Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory

Picture of Sergei Eisenstein, pioneering Soviet film director and theorist

Thanks to Michał Oleszczyk, Film Studies For Free found out about a truly fascinating, and highly promising, project: the Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory.

The Seminar is

an open network of film scholars interested in rediscovering and re-reading historical contributions and debates on film. Special attention is devoted to early writings on cinema, as well as more recent reconsiderations of film's role in the new media landscape. The Permanent Seminar is affiliated with the Film Theory in Media History book series published through the Amsterdam University Press.

The very high quality of the project is guaranteed by its coordinators -- Jane Gaines (Columbia University) and Francesco Casetti (Yale University & University of Milan) --  as well as by its scientific board: Dudley Andrew (Yale University); Chris Berry (University of London-Goldsmiths); André Gaudreault (University of Montréal); Vinzenz Hediger (University of Bochum); John McKay (Yale University); Markus Nornes (University of Michigan); David Rodowick (Harvard University); Philip Rosen (Brown University); Leonardo Quaresima (University of Udine); Maria “Masha” Salazkina (Concordia University, Montréal); and Petr Szczepanik (University of Brno).

There's not much up on the website yet as the project has just begun, but FSFF recommends that its readers take a look and then keep on going back for further film-theoretical delights of the kind linked to below.

• Sergei Eisenstein, "Forthcoming] "Unpublished “Notes for a General History of Cinema” – New York, 2010

• Francesco Orestano, "Motion Pictures and Scholastic Education" (Italy, 1914)

• Giovanni Papini, "Philosophical Observations on the Motion Picture" (Italy, 1907)

• Mario Ponzo, "Certain Psychological Observations Made During Motion Picture Screenings" (Italy, 1911)

• Emilio Scaglione, "Motion Pictures in Provincial Towns" (Italy, 1916)

• Enrico Thovez, "The Art of Celluloid" (Italy, 1908)

• Giuseppe d’Abundo, "Concerning the Effects of Film Viewing on Neurotic Individuals" (Italy, 1911)

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Seeing the join: on film editing

In memoriam Dede Allen  

(December 3, 1923 – April 17, 2010)

The below entry was originally published the day before Dede Allen died. Allen was the highly innovative editor of such notable films as Bonnie and Clyde, The Hustler, Rachel, Rachel, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Night Moves, Slap Shot, Reds, The Breakfast Club and Henry and June. 

Read Matt Zoller Seitz's wonderful tribute to Allen: Dede Allen: The woman who turned film violence into poetry; as well as Julia Wright's informative article, 'Making the Cut: Female Editors and Representation in the Film and Media Industry', CSW Update Newsletter, March 2009, which mentions Allen.

Dissolve by Aaron Valdez (2003): "Found footage film constructed of hundreds of dissolves taken from old educational films and reassembled to create a meditation on our own impermanence". 

Read also Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004

Film Studies For Free presents a much requested links list today, one to openly accessible, high quality scholarly studies of film editing. Without further ado, let's jump cut straight to it:

• 'The Art of Film Editing', Special Issue of P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998 - PDF containing:
• Søren Kolstrup, 'The notion of editing'   
• Sidsel Mundal, 'Notes of an editing teacher'  
• Mark Le Fanu, 'On editing'
• Vinca Wiedemann, 'Film editing – a hidden art?'
• Edvin Kau, 'Separation or combination of fragments? Reflections on editing'
• Lars Bo Kimersgaard, 'Editing in the depth of the surface. Some basic principles of graphic editing'
• Martin Weinreich, 'The urban inferno. On the æsthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver'
• Scott MacKenzie, 'Closing arias: Operatic montage in the closing sequences of the trilogies of Coppola and Leone'
• Claus Christensen, 'A vast edifice of memories: the cyclical cinema of Terence Davies',
• Richard Raskin, 'Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard's Breathless'

• André Bazin, 'Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?' (1953), Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 2, January 2002

• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, 'CHAPTER 1: Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business', Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 2010, 9th ed.)

• Marina Burke, 'Eisenstein and the challenge of sound', Kinema, (date unknown)

• Noël Carroll, 'Cognitivism, Contemporary Film Theory and Method: A Response to Warren Buckland', Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Spring 1992

• Tom Conley, 'Review of Sam Rohdie, Montage', Screening the Past, Vol. 23, 2008

• Roger Crittenden, 'The historical perspective: how the function of editing has evolved', from The Thames and Hudson Manual of Film Editing (London: Thams and Hudson, 1981)

• Mary Debrett, 'Review of Valerie Orpen. Film editing: the art of the expressive. London and New York: Wallflower. 2003', Screening the Past, 2004

• Barry Dornfeld, 'Chronicle of a Summer and the Editing of Cinéma vérité', Visual Anthropology, Vol. 2, 1989

• Sarah Hatchuel, 'Leading the Gaze: From Showing to Telling in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Hamlet', Early Modern Literary Studies, 6.1, 1999

• Ils Huygens, 'Deleuze and Cinema: Moving Images and Movements of Thought', Image [and] Narrative,  Issue 18, September 2007

• James S. Hurley, 'David Bordwell's Iron Cage of Style', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 26, 1998

• Gal Kirn , 'Kuhle Wampe: Politics of Montage, De-montage of Politics?', Film-Philsophy, 11.1, 2007

• 
  
  Martin Lefebvre and Marc Furstenau, 'Digital Editing and Montage: The Vanishing Celluloid and Beyond', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies

  Volume 13, Number 1-2, Automne 2002, p. 69-107 (for other articles on montage and editing in the same journal issue in French see here)

• Jason Lindop, 'Eisenstein: ‘Intellectual Montage’,  Poststructuralism, and Ideology', Offscreen Journal, Volume 11, Issue 2 (February 28, 2007)  

• Gabrielle Murray, 'Knowing Icons and Transforming Experience: Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva México! (1932)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 52, 2009

• Christine E. Nothelfer, Jordan E. DeLong and James E. Cutting, 'Shot Structure in Hollywood Film', Indiana Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science 4 (2009) 103-113, 2009

• Jennifer Proctor, 'Différance, the Spectral, and the Work of Mourning in Aaron Valdez’s dissolve', 2004

• William D. Routt, 'Poubelle, ma belle, Rouge, 6, 2005

• Tim J. Smith, 'An Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing', PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2005 (see also descriptive statement here) 

• Murray Sperber, 'Eisenstein’s October', from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977, pp. 15-22

• Martin Stollery, 'Review of Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive by Valerie Orpen', Scope, Issue, February 2005

• Donato Totaro, 'Sam Rohdie on Montage', Offscreen Journal, January 2008

• Yuri Tsivian, 'What is wrong with the beard : Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible as an eccentric tragedy',  Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 11, n° 2-3, 2001, p. 255-270

• Mike Wayne, 'Review of Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice by Don Fairservice and Film Production Theory by Jean-Pierre Geuens', Scope, August 2003

• Julia Wright, 'Making the Cut: Female Editors and Representation in the Film and Media Industry', CSW Update Newsletter, March 2009

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