New FILM-PHILOSOPHY!!

Frame grab from Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). Read Ben Tyrer's article on film noir and this film in the latest issue of Film-Philosophy

Film-Philosophy 17.1 (2013): the second to last of the brilliant new film studies e journal issues out in December with which Film Studies For Free will present you in 2013. And the daddy of them all.

There will be two more FSFF posts to appear before the holidays, that is, if you can tear yourself away from reading the below articles and reviews.

Articles

• The Facts Before Our Eyes: Wittgenstein and the Film Noir Investigator Keith Dromm PDF
• 'How Can It Not Know What It Is?': Self and Other in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner  Andrew Norris PDF
• Ghost in the Shell 2, Technicity and the Subject  Daniel Hourigan PDF
• Throne of Blood and the Metaphysics of Tragedy  Henry Somers-Hall PDF
• 'That Man Behind the Curtain': Atheism and Belief in The Wizard of Oz  Justin Remes PDF
• Film Noir as Point de Capiton: Double Indemnity, Structure and Temporality Ben Tyrer PDF
• Shooting for Dead Time in Gus Van Sant's Elephant William Little  PDF
• Bad Memories: Haneke with Locke on Personal Identity and Post-Colonial Guilt Justine McGill PDF
• 'Misfortune's Image': The Cinematic Representation of Trauma in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967)  Mark Cresswell, Zulfia Karimova PDF
• The Ister: Cinema's Interruption Linda Daley PDF
• Otherness and the Renewal of Freedom in Jarmusch's Down by Law: A Levinasian and Arendtian Reading Mark Cauchi  PDF
• Mimesis Reconsidered: Adorno and Tarkovsky contra Habermas  Simon Mussell PDF
• Nietzsche and Bad Conscience on Mosquito Coast James Edward Gough, Sue Matheson PDF
• The Closure of the 'Gold Window': From 'Camera-Eye' to 'Brain-Screen' Morgan M Adamson  PDF
• A New/Old Ontology of Film Rafe McGregor  PDF
• Internal Needs, Endoxa and the Truth: An Aristotelian Approach to the Popular Screenplay Daniel McInerny PDF
• Extreme Makeover: Art and Morality in The Shape of Things Joseph H. Kupfer  PDF
• 'Even the Ghost was more than one person': Hauntology and Authenticity in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There Carolyn D'Cruz, Glenn D'Cruz PDF
• I'm Glad I'm Not Me: Subjective Dissolution, Schizoanalysis and Post-Structuralist Ethics in the Films of Todd Haynes  Helen Darby PDF
• Truth, Autobiography and Documentary: Perspectivism in Nietzsche and Herzog Katrina Mitcheson  PDF
• Left-over Spaces: The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers  Benoit Dillet, Tara Puri PDF
• Homeopathic Repetition and Memories of Underdevelopment: The Dialectic of Subjective Experience and Objective Historical Forces  Trevor James Cunnington PDF
• Charcoal Matter with Memory: Images of Movement, Time and Duration in the animated films of William Kentridge  David H. Fleming PDF
• The Philosophical Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes: The Silent Films of Stan Brakhage   James Michael Magrini PDF
• 'The Epidermis of Reality': Artaud, the Material Body and Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc Ros Murray PDF

Book Reviews

• Hsiu-Chuang Deppman (2010) Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film (Iris Chui Ping Kam) PDF
• Alain Badiou (2013) Cinema and Alex Ling (2010) Badiou and Cinema (David H. Fleming) PDF
• Timothy Corrigan, ed. (2012) Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. 2nd Edition (Shawn Loht) PDF
• Michael Charlesworth (2011) Derek Jarman (Justin Remes) PDF
• Sharon Lin Tay (2009) Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practices (Sheryl Tuttle Ross) PDF
• Todd Berliner (2010) Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (John Anthony Bleasdale) PDF
•  M. Keith Booker (2011) Historical Dictionary of American Cinema (Glen Melanson) PDF  
• Shawn C. Bean (2008) The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking (Carrie Giunta) PDF
• Julian Petley (2011) Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Zach Saltz) PDF
• Suzanne Buchan (2011) The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom (Micki Nyman) PDF
• Khatereh Sheibani (2011) The Poetics of Iranian Cinema: Aesthetics and Modernity After the Revolution (Paul Elliott) PDF

More about → New FILM-PHILOSOPHY!!

CINEPHILE on Contemporary Realism: Post-Classical Hollywood, Mumblecore, Neo-Neorealism,Tonacci, Reichardt, Greengrass, Van Sant

Framegrab from Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010). Read 'Beyond Neo-Neo Realism: Reconfigurations of Neorealist Narration in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff' by James Lattimer here (large PDF)

[I]n the last decade or so, a reappraisal of realism has risen to the fore. Sparked by the demise of cinema’s ontological basis (the existential link between film’s corporeal nature and its real-world referent) and the renewed pertinence of Bazin’s cardinal question, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?, realism has been re-framed as a generative area of study in a parlous digital age, enabling new (or newly situated) discourse on cinematic reportage, authenticity, and representation. Recent scholars who have embraced realism’s epistemological subscription—yet managed to traverse the epistemic fissure of a positivist approach—have recognized moments of contingency in contemporary art house and marginal cinemas, rooted either in classical tenets (spatio-temporal integrity, social extension, moral despondence) or emergent ones (“haptic” visuality, profilmic exclusivity, ethical engagement). This issue of Cinephile is situated at the intersection of such discussions. [Editors' Note, Cinephile, Fall 2011]

Film Studies For Free is delighted to announce that the Fall 2011 issue of the great Canadian online film journal Cinephile -- a special issue on realism -- is now available for free download, following its usual period of availability only in a print edition.

The table of contents is given below, and you can download the PDF of the issue here. Below the list of articles, you can find the next Cinephile Call For Papers for an upcoming issue on the New Extremism.

For more on Bazinian, Neo-Bazinian, and Post-Bazinian Film Studies, please check out FSFF's entry as well as other posts accessible via its film realism tag.



Cinephile Fall 2010 Table of Contents

• Editor’s Note
• Contributors
• 'Reenactment and A-filiation in Andrea Tonacci’s Serras da Desordem' by Ivone Margulies
• 'Post-Classical Hollywood Realism and “Ideological Reality”' by Richard Rushton
• 'The Sound of Uncertain Voices: Mumblecore and the Interrogation of Realism' by Justin Horton
• 'The Aesthetics of Trauma: Authenticity and Disorientation in Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday' by Marc Di Sotto
• 'Beyond Neo-Neo Realism: Reconfigurations of Neorealist Narration in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff' by James Lattimer
• 'Gus Van Sant’s Gerry and Visionary Realism' by Tiago de Luca

Call For Papers

Cinephile 8.2, Contemporary Extremism

Deadline for draft submission: September 1, 2012
The last decade has marked an escalation in the treatment of extreme subject matter in European cinema, heralded by the graphic violence and sexuality of French New Extremism at the turn of the millennium and increasingly apparent in films from across Europe. While extreme violence and graphic sexuality have long played a part in the European film tradition (Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel 1929); I Am Curious (Yellow) (Sjöman 1967), Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci 1972), Salò (Pasolini 1975), etc.), these contemporary films are exceptionally abrasive in the use of transgressive material, employing the sensory capabilities of cinema to impact the spectator on a visceral level. Scholars such as Martine Beugnet, Tanya Horeck, Tina Kendall, and Tim Palmer have pointed to New Extremism as a burgeoning cinematic trend that seeks to re-examine our relationship to the body and to the film screen itself. Onscreen penetrative sex, sexual violence, and explicit gore are central features of films like Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible (2002), Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009), and Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001), to name a few films that can be situated within the New Extremist canon.
    With the Fall 2012 issue of Cinephile, we wish to interrogate the parameters and significance of New Extremism. In doing so, we are willing to extend our questions beyond Europe with the hopes of inquiring into Extremism as a global phenomenon. Is New Extremism a feature of European film in particular, prefigured by the European film tradition, or has its influence extended beyond Europe’s borders and bled into other global cinemas? Is Extremism really “new,” or is it merely a contemporary incarnation of old provocations and transgressions? What is the impact of these films, and why should we be watching them (if we should be watching them at all)?
Starting points might include:

• Extremism outside of Europe: Asian cinema (Ichi the Killer (Miike 2001), Old Boy (Park 2003), etc.), North American cinema (Deadgirl (Sarmiento & Harel 2008), August Underground (Vogel 2001), etc.), and other global cinemas
• The legitimacy of New Extremism: extreme content in art cinema vs. extreme content in exploitation, horror, and grindhouse cinemas
• Controversy, notoriety, and censorship (Antichrist, A Serbian Film (Spasojevic 2010), The Human Centipede 2 (Six 2011), etc.)
• New Extremism and horror cinema (High Tension (Aja 2003), Calvaire (Du Welz 2004), Inside (Bustillo & Maury 2007), Martyrs (Laugier 2008), etc.)
• Spectatorship, affect, and corporeality
• Approaches to New Extremism: Genre, mode, movement, or trend?
• Theory and New Extremism

We encourage submissions from graduate and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty.
    Papers should be between 2000-3500 words, follow MLA guidelines, and include a detailed works cited page, as well as a short biography of the author.  Submissions and inquiries should be directed to: submissions@cinephile.ca
    Cinephile is the University of British Columbia’s film journal, published with the continued support of the Centre for Cinema Studies. We are proud to feature a new article by Sarah Kozloff in our Spring 2012 issue. Previous issues have featured original essays by such noted scholars as K.J. Donnelly, Barry Keith Grant, Matt Hills, Ivone Margulies, Murray Pomerance, Paul Wells, and Slavoj Žižek. Since 2009, the journal has adopted a blind peer-review process and has moved to biannual publication.  It is available both online and in print via subscription.

• The Voice-Over (Issue 8.1)
• Contemporary Realism (Issue 7.2)
• Reassessing Anime (Issue 7.1)
• Horror Ad Nauseam (Issue 6.2)
• Sound on Screen (Issue 6.1)
• The Scene (Issue 5.2)

More about → CINEPHILE on Contemporary Realism: Post-Classical Hollywood, Mumblecore, Neo-Neorealism,Tonacci, Reichardt, Greengrass, Van Sant

Welcome to NECSUS, A New Open Access Film and Media Studies Journal

Frame grab from The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999). Read Anna Backman Rogers's article on this film at the new NECSUS journal.

Hot off the press! To coincide with its annual conference, taking place in Lisbon from tomorrow, the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) has just launched its new online and open access journal NECSUS. Feast your eyes on the marvellous contents of its first issue on Crisis below.

It has been added to Film Studies For Free's permanent listing of online and open access film and media studies journals. And now FSFF's author will read it! Yay!

Enjoy the conference, fellow NECS members!


Spring 2012: Launch Issue

• Editorial Necsus
• The gaps of cinema by Jacques Rancière
• Twitter as a multilingual space: The articulation of the Tunisian revolution through #sidibouzid by Thomas Poell and Kaouthar Darmoni
• Policing the people: Television studies and the problem of ‘quality’ by Sudeep Dasgupta
• The photo-novel, a minor medium? by Jan Baetens

Special Section: Crisis

• Sea-change: Transforming the ‘crisis’ in film theory by Robert Sinnerbrink
• A sideways view of the film economy in an age of digital piracy by Ramon Lobato
• Portraying the global financial crisis: Myth, aesthetics, and the city by Miriam Meissner
• Universal, Germany, and All Quiet on the Western Front: A case study in crisis historiography by Michael Wedel
• Ephemeral bodies and threshold creatures: The crisis of the adolescent rite of passage in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant by Anna Backman Rogers

Book Reviews:

• Crisis and capitalism in contemporary Argentine cinema reviewed by Fausto Appiolaza
• Towards a new media archaeology? A report on some books and tendencies reviewed by Petra Löffler

Conference Reviews:

• Moving image and institution: Cinema and the museum in the 21st century, University of Cambridge reviewed by Beatriz Bartolomé Herrera
• The impact of technological innovations on the historiography and theory of cinema, La Cinémathèque québécoise, Montreal reviewed by Trond Lundemo

Festival + Exhibition Reviews:

• Busan Cinema Forum 2011 reviewed by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck
• Atlas. How to carry the world on one’s back? reviewed by Teresa Castro

More about → Welcome to NECSUS, A New Open Access Film and Media Studies Journal

New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

Links to all items are set out for you below.

• The Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 2
  

• Rush to Judgement: Imperfect Justice in Fury (1936)
  Stella Bruzzi
• You Only Live Once (1937)
  V. F. Perkins
• Going Straight: The Past and the Future in The Return of Frank James (1940)
  Edward Gallafent
• The Woman in the Window (1944)
  Mark Rappaport
• Guess-Work: Scarlet Street (1945)
  Adrian Martin
• The Big Heat: Acts of Violence (1953)
  Peter William Evans
• Human Desire (1954)
  Deborah Thomas
• Lang With Lacan: The Power of the Gaze in Moonfleet (1955)
  Peter Benson

• Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of Découpage
  Christian Keathley
• The Texture of Performance in Psycho and its Remake
  Alex Clayton
• The Cry of the Owl: Investigating Decision-Making in a Contemporary Feature Film
  John Gibbs

This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.

More about → New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

Issues of KINEMA (Spring and Fall 2010)

Image from Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007). Read Alessandro's Zir's article on this film for Kinema (Spring 2010)

Film Studies For Free continues with its roundup of recent offerings from online film studies journal by catching up with the last two issues posted at Kinema: a Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media.

Lots of good stuff here, but FSFF particularly enjoyed Alessandro Zir's essay on Paranoid Park, Antonio Sanna on the connections between the Alien series of films and Bram Stoker's Dracula novel, and Des O'Rawe's study of Godard's Film Socialisme.

Spring 2010

'The Art of Creative Scriptural Extrapolation [on Celil B. De Mille's films]' by Anton Karl Kozlovic
'Reproducing the Fin-de-siècle Gothic with Techno-Gothic Vampires' by Antonio Sanna
'Film, Arts and Culture as Community Outreach Tools' by Victor S. O. Yu
'Interview with Gary Tooze' by Jan Uhdeby
'Going to the Movies in Egypt' by Mustafa Mahmoud Yousry
'The Desire for History in Lars von Trier’s Europa and Theo Angelopoulos’ The Suspended Step of the Stork' by Angelos Koutsourakis
'Non-Realism and Ontology in Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park' by Alessandro Zir

Fall 2010

'The Fraternity of Metaphors: Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme' by Des O'Rawe'
'Interview with Kevin Brownlow on the Making of Winstanley' by Tony Tracy
'Targeting Alien Filmmakers in 1930s Hollywood' by J. Emmett Winn
'Woody Allen as Impossible Cassandra' by Alessandro Zir
'The Language and Genealogy of Early Spy Cinema' by Lukasz Boron
'Interview with Singapore Filmmaker Boo Junfeng' by Yvonne Ng
'The New Vicissitudes of Auteur Cinema' by Christina Stojanova

More about → Issues of KINEMA (Spring and Fall 2010)

Fruity film and television studies links!

Due to a devastating case of total PC meltdown (following painful months of on-and-off digital trouble and strife), Film Studies For Free brought you nothing new for over a week...

But now it's back.  Its mission is possible once again. And this time it's brought to you by a new, more reliable, and thoroughly inspirational computer host (think Scottish fruit). 

FSFF never wants to go away again (until vacation time at least). But it may struggle for a wee while, while its owner learns the cool new language of her wonderful new i-World.

Anyhoo, here are some choice links to celebrate its stylish return:

• One of FSFF's favourite film blogs -- Videoarcadia -- is back after a hiatus. Lots of things to read, but FSFF really liked the little post on Gus Van Sant's Milk.
• The new online issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is now available with Martin Roberts on Euro-American subcultural fascination with Japan; Michael Z. Newman on the ethical issues around P2P filesharing; Ben Aslinger on 'popular music and urban place'; Serra Tinic on the US Life on Mars and the cultural politics of imports and adaptations; Jeffrey Sconce on nineties comedy; Carly A. Kocurek on youth, video gaming and the law; Daren C. Brabham on 'Crowdsourced advertising'; and Priscilla Peña Ovalle on racialised bodies in Mexican Breakfast.
• A brilliant stream of posts over at Film For The Soul, thanks to its (now, spinoff) project 'Counting Down the Zeroes: The Noughties in all their glory'. There are twelve great guest posts on noughties films, so far (on Requiem for a Dream, X-Men, Pollock, You Can Count on Me, Traffic, Yi Yi/ A One and a Two, Werckmeister Harmonies,  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, InuYasha, High Fidelity, Boiler Room, and Battle Royale). If you'd like to contribute your own essay on a noughties film, please contact Ibetolis of Film for the Soul asap.
• If your bag is very heavyweight but brilliant philosophy with your film and literary studies (think Wittgenstein, Blanchot, Lacan, T.S.Eliot, plus David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci...), do venture a visit to the remarkable blogspot of Michael Grant, one of FSFF's owner's friends and former colleagues. For the as yet uninitiated, two good posts to try out first are: 'David Cronenberg: Style and Extremity' and  'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead'. 
• Other great blog posts from AP at the Movies ('Barbara Stanwyck, Cowboy Queen' and 'Waiting on a train [on The Train Robbers, 1972]''); Cinebeats (on Yusako Matsuda); Spectacular Attractions (on M. Night Shyamalan's underrated film Unbreakable); the peerless Tativille on Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees; and lots of wonderful recent posts at Shooting Down Pictures (FSFF loved the one on the 'best documentary of the decade').

More about → Fruity film and television studies links!