They came from the Twitterfeed...

Image from El sur/The South (Víctor Erice, Spain, 1983), subject of a recent blogpost by Kevin B Lee. See also Jo Evans, 'A Myth in Time: Victor Erice's El sur', Journal of Hispanic Research, 4 (1995-96) and Miguel Marías, 'El sur', Senses of Cinema, Issue 38, 2006.

Below is a quite horrendously long (and hyperbolic) list of live links to online and freely accessible items of note (or of quirk) as already delivered up to e-posterity (or e-phemerality) by Film Studies For Free's occasionally very vibrant Twitterfeed.

If you'd like to be almost constantly supplied with news of such magnificent resources as these (-- in 140 characters or fewer -- in real time -- as they excitedly happen --), please subscribe to the ever so abbreviated & abridged @filmstudiesff HERE. Ta!

• One of the best (and best written) reviews of film in 2009 from the ever excellent Tativille (Michael J Anderson): http://bit.ly/6lKAhv
• Yes, indeed: "oh God" (thanks to Matthew Flanagan @flanaganm): - 'The Top 10 Conservative Movies of the Last Decade' http://bit.ly/5zhsqw
• Another highly compelling decade list, this time by Chuck Tryon (@chutry) 'My Decade in Movies, Part I' http://bit.ly/8s6t8T
• Another one of the best: Michael Z Newman/Zigzigger's fab Faves 2009 http://zigzigger.blogspot.com/2009/12/faves-2009.html
• Lots of great links at Girish Shambu's blog: 'Framework on Cinephilia, etc.' http://bit.ly/5KNChe
• 7 video interview segments featuring François Truffaut discussing his filmmaking - from Scott Myers @GoIntoTheStory http://bit.ly/8fNnQP
• GREAT film decade list by Miriam Bale (House Next Door): 'Shifted Images [Not the best or worst but the most enduring]' http://bit.ly/8HCxru
• Great stuff from Jim Barratt: 2009: 'a [film business] year in rear view' http://bit.ly/5HmhUY(@BigPicResearch)
• David Cairns' (@dcairns) Hitchcock Year comes to a (near) end - http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/the-pattern-is-complete/
• Andrew Sarris's CONFESSIONS OF A CULTIST ON THE CINEMA (1955, 1969) Internet Archive Free Download: http://bit.ly/8U0AS7
• Some excellent pointers from Omar Ahmed at E L L I P S I S to hard to find INDIAN CINEMA on YOUTUBE - http://bit.ly/8ukI1F
• Some great film articles in new Journal of the Imaginary and Fantastic : Vol.1 No.6 : Talking Animals http://bit.ly/5uYknt
• Some end of the decade brilliance from Bordwell & Thompson: 'The ten-plus best films of … 1919' - http://bit.ly/8MWeaY   
• Wonderful continuing exploration of Single Take Titles -- 'Part 4: The POV' -- thanks to @ArtoftheTitle- http://bit.ly/5cjtum 
• Fab new December issue of online Irish Journal Of Gothic and Horror Studies http://bit.ly/4B4vfC
• Properly up and running online now: new Senses of Cinema, Issue 53: http://bit.ly/422jIv (RT @theauteursdaily& @sallitt)  
• Acquarello (@filmref) posted some notes on Renate Günther's book on Marguerite Duras (MUP) http://tinyurl.com/yfx2q8m (RT @theauteursdaily) 
• Brilliant mapping out in Chuck Tryon's MLA '09 paper: “Blogging, Scholarship, & the Networked Public Sphere” (@chutry) http://bit.ly/4T2oB4
• More truly great stuff from @drnorth: 'Gaia and Dolls: James Cameron’s Avatar' at Spectacular Attractions - http://bit.ly/5MDMUb
• Aaron Cutler on Louis Feuillade atThe House Next Door: 'The Treasure of Tih Minh' http://bit.ly/8gkdZy
• A particularly good article by Adrian Danks on the New Iranian Cinema, Close-Up and the “Film-on-film” Genre http://bit.ly/4z6HTG
• Great post @ E L L I P S I S on KANCHENJUNGHA (Satyajit Ray, 1962): 'Why accept a life of endless submission?' (indeed) http://bit.ly/8MRbB4
• Great blogpost by Kevin B. Lee (@alsolikelife) on Erice's El sur (1983): http://bit.ly/5NeJix
• Check out James MacDowell's great blog, The Lesser Feat, for a lovely tribute to Robin Wood http://bit.ly/8vO8W4       
• Jonathan Rosenbaum's 1974 great Sight & Sound review of THEORY OF FILM PRACTICE by Noël Burch http://bit.ly/5yJ29d
• Monumentally BRILLIANT essay on Gamer, ('As radical as reality itself': dir. Neveldine/Taylor, 2009) by Steven Shaviro: http://bit.ly/5fjUY0  
• Wonderful post by Luke McKernan at The Bioscope on fashion in silent cinema: 'Catwalks and pavements' http://bit.ly/7SBdii 
• MUST-read (Via @theauteursdaily & @chutry): Jason Sperb is brilliant on on cinephilia & Gondry's BE KIND REWIND http://bit.ly/6fGIPv 
• Great post by Chris Cagle at Category D: A Film and Media Studies Blog: 'The Influence Fallacy' http://bit.ly/78xeoq
• Great article by Lisa Gye on Baz Luhrmann's Australia and McLean's Wolf Creek in new Fibreculture Journal Issue 15 http://bit.ly/6AlCRA
• 'Magic, Medicine & Technology in Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Gibson’s The Neuromancer & Slonczewski’s Brain Plague' pdf http://bit.ly/4sRiha
• Martha Nochimson on Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux in latest issue of Cineaste Magazine http://bit.ly/4Na8XC    
• Matt Zoller Seitz's great video essay on Clint Eastwood and revenge (Pts 1 and 2) at Moving Image Source http://bit.ly/5C06nn 
• 'A CINEMATIC FABLE': Adrian Martin on Jacques Rancière's essays (large [and beautiful...] pdf) http://bit.ly/4yHgAx
• Reverse Shot Direct Address #1: Sally Potter on direct address, her new film Rage & the power of the filmed image.http://bit.ly/7M5Sii
• Richard Brody's 'Best Films of the Decade' @tnyfrontrow is one of the most interesting lists I've read so far http://bit.ly/5lZjiW 
• Interesting observations on the world premiere of Born of Hope, an independent, fan-made cinematic prequel of Lord of the Rings http://bit.ly/6tNi2O 
• Viewing (3'40"). AO Scott (http://bit.ly/69zAyh) on Chris Marker's LA JETÉE (1962, http://bit.ly/sl6tH) (RT @theauteursdaily)
• And, to conclude, some shameless self-promotion... Catherine Grant's latest post at Directing Cinema - 'Auteurist collaborations: Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville' http://bit.ly/6NkQzM

More about → They came from the Twitterfeed...

A Heart of Gold: Pakeezah and the Hindi Courtesan Film

Click on the image of Meena Kumari, above, to link to the 'Chalte Chalte' sequence in Pakeezah (music by by Ghulam Mohammed, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kaifi Azmi, Kamal Amrohi, Kaif Bhopali, sung by Lata Mangeshkar).

One of the favourite films of Film Studies For Free's author is Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah/Pure Heart (1971), a magnificent Hindi melodrama and one of the most accomplished and beautiful films in the transnational 'courtesan with a heart of gold' film genre.

As one of FSFF's favourite scholarly film weblogs is Michael J. Anderson's Tativille, you can possibly imagine how delighted it was to find that the centrepiece feature of Indian Auteur's third issue is Anderson's remarkable essay on Pakeezah. (IndianAuteur is an excellent online journal edited by Nitesh Rohit, Supriya Suri and others).

What better way to celebrate the felicitous conjunction of all of these elements, then, or to encourage FSFF readers to explore them all, than a little list of Friday links to online and freely accessible studies touching on Pakeezah, Kamal Amrohi, Meena Kumari (pictured above) and the Hindi Courtesan Film.

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Body and Soul: Pakeezah and the Parameters of Classical Indian Cinema', IndianAuteur, Issue 3, May 2009
• Bart Barendregt, 'The changing art of seduction: ritual courtship, performing prostitutes, erotic entertainment', International Institute for Asian Studies, Newsletter 40, Spring 2006
• Anustup Basu, Mantras of the Metropole: Geo-televisuality and Contemporary Indian Cinema, PhD e-thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2005
• Jolanda Djaimala Boejharat, 'Indian courtesans: from reality to the silver screen and back again', International Institute for Asian Studies, Newsletter 40, Spring 2006
• Gregory D Booth, 'Making a Woman from a Tawaif: Courtesans as Heroes in Hindi Cinema', New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 9, 2 (December, 2007): 1-26
• Gregory D Booth, 'Traditional Content and Narrative Structure in the Hindi Commercial Cinema', Asian Folklore Studies, Volume 54, 1995: 169-190
• Wendy F. Hsu, 'Between Narrative and Expressive, Fantasy and Melodrama in Bombay (Bollywood) Film', Virginia Review of Asian Studies, July 2003
• Anandam P. Kavoori and Christina Joseph, 'Nagina Conversations with a snake', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000, pp. 86-91
• Coonoor Kripalani, 'What's Love Got to Do WIth It? – Bollywood Courtesans & Hollywood Prostitutes', Inter-Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2002 (Scroll down to Chapter 6)
• Neepa Majumdar, 'Doubling, stardom, and melodrama in Indian cinema: the "impossible" role of Nargis', Post Script, June 22 2003
• Vijay Mishra, 'Bollywood Cinema: A Critical Genealogy', Asian Studies Institute, 2006
• Aswin Punathambekar, We Are Like This Only: Desis and Hindi Films in the Diaspora, MSc e-thesis, MIT, 2003
• Anjali Ram, 'Framing the feminine: diasporic readings of gender in popular Indian cinema', Women's Studies in Communication, March 22 2002
• Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
• Sangita Shresthova, 'Strictly Bollywood? Story, Camera and Movement in Hindi Film Dance', MSc e-thesis, Princeton, 2003
• Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, 'The Prostitution Questions(s): (Female) Agency, Sexuality and Work', re/productions: Issue#2, April 1999
• Valentina Vitali, 'The Families of Hindi Cinema: A Socio-Historical Approach to Film Studies', Framework, Vol. 42, 2000
• Leda Ward, 'Images of a Decolonizing India: Bollywood’s Tawai’f and the Postcolonial Muslim', e-Thesis, Barnard College, Dance Department, Columbia University, Fall 2008

More about → A Heart of Gold: Pakeezah and the Hindi Courtesan Film

Some May Must-Reads

Film Studies For Free is back from its travels with some brief but essential recommendations for reading. Consider yourselves compassionately instructed to enjoy the following gems from the brilliant film-blogosphere:

• Michael J Anderson at Tativille has just posted a stunning take on the palimpsestic texture of the tremulously gripping film Cloverfield (an FSFF digi-horror favourite along with Rec). Equally unmissable is Tativille's preceding post: a full-length footnoted essay by Anderson called 'What is Cinema? More than Cinema: The Ontological Discourse of Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees (1994)'
• Dan North at Spectacular Attractions continues his wonderful experiments with scholarly film blogging with an insightful and almost live critical analysis of Don't Look Now. Also see his great recent post on She... North concludes each of his posts with rich links lists on the films, to boot.
• Fascinating and highly informed discussion over at Jonathan Rosenbaum's site about the new edition of André Bazin's What is Cinema? (translated by Timothy Barnard) - 'What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, What is Film Study?)'. Also see Girish's compelling thread on this edition.
  
• Thanks to Chris Cagle's (in itself) thought-provoking post 'Theory-Praxis Divide', FSFF got to read Tim Burke's amusing and highly lucid enquiry into why (sometimes/most times) those who teach (theory) can't do (creative practice), 'Why Can’t You?'
• A (customarily) beautifully written and illustrated post from Luke McKernan at The Bioscope : 'An excellent dumb discourse' treats Shakespeare in early cinema.
• Finally (for today), Benjamin Wright's site Aspect Ratio has moved bloghost: the move is accompanied by a lovely post on approaches to music in film, 'Hearing Beyond Words'. There seem to FSFF to be a few teething problems with the new server but you can access the post still at the Wordpress site.

P.S. Let's actually finish with a Call For Papers for an annual conference hosted by an Open Access film and visual studies periodical much loved by FSFF: World Picture Journal.

The 2009 World Picture Conference

October 23-24, 2009
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, Oklahoma

Style

Keynote Speakers

Edward Branigan
(University of California, Santa Barbara)

&

Alexander García Düttman
(Goldsmiths College)

We believe the question of style is in need of new thinking, across media, disciplines and modes of thought. We hope, therefore, to receive abstracts that reflect or extend out of any number of approaches to the question of style (theoretical, philosophical, historical, formal, generic, etc.). Our conference (like our journal) is inflected by a strong interest in the intersection of political and aesthetic questions concerning cinema, visual art, and visual theory, but we encourage the submission of abstracts that do not necessarily occupy themselves with the cinema and/or the visual.

Proposals (250 words), including a brief bio, should be sent to Brian Price at brian.price@okstate.edu by June 1

More about → Some May Must-Reads