Ingmar Bergman Studies

Updated September 19, 2011

Film Studies For Free brings you, below, a very long list indeed of links to online and openly accessible studies of the work of Ingmar Bergman. The list was especially inspired by hearing of the first of the three video studies above, via Adrian Martin, Corey Creekmur and Christa Fuller. This news led to the subsequent discovery of the rest of this amazing videographic trilogy on Bergman's films by Jonas Moberg. Update: FSFF has learned that these videos were devised by Thomas Elsaesser, during his year as Ingmar Bergman Professor at Stockholm University in 2007 in conjunction with the project "Ingmar Bergman in the Museum" (a summary of which is linked to below). Initially, seven of these videos were planned, to go with each of the chapters in the book Film Theory - An Introduction through the Senses. The research for all seven Bergman Senses Videos was carried out by Elsaesser, together with Anne Bachmann, a PhD student at Stockholm University, and Jonas Moberg then edited three of them. Sadly, time ran out on the project and the remaining four planned videos weren't completed.

Bergman scholars and fans should also know about Ingmar Bergman: Face to Face, the beautiful website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which showcases and links to numerous further resources. Sight and Sound has also just featured a fascinating essay by Lena Bergman on her father's viewing habits in his unique private cinema, a converted barn on Fårö, the Baltic island where he lived until his death in 2007. This year’s Bergman Week festival takes place in the cinema on Fårö from 28 June to 3 July. Television viewers in the UK might, in addition, like to hear that Film4 will show 16 Ingmar Bergman films in a series beginning next week. Yay!

If FSFF says so itself, the below list is probably one of its best ever (do scroll right down for all the videos). It was certainly one of the most rewarding to compile... It hopes you will find it in equal parts enjoyable and useful.

• 'Ingmar Bergman: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library'
• Michael Bird, 'Music as Spiritual Metaphor in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman', Kinema, Spring, 1996
• Pedro Blas Gonzalez, 'Smiles of a Summer Night', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, 'Review: Irving Singer (2007) Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on his Creativity. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010
• Michael Brashinsky, 'The Spring, Defiled: Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring and Wes Craven's Last House on the Left', Play it Again, Sam, ed. by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
• Amir Cohen-Shalev, 'Beyond Reconciliation: Filial Relationship as a Lifelong Developmental Theme in Bergman’s Films', Style: Volume 43, No. 1, Spring 2009
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Ingmar Bergman – Person and Persona: The Mountain of Modern Cinema on the Road to Morocco', European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005 - Scroll to p. 133 in PDF)
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Ingmar Bergman in the museum? Thresholds, limits, conditions of possibility', Journal of AESTHETICS and CULTURE Vol. 1, 2009
• Hamish Ford, 'Ingmar Bergman', Senses of Cinema, 23, 2002
• Hamish Ford, 'The Silence', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Ed Gallafent, 'Two Views Over Water: Action and Absorption in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries(1957)', in James Walters and Tom Brown (eds), Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory (2010)[scroll down in large PDF]
• Daniel Garrett, 'Dark Nights of the Soul: Themes in Irving Singer’s book Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Acts of Love Can Redeem Loneliness', Offscreen, December 31, 2010
• Daniel Garrett, 'Wild Strawberries: A Brief Note about Ingmar Bergman and Pauline Kael', Offscreen, 9.9, September 30, 2005
• Sarah W. Gilmartin , 'The Masks of Performance: Art’s Aesthetic and Social Representation in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1983)', Inter-Disciplinary.net, 1st Global Conference (2007)
• Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, 'The Fairy-Tale Theatre: Reception and Authorship at the Margins of the Ingmar Bergman Archive', Archives and Aueturs Conference, Stirling University, September 2009
• Ananya Ghoshal, '“Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t thought about death” - Ingmar Bergman', in Mortality, Dying and Death: Global Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by T. Chandler Haliburton and Caroline Edwards (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2008 - scroll to p. 338 in PDF)
• Erik Hedling, 'Shame: Ingmar Bergman’s Vietnam War', Nordicom Review 29 (2008) 2, pp. 245-259
• Erik Hedling,'[English Language review of] Birgitta Steene, Måndagar med Bergman: En svensk publik möter Ingmar Bergmans filmer. Stockholm: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 1996', TijdSchriftvoorSkandinavistiek, 1, 1999, pp. 174-179
• Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, 'Silence and Fury: Rape and The Virgin Spring', Screening the Past, 28, 2010
• Vreni Hockenjos, 'Strindberg through Bergman: A Case of Mutation', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1
• Poul Houe, 'Faces as Facts of Fiction', Scandinavian Canadian Studies/Etudes Scandinaves au Canada, 18, 2009
• Jesse Kalin, 'Preface', The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Jesse Kalin, 'Introduction: The Geography of the Soul', The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Ingmar Bergman, the biographical legend and the intermedialities of memory', Journal of AESTHETICS and CULTURE Vol. 2, 2010
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Everything Represents, Nothing Is": Some Relations Between Ingmar Bergman's Films and Theatre Productions', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 5.1
• Maaret Koskinen, 'From Short Story to Film to Autobiography: Bergman’s Intermedial Variations', Film International, January 14, 2011
• Maaret Koskinen, 'Ingmar Bergman', Swedish Institute, 2007
• Tarja Laine, 'Failed Tragedy and Traumatic Love in Ingmar Bergman’s Shame', in Kooijman, Jaap, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (eds), Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam University Press, 2008 - scroll to p. 60 in PDF)
• Marco Lanzagorta, 'Cries and Whispers', Senses of Cinema, 25, 2003 
• Kevin B. Lee, 'The Soul of the Megapixel: Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband and Scenes from a Marriage', Reverse Shot, June 9, 2008
• Rikard Loman, 'Bergman’s Vintersagan at the Royal Dramatic Theatre', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1
• Brian McIlroy, '[Review of] Steene, Birgitta. 2005. Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide', Scandinavian Canadian Studies/Etudes Scandinaves au Canada, 16, 2006
• Lloyd Michaels, 'Introduction', Ingmar Bergman's Persona (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 
• Karin Nykvist, 'Remembering and Creating Childhood in the Works of Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg', in Negotiating Childhoods, Edited by Lucy Hopkins, Mark Macleod & Wendy Turgeon (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2011)
• Darragh O’Donoghue, 'The Seventh Seal', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• John Orr, 'Camus and Carné Transformed: Bergman's The Silence vs. Antonioni's The Passenger', Film International, 3.5, 27, 2007
• S. Ruken Öztürk, 'Besieged and Liberated Woman in 'Art' Films: The Problem of Private Sphere', Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Dergisi, (hakemli dergi) 58 (2), 2003:153-176
• Arthur Rankin, 'The Child Archetype in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander', Senses of Cinema, 50, 2009
• Thomas Redwood, '[Review of] Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Film and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick and Wong Kar-wai. New York: Lexington, 2007, Screening the Past, 23, 2008
• Daniel Ross, '[Review of works by Irving Singer]', Screening the Past, 25, 2009
• Steven Shaviro, 'Ingmar Bergman', The Pinocchio Theory, July 31, 2007
• Daniel Shaw, 'Woman as vampire: Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966)', Kinoeye, Vol 2, Issue 15, Oct. 2002
• Irving Singer, 'Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher' (video podcast), MIT World, November 2007 (embedded below)
• Murray Smith, '[Review of] Paisley Livingston, Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy', Notre Dame Philosophical Review, May 19, 2010
• Birgitt Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
• Birgitta Steene, 'The Transpositions of a Filmmaker: Ingmar Bergman at Home and Abroad', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, 20, no 1, 1999
• Birgitta Steene, 'The Sjöberg-Bergman Connection: Hets – Collaboration and Public Impact' TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1 
• Michael Stern. 'The Face as a Fingerprint: Mediation, Silence, and the Question of Identity in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona', Konturen, Vol. 3, 2010
• Sharon Lin Tay, 'On the Edges of the Authorial Voice: Liv Ullmann’s Faithless, Gendered Authorship, and Ingmar Bergman', Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practices (London: Palgrave, 2009) (excerpt)
• Egi Törnqvist, Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
• Elsie Walker, 'An 'Incorrigible Music: Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata', Kinema, 2008
• Denise Ming-yueh Wang, 'Ingmar Bergman’s Appropriations of the Images of Death in The Seventh Seal', 제17권 1호 (2009): 41-62
• Thomas E. Wartenberg, 'Review of Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity', Notre Dame Philosophical reviews, May 23, 2008
• Lynn R. Wilkinson, 'Playful Performances: Ingmar Bergman’s Bildmakarna and Film Authorship', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek vol. 30 (2009), nr. 1
• Margareta Wirmark, 'Strindberg versus Bergman: The End of Spöksonaten', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1 
• Robin Wood, 'Call Me Ishmael [on Fanny and Alexander]', originally published in Canadian Forum, 41, 1983, republished in MOVIE, Issue 2, 2011 
• Rochelle Wright, '[Review of] Philip and Kersti French. Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället). London: BFI Film Classics, 1995. Pp. 77. And Margareta Wirmark. Smultronstället och dödens ekipage. Stockholm: Carlssons, 1998', TijdSchriftvoorSkandinavistiek, 20, 1999, nr. 1
• Rochelle Wright, '[Review of] Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Gender and Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman [Studies in Scandinavian Literature and Culture, eds. George C. Schoolfield and Robert E. Bjork], Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997', TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek, vol. 20 (1999), nr. 1  

Irving Singer, 'Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher' (video podcast), MIT World, November 2007

Liv Ullmann at the Bergman Week 2010, speaking about the filming of Face To Face with Ingmar Bergman. She talks about the relationship between a director and his actors, and specifically the scene when her character commits suicide in the film.

Wim Wenders talks about Ingmar Bergman

Agnes Varda talks about Bergman.

David Stratton talks about Ingmar Bergman.

Bergman Center interviews American director John Landis about Ingmar Bergman at Venice International Film Festival.

Bergman Center interviews French actor Jean-Marc Barr about Ingmar Bergman at Venice International Film Festival.

Memory Screens: New Issue of IMAGE AND NARRATIVE

Frame grab from 1975 (Shaun Wilson, version 1 (2005), DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5mins). Visit Shaun Wilson's website here and read his article about 'home movies' here

The concept of memory screens is an overarching term exploring the relationship between forms of media, viewers, practitioners and memory. The notion of memory screens alludes to the ways in which memories become remembered, layered, forgotten and transformed. The range of articles in this volume reflects the relationship between memory and history, both public and personal. ['Thematic Cluster: Introduction' by Teresa Forde]

Film Studies For Free continues to be impressed by the excellence of the online journal Image and Narrative which has recently published a special issue entitled Memory Screens.

FSFF particularly appreciated film and video artist Shaun Wilson's essay on the art of vintage home movies, Jenny Chamarette's study of the dynamics of the ‘spectre’ or ‘spectral body’ of the auteurist figure of Agnès Varda, Peter Kravanja's exploration of narrative contingencies in Rohmer and Akerman and Teresa Forde and Erin Bell's discussions of memory and British television. But this is a very high quality issue throughout and, as always at I and N, particularly characterised by the thoughtful integration of close analysis and film and moving image theory.

Image and Narrative, Vol 12, No 2 (2011): Memory Screens

Table of Contents

• 'Thematic Cluster: Introduction' by Teresa Forde ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Remixing Memory through Home Movies' by Shaun Wilson ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Video Installation, Memory and Storytelling: the viewer as narrator' by Diane Charleson ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Spectral bodies, temporalised spaces: Agnès Varda's motile gestures of mourning and memorial' by Jenny Chamarette ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Television and memory: history programming and contemporary identities' by Erin Bell ABSTRACTPDF
• 'Television Dramas as Memory Screens' by Teresa Forde ABSTRACT PDF
• 'The Lives of Others: re-remembering the German Democratic Republic'  by Margaret Montgomerie and Anne- Kathrin Reck ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Nostalgic [re]remembering: film fan cultures and the affective reiteration of popular film histories' by Nathan Hunt ABSTRACT PDF

Various Articles

• 'Cinema, Contingencies, Metaphysics' by Peter Kravanja ABSTRACT PDF

Review Articles

• Hillary Chute's Ambivalent Idiom of Witness' by Charlotte Pylyser  ABSTRACT PDF
• 'Naissances de la bande dessinée de William Hogarth à Winsor McCay' by Pascal Lefèvre ABSTRACT PDF

"Born in a dream": studies of Ritwik Ghatak

Subarnarekha (lit. "Golden Line/Thread", Ritwik Ghatak, India, 1962-65)

All motion, in fact, has the same origin. The camera moves, so do men. Then everything comes to rest, or, various integral compositions made out of these create a whole design born in that dream.
Ritwik Ghatak [Ritwikkumar Ghatak, Rows and rows of fences: Ritwik Ghatak on cinema (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000), p. 65]

Every film is going to be more than you can see... Where the real cinema takes place is in your head.
      [...]
The notion of a film born in a dream that then manages to figure that dream in all of these movements, in all of these modulations, in all of these articulations is at the heart of Ghatak
Adrian Martin, 'Seven and a Half Minutes with Ritwik Ghatak (An Apprenticeship in Magic)', Film and Television Studies ‘Under Construction’ Seminar Series, Monash University, June 8, 2011(mp3: 1:40:38, mp4 - Video version)

Very recently, in a much-discussed Film Comment article by David Bordwell, and in the project of a fascinating book titled The Language and Style of Film Criticism ([eds. Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan] Routledge 2011), an old-fashioned line has been redrawn, separating the work of criticism proper (evocative, descriptive, evaluative, lyrical, etc) from the so-called ‘formalism’ of close, textual analysis (frame and audio analysis, structural segment/part breakdown, etc). I reject this distinction.

In the lead-up to the WORLD CINEMA NOW conference this September at Monash, I propose taking seven and a half magnificent minutes – one complex scene in three parts – from Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha (The Golden Line, India, 1965) – and seeing how deeply we can dig into its sharp audiovisual beauty. Ghatak (1925-76), only now receiving the full international recognition he deserves, is a key figure for any history of cinematic forms: using the melodramatic tradition as his pivot between classicism and modernism, he elaborated a moment-to-moment style that was a form of fluid mise en scène shot through at every moment with the kind of disruptive ‘intervals’ beloved of his Master, Eisenstein. In Ghatak, scenes do not simply unfold: they open up into multiple, contesting worlds, man versus woman, old versus new, feeling versus reason, body versus song …

Along the way of this demonstration, I hope to offer a model of how film analysis might be done, or at least how I try to do it: its possible protocols, procedures, pay-offs. Seven and a half cinematic minutes with Ghatak, plus around two musical minutes with Abdullah Ibrahim, amounting to around sixty minutes … Adrian Martin, 'Seven and a Half Minutes with Ritwik Ghatak (An Apprenticeship in Magic)'

Today's entry here at Film Studies For Free -- a list of links to openly accessible studies of the work of the great Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak -- was very much inspired by the online availability of a podcast of a lecture by Adrian Martin, Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies and co-director of the Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University. In the lecture Martin discusses a scene in Ghatak's Subarnarekha (lit. "Golden Line/Thread", India, 1962-65).

The sequence discussed by Martin may be found at 7:40 in the first of the two clips embedded above, continuing up to around six minutes through the second clip. As the above lecture abstract indicates, along the way, Martin says many important things about the practices of film criticism/analysis, and, indeed, about Film Studies more broadly. Great work, and thanks to Arts at Monash University for making it available. [Update: August 2011 - here's a link to the video recording of the lecture. Right click on the link to save to your computer for viewing later).

• Omar Ahmed, 'AJANTRIK / PATHETIC FALLACY (Dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1958, India) - Man and Machine ', Ellipsis: The Accents of Cinema, December 7, 2009

• Anustup Basu, Mantras of the Metropole: Geo-televisuality and Contemporary Indian Cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 (see chapters 3 and 6)

• Raymond Bellour, 'The Film We Accompany', Rouge, 3, 2004

• Moinak Biswas, 'Her Mother's Son: Kinship and History in Ritwik Ghatak', Rouge, 3, 2004

• Moinak Biswas, 'Speaking through troubled times', Journal of the Moving Image,Number 6, 2007

• Megan Carrigy, 'Ritwik Ghatak', Senses of Cinema, Issue 29, 2003

• Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, 'Sound Memories: In Search of Lost Sounds in Indian Cinema', Journal of the Moving Image, Number 6, 2007

• Saayan Chattopadhyay, 'Framing Frontiers', Sarai readers 2007: Frontiers

• Ann R. David, 'Beyond the Silver Screen: Bollywood and Filmi Dance in the UK', South Asia Research, 2007; 27, 5, 5-24

• Kevin B. Lee, 'Ritwik Ghatak: An Online Primer', Shooting Down Pictures, February 8, 2010

• Kevin B. Lee, '997 (132). Subarnarekha / The Golden Thread (1965, Ritwik Ghatak)', Shooting Down Pictures, February 8, 2010

• Adrian Martin, 'Seven and a Half Minutes with Ritwik Ghatak (An Apprenticeship in Magic)', Film and Television Studies ‘Under Construction’ Seminar Series, Monash University, June 8, 2011(mp3) (video version)

• Erin O'Donnell, '“Woman” and “homeland” in Ritwik Ghatak's films: Constructing post-Independence Bengali cultural identity', from Jump Cut,  Issue 47, 2004

• Ashish Rajadhyaksha, 'An Aesthetic for Film Sound in India', Journal of the Moving Image, Number 6, 2007

• Raks Media Collective, 'Dreams and disguises, as usual', Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts


•  


• Raks Media Collective, 'Stammer, Mumble, Sweat, Scrawl, and Tic', e-Flux, 11, 2008

• Anindya Raychaudhuri,‘Resisting the Resistible: Re-Writing Myths of Partition in the Works of Ritwik Ghatak’, Social Semiotics, 19:4, December 2009

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Ritwik Ghatak: Reinventing the Cinema', Rouge, 10, 2007
  

• Subroto Mihir Roy, 'Semeiosis of Music in Ghatak's Select Films', National Film Archives of India, 2007/8

New SCOPE: Chris Marker, Cult cinema, Dance on Film, 1970s Film Theory

Image from The Company (Robert Altman, 2003)

Today, Film Studies For Free is thrilled to point you in the tremendous direction of the latest contents of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. There's lots to recommend in this issue but FSFF particularly enjoyed Katharina Lindner's article on the female dancer on film, along with numerous, wonderful book reviews and conference reports, all part of the fabulous and openly accessible service that Scope provides to the international film studies community.

Scope, Issue 20, June 211

Articles

• Pasts and Futures of 1970s Film Theory Matthew Croombs
• Cultivating the Cult Experience at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Donna de Ville
• Spectacular (Dis-) Embodiments: The Female Dancer on Film  Katharina Lindner
• Chris Marker and the Audiovisual Archive Oliver Mayer

• [ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

• Hollywood Independents: The Postwar Talent Takeover by Denise Mann  
  100 American Independent Films, 2nd edition; The Contemporary Hollywood Reader  Reviewer: Gareth James
• Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video by Keith Beatti Reviewer: Jeffrey Gutierrez
• Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit by Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (eds); Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals Reviewer: Linda Hutcheson
• Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting's An Autumn's Tale by Stacilee Ford; John Woo's The Killer Reviewer: Lin Feng
• Responses to Oliver Stone's Alexander: Film, History, and Cultural Studies by Paul Cartledge and Fiona Rose Greenland (eds); Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film Reviewer: Andrew B.R. Elliott
• Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies by Abe Mark Nornes and Aaron Gerow; The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs Reviewer: Jonathan Wroot
• Chapaev by Julian Graffy; Leni Riefenstahl: A Life Reviewer: Andrei Rogatchevski
• Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century by R. Bruce Elder; Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience Reviewer: Caroline Hagood
• Reworking the German Past: Adaptations in Film, the Arts, and Popular Culture by Susan G. Figge and Jenifer K. Ward (eds); The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Reviewer: Matthias Uecker
• Stellar Encounters: Stardom in Popular European Cinema by Tytti Soila (ed); Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice Reviewer: Rachael Johnson
• Alternative Film Culture in Inter-War Britain by Jamie Sexton; The Lost World of Cliff Twemlow: The King of Manchester Exploitation Movies; The British 'B' Film Reviewer: Laurence Raw
• Elia Kazan: The Cinema of an American Outsider by Brian Neve; Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture, Volume 1 Reviewer: Mildred Lewis
• First Person Jewish by Alisa S. Lebow; Neo-Noir Reviewer: Marat Grinberg

• [ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

• Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-war Britain (1951-1977) Reviewer: Dai Vaughan
• Bonnie and Clyde Reviewer: Ian Murphy
• Cracks & Tell-Tale; Robin Hood; The A-Team  Reviewer: Laurence Raw
• The Karate Kid & The Karate Kid Reviewer: Rachel Mizsei Ward

• [ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

• Flow Conference 2010, University of Texas, Austin, 30 September–2 October 2010 Reporter: Kelly K. Ryan and Heather Muse
• Women's Filmmaking in France 2000-2010, Institut Français, London, 2–4 December 2010 Reporter: Sarah Forgacs
• MeCCSA Conference: Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association, University of Salford, 12–14 January 2011 Reporter: Greg Bevan
• ¡Documentary Now!, University of Westminster, London, 28–30 January 2011 Reporter: Philippa Daniel
• Rendering the Visible Conference, Georgia State University, 10–14 February 2011 Reporter: Drew Ayers and Steven Pustay
• Erotic Screen and Sound: Culture, Media and Desire Conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, 15–18 February 2011 Reporter: Michelle A. Mayefske
• SCMS 2011: Media Citizenship, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New Orleans, 10–13 March 2011 Reporter: Shana MacDonald

• [ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]

New SENSES OF CINEMA

Image from Guest (José Luis Guerin, 2010)

Film Studies For Free took a little break and caught up with some reading. A mini flurry of posts will issue as a result over the next few days, including this first one listing links to the excellent contents of the latest issue of Melbourne based online journal Senses of Cinema.

FSFF particularly liked the interview with the remarkable filmmaker José Luis Guerin about his most recent film Guest, Pedro Blas Gonzalez on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Jiwei Xiao on the films of Jia Zhangke.

Senses of Cinema, Issue 59 Contents

• Editorial 

Feature Articles

• Moira Sullivan Lars von Trier’s Other Comments at Cannes
• Jean-Baptiste Thoret The Seventies Reloaded: (What does the cinema think about when it dreams of Baudrillard?)
• Pedro Blas Gonzalez The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or, Socrates in the Desert
• Graham Daseler Lost Treasure: Trouble in Paradise
• The Celluloid Liberation Front Auschwitz­–Harlem: Post-Traumatic Economy in The Pawnbroker
• Lorraine Mortimer Something Against Nature: Sweet Movie, 4, and Disgust 
• Journey to Galveston: An Interview with Catherine Berge on King Vidor by Peter Tonguette
• Peter Tonguette King Vidor: The Editor’s Director 
• Accidental Cinema and the YouTube Sublime: An Interview with Joe Swanberg by Brigitta B. Wagner
• Jiwei XiaoThe Quest for Memory: Documentary and Fiction in Jia Zhangke’s Films
• Flannery Wilson Filming Disappearance or Renewal? The Ever-Changing Representations of Taipei in Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema 
• On Reality and Imagination: An Interview with Documentarian Dai Sil Kim-Gibson by Tammy Kim
• Imed Labidi Welcome: An Insight into the Landscape of Contemporary French Consciousness
• Kafi Kareem Trinbagonianness in Film: National Identity in Trinidad and Tobago Cinema 
• Defeating the Irremediable Solitude of the Guest: An Interview with José Luis Guerin by Rolando Caputo

Melbourne on Film

• Adrian Danks on On the Beach
• Stephen Gaunson on Marvellous Melbourne: Queen City of the South
• Deb Verhoeven on Melbourne Wedding Belle
• David Nichols on Your House and Mine
• Federico Passi on The Cleaners
• Jake Wilson on Flinders Street
• Ben Goldsmith on Ghost Rider

Festival Reports

• Chris Berry on Far East Film Festival
• Marc Saint-Cyr on Nippon Connection
• Rachel Thibault on Independent Film Festival of Boston
• Sirkka Moeller on Short Film Festival Oberhausen
• Catherine Simpson on Istanbul Film Festival
• Neil Young on CPH PIX
• Sally Shafto on Panorama des Cinémas du Maghreb
• Daniel Fairfax on Cannes
• Bérénice Reynaud on Images Festival
• Tom Redwood on Adelaide
• Bérénice Reynaud on Pan African
• Cerise Howard on Fribourg

Book Reviews

• Robert von Dassanowsky on Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films
• John Fidler on The Apartment Plot
• Peter Tonguette on Steven Spielberg: A Biography
• Burke Hilsabeck on Machine-Age Comedy
• Jay Daniel Thompson on Darwin's Screens
• Chris Yogerst on The Philosophy of the Western
• Daniel Eisenberg on Real and Reel: The Education of a Film Obsessive and Critic

Cteq Annotations

• Julian Savage on Fear Eats the Soul
• Colin Browne on Fox and His Friends
• Adam Bingham on Veronika Voss
• Darragh O'Donoghue on The Third Generation
• Rebecca Harkins-Cross on In a Year with Thirteen Moons
• Serena Bramble on In a Lonely Place
• George Kaplan on They Live by Night
• David Sanjek on Johnny Guitar
• J. David Slocum on Rebel Without a Cause
• Dan Harper on Assassination
• Alain Silver on Samurai Spy
• Anne Rutherford on Double Suicide
• David Melville on Death of a Cyclist
• Lee Hill on Viridiana

Viewing Modes and Mise en Scene: 50 YEARS ON by Christian Keathley

50 Years On from Christian Keathley at Audiovisualcy

 
Film Studies For Free is thrilled to present a brilliant video essay by Christian Keathley. Keathley's latest video is a revision of a contribution made for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies' 50th anniversary conference.

It beautifully posits and explores the idea of two different viewing strategies in the cinema: what Keathley calls a "literate" mode in which "a single-minded gaze is directed torward the obvious [cinematic] figure on offer" on the screen; and a "non-literate" mode, less narrowly focused, roaming instead "over the frame, sensitive to its textures and surfaces".

Keathley's work provides an interesting cinephilic counterpoint to Tim Smith's important psychological film studies research into how our eyes scan and sample images, as highlighted by David Bordwell at his website back in February.

See also Keathley's excellent Pass the Salt  - a videographic study of a moment in Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder,  as well as his written essay on the "obvious' in Preminger at World Picture journal.

FSFF will be out of action until the beginning of July while an acute shoulder injury heals. It hopes you enjoy Keathley's work, as well as other videos at Audiovisualcy, in the meantime.

New Issue of WIDE SCREEN Journal: Cinemas of the Arab World, Militant Cinema, Film Production Studies, SciFi

Frame grab from Drôle de Félix (Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, 2000)

Film Studies For Free's author is busy with marking this weekend, and so can only look longingly for now at the below Table of Contents of a bumper new issue of the journal Wide Screen which appears to be going from strength to strength. There are some very enticing and valuable items here, so FSFF wanted to rush its readers the usual direct links to the openly accessible contents.

Wide Screen Vol.3 No.1

• 'From the Editors' Desk' by Kuhu Tanvir PDF

 Essays:

• 'Militants and Cinema: Digital Attempts to Make the Multitude in Hunger, Che, Public Enemies' by Joshua Aaron Gooch Abstract PDF
• 'Minnelli's Yellows: Illusion, Delusion and the Impression on Film' by Kate Hext Abstract PDF
• Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction and the Post-Human' by Anirban Kapil Baishya Abstract PDF
• 'Drôle de Félix: A Search for Cultural Identity on the Road' by Zélie Asava Abstract PDF
• 'An Analysis of the Technoscientific Imaginary in the Remake of The Stepford Wives' by Jessica Johnston and Cornelia Sears Abstract PDF 
• Home Sweet Home: The Cautionary Prison/Fairy Tale' by Paul Tremblay Abstract PDF 

Film Production Studies (Contd. from W.S. 2.2)

• Handling Financial and Creative Risk in German Film Production' by M. Bjørn von Rimscha Abstract PDF
• Opening Pandora’s (Black) Box: Towards A Methodology Of Production Studies' by Graham Roberts Abstract PDF 

Cinemas of the Arab World:  

• 'Introduction: Cinemas of the Arab World' by Latika Padgaonkar Abstract PDF
• 'Cinema “Of” Yemen And Saudi Arabia: Narrative Strategies, Cultural Challenges, Contemporary Features' by Anne Ciecko Abstract PDF 
• Director Profile: Mai Masri' by Latika Padgaonkar Abstract PDF
• Salah Abu Seif and Arab Neorealism' by Ouissal Mejri Abstract PDF 
• Review: London River' by Latika Padgaonkar Abstract PDF 

Book Reviews:

• 'Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983' by Radha Dayal Abstract PDF

Undead Links to George A. Romero Studies

Zombies intruding on the free flow of commerce? Frame grab from Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)

In [George Romero's films], antagonism and horror are not pushed out of society (to the monster) but are rather located within society (qua the monster). The issue isn’t the zombies; the real problem lies with the “heroes”—the police, the army, good old boys with their guns and male bonding fantasies. If they win, racism has a future, capitalism has a future, sexism has a future, militarism has a future. Romero also implements this critique structurally. As Steven Shaviro observes, the cultural discomfort is not only located in the films’ graphic cannibalism and zombie genocide: the low-budget aesthetics makes us see “the violent fragmentation of the cinematic process itself." The zombie in such a representation may be uncanny and repulsive, but the imperfect uncleanness of the zombie’s face—the bad make-up, the failure to hide the actor behind the monster’s mask—is what breaks the screen of the spectacle. [Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010] 

About a month ago, Film Studies For Free's author was delighted to take part in the first of a series of screenings and roundtables on the fascinating and complex subject of 'Intrusion' and its 'specific relation to the visual on the different but interrelated registers of the psychic, sexual, social and political'. 

This inventive and highly productive series was organised by Amber Jacobs, Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and creator and presenter of the wonderful Daily Subversions weekly radio show on ResonanceFM (available everywhere online). FSFF will post a video essay contribution on the first film in the 'Intrusion' series just as soon as the more mundane 'intrusions' of research deadlines and the hectic grading season have subsided.

An excellent podcast of the final roundtable of the series, discussing George A. Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, has just gone online. The discussion features Dr Jacobs, along with Mark Fisher (Cultural Studies and Music Culture, Goldsmiths), Gordon Hon (Artist and Lecturer in Visual Culture, Winchester School of Art), Paul Myerscough (Senior Editor at the London Review of Books), and some great contributions from the audience. The podcast lasts just under an hour. 

To accompany this new online resource, FSFF has assembled and updated a scarily good list of links to further, openly accessible studies or scholarly discussions of Romero's work. Also see previous related entries "Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies and Zombie Week at In Media Res. And also be aware that you can watch Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

• Birkbeck College Roundtable Discussion on ‘Dawn of the Dead’, May 26, 2011 (with Amber Jacobs, Paul Myerscough, Gordon Hon and Mark Fisher) 
• Michael Bloom, 'Reanimating the Living Dead: Uncovering the Zombie Archetype in the Works of George A. Romero', Offscreen, April 30, 2009
• Matt Cardin, 'Spirituality in Romero’s Living Dead Films', TheoFantastique, December 3, 2009
• John Cussans, 'Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tucson', First published in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil edited by Paul Yoder and Peter Mario Kreuter, May 2004
• Erin Burns Davis, 'To Say Death’s Name: The Ever-changing Definition of the Zombie in Popular Culture', Academia.edu, 2006 
• Jennifer Whitney Dotson, Considering Blackness in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead: An Historical Exploration, MA Thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2006
• Stephen Harper, '"They’re Us": Representations of Women in George Romero’s ‘Living Dead’ Series', Intensities, 2003
• Stephen Harper, 'Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead', Americana, 1.2, Fall 2002
• Stephen Harper,  “Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic”, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005 
• Philip Horne, 'I shopped with a zombie', Critical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1992, 97-110
• Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010
• John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996
• Marco Maurizi, '“Just in Case Society Crumbles”: George A. Romero and Marxism', Historical Materialism Conference, 2006
• Kim Paffenroth, 'Religious Themes of George Romero’s Zombie Movies', Golem: Journal of Religion and Monsters, Spring 2006 
• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', In Media Res, Wednesday, September 30, 2009
• Pinewood Dialogue with George A. Romero
• Steven Shaviro, 'Survival of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, September 25, 2010
• Steven Shaviro, 'Diary of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, April 26, 2008
• Jasie Stokes, Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: the Zombie in Popular Culture from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead, MA Thesis, Brigham Young University, April 2010
• Jesse Stommel, '"Pity Poor Flesh": Terrible Bodies in the Films of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 56, May 2007
• Margaret Twohy, 'From Voodoo to Viruses: The Evolution of the Zombie in Twentieth Century Popular Culture', MPhil Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, October 2008

George A. Romero, Daddy of the Dead (a Wired.com video)

Romero's Zombies