Open Access Film Studies

Not one but two big trumpets! Image from Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Film Studies For Free is a little embarrassed today. It is being called upon to blow its author's trumpet. It does hope that this won't happen too often, because it might have to protest...

Luckily, the embarrassment is mitigated by the fact that, at the same time, it is blowing the trumpet of a very worthy event on a subject so close to FSFF's heart -- Open Access Film Studies -- as to be almost indistinguishable from it. 

All of which is to say, please read the below announcement and, if you are in the very bonny vicinity of St. Andrews University next Wednesday, do consider coming along.

Open Access Film Studies

Wed 23rd March 2011 09:15 to 17:30
Parliament Hall, St Andrews University

---

Our fifth annual study day (organised by Chelsea Wessels) will be devoted to the subject of the free dissemination of film studies work and resources via the internet. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, who runs the 'Film Studies for Free' website.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in postgraduate study at the Centre for Film Studies, or simply in finding out more about what we do, to meet staff and current students.

Programme

9:15 - 9:30 Welcome
9:30 - 11:00 Dr. Catherine Grant: 'Fast-forwarding Film Studies in the Digital Age?  Back to an experimental, multimedia future'
11:00 - 11:30 Tea and Coffee Break
11:30 - 1:00 Panel 1
Vera Ryzhik "That's What My Blog Says: Free Sharing in New Information Technology and The Post-Human Identity"
Yun Mi Hwang "Online Access to the Korean Film Archive: Promotion of a National Cinema in the 21st Century"
Dr David Martin-Jones "Film-Philosophy.com"
1:00 - 2:00 Lunch
2:00 - 3:45 Panel 2
Matthew Holtmeier "Karagarga: Piracy, or Public Archive?"
Fredrik Gustafsson "The web and the blog in a time of media turmoil"
Dr Tom Rice: "Colonial Film: Creating an online archive"
3:30 - 4:00 Tea and Coffee Break
4:00 - 5:30 Video Essays, Screening and discussion

For more information, contact Dr. Alex Marlow-Mann by email

The award season begins...

Image from La niña santa/The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel, 2004)

Peter Nellhaus of the great Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee film blog has awarded Film Studies For Free's author one of the seven "Kreativ Blogger" awards in his gift. Er, thank you kindly, Peter!

 
 Here are the rules one must follow upon receipt of the Kreativ Blogger award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they've been nominated.

Seven possibly interesting, if not very revelatory, things about Film Studies For Free's author: 

1. She doesn't usually cooperate with chain letter activities, but...
2. ...Flattery by other film bloggers is one of her two Achilles' heels.
3. She is pretty much "self-taught" in Film Studies, her PhD being on Latin American literature; hence, perhaps, the particular appeal for her of easily accessible, online, scholarly materials on the former subject. Her own, formative/favourite, link-aggregator sites were Sarah Zupco and Daniel Chandler's legendary media studies and cultural theory websites.
   
4. She continues to be very attached to the kinds of Spanish-language cinema she started out by teaching. Her favourite writer-directors are Pedro Almodóvar and Lucrecia Martel. They like each other, too; the former has produced the last two films of the latter (blog posts coming up on these two soon..).
5. For ten great years, she was lucky enough to teach some of the best Film Studies students, and to work alongside some of the best Film Studies academics, in the whole, wide world
6. Then, around two years ago, she was equally lucky in being able to choose to leave the groves of Academe for a life of (film studies for) freedom and adventure at her own desk.
7. The fully-formed idea for Film Studies For Free came to her in a flash nearly two years ago, following a very fruitful conversation with an encouraging Cambridge University academic about the directions being taken by online film studies (merci!).

7 (mostly newish) 'Kreativ' Blog(ger)s  - none of whom are in any way obliged to respond to my recommendation:

1. Just starting out (brilliantly): James MacDowell at The Lesser Feat.
2. Ditto: James Zborowski's Between Sympathy and Detachment
3. A promising new bloggish website: The Film Notebook. 
4. Another good newish blog by Austin Fisher.
5. Liminal Vision is a new blog authored by (the great) Tara Judah (see also her midnighteye tweeting) and Alex Rossiter: "Liminal Vision looks at contemporary art, cinema, cities, and other random things"
6. Andy Wallis's Frame by Frame blog, a wonderful example of how blogs are being used in high school/secondary school film education.
7. And, last but definitely not least - no longer a new blog, but one of my longstanding favourite film blogs, a truly great resource: Jim Barratt's Bigger Picture Research.