New Issue of Scope! Gollum/LOTR, Egyptian cinema, Fight Club, Snuff-Fiction

Read Mike Miley's review of Glyn Davis's study of  Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987). Read Film Studies For Free's related entry dedicated to Todd Haynes and its entry on the Sirkian melodrama. 

As usual, Film Studies For Free is delighted to bring you news of the latest issue of Scope; an Online Journal of Film and TV Studies. The full table of contents is given below. 

In addition to an excellent selection of main articles, there is an astonishing array of book and film reviews and conference reports, the latter sections in particular flagging up the enormous, but highly worthwhile, collective editorial effort that goes into producing a very good quality Open Access journal.

Thank you, Scope!

Scope, Issue 19, February 2011

Articles

• Playing with Gollum: Uncovering the Cultural Life and Transnational Travels of a Complex Character - Part One Martin Barker

• Playing with Gollum: Uncovering the Cultural Life and Transnational Travels of a Complex Character - Part Two Martin Barker

• Dying to be Seen: Snuff-Fiction's Problematic Fantasies of "Reality" Steve Jones

• Screening Egypt: Reconciling Egyptian Film's Place in "World Cinema" Omar Kholeif

• A Copy, of a Copy, of a Copy? Exploring Masculinity Under Transformation in Fight Club Simon Lindgren

• [ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

• Carmen on Film: A Cultural History by Phil Powrie, Bruce Babington, Ann Davies and Chris Perriam  100 Hundred Years of Spanish Cinema By Tatjana Pavlovi, Inmaculada Alvarez, Rosana Blanco-Cano, Anitra Grisales, Alejandra Osorio and Alejandra Sánchez Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943 By Steven Ricci Reviewer: Noelia Saenz

• Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies by Terry Bolas  Beginning Film Studies By Andrew Dix Reviewer: Juli Pitzer

• Isuma: Inuit Video Art by Michael Robert Evans Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series By Mary Jane Miller  Reviewer: Heather Macdougall

• The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks by Peter Graham and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.)  Stardom in Postwar France Edited by John Gaffney and Diana Holmes Reviewer: John Berra

• Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era by Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson (eds.) Reviewer: Evan Elkins

• Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy by Paola Marrati. Translated by Alisa Hartz  Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film By Irving Singer Reviewer: Alexander Thimons

• Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema by Warren Buckland (ed.) Reviewer: Chris Pallant

• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story by Glyn Davis Reviewer: Mike Miley

• The Hitchcock Annual Anthology: Selected Essays from Volumes 10-15 by Sidney Gottlieb and Richard Allen (eds.) Reviewer: Christina M. Parker

• Film and Memory in East Germany by Anke Pinkert  Nation and Identity in the New German Cinema By Inga Scharf Reviewer: David Embree

• Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language by Hester Baer Reviewer: Paul Cooke

• Understanding Indian Cinema: Culture, Cognition and Cinematic Imagination by Patrick Colm Hogan  Mourning The Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition By Bhaskar Sarkar Reviewer: Scott Jordan Harris

• Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Movies by Dave Saunders Reviewer: Joseph Arton

• Jean-Pierre Jeunet by Elizabeth Ezra  The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience By Jennifer M. Barker Reviewer: Alison Frank

• Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel by Nick Dawson  The Films of Hal Ashby By Christopher Beach Reviewer: Aaron Hunter

• Steven Spielberg and Philosophy: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Book by Dean A. Kowalski (ed.)  Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy By Colin Davis Reviewer: Chelsea Wessels

• The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity  by Catherine Russell   Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary By Abé Mark Nornes  Reviewer: Stephen Potter

• Anatomy of Film. Sixth Edition by Bernhard F. Dick Reviewer: Monika Raesch

• Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin by David Church (ed.)  The Young, the Restless, and the Dead: Interviews with Canadian Filmmakers, Volume 1. Edited by George Melnyk Reviewer: Rachel Walls

• TV China by Ying Zhu and Chris Berry (eds.)  Transnational Television in Europe: Reconfiguring Global Communications Networks By Jean K. Chalaby Reviewer: Bärbel Göbel

• [ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

• The Godfather Reviewer: Mark Chapman

• Red Hill Reviewer: Kate Harper

• The Eclipse Reviewer: Andrea Grunert

• Life on Mars Reviewer: Mary Irwin

• Kaminey Reviewer: Sagnik Banerjee

• [ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

• British Film 2000-2010: Crossing Borders, Transferring Cultures, Germersheim School of Translation, Interpreting, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, University of Mainz, 18 – 21 February 2010 Reporter: Ron Walker

• NERFS (North-East Regional Film Seminar), Northumbria University, Newcastle, 15 July 2010 Reporter: Louise Anderson and Erin Hill-Parks

• Investigating Torchwood: Text, Context, Audiences, Cardiff School of Creative Arts, University of Glamorgan, 18 June 2010 Reporter: Ross P. Garner

• NECS 2010 Annual Conference, Communication Faculty, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, 24 – 27 June 2010 Reporter: Ozgur Cicek

• MeCCSA-PGN 2010: Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association Postgraduate Network Conference, University of Glasgow, 31 June – 1 July 2010 Reporter: Douglas McNaughton

• Screen Studies Conference: Screen Performance, University of Glasgow, 2 – 4 July 2010 Reporter: Melanie Hoyes

• [ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]

Sound on Screen: The Exorcist, Haneke, J-Horror, Warner Bros., animation, Apocalypse Now

Image from Apocalypse Now Redux (Francis Ford Coppola, 2001)

Film Studies For Free only just heard about the Spring 2010 issue of online journal Cinephile (Vol. 6 No. 1). So, while technically FSFF is 'rushing you the news', it red-facedly admits that it arrived a little late to this particular, openly accessible, Film Studies party...

Anyhoooo, it's an excellent issue on ‘Sound on Screen’, available as one large PDF. The contents are given below.

FSFF earnestly promises to keep its e-ears closer to the ground next time an issue is due...


Table of Contents

• 'William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and the Proprietary Nature of Sound' by Jay Beck

• 'Acoustic Infidelities: Sounding the Exchanges between J-Horror and H-Horror Remakes' by William Whittington

• 'Listening to Silence: The Films of Michael Haneke' by Lisa Coulthard

• 'Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema' by Randolph Jordan

• 'Lunacy at Termite Terrace: The Slapstick Style of Warner Bros. Animation' by Andres Lombana Bermudez

• 'On the Occult Nature of Sound-Image Synchronization' by K. J. Donnelly

• 'The New Scene Canon - Chopping Choppers Unforgettably: The "Nowhere to Go but Down" Scene in Apocalypse Now' by Mark Harris

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

"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]

Lots more links to film studies journals to celebrate Open Access Week!

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

“Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year. Open Access Week is a key opportunity for all members of the community to take action to keep this momentum moving forward.  

It's International Open Access Week this week, and while every week is Open Access Week at Film Studies For Free, this website decided to celebrate this special week of events by flagging up the work of an individual who can rightfully claim to be one of the most hard-working supporters of this important cause: Jan Szczepanski.

FSFF was recently contacted by Jan, a librarian from Sweden who has been a collector of freely accessible scholarly e-journals since the end of the 1990's. He has been responsible for gathering the longest ever lists of links to (multilingual) Open Access scholarly journals titles, mostly in humanities and the social sciences, many of which you can access through the embedded document below (also see here).

FSFF hasn't yet fully cross-checked Jan's list with its own list of English-language online Film and Media Studies Journals (permanently accessible from the table of contents in the right-hand sidebar), but will do so as soon as possible in order to add notable items it hasn't yet come across.

FSFF has set up the document below so that you can immediately scroll down through the Film titles, from page 107. But you can also perform a search for 'Masskommunikation' to scroll automatically to page 491 for lots of Media Studies titles.

Thanks so much to Jan for getting in touch and especially for all his hard work in assembling this monumental list.

8.999 Open Access Journals. New, expanded list, December 2009

Senses of Cinema: The (Post-)'Dreaming' Issue

Image from Nothing Personal (Urszula Antoniak, 2009) premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 - Read the late John Orr's festival report.

Were dreams the “virtual worlds” of a previous era? Or at least as Freud understood them to be, as wish fulfilments? In this day and age of  “virtual reality” sites such as Second Life, are not all wish fulfilments at our disposal, made manifest instantly? We continue to dream, of course, but dreaming may be just the archaic [remnant] of a by-gone activity. Old habits die hard. If the post-modern age is post-Freudian, then it also post-dreaming. [Welcome to Issue 56 of our journal (Senses of Cinema)' by the editors']

Hot off the digital press: a new issue of online journal Senses of Cinema, with a distinct focus on dreams and virtuality. Film Studies For Free brings you the tantalising table of contents below.

FSFF also notes that this issue carries the final Senses of Cinema contributions (and here) by the late film scholar John Orr. You can read FSFF's tribute to him here.

Issue 56 Contents 

Editorial

Feature Articles

An Interview with Arnaud Desplechin by Marko Bauer

An Interview with Marie-Christine Questerbert by Sally Shafto

Feed Me Grapes by Murray Pomerance

Inception by Ian Alan Paul

World on a Wire by the Celluloid Liberation Front

The Illusionist by David Bellos

The Skladanowsky Brothers by Stephen Barber

Iván Zulueta’s Cinephilia of Ecstasy and Experiment by Matt Losada

Rico Ilarde as filmmaker by Noel Vera

Watching the World Cup Final by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Cocksucker Blues by Stephen Gaunson

Jake Wilson interviews Leo Berkeley

Mary M. Wiles interviews Gaylene Preston

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill Dossier

Dossier Introduction by Adrian Danks
Jake Wilson on Films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
OtherFilm on Cantrills Expanded Cinema
Michael Koller on Waterfall
Freda Freiberg on In This Life’s Body

Steven Ball on Cantrills Filmnotes

Great Directors

John R. Hamilton on Paul Schrader

Festival Reports

Paul Breschuk on Media City
Damien Spiccia on Revelation
David Sanjek on Il Cinema Ritrovato
Ivana Novak on Dokufest
Bill Mousoulis on Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Darragh O’Donoghue on Killruddery
John Orr on Edinburgh International Film Festival
Jake Wilson on MIFF

Book Reviews

John Orr on Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence and Jerzy Skolimowski
David Melville on Latin American Melodrama and All About Almodóvar
David Sanjek on Richard Lester
Geoff Mayer on Screen The British "B" Film
Gozde Kilic on Conversations with Directors

Cteq Annotations

Tony Williams on Centre Stage
John Fidler on Irma Vep
Carla Marcantonio on In the Mood for Love
Audrey Yue on Song of the Exile
Michael Da Silva on The 10th District Court: Moments of Trials
Adrian Danks on The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
Wheeler Winston Dixon on One Hour With You
Shari Kizirian on Madame Dubarry
Michael Koller on Kohlhiesels Töchter and Schuhpalast Pinkus
Pasquale Iannone on Broken Lullaby
Louise Sheedy on Beginnings
Louise Sheedy on Arts Vietnam
Darragh O’Donoghue on The Phantom Carriage

100 (Plus) Online Film and Media Journals of Note

Image from Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Film Studies For Free has enlisted the inimitable indexical services of Travis Bickle to flag up the very rough location of a permanent sidebar link to a handy new page at this blog. (Helpful hint: Travis is currently aiming a little high or low, depending on where this entry sites itself in your browser)...

It's a page where FSFF 's adventurous readers -- perhaps, also, ones with lots of time on their hands -- can find a copious listing of Online Film and Media Studies Journals.

This list of direct links to openly accessible journals and periodical websites will be assiduously maintained and excitedly added to over the coming months and years, so be sure to bookmark it for future use.

Thrillingly, FSFF will very soon be adding further pages, housing equally essential Film Studies information. And, as usual, it won't be backward about coming forward about those...

MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism

MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism is a refereed academic publication whose aim is to create a forum for the range of analysis, debate and discussion that only a journal devoted to a detailed film criticism can adequately provide. We are committed to publishing rigorous but accessible critical writing, at a variety of lengths, that is responsive to the detailed texture and artistry of film and television, old and new. We also welcome articles that illuminate concepts, analytical methods and questions in film aesthetics that are of significance to film criticism. The journal is published on a bi-annual basis.

Film Studies For Free is jumping for joy!  MOVIE, the legendary film magazine (1962-2000) published and designed by the late, and much lamented, Ian Cameron (1937-2010) and source of some of the most brilliant and influential writing on film ever, has inspired the beautiful birth of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, an online and openly accessible scholarly periodical, with a website hosted by the University of Warwick. 

Many of the same people central to MOVIE's earlier incarnation are involved this time around (Victor Perkins, Douglas Pye, Jim Hillier, Charles Barr, Deborah Thomas, Ed Gallafent, Michael Walker) together with a whole host of some of the best and brightest younger film writers (Andrew Klevan, James Macdowell, John Gibbs, Kathrina Glitre). 

FSFF hasn't read it yet, but wanted to rush you the news. So, as usual, the table of contents (with direct links to PDF files) is pasted in below. 

Wow, wow, wow...

Issue 1, 2010

• Editorial

• Ian Cameron: a Tribute V. F. Perkins

• Films, Directors and Critics Ian Cameron, reprinted from Movie 2

• Access and Excess in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Lucy Fife Donaldson

• Sleeping with Half Open Eyes: Dreams and Realities in The Cry of the Owl John Gibbs

• Fugitive Physicality and Female Performance in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss and Lola Kate Leadbetter

• Notes on Quirky James MacDowell

• At the Border: the Limits of Knowledge in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and No Country for Old Men Douglas Pye

• Limbo: Frustrated Narration Deborah Thomas

• Acting Ordinary in The Shop Around the Corner George Toles

• The Rhetoric of The Wire James Zborowski

• Review: Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, 3 – 10 October 2009 Michael Walker

• Robin Wood and Ian Cameron

This issue edited by Edward Gallafent and John Gibbs, with grateful acknowledgement of the contributions of Lucy Fife Donaldson and James MacDowell.

Scope on Moving Image Archives

Image from Picturegoer Magazine, archived at the Bill Douglas collection, University of Exeter, as discussed by Lisa Stead in
her article Audiences from the Film Archive: Women's Writing and Silent Cinema.
(Used in accordance with the Original License)

Across the [Using Moving Image Archives] collection, then, scholars ask: how is the archive, as a repository of memory and of the past, used to construct cultural history? What can archives tell us about the formation of particular categories of identity? How can the ephemeral, like the digital, be archived? These are pressing, important questions, and we hope the varied answers here will lead to further reflection and debate upon the place of archival research in the interdisciplinary study of moving images.  From 'Introduction', by Nandana Bose and Lee Grieveson

Film Studies For Free is still catching up with the busy, Summer, electronic educational traffic. Below are links to all the brilliant items in one of the most significant volumes to be published online in its recent absence on holiday: Scope's latest issue on Using Moving Image Archives, edited by Nandana Bose and Lee Grieveson.

FULL ISSUE AS e-BOOK

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements and Introduction by Nandana Bose and Lee Grieveson

Part I: The Archive and the Nation

• Amateur Film and the Interwar English Countryside by Michael McCluskey

• Critical Reflections on Film as a Historical Source: A Case Study of the Military Regime in Brazil by Nina Schneider

Part II: The Ephemerality and Textuality of the Archive

• Audiences from the Film Archive: Women's Writing and Silent Cinema by Lisa Stead

• Archival Realities and Contagious Spaces: Shopgirls, Censorship and the City in Damaged Goods by Heida Johannsdottir

Part III: The Televisual and Digital Archive

• Reading Political Comedy: Yes Minister and Comic Coherence by Matt Crowder

• The Representation by French Television of Building Construction Work in and around Paris During the 1960s by Jacob Paskins

• Archives and Prefigurative Practices: Digital Games Walkthrough Archives as Record and Resource by Daniel Ashton

Kinocultura: on Russian, Russo-Soviet, Eastern European, & Central Asian cinemas & television

Excerpt from the beginning of Nastroishchik/The Tuner (Kira Muratova, Russia/Ukraine, 2004)

Muratova’s tight and intricate narrative is punctuated by familiar cinematic devices, red herrings, and pranks immediately identifiable—even beyond cinema production—with Muratova’s sui generic style. [F]irst, her inclusion of a “cultural intermezzo” by an amateur artist-enthusiast.  [...]  In The Tuner, this device takes the form of a girl singer-songwriter performing on public transport and a number of other charmingly inept musicians (a clarinetist, two tuba players, random, elderly singers, and Andrei’s spontaneous “Uzbek” improvisation).  This is the utopian dimension of Muratova’s creative act: irredeemably unprofessional, yet utterly complete, self-sufficient in itself, the flawless conjuration of an inner hallucination. Nancy Condee, 'Kira Muratova, The Tuner [Nastroishchik] (2004)', Kinocultura, Issue 7  January 2005

(See also Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin Kinocultura, Issue 8, April 2005; Acquarello, 'The Tuner, 2004', Strictly Film School, July 27, 2006)

Film Studies For Free was alerted yesterday by David Hudson at The Auteurs Daily that the April 2010 issue of Kinocultura, the Open Access journal of New Russian Cinema, had just been published online.  

This journal has been appearing since July 2003, and that simple fact makes for a true wealth of freely accessible scholarly resources. With its editorial board of leading scholars in this field, Kinocultura is quite simply one of the best film studies e-journals, with its incredibly wide-ranging scholarly articles alongside wonderful film and book reviews and dossiers/reports/roundtable discussions/videos.  

Below, FSFF has copied and pasted in the index of all full-length articles and interviews published by the journal to date. Here also is a list of Kinocultura's special issues on particular countries:#1 Central Asia (2004); #2 Poland (2005); #3 Slovakia (2005); #4 Czech Rep. (2006); #5 Bulgaria (2006); #6 Romania (2007); #7 Hungary (2008); #8 Serbia (2009); #9 Ukraine (2009); #10 Estonia (2010). Note that there are forthcoming issues on Kazakhstan and Croatia.
 
Those of you interested in Russian and Soviet film studies should also know about the following great, online bibliography, too: University of Pittsburgh Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Kinocultura - Issue 28: April 2010

• Mariya Y. Boston: "Speaking in Tongues: Poetic Language in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun"

• Andrey Shcherbenok: "Asymmetric Warfare: The Vision of the Enemy in American and Soviet Cold War Cinemas"

Festival Report

• Birgit Beumers: " Restoring Images: Belye Stolby 2010"

Issue 27: January 2010

• David MacFadyen: Cinematic Abuse as Self-Affirmation: Russian Video Mash-ups, Illegal Social Networking, and the Rise of Bekmambetov’s “Office Plankton”

• Maria Vinogradova: Amateur Cinema in the Soviet Union and the Leningrad of Film Amateurs in the 1970s-1980s

Festival Reports

• Dar'ia Borisova: Kinoshok 2009: The Expiring Principle of Soviet Brotherhood

AAASS 2009 Roundtable on Young Kazakh Cinema

• Birgit Beumers: Waves, old and new, in Kazakh Cinema

• Jane Knox-Voina: Young Kazakh Filmmakers:  New “New Wave” on the Road

• Stephen M. Norris: The Gifts of History: Young Kazakh Cinema and the Past

• Eugénie Zvonkine: “Kazakhstan Rules the World:” Satybaldy Narymbetov’s Mustafa Shokai (2008) and the Rewriting of History

Issue 26: October 2009

• Evgenii Margolit: “Monumental Sculptures in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s”

Festival Reports

• Birgit Beumers: “A Return to Folklore?—Suzdal 2009”

• Birgit Beumers, “Kinotavr 2009: The Victory of New Drama”

• Christina Stojanova: “Characters and Circumstances: Notes on the Competition Program of the 31st Moscow International Film Festival”

Issue 25: July 2009

• Kristina Matvienko: With a Cine-Eye through Russia: The Festival “Kinoteatr.doc” 2009

• Irina Mel’nikova: (Re)presentation of The Metamorphosis: Valerii Fokin, Franz Kafka, René Magritte and the Issue of Cinematic Adaptation

• [Interview] Anton Sidarenka: Interview with Sergei Loznitsa. Conversations on Cinema: "A Master of Time"

Issue 24: April 2009

• Nikolai Izvolov: Designed Sound in the USSR

• Jane Knox-Voina: New ‘New’ Wave Filmmakers Welcome Their Audiences’ Discomfort: Kazakh and Kyrgyz Youth Films

• Gulnara Abikeeva: Central Asian Documentary Films of the Soviet Era as a Factor in the Formation of National Identity

Festival Report:

• Gulbara Tolomushova: The Secret Sense of the Tashkent Messages

Issue 23: January 2009

• Maria Belodubrovskaya: Understanding the Magic: Special Effects in Ladislas Starewitch's L'Horloge magique

• Larisa Maliukova: The State of the Art: Russian Animation Today

• Evgenii Margolit: The Image of Germans in Russian Cultural Space

Festival Reports:

• Birgit Beumers: New Voices and Old Images: Eurasia 2008

• Gulbara Tolomushova: Dushanbe Flights to Googoosh's Songs: Didor 2008

Issue 22: October 2008

• Klaus Eder: Moscow 2008: The Center of the Province

• Nina Tsyrkun: "Forward to the Past, or: What kind of millennium has begun?" (on the Russian Program of the Moscow International Film Festival)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: "Kinotavr 19"

• Aliya Moldalieva: "New Cinema in Kyrgyzstan"

Issue 21: July 2008
Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium 2008 — The Ideological Occult: Russian Cinema under Putin:

• Seth Graham: "Two Decades of Post-Soviet Cinema: Taking Stock of Our Stocktaking"
• Stephen Norris: "Packaging the Past: Cinema and Nationhood in the Putin Era"
• Marina Drozdova: "Tremors: Various Types of Unrest"
• Aleksandr Kiselev: " 'No Power Can Force Us to Live Badly' "
• Gregory Dolgopolov: “Liquidating the Happy end of the Putin-era”

• Birgit Beumers: "The 13th Open Russian Animation Festival Suzdal" (2008)

• Dina Goder: "Kinoteatr.doc 2008: Some Notes on the Cuffs"

• David MacFadyen: “The Presumed Threat of Digital Culture to Russian Cinema”

Issue 20: April 2008

• Tom Birchenough: The Koktebel Studio

• Dar'ia Borisova: The Forum of National Cinematographies Played at Being a Film School

• Barbara Wurm: The International Film Festival Rotterdam — A Festival of Significance for Russian Cinema; In Focus: Svetlana Proskurina

• Birgit Beumers: Returning to the Roots: Central Asia in Rottterdam

• [Interview] Inna Smailova: Interview with Abai Kulbai: The Keeper of Eternal Values in Cinema

Issue 19: January 2008

• [Interview] Giulia Marcucci: Interview with Aleksandr Mindadze: From Scriptwriter to Director

• Irina Shilova: Renata Litvinova: Actress and Persona

• Michael Rouland: A Tour through Kinostan

• Inna Smailova: Three Generations of Kazakh Cinematographers: Action - Reaction - Change of Reality

• Eugénie Zvonkine: "On a Motorbike or on a Horse?": The IV Eurasia International Film Festival 2007

Issue 18: October 2007

• Tom Birchenough: "Vladivostok 2007": The lnternational Pacific Meridian Festival

• Mihai Chirilov: "Phony Games: The Moscow International Film Festival 2007"

• Jeremy Hicks: “Reflections of Andrei Tarkovskii: The Zerkalo Festival and Conference”

• David MacFadyen: “Strike Up, Pipers! The Russian Program of the Moscow Film Festival, 2007”

• Kirill Razlogov: "Kinotavr: Caught in the Crossfire"

Issue 17: July 2007
Melodrama and Kino-Ideology: Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium Roundtable:

• Peter Bagrov: "Soviet Melodrama: A Historical Overview"
• Dawn Seckler: "Orphans of the Storm: Economic Destitution, Physical Lack, and Social Alienation in the Contemporary Russian Melodrama"
• Oleg Sulkin: "Melodrama as the Experience of the Moment"
• Dmitrii Savel'ev: "Out of Ideology: The Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• Mikhail Trofimenkov: "Origin of the Species: Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• David MacFadyen: "Ethical Masochism in Recent Russian Melodrama"
• Marcia Landy: "Melodrama: Short Reflections on a Long Subject"

• Kristina Matvienko: The Third Festival of Real Cinema: "Kinoteatr.doc" (2007)

Issue 16: April 2007

• Jose Alaniz: Cinema without Barriers

• Thomas Campbell: A Khakassian Sends a Postcard Home: The Strange Career of Evgenii "Debil" Kondrat'ev

• David MacFadyen: Changing Notions of Realism in Primetime Russian TV Drama

• Stephen Norris: In the Gloom: The Political Lives of Undead Bodies in Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch

Issue 15: January 2007

• Peter Bagrov: Ermler, Stalin, and Animation: On the Film The Peasants (1934)

• Birgit Beumers and Michael Rouland: Eurasia 2006: An International Festival?

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: The Kamenskaia Television Series and the Conventions of Russian Television

• Alena Solntseva: KINOTEATR.DOC: The First Three Years

Issue 14: October 2006

• Svetlana Khokhriakova: Starless, Prize-less: The Moscow International Film Festival 2006

• Adam Lowenstein: From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema (Lincoln Center Program, August 2006)

• Elena Plakhova: Victims of Euphoria: The 17th Open Russian Film Festival (Kinotavr 2006)

• Birgit Beumers: Cannes 2006: The Russian Presence

Issue 13: July 2006

• Natalia Lukinykh: Inspired by the Oscar, Hardened by the Marketplace. On the Everydays and Holidays of Russian Animation. (Suzdal Animation Festival)

• Eugenie Zvonkine: The Tenth Forum for National Cinematographies of the CIS and the Baltic States (Kinoforum)

• Aleksandr Deriabin: Judgment Day: Recreation and Stylization (On Ethics in Documentary Filmmaking and Other Matters)

Issue 12: April 2006

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: "The Eurasia-2005 Film Festival: Ambitions and Realities"

• Vladimir Padunov: Storing and Restoring History: Gosfil'mofond and the 10th Belye Stolby Archival Film Festival

• Thomas Campbell: Five Theses About Timur Bekmambetov's Day Watch

Russian TV-Serials: AAASS Roundtable 2005: "Russian TV: Past Issues of Present Concern"

• Birgit Beumers: "The Serialization of the War"
• David MacFadyen: "The Significance of Brezhnev for Russian TV Drama Today"
• Alexander Prokhorov: "Size Matters: The Ideological Functions of the Length of Soviet Feature Films and Television Mini-Series in the 1950s and 1960s"

Issue 11: January 2006

• José Alaniz: Moscow Conceptualism and the ArtKomiks of Gosha Ostretsov

• Thomas H. Campbell: The Bioaesthetics of Evgenii Iufit

• Seth Graham: Iusup Razykov and Contemporary Uzbek Cinema

Issue 10: October 2005

• Elena Stishova: There's No Point Arguing with the Marketplace: The Ninth KinoForum

• Aleksandr Shpagin: Newly Sprouting Seedlings in the Rustling Field of Domestic Cinema (Kinotavr 2005)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: Study, Study, Study: The Grand Prize of the 27th Moscow International Film Festival Went to Aleksei Uchitel''s Dreaming of Space  

Issue 9: July 2005

• Ian Christie: Iakov Protazanov: A Timely Case for Treatment

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: "Fedor Mikhailovich Lucked Out with Vladimir Vladimirovich": The Idiot

• Television Series in the Context of Putin's Culture

Issue 8: April 2005

• John MacKay:  The "Spinning Top" Takes Another Turn: Vertov Today

• Petre Petrov:  The Freeze of Historicity in Thaw Cinema

• Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin

• David MacFadyen: Literature Has Left the Building: Russian Romance and Today 's TV Drama

Issue 7: January 2005

• Special Feature: Dziga Vertov: John MacKay: Disorganized Noise: Enthusiasm and the Ear of the Collective

• KinoShock 2004: Gul'nara Abikeyeva: KinoShock: A Panorama of National Cinemas  

Issue 6: October 2004
"National Cinema": Pittsburgh Film Colloquium roundtable featuring:  

• Nancy Condee: Imperial Ectoplasm
• Marcia Landy: Frames or Frame Ups of National Cinema
• Adam Lowenstein: David Cronenberg and the 'Face' of National Authorship

Moscow International Film Festival 2004 : Susan Larsen: At the Intersection of Art, Commerce, and National Pride  

Issue 5:  July 2004

• Kinoforum 2004: Vladimir Padunov: Imperial Acorn -→ National Oaks: The Eighth KinoForum .

• Kinotavr 2004: Victor Matizen: Masses and Classes: Kinotavr 2004 .

Issue 4:  April 2004

• Josephine Woll: Exorcising the Devil: Russian Cinema and Horror.

Issue 3:  January 2004

• Vladimir Padunov: Stars Above Almaty: Kazakh Cinema Between 1998 and 2003 .

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: Demythologizing and Reconstructing National Space in the Kazakh "New Wave" .

Issue 1:  July 2003

• Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov: Subtropical Cinema: Kinotavr, Collective Heroes and Small Screens: The Fourteenth Annual Open Russian Film Festival (3-17 June 2003).

• Vladimir Padunov: Moscow's Silver Anniversary: XXV Moscow International Film Festival (20-29 June 2003).