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

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

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

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

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

Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and the Moving Image

Audio Resources

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

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

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

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

University of Kent Aesthetics Research Group

Audio and video resources:

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

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

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

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

Research Seminars (ongoing)

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

Art, Aesthetics and the Sexual (2009)

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

In fond memory of Patrick Swayze

The power behind Film Studies For Free's e-throne is a 'person of a certain age', making her (chrono) logically susceptible to a good number of the many charms and talents of actor Patrick Swayze. She is, thus, saddened by the news of his untimely death.

Swayze was an actor of surprisingly slight physical stature, but one who loomed very large and very beautifully, not only in Hollywood and independent cinema, and, of course, in the estimation of his many fans and admirers, but also in the musings of quite a few Film Studies scholars. In particular relation to the latter, he helped to inspire -- FSFF is sure -- many worthwhile studies of (post-)modern gender and sexuality, 'looking relations', and acting in film.

In fond memory of his work for the screen, a few links to openly-accessible items of some of that scholarship are given below:

• Katherine Barscay, 'Kathryn Bigelow's Gen(d)re', Cinephile (Post Genre Issue), Vol. 4, Summer 2008
• Douglas Booth, 'Surfing Films and Videos: Adolescent Fun, Alternative Lifestyle, Adventure Industry, Journal of Sport History, Fall 1996
  
• Kathryn Kane, 'Passing as Queer and Racing Towards Whiteness: To Wong Foo, Thanks but No Thanks', Genders OnLine Journal, Issue 42, 2005
  
• Ahava Leibtag, '"The only thing you have to be is yourself": Ideology and Identity Politics in Dirty Dancing and The Last Dance', MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2002
• Marianne Mulvey, 'Is there sincerity in hollow speech? Feeling the cliché in contemporary performance', Nowiswhere, Issue 3, 2009 (scroll down)
  
• Thomas Piontek, 'Kinging in the Heartland; or, The Power of Marginality', Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 43, No. 3/4, 2002, pp. 125-143
• Nicola Rehling, ''White Masculinity in Cross-Dressing Comedies', All or Nothing: White Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Cinema, PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2005 (pp. 228-233)
  
• Tracy Sutton and Gregory Fouts, 'Measuring and Contextualising "Chemistry" in the Movies', Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 10, No. 1, Winter 2005
• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism & Kathryn Bigelow', Cinephile (Gender and Violence Issue), Vol. 1, April 2005

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993)

Christina Lane, Feminist Hollwyood: From Born in Flames to Point Break (Wayne State University Press, 2000)


John Izod, Myth, Mind, and the Screen: Understanding the Heroes of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Queer Film and Theory Links In Memory of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Image from Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear of the death at 58 of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of the discourse of 'queer theory', and an inspirational teacher and critic.

Like many other film researchers, some of FSFF's author's own writing on queer films was deeply influenced by Sedgwick's brilliant exploration of the epistemology of the closet.

In memory of Sedgwick, FSFF has assembled a webliography, below, of links to pieces of high quality, freely accessible, scholarly writing (or recordings/videos) on the web on the topic of queer/glbt films and/or queer film theory, a number of which, unsurprisingly, employ her critical insights. Further links added since original post: last updated June 2, 2009.

• John S. Bak, 'Suddenly Last Supper: Religious Acts and Race Relations - Tennessee Williams's 'Desire',Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 2005


• John Bannister, 'Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, and Susan Sontag: Campaigners of Camp and the Carry On films', Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007
  

• Harry M. Benshoff, 'Notes on Gay History/Queer Theory/Gay Film'


• Chris Berry, 'East Palace, West Palace: Staging Gay Life in China', from Jump Cut, no. 42, December 1998, pp. 84-89


• Chris Berry, 'My Queer Korea: Identity, Space, and the 1998 Seoul Queer Film & Video festival', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 2, May 1999
  

• Orla Juliette Borreye, 'The Significance Of The Queer And The Dog In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000): A Masculinity At War', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009

• NEW R. Bruce Brasell, 'The Making of "Monsters": The Queer as Producer', from Jump Cut, no. 40, March 1996, pp. 47-54
  

• Patrick S. Brennan, 'Cutting through Narcissism: Queer Visibility in Scorpio Rising', Genders 36, 2002


• Michael Bronski, 'From The Celluloid Closet to Brokeback Mountain: The Changing Nature of Queer Film Criticism', Cineaste, 2008


• Stella Bruzzi, 'The Talented Mr Ripley', EnterText 1.2, Spring 2001


• Norman Bryson, 'Todd Haynes's Poison and Queer Cinema', Invisible Culture - An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture Issue 1, Winter 1999


• Kathy Burdette, 'Queer Film Theory - Bibliography'


• Alain Chouinard, 'Queering the Québécois and Canadian Child in Jean-Claude Lauzon’sLéolo', Synoptique13, February 2009


• Lesley Chow, 'The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett,' Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 59, February 2008
  

• Douglas Crimp, 'Getting the Warhol we Deserve: Cultural Studies and Queer Culture', Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies, 1999
  

• Rick Curnette, 'Child's Play: The Pixelvision Videos of Sadie Benning', The Film Journal, Issue 4


• Belidson Dias & Susan Sinkinson, 'Film spectatorship between queer theory and feminism: Transcultural readings', Paper for InSEA on Bridge - 7 European Regional Congress 1st - 6th July 2004 Istanbul - Cappadocia
  


• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21


• Tanfer Emin-Tunc and Nichole Prescott, 'Glen or Glenda: Psychiatry, Sexuality, and the Silver Screen', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 41, August 2003
  

• NEW Bryan Ray Fruth, 'Media Reception, Sexuality Identity, and Public Space', e-PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 2007
  


• Jane Gaines, 'Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Queering Feminist Film Theory', from Jump Cut, no. 41, May 1997, pp. 45-48


• Stefan Jack Garel, 'Queer Bodies and Settlements', (e-PhD Thesis: University of Exeter, 2008)


• 'Gays, Lesbian, and Transgendered People in Motion Pictures: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library'


• David Gerstner, 'Queer Modernism: The Cinematic Aesthetics of Vincente Minnelli', Modernity, Vol. 2, 2000


• Michael Goddard, 'Beauty Lies in the Eye (So Why Can't I Touch It?)', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 25, 1998


• Andrew Grossman, 'Twelve Tone Cinema: A Scattershot Notebook on Sexual Atonality', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 43, February 2004


• Julie Grossman, “The Trouble with Carol: The Costs of Feeling [On Todd Haynes' Safe]', Other Voices 2.3 January 2005


• Adam Hartzell, 'Queer Pal For The Straight Gal - Wanee & Junah and Queer Friendship', The Film Journal, Issue 7


• Todd Haynes interviewed by Richard Dyer [audio recording from the Tate Modern], 'Double Indemnity: Todd Haynes/Edward Hopper' (4 June 2004)


• Todd Haynes's film: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)


• Zoë Heyn-Jones, 'Eye and Brain, Torn Asunder: Reading Ideology in Sally Potter’s Orlando', Synoptique, 11, March 12, 2008
  

• NEW In Media Res GLBT media-themed week, April 21-25, 2008


• Fiona Jenkins, 'Grief's Testimony: On Almodóvar’s All About My Mother', Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, Vol. 4, Number 2, August 2007


• Jamie June, 'Is it Queer Enough?: An Analysis of the Criteria and Selection Process for Programming Films within Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Film Festivals in the United States' (e-Thesis)


• Dmetri Kakmi, 'Queer Cinema: A Reality Check', Senses of Cinema, 2000


• Peter Kemp, 'Bi-Polar Gender-Blender: Sylvia Scarlett,' Senses of Cinema 22, Sept-Oct 2002


• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope Issue 9, 2007


• Kevin B. Lee, 'Madchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931)'


• Dennis Lo, 'The Politics and Aesthetics of “Asian American” Sexuality in Ang Lee’s Cross-Cultural Family Dramas: A Case Study on The Wedding Banquet and The Ice Storm', Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol. 1, 2008


• Patricia MacCormack, 'Barbara Steele's Ephemeral Skin: Feminism, Fetishism, and Film', Senses of Cinema, September 2002


• Patricia MacCormack, Pleasure, Perversion and Death: Three Lines of Flight for the Viewing Body, Transmat Online Book


• James MacDowell, 'What Value is There in Gus Van Sant's Psycho?', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 7, 2005


• Stephen Maddison, 'Pedro Almodóvar and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: the Heterosocial Spectator and Misogyny', Chapter 4 of Fags, hags, and queer sisters : gender dissent and heterosocial bonds in gay culture (New York : St. Martin's, 2000)


• Joseph McBride, 'George Cukor: The Valor of Discretion', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 32, April 2001
  

• Deborah Mellamphy, 'The Paradox Of Transvestism In Tim Burton’s Ed Wood', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009
  


• Frann Michel, 'The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love', Cineaste, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1995


• D.A. Miller, 'Anal Rope'
  

• D. A. Miller, 'La Ronde', Film Quarterly, Spring 2009
  

• Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 'Driving into the 'Dustless Highway' of Queer Cinema', Film Journal, 2002


• Rebecca Panosky, 'Dorothy Arzner and Gender Representation.” In: “International Female Film Directors: Their Contributions to the Film Industry and Women's Roles in Society.” Chapter 4 of e-Thesis


• Susan Pelle and Catherine Fox, 'Queering Desire / Querying Consumption: Rereading Visual Images of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art', Third Space, Vol. 6 Issue 1, Summer 2006


• Matthew Ogonoski, 'Queering the Heterosexual Male in Canadian Cinema: An Analysis of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo', Synoptique, 13, February 2009


• Ryan Powell, 'Putting on the Red Dress: Performative Camp in Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows,' Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007


• Kate Rennebohm, 'Queering Childhood: An Examination of Claude Jutra’s Dreamspeaker', Synoptique 13, February 2009


• Elena del Rio, 'Performing the Narrative of Seduction: Claire Denis's Beau Travail', Kinoeye, Vol. 3, Issue 7, Spring 2003


• Julian Savage, 'The Conscious Collusion of the Stare: The Viewer Implicated in Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul,' Senses of Cinema, 16, Sept-Oct 2001


• Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramman, 'Mädchen in Uniform', trans. Leonie Naughton, Screening the Past, 12 January 1998
  

• NEW Ian Scott Todd, 'Outside/In: Abjection, Space, and Landscape in Brokeback Mountain', Scope13, February 2009
  


• Neera Scott, 'Sublime Anarchy in Gus Van Sant's Elephant', Senses of Cinema, 2005


• Steven Jay Schneider, 'A Tale of Two Psychos', Senses of Cinema, 2000


• Yael Sherman, 'Tracing the Carnival Spirit in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Feminist Reworkings of the Grotesque', Third Space, Vol. 3, Issue 2, March 2004


• Anneke Smelik, 'Gay and Lesbian Criticism'


• Anneke Smelik, 'Art Cinema and Murderous Lesbians'


• Anneke Smelik, 'The Carousel of Genders'

• NEW Carter Michael Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Independent Film, e-Thesis University of Oregon, 2008
  

• Irini Stamatopoulos, 'Ang Lee's Cowboys', Offscreen Journal, Volume 11, Issue 2 (February 28, 2007)


• K. E. Sullivan, 'Ed Gein and the Figure of the Transgendered Serial Killer', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000, pp. 38-47


• Denise Tse Shang Tang, 'A Dialogue on Intimacy with Chan Kwok Chan in Yau Ching's Ho Yuk: Let's Love Hong Kong', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 14, November 2006


• Donato Totaro, 'Psycho Redux', Offscreen Journal, 2004


• Evangelos Tziallas, 'Looking Beneath the Skin: Reconfiguring Trauma and Sexuality', Stream: A Graduate Journal of Communication, Spring 2008 1(1)


• Justin Vicari, 'Reading/Watching Fassbinder', Film Journal, Vol. 1, No. 13, Winter 2006


• Amy Villarejo, 'Interview with Tish Pearlman for Out of Bounds/Cornell University' [about Queer film and queer film theory] RealPlayer file, 29 mins 30 seconds


• Nicholas de Villiers, 'Glancing, Cruising, Staring: Queer Ways of Looking', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 57, August 2007


• Nicholas de Villiers, '”The vanguard - and the most articulate audience”: Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters', Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007
  

• Adam P Wadenius, 'The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection And Todd Solondz's Happiness', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009
  


• Tamsin Whitehead, 'Rejecting the Margins of Difference: Strategies of Resistance in the Documentary Films of Pratibha Parmar', Third Space, Vol. 7, Issue 2, Winter 2008


• Damon Young and Gilbert Caluya, '”A Vessel of Imagery”: An Interview with Gregg Araki',Senses of Cinema, 2005

P.S. Another set of must-reads from the Reverse Shot website - just click on the film-title links below for some great reading on queer cinema and television:

Reverse Shot - Proposition 24: Defining a New Queer Cinema

by MK and JR

Broken Sky by Michael Koresky

The Wire by Chris Wisniewski

Lan Yu by Andrew Chan

I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory by Michael Joshua Rowin

Hairspray by Leo Goldsmith

Be Like Others by Joanne Nucho

Casino Royale and the new James Bond by Andrew Tracy

Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and the Queer Prestige Film by Matt Connolly

The House of Mirth by Jeff Reichert

Far from Heaven by Chris Wisniewski

Milk by Michael Koresky