FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

Insightful interview (in English) with filmmaker and academic Clio Barnard about her experimental documentary The Arbor on the life and work of Andrea Dunbar, British writer of the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob, too. The Arbor was one of Film Studies For Free's author's favourite films seen in 2011 (interview December 5, 2011)

Not since its December 2008 blog entry A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs has the otherwise intrepid Film Studies For Free ventured into the rather crowded, online territory of end-of-year lists.

But, as it signs off on its seasonal break until the first few days of 2012, FSFF thought the time was right for a listing of links to its favourite, openly accessible, online Film Studies resources in 2011.

Thanks so much to all who worked hard to bring you these openly accessible treasures in the first place. And thanks also, dear readers, for being there to appreciate them.

FSFF very much looks forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

1. Top seven film and moving image studies history resources online in 2011: 
1. The Colonial Film Project archive plus two freely accessible chapters by those involved in the project: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 32 sample pages; and Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 25 sample pages
2. Media History Digital Library
3. The Turconi Project
4. EU Screen
5. European Film Gateway
6. The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories
7. The Kracauer Lectures website
2. Top five, most consistently brilliant Film Studies bloggers:
1. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson for Observations on Film Art
2. Luke McKernan for The Bioscope (also see McKernan's two new ScoopIt! projects: The Bioscope and Screen Research)
3. Roland-François Lack for The Cine-Tourist, The Daily Map and The BlowUp Moment (also see The Autopsies Group website) and also on Twitter
4. Dan North for Spectacular Attractions (also see The Cinema of Puppetry) and also on Twitter
5. Tie between Michael J. Anderson and Lisa K. Broad for Tativille and Ten Best Films; and  Omar Ahmed for Ellipsis
3. Best new Film Studies blog: Katherine Groo's Half/Films
4. Best 'media studies approaches to film and moving image studies' blog - tie between:
1. Just TV by Jason Mittell (also on Twitter)
2. Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style by Anne Helen Petersen (also on Twitter)
3. The Chutry Experiment by Chuck Tryon (also on Twitter)
4. The Negarponti Files by Negar Mottahedeh (also on Twitter and Facebook)
5. Most consistently original, Film and Moving Image Studies writer active online - a tie between: 
1. Adrian Martin (e.g. see all the links here)
2. Nicholas Rombes (e.g. see here and here)
3. Amanda Ann Klein (also see here)
4. David Bordwell
5. Kristin Thompson (also see here and here)
6. Jeffrey Sconce (also see here)
6. Best Film Studies informed, commercial film criticism website: Alternate Takes
7. Best new online film journal in 2011 - a tie between:
1. LOLA edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu
2. ALPHAVILLE edited by Laura Rascaroli and others at the University of Cork
3. JOAN'S DIGEST edited by Miriam Bale
8. Best recently established online academic Film Studies journal: MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism
9. Top twelve established, online, (mostly) English language, Film Studies journals:
1. Screening the Past
2. Film-Philosophy
3. SCOPE
4. Jump Cut
5. Senses of Cinema
6. MEDIASCAPE
7. Participations
8. Bright Lights Film Journal
9. CINEPHILE
10. Offscreen
11. La Furia Umana 
12. World Picture Journal
13. For links to one hundred more journals (including some brilliant, primarily non-English language journals, like Transit: Cine..., see here)
10. Most generous, Open Access Film Studies author: Thomas Elsaesser for the below freely accessible e-books and for the hundreds of further resources linked to from his website:
1. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), A Second Life : German Cinema's First Decades (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
2. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
3. Elsaesser, Thomas,  Jan Simons, Lucette Bronk (eds), Writing for the Medium: Television in transition (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
4. Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
5. Elsaesser, Thomas, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
6. Elsaesser, Thomas, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
11. Best online cinephile news and criticism site: MUBI Notebook (thanks so much to David Hudson and Daniel Kasman for their brilliant work)
12. Best cinephile salon site - a tie between:
1. Dave Kehr's place
2. Girish Shambu's place
13. Best seven multimedia/multiplatform/multichannel-style film and moving image studies websites:
1. FlowTV
2. In Media Res 
3. Moving Image Source 
4. Screen Machine 
5. Screen Culture
6. Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture 
7. Critical Studies in Television
14. Most impactful online Film Studies work in 2011 - a tie between:
1. Tim Smith's work on how movie viewers watch, showcased here as well as on his blog Continuity Boy and his research site.
2. Matthias Stork's video essays on Chaos Cinema (see FSFF's original post on this)
3. Aitor Gametxo's video essay: Variation: THE SUNBEAM, David W. Griffith, 1912
4. Steven Shaviro's work on Post-Cinematic Affect: see here for lots of links
15. FSFF's favourite Film Studies academic links on Twitter: @filmdrblog (also see the Film Doctor's actual blog)
16. FSFF's favourite non-academic, film studies-informed, online film critics - a tie between:
1. Srikanth Srinivasan (also on Twitter)
2. Matt Zoller Seitz (also on Twitter
3. Kevin B Lee (also on Twitter here and here)
4. Jim Emerson (also on Twitter)
5. Jonathan Rosenbaum (also on Twitter)
6. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (also on Twitter)
7. Farran Smith Nehme (also on Twitter)
8. Marilyn Ferdinand and Roderick Heath (also on Twitter here and here) and see Rod's blog
9. Anne Billson (also writing for the Guardian and on Twitter)
10. David Cairns (also on Twitter)
17. FSFF's ten favourite FSFF blogposts (and blogpost clusters) in 2011: 
1. On 'Affect' and 'Emotion' in Film and Media Studies
2. Double Vision: Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend and ¡Viva Raúl Ruiz!
3. V.F. Perkins on FILM AS FILM and More Victor Perkins Video Interviews Online from Saarbruecken 
4. The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey 
5. The Tree of Links: Terrence Malick Studies 
6. Ingmar Bergman Studies 
7. Viewing Modes and Mise en Scene: 50 YEARS ON by Christian Keathley and The Obscurity of the Obvious: On the Films of Otto Preminger 
8. On Figural Analysis in Film Studies 
9. Liquid Atmospherics: On the cinema of Wong Kar-wai 
10. Its own video essay posts: Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE (1944); Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love; Links on videographical film criticism, editing, 'intensified continuity', 'chaos cinema', 'hapticity' and (post) cinematic affect; and Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film Studies 
18. FSFF's most read post in 2011 by some distance was "An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011
19. Most popular resource at FSFF: Open Access Film E-books List
20. Best search engine for Open Access Film Studies (and other Arts and Humanities resources): JURN (thanks, as ever, to the indefatigable David Haden)

More about → FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

Are you now or have you ever been a non-anglophone film blogger?

HarryTuttle -- he of one of Film Studies For Free's favourite film blogs Screenville, based in Paris (France!) -- is seeking greater contact with non-English language speaking (or not only English-language speaking) film bloggers - in the first instance with ones from 'Iran, China/Hong Kong, [...] Africa, Taiwan, South Korea, The Philippines, Thailand, Argentina, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, India, Russia'.

Tuttle's aim is both simple and highly laudable: the greater internationalization of critical film discourse by expanding the voices contributing to it, as well as by connecting those voices up much more effectively.

I dream of a blogosphere we could navigate to meet film lovers from any [...] country, and be able to read their thoughts on cinema, in their own language, or translated (one way or the other). I talked about this project for a long time now (here for example), without being able to discover new blogs out there on my own, so I hope to find some help in a collective effort for everyone interested in this endeavour. All help is welcome if you share this concern to meet foreign film bloggers.

The project is connected (as per the link in the quote) to some comments made by Adrian Martin in a FilmKrant article last November:

Almost every film magazine on the Net sticks to an old, pre-WWW format: reviews of current film releases, the latest Film Festivals and events and books, some general reflections on cinema and its cultural context. But the idea of the 'local' reigns supreme: when a new film reaches your city, that's when you devote serious attention to it - for the sake of your local audience. But why should it matter, any longer, whether You, the Living premieres in Cannes in 2007 or Melbourne in 2008 or Iceland in 2010? Cyber-magazines still refuse to face the implications of their global address; they are afraid to throw open their topics and co-ordinates.

[...]

[T]he film magazine of the future will be both a generator and an organiser of those critiques.

[Also see the related blog post Nomad Cinephilia (Adrian Martin)]

Great stuff! For its part, to begin with, Film Studies For Free has contributed what it hopes will be a useful link for Screenville's project: one to the website Global Voices Online which has a film feed HERE.

But, if you can help or simply want to find out more about this project, please visit Harry at Screenville tout de suite!

More about → Are you now or have you ever been a non-anglophone film blogger?