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Two x FRAMES: 'The Political Western Beyond Cold War Frontiers' and 'Promotional Materials'

Diposting oleh good reading on Sabtu, 21 Desember 2013

Film scholar Tim Bergfelder giving a talk which is embedded at the latest issue of Frames

Today, Film Studies For Free rounds up two, very fine, 2013 issues of the e journal Frames. Feast your eyes on all the links below.

The latest issue on the political western is just out. The earlier issue, on film and television promotional materials, will form part of a long in preparation bumper FSFF collection on paratextuality that will now appear in the new year, along with other (very long in preparation) posts: on the magnificence of Caboose, a film studies publisher with a marvellous attitude to freely available content; on découpage; and on many other topics.... 2013 has proved to be just too short a year to cram all this in.

There's still one more FSFF entry to go before the holidays, though, so please look out for that on Monday. In the meantime, happy solstice!


Frames, Issue 4, December 2013: Commies and Indians: The Political Western Beyond Cold War Frontiers 

 

Editorial
Letter from the Editor By Heath Iverson

Feature articles
Video Supplement
P.O.V.

Frames, Issue 3, May 2013: Promotional Materials 
 

Editorial
Feature articles
Interviews
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Cinemagogic Echoes? Len Lye's FREE RADICALS (1958) and Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's HOUR OF THE FURNACES (1968)

Diposting oleh good reading on Senin, 18 Februari 2013


A real-time comparison, for scholarly purposes, of Len Lye's 1958 experimental animation FREE RADICALS and the opening minutes of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's 1968 Grupo Cine Liberación activist film  LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS/HOUR OF THE FURNACES

[Len] Lye's Free Radicals (1958) […] is a black and white scratch animation short, cut to the insistent rhythmic accompaniment of an African drum solo.* It immediately calls to mind the unforgettable opening scenes of Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas' Third Cinema classic La hora de los hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (1968).** While equally exciting and radical, these strikingly similar films hint at the extent to which the world and the political landscape had changed in the decade between their respective release dates, and between then and now. We have no way of knowing if Getino and Solanas knew of Len Lye's film. We know, however, that films exchange ideas, talking to one another across time, and that the conversation between radical aesthetics and radical politics is ongoing, with both daring to 'make it new' and set the world on its feet, by turning it upside down. [Jerry Whyte, 'Free Radicals', CineOutsider.com, December 11, 2011. Online at: http://www.cineoutsider.com/articles/stories/f/free_radicals_1.html]
A demonstration and a lesson, The Hour of the Furnaces imports into cinema the affirmative aesthetics of the written political treatise. A collective ideal informs the whole film. It anticipates a liberated time. It’s not the product of a single voice but of a chorus of poems (Marti, Césaire), manifestos (Fanon, Guevara, Castro, Juan José Hernández Arregui) and films (by Fernando Birri, Joris Ivens, Nemesio Juárez). It conjoins the powers of didacticism, poetry and agogy (the agogic qualities of a work concern its rhythmic, sensible, physical properties – a notion suggested by the French aesthetician Etienne Souriau). Stylistically, the film uses all possible audiovisual techniques, from flicker to contemplative sequence shots (for instance, the final three-minute shot that reproduces a picture of the dead Che Guevara’s face with his eyes wide open), from collage to direct cinema, from blank screen to animated effects, from the rigours of the blackboard to the hallucinogenic properties of the fish-eye, from classical music to anglophone pop hits. Cinema is an arsenal and here all its weapons are unsheathed. [Nicole Brenez, 'Light my fire: The Hour of the Furnaces', Sight and Sound Magazine, 8 March 2012. Online at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/light-my-fire-hour-furnaceshttp://www.bfi.org.uk/news/light-my-fire-hour-furnaces]
'Agogics' is a musical term that designates the use of agogic accents, that is accents consisting in a lengthening of the time-value of the note. The philosopher Étienne Souriau extended the use of the term to include all the arts existing in time. He defined 'agogics' as \what characterizes an artwork that takes place in time, through movement, and specifically through the creation of a fast or slow pace, or the use of different rhythms.' For musicians, the notion is related to gesture, to physical movements, to a bodily interaction with their instrument, to a sense of speed, an energy, a precise handling of a piece. [Christian Jacquemin et al, 'Emergence of New Institutions for Art-Science Collaboration...' [date unknown], Online at: seadnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/jacquemin_final1.pdf. Hyperlinks added by FSFF] 
Souriau developed his idea of the agogic as an explicit reaction to the ‘rather banal description [of] arts of space in contrast to the phonetic and cinematic arts’. [Of] interest is Popper’s use of the term to describe the quality of temporal pattern that he identifies in a range of works. At one extreme [..].] is the velocity and dramatic choreography of a Len Lye installation. The term agogic conflates speed, acceleration and duration and would appear to be a significant aspect of kinetic form. [Jules Moloney, Designing Kinetics for Architectural Facades: State Change (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011), p. 64.]
Film Studies For Free's author has been a tad busy elsewhere lately - and there will be lots to catch up with at this blog in due course.

But today FSFF is thrilled to present its (by distance) contribution to a teach-in which took place earlier today. This video was produced in a few hours this morning, using readily available materials for quotation (see above and below), in solidarity with a campus occupation that you can choose to read more about here.

Staff and students of media and cultural studies, working in a deeply personal, activist capacity, gave short presentations on their research and thinking about ideas of resistance, occupation and neoliberalism in the context of the university and beyond, in order to consider how research in their fields might offer new and diverse perspectives on activism and resistance.

FSFF has always liked its politics, like its film studies, to have rhythm and timing, so its research project today foregrounds those elements. You can find its author's scholarly discussion of this kind of "real-time" videographic comparison here: 'Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies', MEDIASCAPE: Journal of Cinema and Media, Winter 2013.

FSFF has devoted a number of previous entries to online and openly accessible resources on Third Cinema and revolutionary aesthetics in the past. See especially this bumper post and this more recent one. 

And you can find the two films quoted from above, in low-res online video versions, as per the details and links below.

More about → Cinemagogic Echoes? Len Lye's FREE RADICALS (1958) and Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's HOUR OF THE FURNACES (1968)
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Corrected entry (February 12): FRAMEWORK: The Journal of Cinema and Media

Diposting oleh good reading on Selasa, 15 Januari 2013

'Snakes&Funerals' by Emily Jeremiah, James S. Williams and Gillian Wylde. Taking Jean-Luc Godard’s canonic film Le Mépris / Contempt (1963) as a starting-point, Snakes&Funerals set out to explore the queer possibilities of image and sound, especially of colour and of ‘straight’ repetition. First published in Frames, Issue 1, July 2012.

Film Studies For Free [thought it had] had a lovely surprise today. It found, through Google Scholar, that NINE full issues of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media (including the most recent five issues) were freely accessible through the Digital Commons of its publisher Wayne State University Press. It jumped to the pleasing conclusion (encouraged by the use of the word Commons + free access), that this great journal had turned to open access publishing.

Then, on February 11, FSFF received a very courteously worded email with the following message from a very nice representative of Wayne State University Press:

Unfortunately, this journal is not open access, and we have no plans to make it so at this time. I'm writing to you so that you have the correct information about Framework. 


When you visited the site, BePress (administrator of Digital Commons) had not yet activated the toll-access barrier to the journal content. That was an error on our part, one that we have since rectified. Those who click on the links you have posted on your blog will not be able to download the article for free. Instead, a $5 fee is charged before access is granted. I apologize for the confusion [...].
$5 is much, much cheaper than most traditional "gated" online academic publication access, for sure. But FSFF must apologise to its readers -- who, up until a short while ago, will have been able to access contents for free -- for drawing a premature conclusion.

More about → Corrected entry (February 12): FRAMEWORK: The Journal of Cinema and Media
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On Liberation Cinema and Raymundo Gleyser

Diposting oleh good reading on Minggu, 08 April 2012

This is a documentary film about the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer, Argentine filmmaker, kidnapped and murdered by that country’s military dictatorship in 1976.

Through Raymundo’s life, we follow the story of Latin American revolutionary cinema and the liberation struggles of the 60’s and 70’s. Raymundo was one of the major architects of the militant cinema, yet after his  "disappearance" he fell into oblivion.
It is essential that the new generation rediscovers his life and works which are a source of inspiration today more than ever. This documentary will bring back what the CIA and the Latin American dictatorships couldn’t destroy: the memory, the ideals and the courage to tell the truth.

We worked during four years on the research, recovery of archives and editing of the film, getting the support of Jan Vrijman Fund (IDFA - Netherlands), Fondation Altercine (Canada), and National Endowment of the Arts (Argentine). [Note by Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina; hyperlinks added by Film Studies For Free]
Film Studies For Free is delighted to present today a wonderful, full-length documentary about revolutionary Latin American cinema. It is a moving and hugely informative film about the inspirational life and filmmaking of Raymundo Gleyser, founder of the Cine de la Base movement. The Google translation of Spanish-language Wikipedia page about Gleyser may be read here. 

There's very little written about Gleyser in English, so this subtitled version of Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina's film is an incredibly valuable resource. Thanks so much to them for making it freely watchable online. A marvellous work of generosity in a number of ways. You can read a little about the documentary here.

Another, must-see film by Arduito and Molina that this filmmaking couple has just made available online for free, in an, as yet, unsubtitled version, is Nazión (2011) about the origins of the Argentine military dictatorship.

Below, FSFF has linked to its previous, related, entries of links to studies of Latin American and other radical and revolutionary cinema, together with some relevant full-length films viewable online. 

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¡Viva Raúl Ruiz!

Diposting oleh good reading on Kamis, 29 September 2011


Video essay-tribute by Catherine Grant
The above is a very short study of a sequence from Diálogos de exiliados/Dialogues of Exiles (France, 1974/5), an extremely low-budget film written and directed in Paris by the late and much lamented Raúl Ruiz. Diálogos was the first film to be made by that filmmaker in exile from Chile, with many of his countrymen and women, after Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup d'état against the legally elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende. Controversially, at the time, it wasn't exactly the most conventional, or, despite its satire, the most crowd-pleasing 'exile' or 'solidarity' film that could have been made in those circumstances. And yet, as Zuzana Pick wrote of it, "[Diálogos] can fulfill the function that Ruiz intended for it by provoking dialogue. With its clear and evocative title, this first work of Chile’s cinema of resistance inserts itself into the struggle against fascism."
A few weeks back, Film Studies For Free published a sincerely felt tribute to the recently deceased Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. The tribute took the customary, if somewhat impersonal, form for this blog: a long list of links to openly-accessible scholarly and critical writing on Ruiz's work.

Shortly after that list appeared, though, FSFF's author was asked for a more personal response to the work of one of her favourite film artists: to contribute some thoughts on a beloved moment in Ruiz's films to a wonderful collection of such thoughts -- by critics, academics, and people who knew the Chilean filmmaker -- currently being published in serial form at the MUBI Notebook.

This was how the above, little video tribute came into being. The links to all the contributions are being added below as they, also, appear online.

Many thanks to David Phelps for his wonderful work of commissioning and curation. It was a real pleasure, albeit quite a poignant one, to take part, and an honour to have one's work published in such excellent, international company.

COMING SOON

  • The Golden Boat (1990) by C. Mason Wells
  • Poetics of Cinema (1994/2005) by Matthew Flanagan
  • Shattered Image (1998) by Zach Campbell
  • “Los dos caminos” / “The Two Paths” by Cristián Sánchez Garfias
  • Time Regained (Le temps retrouvé, 1999) by David Pendleton
  • Cofralandes, Chilean Rhapsody (2002) by Quintín
  • Klimt (2006) by Adrian Martin
  • A Closed Book (2010) by David Phelps
  • Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) by Carlos Losilla
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    Double Vision: Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend

    Diposting oleh good reading on Jumat, 19 Agustus 2011

    Updated Sunday August 21, 2011
    The late Raúl Ruiz in conversation with Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli at the University of Aberdeen in 2007. One of the most prolific directors of the last 50 years, having written over 100 plays before starting in the cinema, Ruiz films have been characterized as ironic, surrealistic and deeply experimental.

    Here is my own theoretical fiction: in the waking dream that is our receiving the film, there is a counterpart; we start projecting another film on the film. I have said to project and that seems apt. Images that leave me and are superimposed on the film itself, such that the double film - as in the double vision of Breton traditions - becomes protean, filled with palpitations, as if breathing. [Raúl Ruiz, 'The Face of the Sea (In Place of an Epilogue)', Poetics of Cinema 2]
    Every time that a general theory or a fiction is elaborated I have the impression that ... there is a painting stolen, a part of the story or puzzle missing. The final explanation is no more than a conventional means of tying together all the paintings. It’s like the horizon: once you reach it, there is still the horizon.  [Raúl Ruiz in L’Hypothèse du Tableau Volé/The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Ruiz, 1979)]
    ... Raul Ruiz's comments on filmmaking outside metropolitan centres are revealing. He tells us how, when he was studying theater and film in Santiago with the aid of American textbooks, he was surprised to find "that the films we loved the most were badly made" - because they were not made according to the set of assumptions about action and behaviour in Central Conflict Theory." This led him to strategise that "every film is always the bearer of another, a secret film" and that "the strong points [of the inexplicit film] are found in the weak points of the apparent one." This argument seems to be not just about how fascination presents itself in film; it also suggests that fascination (Ruiz calls it "the gift of double vision that we all possess") is not just an aesthetic project: It is, above all, a social and political project. [MA Abbas, 'Dialectic of Deception', Public Culture, 1999, v. 11 n. 2, p. 347-363, p. 360 citing Ruiz, A Poetics of Cinema, trans. by Brian Holmes, (Paris: Editions Di Voir, 1995); p. 11, 111, and 109 respectively:]
    Film Studies For Free is very sad to pass on news of the death of Chilean film director Raúl Ruiz in Paris after a long illness. 

    Film critic Dave Kehr points to the report in Le Monde in which Ruiz's producer, François Margolin, informed the French newspaper that the director "was in the midst of finishing the editing of a film he has shot on his childhood in Chile ... And he was preparing another film in Portugal, on a famous Napoleonic battle.”  Perhaps we will get to see the first of these tantalising projects. FSFF very much hopes so.

    Below is this blog's sincerely felt tribute to the brilliant Ruiz, one of the most memorable and talented of prolific filmmakers (and one of the most prolific of filmmakers against the odds): a list of links to online studies of the director's work, as well as to interviews with him, and writing by him. Further links will continue to be added here in the days and weeks to come.

    Links to posthumous tributes to Ruiz, along with other material about his films, are being gathered by David Hudson at the Mubi Notebook.

    Update (August 21, 2011): The list below was expanded with many additional entries, including, at the foot of the post, a number of documentaries about (and/or recordings of) Ruiz. Of particular note is the documentary Exiles: Raoul Ruiz Chilean Film Director (BBC, 1988, directed by Jill Evans), which contains many marvellous excerpts from Ruiz's films. 

    Also see Jonathan Rosenbaum's marvellous tribute to Ruiz, 'Ruiz Hopping and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites'.

    You can watch Ruiz's Three Crowns of a Sailor (1983, circa 117 mins) online at present for free, too!

    And Girish Shambu has just posted "A Ghost at Noon",  a remarkable and very personal tribute to Ruiz by Adrian Martin (author or editor of many of the essays below).






    Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen: Tuesday 13th June 2006, Mr Raoul Ruiz, the distinguished film director spoke to us in broad terms about his work in film (he has directed almost 100 films) and film theory (he is the author of a multi-volume book entitled "The Poetics of Cinema").
    More about → Double Vision: Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend
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