Wong Kar-wai Links: To Faye Wong (and David Bordwell), Thanks For Everything

Faye Wong sings her fabulous Cantonese cover of 'Dreams' by the Cranberries in Wong Kar-wai's Chung Hing sam lam/Chungking Express

Film Studies For Free was so inspired by David Bordwell's great recent post (Ashes to Ashes (Redux)) on Kar Wai Wong/Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux (2008) (also see Bordwell's Years of being obscure), and so (eternally) grateful to Faye Wong for lending her iconic classiness to FSFF's upper regions, that its festive gift to its readers this year is some extensive, scholarly, Wong Kar-wai linkage - see below. Oh and, as a little extra stocking-filler, do please check out the wonderful new issue of World Picture Journal on 'the obvious':

Derek Attridge and Henry Staten, Reading for the Obvious: A Conversation; Scott Durham, "The Center of the World Everywhere": Bamako and the Scene of the Political'; Rosalind Galt, The Obviousness of Cinema; Sandra Gibson + Luis Recoder Cinema/Film; Christian Keathley, Otto Preminger and the Surface of Cinema' David Farrell Krell, The School for Stupefaction; Scott Krzych, Kino Ex Nihilo; Ernesto Laclau in conversation with Brian Price and Meghan Sutherland, Not a Ground but a Horizon; Sam Lipsyte, A Pimple on the Ass of Drew Barrymore Speaks; Karen Pinkus, Nothing from Nothing: Alchemy and the Economic Crisis; Angelo Restivo, The Obvious: Three Reminiscences; Stephen G. Rhodes, Interregnum Reanimated: The Living Cemetery; Jeffrey Sconce, Circuit City Unplugged.

Warm seasons greetings to every one of FSFF's readers, many thanks for a fun first six months of blogging-life, and see you all again after a short break!

• Acquarello on Wong Kar-wai at Strictly Film School
• Matt Bautch, 'The Cultural Aesthetic of Wong Kar-wai', Latent Image 2003
• Felicia Chan, 'In Search of a Comparative Poetics: Cultural Translatability in Transnational Chinese Cinemas', PhD E-thesis, Nottingham University 2007, (chapter 3 - p. 147-201 - treats Wong Kar-wai)
• Ethel Chong, 'In the Mood for Love: Urban Alienation in Wong Kar Wai’s Films', Kinema Spring 2003
• Jeremy Cohen, 'Lonely Hearts: Wong Kar-Wai's Obscure Objects of Desire', Eye Candy Winter 2006
• Christopher Doyle & Wong Kar-wai interview for Interview Magazine on Ashes Redux
• Wendy Gan, "0.01cm: Affectivity and Urban Space in Chungking Express." Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, November 2003
• John Christopher Hamm, 'Review of Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time by Wimal Dissanayake', MCLC Resource Publication, October 2005
• Ian Johnston, 'Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046', Bright Lights Film Journal, vol. 47, February 2005
• Kent Jones, "Of love and the city." Film Comment, Jan/Feb 2001. Vol. 37, Issue 1; p. 22
• Daniel Kälberer, 'Reference Literature on Wong Kar-wai', Film Bibliography 2006
• Anthony Leong, 'Meditations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar Wai', Asian Cult Cinema 1999
• Toh Hai Leong, 'Wong Kar-wai: Time, Memory, Identity', Kinema Spring 1995
• Trish Maunder, 'Interview with Tony Leung', Senses of Cinema 2001
• Andrew O’Hehir, 'Wong Kar-wai's blueberry-pie America', Salon.com 2008
• Robert M Payne, 'Ways of seeing wild: the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai', Jump Cut 44, 2001, text version HERE
• Effie Rassos, 'Everyday Narratives: Reconsidering Filmic Temporality and Spectatorial Affect Through the Quotidian,' PhD E-thesis, University of New South Wales, 2005
• Tony Rayns, 'The Innovators 1990-2000: Charisma Express', Sight and Sound January 2000
• Quentin Tarantino on Chungking Express on YouTube
• Stephen Teo, 'Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love: Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time', Senses of Cinema 2001
• Stephen Teo, '2046: A Matter of Time, a Labour of Love', Senses of Cinema 2005
• Stephen Teo, 'Local and Global identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?' Senses of Cinema 2007
• Fiona A. Villella (symposium ed.), 'The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai - A 'Writing Game', Senses of Cinema 2001 (entries on Backside; Blue; Creation; Dali-esque Time' Desire; Emotion; Look; Love; Possibility; Repetition; Space; Third-World; Time; Wrongheaded)
• Elizabeth Wright, 'Profile of director Wong Kar-wai', Senses of Cinema 2002

Miscellaneous:

• Wong Kar-Wai A fan site for the Hong Kong cult director presenting news, a biography, filmography, photos, and links.
• Chasing The Metaphysical Express: A Wong Kar-Wai Fansite A fan site featuring Wong Kar-Wai, reviews, and images.
• Wong Kar-Wai Facebook The official Facebook Page of Wong Kar-Wai.
• Wong Kar Wai on YouTube
• Faye Wong - Wikipedia Page Faye Wong (王菲) (born August 8, 1969) is a Chinese singer, songwriter, actress, model, and philanthropist.
• Faye Wong at the Internet Moview Database

On film-thinking: Daniel Frampton's Filmosophy

L’Enfant / The Child (Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2005)

For what are hopefully self-evident reasons, Film Studies For Free chooses very rarely to focus on papercentric (© Gary Hall) Film Studies. But today (The Day That UK Academia Stands Still) it opts for the purposeful casting of its beady e-eye on the digital and freely accessible manifestations and repercussions of just one such item.

The book of which FSFF speaks is by an author - Daniel Frampton - who is the true pioneer of Open-Access Film Studies, initially through his founding (in November 1996) of the magnificent, online salon-journal Film-Philosophy. Thanks to his Filmosophy, Frampton has also come to be of those (nowadays) very rare authors who have succeeded in founding a significant school of thought.

Filmosophy (London: Wallflower Press, 2006) - Frampton's book - describes itself thus (hyperlinks added, as ever, by FSFF):

Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. The book coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of ‘film-thinking’, arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic ‘intent’ about the characters, spaces and events of film. With discussions of contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr, Michael Haneke and the Dardenne brothers, this timely intervention into the study of film and philosophy will stir argument and discussion among both filmgoers and filmmakers alike.

As for his book's central concept of the 'filmmind', Frampton writes:

Film seems to be thinking right in front of us. Consider the empathetical framings of The Child, the questioning movements of Magnolia, the egalitarian images of Time of the Wolf. The point is that both the daytime chatshow and the video news report also involve this choice, this belief about what they show (or do not show, as in the lack of images from Helmand). If we begin to understand how film "thinks" we will start to
understand how moving images affect our life and being.

If you would like to know more about Filmosophy, or, if you already know more, but would like to read about it online for free, below are some hot, hot, hot filmosophical links:

Daniel Frampton's online writing about Filmosophy:

• The Filmosophy website
• Filmosophy on Google Books
• Daniel Frampton, 'A Filmosophy Of The Dardennes', Vertigo Magazine (Vol.3 No.3 - Autumn 2006)
• Daniel Frampton, 'The Way that Movements Speak [on Tarr & Pawlikowski]', Film-Philosophy, vol. 5 no. 10, March 2001
• Daniel Frampton, Lars von Trier x 6 (1993)
• Daniel Frampton, On Deleuze's Cinema (1991)
• Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy: Colour, in MacCabe & Petrie, eds, Working Papers from the BFI (London: BFI, 1996)
• Daniel Frampton, 'Moving images', The Guardian, Monday 23 October 2006

Open Access Articles Referring to Filmosophy:

• Daniel Yacavone, 'Towards a Theory of Film Worlds', Film-Philosophy, 12.2, 2008 ('Daniel Frampton has recently attempted to provide a less reductive account of film. worlds (as experienced by viewers) within his broader ‘filmosophy’. ...')
• Sarah Cooper, 'Mortal Ethics: Reading Levinas with the Dardenne Brothers', Film-Philosophy, 11.2, 2007 ('Frampton equates with the consciousness of the ‘filmmind’')
• Davina Quinlivan on Lars Von Trier, Film-Philosophy, 12. 1, 2008 ('Frampton’s envisioning of the ‘filmmind’ (Frampton, 2006, 147), a cinematic consciousness. whose form embodies the very ideology that it diegetically ...')

Open Access, English-language Reviews of Filmosophy:

• Review for Film-Philosophy by Philipp Schmerheim (12.2, 2008) ('Frampton wants to establish a terminology which redirects scholarly attention to the experience rather than analysis of film ... [H]is attempt to reform writing about film, away from what he conceives of as ‘technicist’ rhetoric to a more poetic way of writing, ultimately does not live up to its promises')
• Review of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture by Sylvie Magerstädt (vol. 5 no. 3, September 2008).
• Review for Scope by Ils Huygen ('Filmosophy is about this mutually productive encounter between cinema and ... In filmosophy "film style is now seen to be the dramatic intention of the film')
• Review for Senses of Cinema by Tony McLibbin
• Review for Frieze Magazine by Roland Kapferer ('Filmosophy is representative of this Postmodernist dethroning. The neologism ‘filmosophy’ is in itself highly revelatory. Philosophy – philo-sophia...')

Also see:

• Mike Rot, The Filmosophy Manifesto, The Pagan Agenda, 18 August 2007
• Ted Striphas, Differences & Repetitions: Filmosophy®
• Kings College Conference on 'Emergent Encounters in Film Theory: Intersections Between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy', 21 March 2009
• Ronald Rovers, Review of Filmosophy, De Filmkrant, no. 284, January 2007. [Dutch]
• Martin Marzidovšek, 'Filmski Biti', Ekran: Revija Za Film in Televizijo, vol. 32 letnik XLIV, April-Maj 2007. [Slovenian]
• Mohammad Shahbâ's Farsi translation of an early version of the Introduction to Filmosophy (2001)

Other citations listed on Filmosophy.org:

• Asbjørn Grønstad, 'Downcast Eyes: Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion', Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 1, pp. 133-144 here
• Ils Huygens, 'Deleuze and Cinema: Moving Images and Movements of Thought', Image & Narrative, Issue 18. Thinking Pictures, here
• Mark Goodall's text about 'Crash Cinema' here
• Mark Richardson, 'The Importance of Paracinema in the Cyberspace Era ', The Film Journal, here
• Richard Camilleri on Korean cinema, To Taste: Aesthetics, Politics, Bodies (November 7 2007) here
• Eric Henderson's text on Chris Marker for Slant Magazine here
• Owen Hatherley's text on cinema here
• Some Iranian texts here & here & here & here

Film 'Conversations With History': Stanley Cavell, Oliver Stone, Robert Wise, and others

Stanley Cavell, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Harvard University, joins UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler to talk about his life as a philosopher and his passion for movies as part of Kreisler's Conversations with History series.

Thanks a lot for your nice comments about Film Studies For Free's A-Z of Favourite Scholarly blogs post. If it had its fun time compiling the list all over again, the rather absent-minded FSFF would add the following two favourite items: f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g and Latest Articles on Moving Image Source (indeed they, and one or two others, will be added when the list joins the right-hand menus of this blog).

Today, Film Studies For Free is thrilled to bring you links to the great videos and transcripts of interviews with filmmakers and filmthinkers that form part of UC Berkeley's Conversations with History series. All the videos last roughly an hour, so these are rich resources indeed. The full film-related index is HERE.

• Stanley Cavell; Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Emeritus; Harvard: "A Philosopher Goes to the Movies," 2/7/02 video link here
  
• Shima Iwashita, actress: "The Movie Experience," 2/27/99
  
• Ken Jacobs, Film Artist: "Film and the Creation of Mind," 10/14/99 video link here
  
• Nathaniel Rich, Associate Editor, Paris Review: "San Francisco in Film Noir," 6/23/05 video link here
  
• Donald Richie, writer and film critic: "Writing, Film, and Japan: An Expatriate's View," 9/21/01
  
• Masahiro Shinoda, film director: "The Movie Experience," 2/27/99
  
• Oliver Stone, Filmmaker: "History and the Movies," 4/17/97 and 6/27/97 video link here
  
• Robert Wise, Filmmaker: "The Wise Touch," 2/28/98

See also Harry Kreisler's Conversations with History Blog for further updates about this series.

A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs

Film Studies For Free has recently been infected by two viruses: one nasty but better now, thanks (ach-oo); the other relatively benign, but still totally brain-scrambling in its own way.

The latter is the dratted 'alphabet meme' still doing the film-blogospheric round (issuing from the Blog Cabins site).

As this metablog doesn't write about films (oh no), the forced A-Z of its choice is 'Favourite Scholarly Film/Moving Image Blogs' mostly in the English language, or 'Favourite [anglophone] Film/Moving Image Blogs with a Sizeable Scholarly Component or Impact'.

And, yes (note to FSFF's more litigious readers), all of the usual rules of this exercise are broken below (and more); but this piece of favouriting frenzy is a service to the community: FSFF's formal film blogroll currently has just under 200 entries, so the below choices will form the basis of a new 'Highly Recommended Scholarly Blogs List' to sit near the top of FSFF's right-hand menu.

Comments on this list are most welcome. And do please let FSFF know if it's missing any really important blogs from its various lists. Thank you.

• annett's blog missing image


• Bigger Picture Research for coverage of its film biz angle; Bright Lights After Dark for all else (for recognition of The Bioscope's excellence, see under 'T');


• Category D: A Film and Media Studies Blog (this was a close one: apologies to Henry Jenkins fans (his is easily the best Media Studies blog), and also to those many fans of Will Scheibel, Kimberly Lindbergs, Scott Kirsner, Michael E. Grost and the guys at Cinemetrics (all very good runners-up), but Chris Cagle's research-led blogging was one of the biggest inspirations for FSFF


• DinaView; Digital Poetics; and Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope (yup, a genuine three way tie)


• Edit Room: The Wide Screen journal editors' blog; and Expanded Cinema


• Film of the Month Club; FSFF also likes Flickhead (not intentionally scholarly, perhaps, but scrupulously informative; keep an eye also on Foreigner's Guide to Film Culture in Korea)


• girish and GreenCine Daily (what would a blogger's life be like without these two - not the happy one it is, that's for sure). An honorable mention, too, for Bob Rehak's Graphic Engine, which FSFF only recently (shamefully) discovered (joyfully).


• House of Mirth and Movies


• I Screen Studies


• Jason Sperb's Jamais Vu ties with Jason Mittell's Just TV and Jonathan Rosenbaum's JonathanRosenbaum.com
  
• Kino-Eye.com


• Like Anna Karina's Sweater


• Alexandra Juhasz's Media Praxis edged out Mystery Man on Film and Michael Barrier on Animation


• notcoming.com is a good film review site, often looking at classic or off-the beaten track films


• Observations on film art and FILM ART sine qua non; but FSFF also loves Only The Cinema


• Parallax View is a worthy P-winner, but FSFF also adores Pedro Almodóvar's Blog...


• Q Branch (it has to be)


• rear window views : sweiv wodniw raer (very specific and somehow all the better for scholars for that)


• Spectacular Attractions is FSFF's S-daddy, but mentions très honorables, aussi, for the absolutely S-fabuleux Strictly Film School (Acquarello), Shooting Down Pictures, Screenville, Self-Styled Siren and Spectres du Cinéma


• The Bioscope, The Chutry Experiment (FSFF wouldn't have made it any any easier for itself by omitting the 'The', sadly...) and Tativille for consistently superb writing on film


• Unspoken Cinema (now that was easy)


• Vertigo Ramblings (Dan Auiler) and videoarcadia (the latter hiatus-ing at the mo', but it credibly assures us it will be back)


• What's New at the Internet Archive; runner-up: Winds From The East


• The Extratextuals (phew, thank you, Jonathan Gray!)
• You must be Mistaken, I'm alive (aka Polar Bear's Film Journal)
• zigzigger

Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola Links

For those (vast hordes) of you interested in the work of filmmaker Sofia Coppola, a tip (via GreenCine Daily) that you should visit the Cinetrix's regularly wonderful and terribly withering (to academic film theory, at least) website Pullquote where she's posted a video version of Coppola's 1996 debut short Lick the Star - see her post Boys in the attic HERE. Thanks Cinetrix!
Here's a little FSFF Sofia Coppola linkage:

• Sofia Coppola Wikipedia Page
• Sofia Coppola's Internet Movie Database Page
• Pam Cook seminar paper 'Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette: A Fashionable History', University of Nottingham, 23 October 2008'
• Senses of Cinema Profile by Anna Rogers
• 'Marie Antoinette as feminist counter-cinema': great blog post by Annie at the University of Minnesota Feminist Film/ Media Studies course blog 2008
• ‘Marie Antoinette’ - a Quotational Reference Guide
• Sofia Coppola at The Director's Bureau
• Sofia Coppola Talks About "Lost In Translation," at IndieWire
• Stephanie Zacharek on The Virgin Suicides
• Sofia Coppola on Facebook
• The Coppola Family Website
• Sofia Coppola links at About.Com
• Google and YouTube Sofia Coppola Video Search Page
• Eleanor Coppola in conversation with Davia Nelson (one hour long webcast interview at The Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, May 6th, 2008) at Fora TV

Round up: Online Scholarship, Virtual Training Suites, and Fascinating Miscellany

Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934)

Honourable mentions in despatches (from Film Studies For Free's return to [indefatigable] active duty) for the following:

• Thanks to Mystery Man on Film and Kelly Sonora at the Online College Blog, FSFF heard of Jessica Merritt's article Reel Education: 50 Free Open Courses for Movie Lovers which lists 50 new freely accessible, online, practice and theory courses about films. There are some wonderful resources here. Below are links to some of the courses, but please do explore the full list:
  

  Special Topics in Cinematic Storytelling: [MIT]
  The Film Experience: [MIT]
  Studies in Film: [MIT]
  Topics in the Avant-Garde in Literature and Cinema: [MIT]
  A Conversation with Filmmaker Mira Nair: [Harvard]

• The vast majority of the above listed courses are provided by MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. What a great initiative, FSFF thinks.

• Lots of updates have appeared in the last weeks to Film Studies For Free's list of Online and Open-Access Film and Moving-Image Studies Writing Of Note by Individual Named Authors, so do please (re)visit the list and bookmark it, if you haven't already done so. Two of the most wondrous links to be added to it from the point of view of offering up academic models for Open Access publishing are those to the websites of Dr Geoffrey Kantaris and Professor Paul Julian Smith, both based in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. Muchísimas gracias for their generosity of spirit, as well as for their excellent work on Spanish-language film.


• Another great model worthy of interest and emulation is Spectacular Attractions, the blog by Dr Dan North, Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture in the School of English, University of Exeter. Dan has posted a great conference paper there on Cloverfield’s Obstructed Spectacle. It's a wonderfully illustrated piece of writing and has prompted some detailed responses from readers which are very much worth following, too. In response to one glowing comment, Dan deals with some of the concerns that academics have with self-publishing their work thus:
  

  I did think about keeping the paper away from the blog, in case I wanted to revise it for publication, but I think it would be very heavily updated for a journal article, so it might constitute a whole new piece. And the comments I get here, as well as at the conference, would help me to make those updates [...] Academics shouldn’t just talk to other academics.

  Please think about self-publishing your papers, people. And RESPECT to Dr North.


• Thanks to GreenCine Daily for news of the latest online issues of film journals Criticine and Cineaste.


• Ed Howard at the wonderful website Only The Cinema has announced a new blog-a-thon, which will run from January 12-23, 2009 and will focus on the early films of Howard Hawks. Quite coincidentally FSFF came across a great blogpost on early Hawks -- In defense of The Front Page (1931) -- at the marvellous early cinema blog The Crowd Roars.



• Intute is a UK-based free online service providing access to the best Web resources for education and research, selected and evaluated by a network of subject specialists.The Intute Virtual Training Suite provides free Internet tutorials to help you learn how to get the best from the Web for your education and research. The tutorials are written and updated by a national team of subject specialists based in universities and colleges across the UK. HERE's a direct link to the Media and Communication tutorial.


• Like Intute, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is funded by the UK HE and FE funding bodies to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research. JISC has just posted the following video of note: New animation: Intellectual Property Rights in the Web 2.0 world. Download it in QuickTime HERE

The Day The Clangers' Moon Stood Still: RIP Oliver Postgate 1925-2008

Clangers : The Intruder (season 1, Episode 5)

Back from its wee break, Film Studies For Free was saddened to hear of the passing of one of the DIY geniuses responsible for its author's early fascination with the world of filmmaking: Oliver Postgate, co-creator (with Peter Firmin) of numerous magical Small Films shown on television (Bagpuss, Clangers, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, Pogles, Pingwings), died peacefully in Broadstairs on the Kent coast on 8 December 2008.

Here are some Postgate weblinks:

• screenonline: Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin
• Oliver Postgate's Website
• Oliver Postgate Facebook
• Oliver Postgate at IMDB
• Oliver Postgate Blog for the New Statesman
• Noggin the Nog site
• Ivor the Engine site
• Pingwings site
• Postgate and Firmin's Small Films company website
• Oliver Postgate Wikipedia page
• BBC - Cult - Classic TV - The Clangers Oliver Postgate Interview
• An Interview With Oliver Postgate
• Bagpuss creator Oliver Postgate dies Media guardian.co.uk
• BBC website Obituary
• BBC website news of Postgate's death
• Cartoon Brew weblog post 'Pingwings Rediscovered' link added 11.12.08
• Cartoon Brew weblog post 'Oliver Postgate, RIP' link added 11.12.08 (thanks to GreenCine Daily)