Reframing Cinema Histories: ALPHAVILLE Issue 6

Header image from the symposium website for “Reframing Cinema Histories”

This issue of Alphaville originates in a one-day symposium, “Reframing Cinema Histories”, which was organised at University College Cork in March 2013. The aim of the event was to bring together a select group of scholars working on a range of historical projects and, through presentations of specific case studies and a round table discussion, highlight the variety of methodological approaches that may be adopted by the researcher studying and writing about cinema history [Reframing Cinema Histories: Editorial by Pierluigi Ercole and Gwenda Young, Alphaville, Issue 6, 2013]

And the new journal issues just keep on coming! Today, Film Studies For Free links to a very high quality issue of special interest to film historians and others working in film historiography: Alphaville's latest offering on Reframing Cinema Histories.

Utter brilliance from start to finish, IFSFFHO...


Alphaville, Issue 6, Winter 2013: Reframing Cinema Histories: 

• Editorial by Pierluigi Ercole and Gwenda Young (Issue 6 Editors) Articles:

• "A Taste in Pictures": The Second Birth of Cinema in Cork by Denis Condon, National University of Ireland Maynooth
• Understanding Dutch Film Culture: A Comparative Approach by Judith Thissen, Utrecht University
• "The Greatest Film of the Fascist Era": The Distribution of Camicia nera in Britain by Pierluigi Ercole, Oxford Brookes University
• Exploring Racial Politics, Personal History and Critical Reception: Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust (1949) by Gwenda Young, University College Cork
• An Advertiser's Dream: The Construction of the "Consumptionist" Cinematic Persona of Mercedes Gleitze by Ciara Chambers, University of Ulster
• The Politics of Independence: The China Syndrome (1979), Hollywood Liberals and Antinuclear Campaigning by Peter Krämer, University of East Anglia
• What is the Value of a Technological History of Cinema? by Lee Grieveson, University College London

Book Reviews:

1. A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove, by John Spong (2012) Reviewer: Matthew Carter, University of Essex
2. Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video, by Akira Mizuta Lippit (2012) Reviewer: Niall Flynn, Independent Scholar
3. Men and Masculinities in Irish Cinema, by Debbie Ging (2013) Reviewer: Barry Monahan, University College Cork

[Book Reviews Editor: Ian Murphy]

Conference Reports:

1. World Cinema On-Demand: Film Distribution and Education in the Streaming Media Era
2. Queen's University Belfast, 15–16 June 2012; 26 June 2013; 19 September 2013 Reporter: Alexandra Kapka, Queen's University Belfast
3. Revisiting Star Studies, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, 12–14 June 2013 Reporter: Jennifer O'Meara, Trinity College Dublin
4. A Star is Born: Cinematic Reflections on Stardom and the "Stardom Film", King's College London, 13 September 2013 Reporter: Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg, King's College London

[Reports Editor: Yuanyuan Chen]

More about → Reframing Cinema Histories: ALPHAVILLE Issue 6

ALPHAVILLE Issue 3: Sound, Voice and Music

Framegrab from Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)

In his discussion of the work of Hal Ashby ['When is the Now in the Here and There?'], Aaron Hunter contributes to the emerging body of scholarship on the technique of “trans-diegesis”. Taking Ashby’s Coming Home (1978) as a case study, Hunter shows how Ashby’s use of trans-diegetic music—music that crosses narrative layers—forms part of a consistently playful approach to cinematic form and functions on several levels: as a tool that allows for a merger between moments in time, as a device to create a transition between incongruent events within the diegesis, or as mechanism to create a temporal confluence between apparently sequential events. [Alphaville, 3, 2012 Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine]

 
Once again, Film Studies For Free salutes the online journal Alphaville. Its latest issue, just out, treats the important topic of sound, voice and music in film and television and boasts some excellent contributions.

FSFF enjoyed them all, but particularly liked Michael Dwyer's The Same Old Songs in Reagan-Era Teen Film and Michael Charlton's Performing Gender in the Studio and Postmodern Musical, along with the discussion of Hal Ashby's film by Aaron Hunter. There are also some great book reviews and rewarding conference reports, too, perhaps most notably James MacDowell's detailed discussion of  The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures.

All the contents are linked to below.


Alphaville, Issue 3, Summer 2012
Sound, Voice, Music Edited by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine

Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine

• The Same Old Songs in Reagan-Era Teen Film by Michael D. Dwyer, Arcadia University
• Performing Gender in the Studio and Postmodern Musical by Michael Charlton, Missouri Western State University
• When is the Now in the Here and There? Trans-diegetic Music in Hal Ashby’s Coming Home by Aaron Hunter, Queen’s University Belfast
• Beneath Sci-fi Sound: Primer, Science Fiction Sound Design, and American Independent Cinema by Nessa Johnston, University of Glasgow
• Cultural Innovation and Narrative Synergy in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet by Ioana Literat, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California
• Emotion Capture: Vocal Performances by Children in the Computer-animated Film by Christopher Holliday, King’s College London

Book Reviews Edited by Jill Murphy

• Media and Memory, by Joanne Garde-Hansen (2011) Reviewer: Elena Caoduro, University of Southampton
• Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen, by Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong (2011) Reviewer: Fiona Lee, City University of New York – The Graduate Center
• Music Video and the Politics of Representation, by Diane Railton and Paul Watson (2011) Reviewer: Antonio Sanna, Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Italy)
• Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview, by Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty and Jochen Eisentraut (eds.) (2009) Reviewer: Penny Spirou, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia)
• Seeing Through Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood Film Scores, by Peter Franklin (2011) Reviewer: K. A. Wisniewski, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (USA)
• Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir, by Robert Miklitsch (2011) Reviewer: James A. Wren, San José State University

Reports Edited by Ian Murphy

• Dysfunctionalities. Annual Conference of the German Society for Media Science (GfM) Postdam, Germany, 5-8 October 2011 Reporter: Patricia Prieto Blanco, Huston School of Film and Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway
• The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Historiography and Theory of Cinema Montreal, Canada, 1-6 November 2011 Reporter: Daniel Fitzpatrick, DAH, National University of Ireland, Galway
• The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures University of Kent, Canterbury, 21-22 January 2012 Reporter: James MacDowell, University of Warwick

More about → ALPHAVILLE Issue 3: Sound, Voice and Music