On Embodiment and the Body: New Issue of CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

Above, a recording of composer Simon Fisher Turner and sound artist Black Sifichi's live performance of SFT's score for Derek Jarman's 1994 film Blue at Glasgow's Tramway Theatre in 2008.  Below, a brief excerpt from Vivian Sobchack's article 'Fleshing out the image: Phenomenology, Pedagogy, and Derek Jarman's Blue', CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 3 (2012) PDF]

Today, most graduate students are in such a hurry to “professionalize” and “talk the talk” of their disciplines that they often forget to attend to their own experience of “seeing” and “listening” — or they devalue it. Instead, they rush to quote others, and describe their objects of study through a range of “floating signifiers” that tend to overdetermine and foreclose their objects and their descriptions before the latter have even really begun. Hermeneutically sophisticated yet overly dependent upon “received knowledge,” these students are also secretly insecure and worried that everyone else ‘knows’ more than they do — and intellectually aware of “the death of the subject,” they are highly suspicious of their own “subjective” experience. They ignore, mistrust, and devalue it as trivial, mistaken, or irrelevantly singular — this last, a false, indeed arrogant, humility that unwittingly rejects intersubjectivity, sociality, and culture. Thus, ignoring the apodicticity (or initial certainty) and presence of their own lived-bodies engaged in being-in-the-world (and in the cinema), their thought about the world (and cinema) has no existential ground of its own from which to empirically proceed. Phenomenological inquiry affords redress to this contemporary situation: it insists we dwell on the ground of experience before moving on to more abstract or theoretical concerns, that we experience and reflect upon our own sight before we (dare I pun?) cite others. [From Vivian Sobchack, 'Fleshing out the image: Phenomenology, Pedagogy, and Derek Jarman's Blue', CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 3 (2012) PDF]

Happy new year to all of Film Studies For Free's readers! FSFF has unfortunately been slowed up in its efforts to bring you its list of Best Online Film Studies Resources in 2012. That should now be published around the end of next week.

But, in the meantime, there are a few new journal-issues to catch up with, including a strong contender for the category of Best Single Issue of an Online Film Studies Journal in 2012: the below, latest offering from CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image on Embodiment and the Body. And, in this blog's humble opinion, Vivian Sobchack's article, from which FSFF has cited above, would be a shoo-in for Best and certainly most important 2012 Article...

CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 3 (2012) PDF

EMBODIMENT AND THE BODY edited by Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco

• EDITORIAL: CINEMA, THE BODY AND EMBODIMENT, 1-9 PDF 
• ABSTRACTS, 10-18 PDF

Articles

• FLESHING OUT THE IMAGE: PHENOMENOLOGY, PEDAGOGY, AND DEREK JARMAN’S BLUE, 19-38 PDF  by Vivian Sobchack
• SEDUCTION INCARNATE: PRE-PRODUCTION CODE HOLLYWOOD AND POSSESSIVE SPECTATORSHIP, 39-61 PDF by Ana Salzberg 
• A PHENOMENOLOGY OF RECIPROCAL SENSATION IN THE MOVING BODY EXPERIENCE OF MOBILE PHONE FILMS, 62-83 PDF by Gavin Wilson
• CINEMA OF THE BODY: THE POLITICS OF PERFORMATIVITY IN LARS VON TRIER’S DOGVILLE AND YORGOS LANTHIMO’S DOGTOOTH, 84-108 PDF by Angelos Koutsourakis
• THE BODY OF IL DUCE: THE MYTH OF THE POLITICAL PHYSICALITY OF MUSSOLINI IN MARCO BELLOCCHIO’S VINCERE, 109-123 PDF by Marco Luceri
• EIJA-LIISA AHTILA: THE PALPABLE EVENT, 124-154 PDF byAndrew Conio
• UPSIDE-DOWN CINEMA: (DIS)SIMULATION OF THE BODY IN THE FILM EXPERIENCE, 155-182 PDF by Adriano D’Aloia 
• EMBODYING MOVIES: EMBODIED SIMULATION AND FILM STUDIES, 183-210 PDF by Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra 
• EXISTENTIAL FEELINGS: HOW CINEMA MAKES US FEEL ALIVE, 211-228 PDF by Dina Mendonça 
• THE BODY AS INTERFACE: AMBIVALENT TACTILITY IN EXPANDED RUBE CINEMA, 229-253 PDF by Seung-hoon Jeong

Interview

• A PROPOS D’IMAGES (A SUIVRE): ENTRETIEN AVEC MARIE-JOSE MONDZAIN [FR.], 254-271 PDF Conducted by Vanessa Brito

Conference Reports

• CONFERENCE ROUND-UP SUMMER 2012: POWERS OF THE FALSE (INSTITUT FRANÇAIS, LONDON, 18-19 MAY), SCSMI CONFERENCE (SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE/NYU, NEW YORK, 13-16 JUN.), FILM-GAME-EMOTION-BRAIN (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM, 14-21 JUL.), AND FILM-PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE (QUEEN MARY – UNIVERSITY OF LONDON/ KING’S COLLEGE LONDON/KINGSTON UNIVERSITY, 12-14 SEPT.), 272-283 PDF by William Brown

Special Section

• CÍRCULOS E POÉTICAS EM FILMES LITERÁRIOS DE FERNANDO LOPES, 284-300 PDF by Eduardo Paz Barroso

More about → On Embodiment and the Body: New Issue of CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

In the Hands of Fate: Existentialism in Film

Image from I’m a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) [See Sam Mithani's thesis, The Hollywood Left: Cinematic Art and Activism in the 1930s for reflections on the existentialism of this film's director]

Viewing (30:43): In the Hands of Fate: Existentialism in Film (October 18, 2010)

Cinema condenses actions and their consequences. It puts the viewer into someone else's shoes. Dilemmas tend to be urgent, up-close and personal: ergo, all films are existential. But several films in this year's [London Film Festival] programme specifically emphasise philosophical struggles with circumstance. Veiko Õunpuu's The Temptation of St Tony makes drama out of the very discourse of existential thought. Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods and Men follows monks whose faith is shaken by fear of execution. Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte links a dying man's end, to the fate of a lost kid (as in goat) and a felled tree. Finally, the dying man in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives accepts his fate yet the past makes its own demands on him. It's more than just mortal thoughts that brings these films together; it's a heightened sensitivity to our sense of purpose. We are very excited that directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Michelangelo Frammartino [joined] Dr David Sorfa (Senior lecturer in Film Studies at Liverpool John Moores University and managing editor of the journal, Film-Philosophy) on a panel chaired by Ian Haydn Smith, Editor of International Film Guide.

Film Studies For Free wanted to alert its readers to the above linked-to, wonderful BFI video on the topic of  existentialism and cinema. In its usual good faith, and as a perfect accompaniment, FSFF also brings you a little list of links to great, openly accessible, scholarly reading, much of it book-length, on the very same theme.

• Anders Albrechtslund, 'Surveillance pleasures: existentialism and ethics as represented in cinematic art' [Draft version], Author's Website, date unknown
• Tomas Axelson, 'Movies and Meaning: Studying Audience, Fiction Film and Existential Matters', Particip@tions, Volume 5, Issue 1, Special Edition (May 2008)
• Brian K. Bergen-Aurand, Seeing and the Seen: Post-Phenomelogical Ethics and the Cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Maryland, 2004  
• Jean-Philippe Derant, 'Existentialist Aesthetics', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009
• Marty Fairbairn, Cinema as Secular Church: A Phenomenological Typology and Hermeneutics, PhD Thesis, McMaster University, 1995
• Robert Harvey, 'Sartre/Cinema: Spectator/Art That Is Not One', Cinema Journal, 30.3, 1991 
• Sam Mithani, The Hollywood Left: Cinematic Art and Activism in the 1930s, PhD Thesis, University of Southern California, 2007 
• Katherine V. Pettit, The truth and death of indexicality: photography, philosophy and cinema, MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2002 
• David C. Simmons, The Dysphoric Style in Contemporary American Independent Cinema, PhD Thesis, Florida State University, Spring 2005
• Benjamin 
P.
 Spencer
, '“Show Me How to See Things the Way You Do": Existentialism in Faith, Philosophy, and Film [on The Thin Red Line]', Honours Thesis, Whitman College, 2010
• Deborah A. Walker, Self-reflexivity and the construction of subjectivity in contemporary French cinema: Alain Resnais, PhD Thesis, University of Auckland, 2001
• Tony Williams, 'Power and Paranoia: 40s Hollwyood', from Jump Cut, no. 35, April 1990, pp. 73-77

More about → In the Hands of Fate: Existentialism in Film

Deleuzian film studies in memory of David Vilaseca

Image of Ingrid Bergman as Karin in Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Read 'Eruptions of God. Roberto Rossellini. Stromboli' by Corry Shores

For [French philosopher Henri] Bergson, the brain does not produce a representation of what it perceives. Perception is the mutual influence of images upon one another, of which the brain is only another image—it does not “produce” anything, but filters impulses into actions or non-actions. The implications for film are two-fold. By addressing the perceiving subject as one image among the world of images, Bergson steps outside models that locate perception and memory within the mind of the subject. I would further suggest, following [Gilles] Deleuze, that Bergson’s theory of matter allows us to see film not as a fixed representation, a concrete image of a “real” object, but as an image in its own right, with its own duration and axes of movement. What we might call the film-image thus occurs in the gap between subject and object, through the collision of affective images.

Deleuze’s formulation of the film-image as a mobile assemblage (sometimes a frame, sometimes a shot, a sound, or the film as a whole) lends itself to this reading. It refuses to reduce the physical image on the screen to a mere reproduction of an assumed “real” object it represents. Such a formulation similarly reevaluates the relationship between the concrete optical and sonic images that comprise the film. Rather than conceiving of each component as a “building block,” it allows for the shifting conglomerations of elements which are themselves dynamic and mobile. A film cannot be distilled to a structure that originates from outside itself. Instead, each film-image is contingent, particular, and evolving.

The distinction between the time- and movement-images becomes more clear in this context. Rather than a question of either content or form, the difference lies in their affective power, whether they are bent toward action, in the case of the movement image, or if they open into different temporal modalities. It is in this second case that the time-image falls, and it is here that Deleuze locates the creative potential of film. This potential does not exist solely within the physical image itself, however, but is contained as well in the modes of perception and thinking that it triggers. Much like the time-image, the mental faculty most attuned to the openness of time, according to Bergson, is that of intuition.

Amy Herzog, 'Affectivity, Becoming, and the Cinematic Event: Gilles Deleuze and the Futures of Feminist Film Theory', in Koivunen A. & Paasonen S. (eds),Conference proceedings for affective encounters: rethinking embodiment in feminist media studies , University of Turku, School of Art, Literature and Music, Media Studies, Series A, No. 49

Film Studies For Free lovingly presents its long list of links to online and openly accessible film-studies resources of note pertaining to the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Like lots of continental theorists invoked in Film Studies, 'Deleuze' has been somewhat of a moveable feast, but, as the links below testify, in recent years this particular feast has been a highly nourishing one for a variety of approaches to this discipline.

This FSFF entry is one of two posts to be dedicated to the fond memory of David Vilaseca, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Critical Theory at Royal Holloway, University of London. Professor Vilaseca tragically died in a road traffic accident in London on February 9, 2010. His achievements in life were many, as this touching obituary written by his good friend and mentor Professor Paul Julian Smith eloquently sets out. Both in person and in his writing he was an inspiration. He will be much missed.

FSFF's author had met David Vilaseca on a number of occasions over the years and is a keen follower of his brilliant work on queer, Catalan, and Hispanic culture. She wishes to express her sincere condolences to David's family, friends, and colleagues.

David Vilaseca had a particular interest in Deleuzian philosophy as well as in the critique of Deleuze's work by fellow French philosopher Alain Badiou. Three of his related essays are linked to below, and interested FSFF readers should also look out for his third book Negotiating the Event: Post-deconstructive Subjectivities in Spanish Literature and Film, to be published this Autumn, which will undoubtedly explore further the pertinence of Deleuze and Badiou's work for film studies.

Good Film and Cultural Studies-related Deleuzian websites:

• Rhizomes

• The Pinocchio Theory (Steven Shaviro)

• Radio Deleuze

• Immanence (Adrian Ivakhiv) (see especially the entries on 'Why Deleuze?' and 'ecology, Deleuze/Tarkovsky, and the time-image')

• Spittin' Change (Kara Keeling)

• Pirates and Revolutionaries (Corry Shores)

• Deleuze Cinema Project 1 (Corry Shores) 

• Differences and Repetitions blogspot and Differences and Repetitions wiki (Ted Striphas)

• Inmanencia

Deleuzian film studies:

• Carolyn Abbs, 'Virginia Woolf and Gilles Deleuze: Cinematic e-motion and the Mobile Subject', Interactive Media, Issue 1, 2005

• Lisa Åkervall, 'Cinema, Affect and Vision', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Don Anderson, 'Deleuze and Horror Film', rhizomes 11/12, fall 2005/spring 2006

• Dyrk Ashton, Feeling Time: Deleuze's Time Image and Aesthetic Effect', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Jeffrey A. Bell, 'Thinking with Cinema: Deleuze and Film Theory', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 1, 1997

• Garnet Creighton Butchart, 'Thinking Through Cinema: On Rodowick's Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 4, 2000

• Don Callen. 'Action and Image in The Time of the Dismal Tide', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Jinhee Choi, 'Bergson: Before the Deleuze', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 5 No. 35, November 2001

• Mary Flanagan , 'Mobile Identities, Digital Stars, and Post-Cinematic Selves', Wide Angle, 1999

• D.H. Fleming , 'Review: Patricia Pisters (2003) The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory Stanford: Stanford University Press', Film-Philosophy, 13:1, April 2009

• Theresa L. Geller, 'The Cinematic Relations of Corporeal Feminism', rhizomes 11/12, fall 2005/spring 2006

• Michael Goddard, 'Beauty Lies in the Eye (So Why Can't I Touch It?) [on 'Deleuze, Guattari and the Philosophy of Expression', special issue of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, guest edited by Brian Massumi ]', Film-Philosophy, No. 25, September 1998

• Catherine Grant, 'Cinesexuality [review of Patricia MacCormack's book]', Times Higher Education, December 18, 2008

• Markos Hadjioannou, 'Into Great Stillness, Again and Again: Gilles Deleuze's Time and the Constructions of Digital Cinema', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Amy Herzog, 'Reassessing the Aesthetic: Cinema, Deleuze, and the Art of Thinking', Film-Philosophy, Deleuze Special Issue, Vol. 5 No. 40, November 2001

• Amy Herzog, 'Affectivity, Becoming, and the Cinematic Event: Gilles Deleuze and the Futures of Feminist Film Theory', in Koivunen A. & Paasonen S. (eds),Conference proceedings for affective encounters: rethinking embodiment in feminist media studies , University of Turku, School of Art, Literature and Music, Media Studies, Series A, No. 49

• Will Higbee, 'Ungrounding the Narrative of Nation (Review: David Martin-Jones (2006) Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)', Film-Philosophy, 13:1, April 2009

• Jan Jagodzinski, 'Michael Haneke: The Spectatorship of Self-refleXivity; Between Lacan and Deleuze', 'The Scope of Interdisciplinarity' Conference, Center for Integrated Studies, November 2008

• John Johnston, 'Machinic Vision', Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 1. (Autumn, 1999), pp. 27-48

• Jeff Karnicky, 'Georges Bataille and the Visceral Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow', Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998

• Kara Keeling, 'Deleuze and Cinema', Critical Commons, 2010 ("The following selection of film clips from films discussed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze were compiled in the Fall of 2009 by the participants in Professor Kara Keeling's Critical Studies graduate seminar on Deleuze and Culture at the University of Southern California")

• Barbara M. Kennedy, 'Fugitive Spaces -- Between the Critical and the Creative: A Reply to Amy Herzog', Film-Philosophy, Deleuze Special Issue, Vol. 5 No. 41, November 2001

• Jeanne Marie Kusina, 'Difference, Repetition, Disappearance, and Death: A Deleuzian Consideration of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Matt Lee, 'Taking Deleuze (On)', Film-Philosophy, No. 33, October 1998

• Patricia MacCormack, 'Necrosexuality', rhizomes 11/12, fall 2005/spring 2006

• Patricia MacCormack on Pleasure, Perversion, Death and the Viewing Body e-book

• Laura U. Marks, 'Haptic Visuality: Touching with the Eyes', Framework" the Finnish Art Review, No. 2, 2004 (large pdf - scroll down to p. 79)

• David Martin-Jones, 'Site for Sore Eyes', Film-Philosophy, Volume 3 Number 15, April 1999

• Antonio Negri, 'On Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus', Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Volume 18, Number 2, 1995

• David Neo, 'Fractal Images of Memory in Mother and Son: Pt 1', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2001

• David Neo, 'Fractal Images of Memory in Mother and Son: Pt 2', Offscreen Journal, November 30, 2001

• Jakob Nilsson, ' Crystal Matter: Virtual Structures and the Search for Belief', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Jenny O'Connor, 'Quentin Tarantino: Gilles Deleuze's Cinematic "Falsifier"', rhizaomes 16, Summer 2008

• Tom O’Connor, ‘Uncontrollably Herself’: Deleuze’s Becoming-woman in the Horror Films of Michael Almereyda', Horror Studies, 1:1, 2010

• Edward R. O'Neill, 'Apprehending Deleuze Apprehending Cinema [on Der Film bei Deleuze/Le cinema selon Deleuze, edited by Fahle & Engell], Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1998

• Susan Pelle and Catherine Fox, 'Queering Desire/Querying Consumption: Rereading Visual Images of ‘Lesbian' Desire in Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art',thirdspace 6/1, 2006

• Claire Perkins, 'Becoming-democratic: Donnie Darko and other Recent Suburban Utopias', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Claire Perkins, 'Cinephilia and Monstrosity: The Problem of Cinema in Deleuze's Cinema Books', Senses of Cinema, No. 8, 2000

• Patricia Pisters, 'From Mouse to Mouse: Overcoming Information', Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998

• Richard I. Pope, 'In Kubrick's Crypt, a Derrida/Deleuze Monster; or, An-Other Return to 2001', Film-Philosopy, Vol. 7 No. 22, August 2003

• Gregg Redner, 'Dmitri Shostakovich's score for Kozintsev's Hamlet', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Jason Kelly Roberts, 'Review of The Virtual Life of Film by D.N. Rodowick [London: Harvard University Press, 2007]', Scope, Issue 13, February 2009

• D.N. Rodowick, 'Ethics in film philosophy (Cavell, Deleuze, Levinas)', Unpublished essay

• D.N. Rodowick, 'An Elegy for Theory' October, 121 (Summer 2007):  99-110

• D.N. Rodowick, 'Unthinkable Sex: Conceptual Personae and the Time-Image,' (In)Visible Culture 3 (2000)

• D.N. Rodowick, Webcast: from “Immanent Choreographies: Deleuze and Neo-Aesthetics,” Tate Modern, London, England, 21-22 September 2001

• Ilaria Serra, 'The Female Spectator’s Laughter: Anti- Oedipus to Free Female Spectatorship', Deleuze and Feminism special issue, edited by Claire Claire Colebrook, theory@buffalo.edu, no.8, 2003 (scroll down pdf to p. 100)

• Steven Shaviro, 'The Cinematic Body Redux', originally published in Parallax 14:1 (February 2008), 48-54, The Pinocchio Theory

• Steven Shaviro, 'Emotion Capture: Affect in Digital Film', Projections, Volume 1, Issue 2, Winter 2007: 63-82

• Steven Shaviro , 'The “Wrenching Duality” of Aesthetics: Kant, Deleuze, and the “Theory of the Sensible”', The Pinocchio Theory, November 10, 2007

• Robert Sinnerbrink, 'Time, Affect, and the Brain: Deleuze’s Cinematic Aesthetics', Film-Philosophy, 12:1, 2008

• Jacob Skeet, 'Woolf plus Deleuze: Cinema, Literature and Time Travel', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Jason Sperb, 'Time Passing in the Simulacrum of Videodrome', Intertheory, Vol. 3, 2006 

• Andreas Spiegl, 'Empire as Cinema', Afterall, Issue 8, Autumn/Winter 2003

• Melanie Swalwell, 'The Senses and Memory in Intercultural Cinema [on Laura U. Marks's The Skin of the Film]', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 32, 2002

• Michael Angelo Tata, 'Warholian Machinehood II: World Text as External Time Consciousness', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Donato Totaro, 'Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian film Project: Part 1: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image', Offscreen Journal, March 31, 1999

• Donato Totaro, 'Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian Film Project: Part 2: Cinema 2: The Time-Image', Offscreen Journal, March 31, 1999

• Donato Totaro, 'Deleuzian film Analysis: The Skin of the Film', Offscreen Journal, June 30, 2002

• David Vilaseca, 'Deleuze and the Barcelona School: Time in Vicente Aranda's Fata Morgana (1965), in Cristina Sánchez-Conejero, ed., Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Film of the 20th Century. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008; pp.21-32 (Two page excerpt - scroll down in pdf)

• David Vilaseca, 'Antonio Roig's Kafkaesque Laughter: (Anti-)Oedipal Parody in Todos los parques no son un paraíso', rhizomes 11/12, fall 2005/spring 2006

• David Vilaseca, 'How Does One Escape One’s Own Simulacrum? Subjectivity and the Asceticism of Being in Terenci Moix’s Autobiography', Hispanic Review (spring 2008) 

• Thomas Carl Wall, 'The Time-Image: Deleuze, Cinema, and Perhaps Language', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 8 No. 23, July 2004

• Maria Walsh, 'Zizek, Deleuze, and the Feminine Cinematic Sublime', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Edward Willatt, 'Review: Eyal Peretz (2007) Becoming Visionary: Brian De Palma’s Cinematic Education of the Senses. Stanford University Press: Palo Alto, CA', Film-Philosophy, 12:1, 2008

• James Williams, The Transversal Thought of Gilles Deleuze: Encounters and Influences, 2005 (large pdf)

• Daniel Ziegert, 'Radical Measures: 9/11 and | as Deleuze's Time-Image', rhizomes 16, Summer 2008

• Nina Zimnik, 'What Will This Century Be Known As? Deleuze and Resistance for Theory on 'A Deleuzian Century?', special issue of theSouth Atlantic Quarterly, Film-Philosophy, No. 16, June 1998

• Nina Zimnick, ''Give me a body': Deleuze's Time Image and the Taxonomy of the Body in the Work of Gabriele Leidloff', Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1998

More about → Deleuzian film studies in memory of David Vilaseca

35 Shots of Claire Denis (and more)

Image from Vendredi soir (Claire Denis, 2002)

Film Studies For Free's author is excitedly preparing to give a talk at the event 'Drifting: The Films of Claire Denis'. This is the first of an annual series of symposia on 'Modern Directors' to be held at the University of Sussex on May 2nd (programme here), and is organised by Rosalind Galt and Michael Lawrence.

Below are more than sixty links to freely-accessible, mostly scholarly (or otherwise top-notch) material about Denis's work that FSFF's author has found helpful for this and previous work on this filmmaker (HERE's a link to the text of her paper on Denis's 2002 film Vendredi soir). The lists will be added to (all suggestions welcome), so please bookmark this post (last updated June 1, 2009).

Audio and/or Visual Resources Online:

In English/or with subtitles:

• Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy, philosopher, author and writer, discussing and screening L'Intrus, her film based on his book, at the European Graduate School in 2007 - online at at YouTube
• Claire Denis at European Graduate School 2003 - 'Claire Denis, a director talking about the film making process...' at YouTube (also at Denis's EGS page)
• Dickon Hinchliffe's remarkable music from the score of Vendredi soir is currently available HERE (Click on 'Films & Discography' and scroll down to 'Vendredi soir' to listen to it, or to download it for free)
• At v2v you can download a video which contains the full recording of the wonderful 1.5 hours long 'Vienna Conversation' between Claire Denis and the Austrian film critics Michael Omasta and Isabella Reicher on Saturday, May 7th, 2005 (help on downloading the video is given here).
• NEW Via Filmbo's Chick Magnet, FSFF heard of two YouTube videos (part 1 and part 2) in which you can see excerpts of Claire Denis's film of Serge Daney interviewing Jacques Rivette on his early interest in filmmaking, his days with Cahiers du cinéma, and his first meetings with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer. A must watch for those who haven't yet seen Denis's Jacque Rivette, The Watchman. Thanks Filmbo!
  

In French:

• YouTube - 35 RHUMS itw de Claire Denis et Alex Descas, par Léa Rinaldi
• YouTube - Lilan Thuram par Claire Denis (Extrait de l'installation de Claire Denis pour l'exposition "Diaspora", musée du quai Branly)
• 'Où va le Cinéma?: L'auteur, le cinéaste, le collectif - Qui fait l'oeuvre?' round table event videoed at the Centre Pompidou, 4 December 2008, with Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Daniel Deshays, and Bruno Dumont (thanks to Screenville for the link - Merci, Harry!)
• 'Interview exclusive de Claire Denis à propos de son dernier film "L'Intrus"'- Entretien réalisé dans le cadre de la Mostra de Venise par Olivier Bombarda - Septembre 2004, Arte.TV (2 RealPlayer video files)
  

Scholarly Articles and Chapters:

• Aimé Ancian,'Making Contact: Claire Denis’ Vendredi soi', translated by Inge Pruks and William D. Routt, Senses of Cinema, No. 23, 2002
• Muriel Andrin,' The Intuition of the Body, Time, and the Sixth Sense - from Chantal Akerman to Contemporary Women Directors [including Claire Denis]', Zehar, n° 58, 2006, pp. 14-19 & 20-24
• Martine Beugnet, 'The Practice of Strangeness: L'Intrus - Claire Denis (2004) and Jean-Luc Nancy (2000)', Film-Philosophy, Volume 12, Issue No.1, 2008
• Samantha Dinning, 'Claire Denis [Great Directors Series]', Senses of Cinema, No. 50, 2009
• Lisa Downing, Re-viewing the Sexual Relation: Levinas and Film', Film-Philosophy, 11.2, August 2007
• Rosalind Galt, 'The Obviousness of Cinema [with reference to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Denis], World Picture Journal, 2, Autumn 2008
• Nikolaj Lübecker, 'The Dedramatization of Violence in Claire Denis's film I Can't Sleep (J'ai pas sommeil, 1994)', Paragraph, Vol. 30, July 2007
• Adrian Martin,'Claire Denis and the cinema of the body', Screening the past, 2006
• Todd McGowan, 'Resisting the lure of ultimate enjoyment: Claire Denis' J'ai pas sommeil (I Can't Sleep, 1994)', Kinoeye, Vol 3, Issue 7, 9 June, 2003
• Laura McMahon, 'Deconstructing Community and Christianity: 'A-religion' in Nancy's Reading of Beau travail', Film-Philosophy, 12.1, 2008
• Philippe Met, 'Looking for trouble: The dialectics of lack and excess (Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day, 2001), Kinoeye, Vol. 3, Issue, 7, 9 June, 2003
• Douglas Morrey, “Introduction: Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy”, Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 1, 2008
• Douglas Morrey, 'Open Wounds: Body and Image in Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Denis', Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 1, 2008
• Douglas Morrey, 'Textures of Terror: Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day', Belphégor: Littérature Populaire et Culture Médiatique, Vol. 3, No. 2, April 2004
• Jean-Luc Nancy, 'Icon of Fury: Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day, Film-Philosophy, 12.1, 2008
• Hilary Neroni, 'Lost in fields of interracial desire: Claire Denis' Chocolat (1988)' Kinoeye, Vol 3 Issue 7, 9 June, 2003
• Elena del Río, “Performing the narrative of seduction in Claire Denis’ Beau travail (Good Work, 1999)”, Kinoeye, vol. 3, no. 7, 9 June, 2003
• Wim Staat, 'The Other's Intrusion: Claire Denis's L'Intrus', Thamyris/Intersecting No. 19 (2008) 195–208
• Anja Streiter, 'The Community According to Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Denis,' Film-Philosophy, 11.1, 2008
• R. Emmet Sweeney, 'The Hither Side of Solutions: Body and Landscape in L'Intrus', Senses of Cinema, April 2005
• NEW Justin Vicari, Colonial Fictions: Le Petit Soldat and its revisionist sequel, Beau Travail, Jump Cut, No. 50, Spring 2008
  
• Fiona A. Villella, 'A Postcolonial Reading of Claire Denis' Chocolat', Senses of Cinema, vol. 1, Dec 1999
• Emma Wilson, 'Contemporary French Women Filmmakers,' French Studies 2005 59(2):217-223

Relevant (and Informative) Book Reviews:

• Acquarello, 'Claire Denis by Judith Maine', Strictly Film School, January 16, 2006
  
• John Orr, 'Claire Denis by Martine Beugnet', Senses of Cinema, No. 37, 2005
• Saige Walton, 'Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression by Martine Beugnet, [Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007],' Senses of Cinema, No. 50, 2009
  

Excellent Items of Film Criticism:

• Joe Bowman, 'The Decade List: Trouble Every Day', Fin de Cinéma, 3 April 2009
  
• Joe Bowman, '[on L'Intrus]', Fin de Cinéma, 28 April 2006
  
• Adrian Danks, 'Travellin' Light [Vendredi soir], Senses of Cinema, No. 31, 2004
• Paul Grant, 'Jacques Rivette - Le veilleur', Senses of Cinema, No. 42, 2007
• Daniel Kasman, '35 Shots of Rum: In Honour of Changing the World', The Auteurs: Notebook, 13 September 2008
• Daniel Kasman, 'L'Intrus (The Intruder)', D+Kas, 20 December 2005
• Ryland Walker Knight, '35 Rhums on The Night Shift', The Auteurs: Notebook, 13 March 2009
• Travis Mackenzie Hoover, 'Rewriting Documentary: Claire Denis's Jacques Rivette, le veilleur', The House Next Door Online, April 3, 2007
• Travis Mackenzie Hoover, 'In the realm of Work and Play: Claire Denis's Vers Mathilde', The House Next Door Online, January 16, 2007
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Unsatisfied Men [on Beau Travail]] , JonathanRosenbaum.com, 6 May 2000 (also published in the Chicago Reader Online same date, with images)
• Diana Sandars, 'Chocolat', Senses of Cinema, No. 17, 2001
• Daniel Stuyck, 'ELETRIK ALCHEMY: Claire Denis Films Sonic Youth', Film Comment, January-February 2008
• Charles Taylor, 'Beau Travail', Salon.com, March 2000, p. 1
• Tamara Tracz, 'Beau travail', Senses of Cinema, No. 42, 2007

Enlightening Interviews in English:

• Aimé Ancian, “Claire Denis: An Interview”, translated by Inge Pruks, Senses of Cinema, No. 23, 2002
• Annett Busch, 'Claire Denis about Intrusions', (Interview, May 2005), Theory Kit, January 2006
• Chris Darke, 'Desire is violence' [Interview with Claire Denis] Sight and Sound Vol. 10 no. 7 July 2000. p. 16-18
• Robert Davis, 'Interview: Claire Denis on 35 Shots of Rum', Daily Plastic, March 10, 2009
• Robert Davis, 'Outtakes from Claire Denis Interview', Errata, 14 August, 2008
• Darren Hughes, 'Dancing Reveals So Much: An Interview with Claire Denis [about 35 Rhums]', Senses of Cinema, No. 50, 2009
• Kevin Lee, 'Spectacularly Intimate: An Interview with Claire Denis', The Auteurs: Notebook, 2 April 2009
• Craig Phillips, with Jonathan Marlow, '"Making Film is to Be Inside": a Talk with Claire Denis [on Vendredi Soir]', GreenCine, May 14, 2003 (Continues on Page 2 HERE)
• Mark A. Reid, 'Interview by Claire Denis', from Jump Cut, no. 40, March 1996, pp. 67-72
• Jonathan Romney, 'Claire Denis Interviewed', The Guardian Online, 28 June, 2000
• Gavin Smith, 'Claire Denis', Film Comment, January/February 2006
  
• Damon Smith, 'L’Intrus: An Interview with Claire Denis”, Senses of Cinema, No. 35 (April-June 2005), p. 2

Unmissable Articles, Criticism, and Interviews in French:

• Séverine Boularan, 'Un article sur le film "Vendredi Soir" réalisé par Claire Denis', www.cinema-poet.com, N. 4, 2008
• Saad Chakali, 'A Corps ouvert[s]', Cahiers du Cinéma (22 avril 2005)
• Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, '«L'Intrus» - Transférer la greffe', Atopia: The Polylogic E-Zine, 2009
  
• Jean-Luc Nancy, 'L'Intrus selon Claire Denis', remue.net, Spring Issue, 4 mai 2005
• Jean Luc Nancy, ‘L’Areligion (Beau travail de Claire Denis)’. Vacarme, n. 14, 2001
• Jean-Philippe Renouard & Lise Wajeman, '« ce poids d'ici-bas » Entretien avec Claire Denis', Vacarme, n. 14, 2001

Relevant Google Books Links (limited previews):

• Martine Beugnet, Claire Denis (Manchester: Manchester and New York University Press, 2004)
• Judith Mayne, Claire Denis (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005)
• Martine Beugnet, Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007)
  

Open Access campaigning note:
(Film Studies For Free's hobby horse...)
There are, of course, many further, excellent Denis resources available 'for free' if one is a student or member of faculty at an educational institution with a well-supplied library or with relevant online subscriptions. But the above list indicates, if nothing else, that truly openly accessible, high-quality, and, indeed, essential resources for researchers in and outside the academy are plentiful nowadays, especially on contemporary topics.

A big thanks, then, to the authors, artists, editors and publishers of the above works who helped to ensure that their writings, recordings, or videos about Claire Denis's films were freely available to any reader or viewer on the internet.

More about → 35 Shots of Claire Denis (and more)