Edition, Autumn 2006

• N. Payasopon, 'The Cultural and Filmic Elements that contribute to the popularity of the Thai film Nang Nak', BU Review, Volume 2, No. 1, January-June 2003

• Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004

• Laurence A. Rickels, 'Recognition Values: Seeing The Sixth Sense Again for the First Time', Other Voices, v.2, n.2 (March 2002)

• Juneko J. Robinson , 'Review: Jay McRoy (2007) Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam: Rodopi', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• Caroline Ruddell, 'Breaking Boundaries The Representation of Split Identity in Anime', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007

• Steven Schneider, 'World Horror Cinema and the US: Bringing it all back home', Media in Transition 2: globalization and convergence, May 10-12, 2002, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

• Aaron Smuts, 'Haunting the House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 7, April 2002

• Donato Totaro, 'Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 1: The Long Take., Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• Donato Totaro, Visual Style in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Fantastic” Trilogy, Part 2: Mise en Scène', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2003

• Donato Totaro, 'Tokyo Sonata: Flirting with the Fantastic: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008', Offscreen Journal,Vol . 13, Issue 5, 2009

• Dennis Tredy, 'Shadows of Shadows - Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of “The Turn of the Screw”: J. Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), D. Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and A. Aloy’s Presence of Mind (1999)', E-rea, 2.1, 2004

• Nicholas de Villiers, 'Leaving the cinema: metacinematic cruising in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Gang Gary Xu, 'Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood', Senses of Cinema, Issue 34, 2005

• Young-joon Cho, 'Four Cinema Versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', Thannhouser Company Film Preservation, 2006

• Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Neda Hei-tung Ng, 'Magic, Medicine, Cannibalism: the China Demon in Hong Kong Horror', David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Working Paper Series, Paper Number: 74, April 2008 

Nicolas Rapold and Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay
'Bad Seeds: Creepy Kids on Film',

Matt Zoller Seitz's L Magazine video essay
'Unreal Estate: The Scariest Movie Locations of All Time'

From Screen: essays on screen theory, art film and affect, and early Japanese and Chinese cinema

Image from The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) 

Film Studies For Free was ever so happy to discover that Screen, the leading international journal of academic film and television studies -- a journal with which FSFF's author has been proud to be associated as an editorial advisory board member since 1995 -- has a number of wonderful articles and reviews which have been made freely accessible online in full-text and pdf formats.  

This blog particularly liked the essays, linked to below, by Annette Kuhn (a great reflection on screen theorizing on the occasion of Screen's 50th anniversary) and by Barbara Klinger in which she revisits film theories of affect as well as the debates around Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano.

This blogpost won't mean too much to those readers who can take institutional subscriptions to Screen for granted, but FSFF knows it will be appreciated by many others, in lots of different parts of the world, who don't enjoy that particular scholarly benefit.
 
Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2009 (50th anniversary issue)

• Annette Kuhn, Screen and screen theorizing today Screen 2009 50: 1-12; doi:10.1093/screen/hjp001[FREE Full Text][PDF]

Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2006 (first fully digital issue)

• Charlotte Brunsdon, ‘A fine and private place’: the cinematic spaces of the London Underground' Screen 2006 47: 1-17; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl001 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

• Barbara Klinger, The art film, affect and the female viewer: The Piano revisited Screen 2006 47: 19-41; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl002 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

• Gregory A. Walle, Narrating the new Japan: Biograph's The Hero of Liao-Yang (1904) Screen 2006 47: 43-65; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl003 [Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF] 

• Laikwan Pang,Walking into and out of the spectacle: China's earliest film scene Screen 2006 47: 66-80; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl004[Abstract][FREE Full Text][PDF]

Research note 

• Deborah Allison, Multiplex programming in the UK: the economics of homogeneity Screen 2006 47: 81-90; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl005[FREE Full Text][PDF]
  

Debate 

• Sylvia Harvey, Ofcom's first year and neoliberalism's blind spot: attacking the culture of production Screen 2006 47: 91-105; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl006[FREE Full Text][PDF] 

• Don Reddin, The non-democratic regulator: a response to Sylvia Harvey Screen 2006 47: 107-111; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl007 [FREE Full Text][PDF]

Report 

• Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Rune Waldekranz: Swedish pioneering film historian Screen 2006 47: 113-117; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl008[FREE Full Text][PDF]

Reviews 

• James Bennett, Inventing Television Culture: Men, Women and the Box • New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television and Digital Media in the United States Screen 2006 47: 119-124; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl009[FREE Full Text][PDF]

• John Corner, The Subject in Documentary Screen 2006 47: 125-128; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl010[FREE Full Text][PDF]  

• Julie Light, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC Screen 2006 47: 129-132; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl011[FREE Full Text][PDF] 
  

• Helen Piper, Understanding Reality Television • Reality TV – Audiences and Popular Factual Television Reality TV – Realism and Revelation Screen 2006 47: 133-138; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl012 [FREE Full Text][PDF] 

Lots of Links from the Twitterverse and Beyond

Tarzan Call, Number 5 in the List Universe 'Top Ten Sound Effects We All Recognize':

"The Tarzan [call] is the distinctive, ululating yell of the character Tarzan, as portrayed by actor Johnny Weismuller in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, starting with [Tarzan of the Apes] (1932)."

Film Studies For Free is now regularly tweeting (and retweeting) one off links to great online and open-access resources (or, sometimes, just fun ones...). Click here if you're interested in following those leads as they are posted.

It makes sense, then, to come up with occasional round-up posts of those links for FSFF blog readers. And this also provides a good opportunity to throw into that mix other film and media studies items of note that might otherwise get missed.

So here, in no particular order, are a whole bunch of great links:

• Thanks to Ted Hope's contribution to the unmissable Hammer to Nail site, FSFF found out about 'Top 10 Movie Sound Effects We All Recognize' (see above) drawn up by List Universe

• Together with Lalita Pandit Hogan, Patrick Colm Hogan has edited the latest, wonderful, issue of Projections on Hindi cinema. His excellent editorial is freely available online, so do check it out: 'Hindi Cinema as a Challenge to Film Theory and Criticism', Projections, Volume 3, Number 2, Winter 2009 , pp. v-ix(1)

• Over at the fantastic Graphic Engine site, Bob Rehak blogs about ABC's new show Flashforward (which FSFF's author enjoyed on the UK's Channel 5 last night). Also, do check out this post in which Jason Mittell ruminates some more on Lost.

• Read Roman Polanski's Screenplay for Rosemary's Baby (based on the novel by Ira Levin), Final Draft July 24, 1967

• Following yesterday's post on Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, FSFF discovered that if you are surfing the internet from the US or Canada you can currently watch this film online and in full for free courtesy of The Auteurs. Just click here.
  

• Thanks to Reference Site of the Day, FSFF heard of Louise Brooks and the "New Woman" in Weimar Cinema, New Histories of Photography 11, January 19 through April 29, 2007 [Photomuse, a Resource for Scholarship in the History of Photography: an alliance between George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film and the International Center of Photography (ICP)
  

Drawing on the vast archives of the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection, including Louise Brooks’ personal collection, this exhibition will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of her birth. It is also a rare opportunity to examine vintage stills, which are often overlooked but were seminal to the creation of cinematic icons, particularly in the 1920s and 30s when the burgeoning picture magazines were feeding off the publicity machines of film capitals like Hollywood and Berlin.

• Thanks to The Auteurs Daily, FSFF was alerted to the existence Moving Image Source, "A Revolution on Screen: The Cinema of the People's Republic of China," Pt.1 a new video essay by Kevin B Lee. You can find Part 2 here, now. Also see 'The People's Director: The old new China of Xie Jin (1923-2008)' a related article by Leo Goldsmith posted December 11, 2008

• More great stuff from Jonathan Rosenbaum: he has republished 'Fear of Feminism (FATAL ATTRACTION)', at Jonathan Rosenbaum.com, September 25, 2009 (originally published in the Chicago Reader, October 2, 1987)

• An excellent blog post at Chris Cagle's Category D: A Film and Media Studies on Kazan's Sea of Grass (1947): 'almost a test case in auteurism'.
  

• Online Keynote Presentations & Podcasts from the 2009 Media Education Summit (Centre for Excellence in Media Practice).
  

• Check out the wonderful resources at Christian Annyas's The Movie Titles Stills Collection

• Thanks to The Auteurs Daily, FSFF heard about the great online videos for Critics' Picks at the New York Times website. In the latest instalment, 'The King of Comedy', A. O. Scott Reviews Martin Scorsese's 1983 film about the cult of celebrity.

• A must visit: Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School (Thanks to Richard Brody's The Front Row column)
  

• Great free article in good new journal on 'Segundo de Chomón and the early years of cinema'. By Joan M. Minguet Batllori.

• Thanks to cms_mit for alerting FSFF to this great (@henryjenkins) video on convergence culture
  

• Check out HarryTuttle's latest addition to his Critical Fallacies' series: 11 : Egocentrism

• Fab annual summary of Observations on Film Art blogposts that DO prove useful to those using Film Art: An Introduction

• A big recommendation for a very good blog post on Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969) at The Seventh Art (Thanks to @justanotheruser)
  

• See the fabulous, classic film recommendations in the Self-Styled Siren's post "Ten Melos the Siren Would Watch Instead of MAD MEN": (Thanks to @theauteursdaily)
  

• And finally, FSFF's author just republished online a 2003 essay of hers (and yes, if you've read down this far, she does know it's not a good sign that she refers to herself in the third person all the time on this site, but what's an embarrassed, self-promoting, blogger to do?): Still moving images: On the affectivity of photographs in film

Happy Saturday Reading: New 'World Picture Journal'

Song of Youth (Qingchun zhi ge, directed by Cui Wei and Chen Huai’ai, 1959)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to report that the new Summer 2009 issue of World Picture Journal (number 3) has just been posted at its website. The issue is on 'Happiness'

Below are direct links to its three film-related articles. The issue also includes other wonderful essays on Adorno and John Stuart Mill, and a fabulous interview with Adam Phillips:

• Sara Ahmed, Happiness and Queer Politics (includes reference to the Canadian lesbian film, Lost and Delirious [Léa Pool, 2001])


• Jason McGrath, Communists Have More Fun! The Dialectics of Fulfillment in Cinema of the People's Republic of China


• Brian Price, On Compromises (on film theory and political philosophy)

Suzhou River and 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese Filmmaking

Film Studies For Free's author has been busy writing, for her day job, about 婁燁/ Lou Ye's Chinese/German coproduction 苏州河 /Suzhou he/Suzhou River (2000), a striking film which plays much more cleverly than most movies with the idea of implied authorship.

Below are some links to the freely-accessible, online resources of note pertaining to that film, as well as to 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese filmmaking more generally, which were gleaned as part of the research process:

• Cody Beckman, 'Suzhou River', Transnational Chinese Cinemas, December 8, 2008
• Robert Chi, 'Review of Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice, by Jerome Silbergeld', MCLC Resource Center Publication, September 2006
• Jerry Clode, 'Suzhou River', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 7, March 2002
• Gavin Collinson, 'Suzhou River', BBC4 website, April 24, 2004
• Richard Corliss, 'Bright Lights,'Time Asia 157, 12 (March 26, 2001)
• Kirk A. Denton, Bibliography of Chinese Film, Chinese Media & Print Culture resources MCLC
• Lizzie Francke, 'Review of Suzhou RIver' , Sight & Sound, Dec. 2000
• Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and John G. Gammack, 'Shanghai: World City?', Tourism and the Branded City (Ashgate, 2007)
• J. Hoberman, 'Eternal Return', Village Voice, November 7th 2000
• Brian Hu, 'Above Ground and Over His Head', Asia Pacific Arts, February 3, 2005
• Julia Kny, 'A Chinese Vertigo? Tracing Suzhou River's Musical Independence and Innovation', Jörg Lemberg's website, 2006
• Shelly Kraicer, 'Suzhou River', chinesecinemas.org, April 2000
• Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, 'Introduction' and 'Globalization and Yoythful Subculture: The Chinese Sixth-Generation Films at the Dawn of the New Century', Multiple modernities: cinemas and popular media in transcultural East Asia (Temple University Press, 2003)
• Yung Adam Lam, Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films, PhD e-thesis, The University of Auckland, 2000
• Charles Leary, 'Performing the Documentary, or Making it to te Other Bank', Senses of Cinema, July 2003
  
• Shannon May, Film for the New Long March: The Search for National Identity in Chinese Cinema, 1984-2000. Magna Cum Laude Thesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2000
• Shannon May, 'Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of Zhang Yuan and the Sixth Generation” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 8:1 (Spring 2003), 156-160
• Peter Nellhaus, 'Two by Lou Ye', Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee, September 24, 2006
  
• Jenni Peisa, The Unable Individual: The Actantial Analyses of Three Chinese Films and Discussion on Their Representations of the Individual’s Position in Contemporary Chinese Society, Masters e-Thesis, University of Helsinki, April 2008
• Polar Bear, 'Suzhou River (Ye Lou, 2000)', Polar Bear's Film Journal, August 4, 2008
• Peter C. Pugsley, 'Review of The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century by Zhang Zhen (ed.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007, Scope, Issue 12, 2008
• Ma Ran, 'The Sixth-Generation Cinema: To Continue the Dialogue with the West', Cina Oggi, September 17, 2007
  
• Bérénice Reynaud, 'Dancing with Myself, Drifting with My Camera: The Emotional Vagabonds of China's New Documentary,' Senses of Cinema, No 28, 2003
  
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'The World is Watching: Suzhou River', Chicago Reader - On Film, 2001
• Damion Searls, 'Suzhou River', Film Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001
• Donato Totaro, 'FCMM: Into the 21st Century', Offscreen Journal, November 28, 2000
• Lara Vanderstaay, 'A case study of the influence of directorial gender on the representation of female sexuality in four contemporary Chinese films [Red Sorghum, Soul of A Painter, Blush and Suzhou River]', Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Canberra 29 June - 2 July 2004
• Mike Walsh, 'Review of Zhang Zhen (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007', Screening the Past, September 20, 2008
• Gary G. Xu, 'Introduction: China's (Cinematic) Century', Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
• Neil Young, 'Suzhou River', Jigsaw Lounge, February 28, 2001