¡Viva Raúl Ruiz!

Video essay-tribute by Catherine Grant

The above is a very short study of a sequence from Diálogos de exiliados/Dialogues of Exiles (France, 1974/5), an extremely low-budget film written and directed in Paris by the late and much lamented Raúl Ruiz. Diálogos was the first film to be made by that filmmaker in exile from Chile, with many of his countrymen and women, after Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup d'état against the legally elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende. Controversially, at the time, it wasn't exactly the most conventional, or, despite its satire, the most crowd-pleasing 'exile' or 'solidarity' film that could have been made in those circumstances. And yet, as Zuzana Pick wrote of it, "[Diálogos] can fulfill the function that Ruiz intended for it by provoking dialogue. With its clear and evocative title, this first work of Chile’s cinema of resistance inserts itself into the struggle against fascism."

A few weeks back, Film Studies For Free published a sincerely felt tribute to the recently deceased Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. The tribute took the customary, if somewhat impersonal, form for this blog: a long list of links to openly-accessible scholarly and critical writing on Ruiz's work.

Shortly after that list appeared, though, FSFF's author was asked for a more personal response to the work of one of her favourite film artists: to contribute some thoughts on a beloved moment in Ruiz's films to a wonderful collection of such thoughts -- by critics, academics, and people who knew the Chilean filmmaker -- currently being published in serial form at the MUBI Notebook.

This was how the above, little video tribute came into being. The links to all the contributions are being added below as they, also, appear online.

Many thanks to David Phelps for his wonderful work of commissioning and curation. It was a real pleasure, albeit quite a poignant one, to take part, and an honour to have one's work published in such excellent, international company.

• Chilean Memories by Jeronimo Rodriguez (En español, coming soon)
• Don Raúl's Ruizness by Gonzalo Maza (En español, coming soon)
• La maleta (1963/2008) by T.C. Smith 
• Diálogos de exiliados (Dialogue of Exiles, 1975) by Catherine Grant (video essay)
• Colloque de chiens (Dog’s Dialogue, 1977) by Maxim Pozdorovkin
• On Top of the Whale (1981) by James Quandt
• City of Pirates (La ville des pirates, 1983) by Ignatiy Vishnavetsky
• Point de fuite (1984) by Gina Telaroli
• Mammame (1986) by Joe McElhaney
• Brise-glace (1989) by Luc Moullet (in English and French / en anglais et français)

COMING SOON

• The Golden Boat (1990) by C. Mason Wells
• Poetics of Cinema (1994/2005) by Matthew Flanagan
• Shattered Image (1998) by Zach Campbell
• “Los dos caminos” / “The Two Paths” by Cristián Sánchez Garfias
• Time Regained (Le temps retrouvé, 1999) by David Pendleton
• Cofralandes, Chilean Rhapsody (2002) by Quintín
• Klimt (2006) by Adrian Martin
• A Closed Book (2010) by David Phelps
• Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) by Carlos Losilla

Thrilling the Ears: Sound in Hitchcock's cinema

Blackmail, silent version (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)

Blackmail, sound version

Hitchcock's use of sound in Blackmail and Murder is important in three respects. As historical documents the two films overturn some accepted notions of what was technically possible in filming with immobilized cameras and uneditable sound systems. As personal documents they represent Hitchcock's first major experiments in combining sound and image in ways that would not subordinate pictures to dialogue. As films that extend Hitchcock's expressionistic interests into the sound era, they reveal Hitchcock's earliest efforts to use aural techniques to convey a character's feelings. In addition, Blackmail already establishes Hitchcock's predilection for integrating music and sound effects with plot and theme, and it introduces most of his favorite aural motifs. Both films are interesting historically, but Blackmail is the more successful work of art because its aural techniques and motifs are an integral part of a stylistic whole. [Elisabeth Weis, Chapter 2: "First Experiments with Sound: Blackmail and Murder", in The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcocks Soundtrack (Rutherford, Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1982), p. 28]

A new academic year is upon us and Film Studies For Free's author is very happily gearing up to teach, inter alia, Alfred Hitchcock's film Blackmail for the umpteenth time.

It's a truly great teaching topic, one which usually takes off from the fact that Hitchcock converted his silent film to sound during its production. And it has very fruitfully inspired today's entry on scholarship about sound in Hitchcock's cinema.

There are some excellent, openly accessible resources linked to below, most notably Elisabeth Weis's wonderful book on this topic, now added to FSFF's permanent listing of online and freely accessible Film Studies e-books.

• Richard Allen, 'Hitchcock and Narrative Suspense Theory and Practice' in Allen, Richard, Malcolm Turvey (eds), Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004)

• Alan Andres, 'Telescope: A Talk with Hitchcock (1964)', The Bernard Herrmann Society, February 2000

• Giorgio Biancorosso, 'Beginning Credits and Beyond: Music and the Cinematic Imagination', Echo, Volume 3 Issue 1 (Spring 2001)

• David Butler, 'The Days Do Not End: Film Music, Time and Bernard Herrmann', Film Studies, Volume 9 (Winter 2006)

• Stephen Deutsch, 'Psycho and The Orchestration of Anxiety', The Soundtrack, 2010

• Nathan Fink, 'The Sound of Suspense: an analysis of music in Alfred Hitchcock films', 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, University of Bologna, 2006

• Kurt George Gjerde, 'Bernard Herrmann A Celebration of His Life and Music', The Bernard Herrmann Society, April 1999

• Catherine Grant, 'Framing Fascination: Studies of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window', Film Studies For Free, February 16, 2011

• Catherine Grant, 'Study of a Single Film: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo', Film Studies For Free, November 22, 2010

• Stephen Husarik, 'Transformation of “The Psycho Theme” in Bernard’s Herrmann’s Music for Psycho', Interdisciplinary Humanities, 2009

• Amy Lawrence, 'Blackmail (1929)', in Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)

• Richard Littlefield, '[Review of] Steven C. Smith. A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann', The Journal of Film Music, 1.2/3, 2003 

• Gary McCarron, 'Undecided Stories: Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail and The Problem of Moral Agency', Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 33 (2008) 65-80

• Stuart Y. McDougal, 'The Director Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock Remakes Himself', in Horton, Andrew, Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998

• David George Menard, 'Form Inversion in Alfred Hitchcock, Part 1'' and 'Form Inversion in Alfred Hitchcock, Part 2', Offcreen Journal, Vol. 12, 2008

• Ellen J. Nasto, 'Bernard Herrmann: An Annotated Index of Materials', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 1999

• Stephen Rebello, 'Sound in Psycho', excerpt from Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (London: St Martins Press (Trade); 1999)

• Nick Redfern, 'Hitchcock and shot scales', Research Into Film, November 18, 2010

• William H. Rosar, 'Bernard Herrmann: The Beethoven of Film Music?', The Journal of Film Music, 1.2/3, 2003 

• Tom Schneller, 'Unconscious Anchors: Bernard Herrmann's Music for Marnie', Popular Music History Vol.5, Number 1, (2010), pages 55-104 

• Tom Schneller, 'Death and Love: Bernard Herrmann's Score for Vertigo', Cuadernos de musica, artes visuales y artes escenicas, Vol. 1, Number 2 (April-September 2005), pages 189-200

• Tom Schneller, '[Review of ] Jack Sullivan: Hitchcock’s Music', The Journal of Film Music, 2.1, 2007

• Tom Schneller, '[Review of] David Cooper. Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo: A Film Score Handbookand David Cooper. Bernard Herrmann’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir', The Journal of Film Music, 2.1, 2007

• Jack Sullivan, 'Overture', Hitchcock's Music (Yale University Press, 2006) 

• Constantine Verevis, 'Remaking Film', Film Studies, Vol. 4, Summer 2004 (pp 87-103)

• Steve Vertlieb, 'Herrmann and Hitchcock: The Torn Curtain', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 2002

• Michael Walker, Hitchcock's Motifs (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)

• Elisabeth Weis, 'The Sound of One wing Flapping', Filmsound.org, [date unknown]

• Elisabeth Weis, 'Tati, Hitchcock, Antonioni: Three Approaches to Sonic Creativity', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 11, 2007

• Elisabeth Weis, The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcock's Soundtrack (Rutherford, Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1982)

• 1. Introduction (p 13)
• 2. First Experiments with Sound: Blackmail and Murder (p 28)
• 3. Expressionism at Its Height: Secret Agent (p 63)
• 4. Consolidation of a Classical Style: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (p 77)
• 5. Music and Murder (p 87)
• 6. The Subjective Film: Rear Window (p 107)
• 7. Aural Intrusion and the Single-Set Films (p 125)
• 8. Beyond Subjectivity: The Birds (p 136)
• 9. Silence and Screams (p 148) Appendix filmography

• Brian Wise, 'Bernard Herrmann: Remembering an Original who Changed Film Music',WQXR, June 30, 2011

• Bill Wrobel, 'The Nature of Bernard Herrmann's Music', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 2008

• Slavoj Zizek, 'Why Hitchcock is still our contemporary?', Alternative Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 94-105, October 2010

Surveillance Film Studies

Call Northside 777 (Henry Hathaway, 1948). Take a look at
Hannah Gregory's great visual essay on this film

Today, the compulsively unsecretive, positively Panoptic, Film Studies For Free focuses on 'surveillance film studies'. Do cast a beady eye, therefore, at the unsuspiciously Open Access scholarly resources linked to further down the page.

The post has been inspired by the thrilling chronometric proximity of an interdisciplinary conference, taking place next week, on the “Cultures of Surveillance” at University College London (September 29-October 1), with keynote lectures by the very brilliant professors Tom Gunning and Simon Cole.

The full programme can be found here. Anyone interested in these topics should also check out some related and highly innovative work online by the amazing film and humanities scholars at UCL at the following four websites:

• Autopsies Research Group including the Autopsies of Surveillance Project
• The Cinetourist (aka Roland-François Lack)
• The Blow Up Moment (also by Roland-François Lack)
• The Daily Map (also by Roland-François Lack)
  

• Objects Under Surveillance Museum Roundtable, University College London, January 19, 2011 Videos [m4v] of the event can be viewed by clicking on the images below.

Intro. & Simon Baker / Sue Woods & Katy McGahan  /  Neil Paterson  /  Discussion                  

• Wesley Aelbrecht, '2 Into 1 (Gillian Wearing, 1997)', Autopsies of Surveillance, 2011
• Anders Albrechtslund, 'Surveillance and Ethics in Film: Rear Window and The Conversation', JCJPC 15(2), 2008
• Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld, 'The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment', Surveillance and Society, 3(2/3), 2005: 216-221
• Chris Darke, Letter from London [on surveillance culture]', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 8, April 2003
• Deirdre Devers and Stephanie Wilson, 'Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming', DIGRA Proceedings, 2009
• Stephanie Fuller, '"Your papers?": Objects of Surveillance at the US-Mexico Border', Autopsies of Surveillance, 2011
• Hannah Gregory, 'Surveillance on Film: Call Northside 777', Autopsies of Surveillance, 2011
• Nic Groombridge, 'Crime Control or Crime Culture TV?', Surveillance and Society, 1(1), 2002: 30-46
• Nic Groombridge, 'Crime Control or Crime Culture TV?', Surveillance and Society, 1(1), 2002 
• David Harper, 'The Politics of Paranoia: Paranoid Positioning and Conspiratorial Narratives in the Surveillance Society', Surveillance and Society, 5(1), 2008: 1-32 
• Nicholas Holm, 'Conspiracy Theorizing Surveillance: Considering Modalities of Paranoia and Conspiracy in Surveillance Studies', Surveillance and Society 7(1): 36-48, 2009 
• Andrew Hultkrans, 'Surveillance in the cinema: here's looking at you, kid', Stim, 7.1, 2006
• Dietmar Kammerer, 'Video Surveillance in Hollywood Movies', Surveillance and Society - CCTV Special (eds. Norris, McCahill and Wood) 2(2/3), 2004: 464-473
• Thomas Y. Levin, 'Rhetoric of the Temporal Index: Surveillant Narration and the Cinema of “Real Time”', In CTRL[SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, eds. Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Fronhe and Peter Weibel, 578-93. Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM Center for Art and Media; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002
• Peter Marks, 'Surveillance Screens and Screening in Code 46', SCAN: Journal of Media Arts Culture, vol 5 number 1 May 2008
• Peter Marks, 'Imagining Surveillance: Utopian Visions and Surveillance Studies', Surveillance and Society, 3(2/3), 2005: 222-239
• G.T. Marx, 'Seeing hazily (but not darkly) through the lens: some recent empirical studies of surveillance technologies', Law and Social Inquiry, vol. 30, no. 2, Spring 2005
• Serafino Murri, 'Visual Irony as Virus in Panoptic Structures: Logic of Fact and Anti-Truth in Chris Petit’s “Surveillance”', ctrl[space, October 2, 2001
• Simon Rothon, '‘Through the Grapevine’? Listening Devices and Acts of Surveillance', Autopsies of Surveillance, 2011
• Simon Rothon, 'Objects of Surveillance: The Parabolic Microphone', Autopsies of Surveillance, 2011
• Jessica M. Silbey, 'Videotaped Confessions and the Genre of Documentary', Suffolk University Law School Faculty Publications, Paper 35, 2006
• The Politics of CCTV in Europe and Beyond', Special Issue: Surveillance and Society, Vol. 2 (2.3), 2004
• Giovanni Tiso, 'The spectacle of surveillance: Images of the Panopticon in science-fiction cinema', Research Paper, 2000
• Evangelos Tziallas, 'Surveillance, space and performance: informing interstitial subjectivities in Head On', Jump Cut, No. 52, Summer 2010
• Evangelos Tziallas, 'Torture porn and surveillance culture', Jump Cut, No. 51, Summer 2010
• Kristin Veel, 'Surveillance Narratives – from lack to overload', Humanity in Cybernetic Environments, Edited by Daniel Riha. Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010
• Catherine Zimmer, 'Surveillance Cinema: Narrative between Technology and Politics', Surveillance and Society, 8(4), 2011: 427-440

Media History Digital Library

It has been brilliantly publicised already, but Film Studies For Free wanted to make sure all its readers were alerted to the launch of an amazing new website for the Media History Digital Library, an excellent non-profit organisation that, for a good while now, in conjunction with the Internet Archive, has been working to digitize and open up full public access to collections of classic film and media periodicals that belong in the public domain.

On the site, you will find access to over 200,000 digitized pages of public domain media industry trade papers and fan magazines, including Moving Picture World (1912-1918), Film Daily (1918-1936), Photoplay (1917-1940), Radio Broadcast (1922-1930), and much more.

As well as its collections, the new website sports a great blog by MHDL Founder and Director David Pierce, and it also has its own Facebook page.

You are also encouraged to support this brilliant project with sponsorship. As such brilliance doesn't just come about by accident, nor can it possibly come about for free, FSFF strongly urges you to think about supporting this work financially, especially if you know that you, or your institution, are likely to benefit to any great degree from access to these wonderful resources.

On Bill Douglas, Scottish Cinema and Magical Film Archives

Bill Douglas 'My Childhood' Masterclass with Mamoun Hassan (video by Sherief Hassan)

Film Studies For Free today presents an entry about Bill Douglas, one of the most interesting Scottish filmmakers ever, and a highly likely influence on anyone interesting working in that field today -- in FSFF's undoubtedly Sassenach view, that would include, inter alia, fine film folk like Lynne Ramsay, Peter Mullan, David MacKenzie, and Gillies MacKinnon (plus, perhaps, the otherwise English Andrea Arnold and Shane Meadows).

Douglas was known especially for his amazing Trilogy (My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973), and My Way Home (1978)), as well as for the wonderful 1987 film Comrades. But his lifelong collection of cinema artifacts and memorabilia also went on to form the basis of one of the most significant cinema archives in the world, named after him, at the University of Exeter. The Bill Douglas Centre also looks after one of the most important online and openly accessible cinematic archives, too: Everyone's Virtual Exhibition (EVE). If you are so inclined, you may very much like to interact with the BDC at Facebook. 

The particular occasion for this entry is an upcoming symposium on Douglas's work at the University of Exeter taking place this week on Friday September 23. There are papers from eminent scholars Karen Lury, Andrew Noble, Brian Hoyle, Jonny Murray and Paul Newland and from filmmaker Sean Martin and the BDC's principal donor, Peter Jewell, on all aspects of Douglas's work; the Trilogy, Comrades, his unmade scripts, and his collection. There will also be the first ever screening of Charlie Chaplin Lived Here, Bill and Peter's 8mm film made in 1966. The event is free but please register in advance by email. The full programme of papers is available here.

FSFF has assembled some great, freely accessible resources below, including links to work on Scottish cinema and also on film archiving. The goodies include a highly informative and clip-filled 2006 documentary "Intent on Getting the Image" about Bill Douglas's life and career, edited by Stuart Eade and produced and directed by Andy Kimpton-Nye.

At the very foot of the post is a video about the incredibly valuable work of the Bill Douglas Centre. FSFF salutes you!

On Bill Douglas's Films, and related Scottish cinema:

• Bill Douglas entry at BFI Screenonline 
• Bill Douglas: A Brief Biography', Bill Douglas Centre website

• Michael Atkinson, 'Mr. Vengeance: Scottish filmmaker Bill Douglas's autobiographical trilogy', Moving Image Source, September 22, 2008
• Neil Blain, 'The Scottish Dimension in Film and Television', Scottish Life and Society: Transport and Communications, A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, Volume 8, pp. 768 - 792
• Simon Brown, '“Anywhere but Scotland?” Transnationalism and New Scottish Cinema', International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen, 2011
• Yannick Deplaedt, 'Bill Douglas, ou la mémoire au cinéma' [in French], Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, journal of School of Foreign Languages, 2010 (39), 91-117, 2010-08
• Ian Goode, 'Different Trajectories: Europe and Scotland in Recent Scottish Cinema', PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, July 2007
• Rhys Graham, 'The Glimpse Given Life: An Elegy for Bill Douglas'Senses of Cinema, Issue 10, 2000
• Lynne A. Hibberd, Creative industries policy and practice. a study of BBC Scotland and Scottish Screen, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2009
• Michael McCracken, 'Lowest of the Low: Scenes of Shame and Self-Depreciation in Contemporary Scottish Cinema', MA Thesis, University of North Texas, May 2008
• Christopher Meir, Underwriting national sovereignty?: policy, the market and Scottish cinema, 1982- present, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007
• Catherine M. Munroe, From Highlander to Hard Man: Representations of Scottish Masculinity in 1990s Cinema, Masters Thesis, York University, Ontario, 2000
• Sarah Neely, Adapting to change in contemporary Irish and Scottish culture: fiction to film. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2003
• Beatriz Oria Gómez, 'Imagining Scotland: Local Hero (1983) and Kailyardism', Bells: Barcelona English language and literature studies; Vol.: 17, 2008
• Takato Seino, Realism and Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary British Cinema, MPhil Thesis, DeMontfort University, 2010
• Linda Wood, British Films (London: BFI, 1983)

On Archive and Online Repository Matters, etc.:

• Luisa Calè and Patrizia Di Bello, 'Introduction: Verbal and Visual Interactions in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture', 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 5 (2007)
• Fergus Cooke, 'Questions of Authorship and Audience: A Study of Artefacts Related to the Film Rebecca (1940)', Bill Douglas Centre, [date unknown] 
• Jessica Gardner, Michelle Allen, Dominic Prosser, and Helen Hanson, 'E-learning at the University of Exeter Library', SCONUL FOCUS, 2005 (RTF)
• Catherine Owen, Tony Pearson, Stephen Arnold, 'Meeting the Challenge of Film Research in the Electronic Age', D-Lib Magazine, Volume 6 Number 3, March 2000
• Duncan Petrie, 'The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture: A Report for Screen', 1999
• John Plunkett, 'DIGITISATION AND MATERIALITY FORUM From Optical to Digital (and back again)', 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 6 (2008) 
• Lisa Stead, Audiences from the Film Archive: Women's Writing and Silent Cinema', Scope, Issue 17, June 2010

Christine Sprengler, 'Memory and Exile in the Bill Douglas Trilogy' in Cultures of exile: images of displacement By Wendy Ellen Everett, Peter Wagstaff (Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2004)

Graham Smith, 'The Travelling Lanternist and the Uncommercial Traveller; An Experiment in Correspondences', in Literature and the visual media by David Seed (London: DS Brewer, 2005)

Below, in eight short parts, "Intent on Getting the Image",
a documentary about the life and work of Bill Douglas

Below, a video introducing the work of the Bill Douglas Centre at the University of Exeter

Articles from the New Review of Film and Television Studies

Images from The Story of Adèle H. (François Truffaut, 1975) and The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) - two films referred to in Agustín Zarzosa's article 'Jane Campion's The Piano: melodrama as mode of exchange'

Film Studies For Free was very happy to hear that the excellent journal New Review of Film and Television Studies is now offering free access to a great selection of essays, including a recent offering by Thomas Elsaesser on Avatar, and translations from Christian Metz's book Impersonal Enunciation.

As well as the marvellous aforementioned items, FSFF also highly recommends the articles by Mette Kramer and Agustín Zarzosa.

All freely accessible material is linked to below. 

• Cinema and the two cultures: Robert Lepage's La face cachée de la lune by Sylvie Bissonnette

• Introduction to Christian Metz's Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film by Cormac Deane

• James Cameron's Avatar: access for all by Thomas Elsaesser

• The embrace of Mother Nature: appraisal processes and the regulation of affect in attachment genres by Mette Kramer

• Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film (extracts) by Christian Metz and Translated by Cormac Deane

• A lightning-image of the kaleidoscope: a review of Päsi Valiaho's Mapping the Moving Image by Imola Mikó

• The narrative structuring and interactive narrative logic of televised professional wrestling by Aaron J. Petten

• Review of Jeremy G. Butler, Television Style by Barry Salt

• Jane Campion's The Piano: melodrama as mode of exchange by Agustin Zarzosa

Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim Societies

Publicity still from The Green Wave (Ali Samadi Ahadi, 2010)

Film Studies For Free learnt of free online access to a timely and important 'Virtual Special Issue' of the journal Third Text. The excellent contents of the issue are set out below.

The selected articles are made available to accompany Winds of Change: Cinema from Muslim Societies, a series of films and talks programmed by Third Text and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 21 – 25 September 2011.

To access the issue please use this link.

For programme information and tickets to the ICA season click here.

• 'The Nakba Projected: Recent Palestinian Cinema' by Haim Bresheeth
• 'Travelling ‘Postcolonial’:Allegories of Zion, Palestine and Exile' by Ella Shohat
• 'Introduction: Is There a Muslim World?' by Ali Nobil Ahmad
• 'Paradise Delayed:With Hany Abu-Assad in Palestine' by Hamid Dabashi
• 'Between Socialism and Sufism: Islam in the Films of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty', by David Murphy
• ‘"Framed Patterns of Infinity": Takva, a Mortal Individual’s Fight for Becoming-Imperceptible' by Serazer Pekerman
• 'Introduction:The Militant Image: A Ciné-Geography' by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray
• 'Third Cinema/Militant Cinema:At the Origins of the Argentinian Experience (1968-1971)' by Mariano Mestman
• 'Social Formations of Global Media Art' by José-Carlos Mariátegui, Sean Cubitt and Gunalan Nadarajan
• 'Introduction:Art,‘EnclaveTheory’ and the Communist Imaginary' by John Roberts

Again, to access the issue please use this link.

V.F. Perkins on FILM AS FILM

Victor Perkins discusses his ideas and approaches to film aesthetics

Film Studies For Free just got wind of the below videos: seven segments of a truly fascinating interview with V.F. Perkins which took place at the Kino 8 1/2 in Saarbrücken, Germany, and was filmed by Media Art and Design Studiengang.

In the interview, Perkins engagingly discusses his approach to film studies and, in particular, talks about the trajectory of his seminal 1972 book Film as Film. A wonderful resource.

And once you've watched the videos, make sure to check out the listings of links to some of V.F. Perkins work online at the very foot of FSFF's entry.

Technology and Technique

Film as Film

Urgency of Articulation

 Loss and Cinema

Film Criticism

The Rules of the Game

Octave

• V.F. Perkins, 'Same Tune Again! Repetition and Framing in Letter from an Unknown Woman' (originally published in CineAction! no. 52), 16:9, September 2003 
• V.F. Perkins, ' 'Reconsideration: Le Plaisir: "The Mask" and "The Model"', Film Quarterly,  Film Quarterly (Vol. 63, No. 1, Fall 2009)
• V.F. Perkins, 'Moments of Choice', originally published in The Movie, ch. 58, reprinted in Ann Lloyd (ed.), Movie Book of the Fifties, Orbis, 1982; republished online by the Australian journal Rouge (issue 9, 2006)
• V.F. Perkins, 'You only live once', WRAP, Warwick, 2009 
• V.F. Perkins, 'Ian Cameron: a Tribute', MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, Issue 1, 2010
  
  

Documentary and Space: New issue of MEDIA FIELDS JOURNAL

Framegrab from El Valley Centro (James Benning, 2000). Read Elizabeth Cowie's article on Documentary Space, Place, and Landscape which discusses Benning's film, among others. Cowie is author of the new book Recording Reality, Desiring the Real (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Film Studies For Free brings you openly accessible brilliance from the latest issue of Media Fields Journal. It's a really excellent issue on documentary and space - a must-read. And however hyperbolically positive (the always hyperbolically positive) FSFF is, it doesn't always say that. So, do yourselves a big favour and click on the below links without further ado.

• Ryan Bowles and Rahul Mukherjee, 'Documentary and Space: Introduction', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Alexandra Juhasz, 'A Place in the Online Feminist Documentary Cyber-closet', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Jason Alley, 'Spaces of Reticence', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Laura Rascaroli, 'Sonic Interstices: Essayistic Voiceover and Spectatorial Space in Robert Cambrinus’s Commentary (2009)', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Elizabeth Cowie, 'Documentary Space, Place, and Landscape', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• André Jansson and Erik Gandini, 'Gitmo Space: A Dialogue about Mediatized Warfare, Documentary Filmmaking and Heterotopic Truth', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Nonny de la Peña, 'Physical World News In Virtual Spaces: Representation and Embodiment in Immersive Nonfiction', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Brett Lashua, 'Popular Music Memoryscapes of Liverpool 8', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Erica Stein, 'The Road to Heaven Twists: The City, Urban Planning, and Experiential Space', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Christina Corfield, 'Flexible by Nature: Video and the Cultural Production of Concrete Fact', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Dan Fleming, 'The Staging of Affect and the “Elsewhens” of Documentary Space', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Sukanya Sen, 'Encountering Space: Documenting the Topography of the Migrant Home', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Maggie Hennefeld, 'The Geopolitics of Narrative Parody in Ulrike Ottinger’s Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• 'Mapping Documentary: Roundtable with Filmmaker Ido Haar and Film and Media Studies Scholar Janet Walker in Conversation with David Gray and Jade Petermon', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Renée Rhodes, 'Moving Makes a Map', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

• Bernadette Flynn, 'Spatial Praxis in the Staging of Material Evidence', Media Fields Journal, Issue 3, 2011

Bitter Brilliance: Links to Nicholas Ray Scholarship and Criticism

Serena Bramble's video tribute to Nicholas Ray at PRESSPLAY

Kim Morgan and Matt Zoller Seitz, '[Video essay on In A Lonely Place embedded in] Please Don't Let Me Love You', Sunset Gun, July 16, 2009

...the bitter brilliance of Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men... [Edward Gallafent, 'Susan Hayward in the 50s', Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, 2, 2011]

If the cinema no longer existed, Nicholas Ray alone gives the impression of being capable of reinventing it, and what is more, of wanting to. While it is easy to imagine John Ford as an admiral, Robert Aldrich on Wall Street, Anthony Mann on the trail of Belliou la Fumée or Raoul Walsh as a latter-day Henry Morgan under Caribbean skies, it is difficult to see the director of Run For Cover doing anything but make films. A Logan or a Tashlin, for instance, might make good in the theatre or music-hall, Preminger as a novelist, Brooks as a school teacher, Cukor in advertising - but not Nicholas Ray. Were the cinema suddenly cease to exist, most directors would in no way be at a loss; Nicholas Ray would. After seeing Johnny Guitar or Rebel Without A Cause, one cannot but feel that here is something which exists only in the cinema, which would be nothing in a novel, the stage, or anywhere else, but which becomes fantastically beautiful on the screen. [Jean-Luc Godard, [On Nicholas Ray's Hot blood]', Cahiers du cinéma, 1957, cited by Sam Rohdie, 'Studies', Screening the Past, Issue 19, 2006]

In the opening credit sequence of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Jim Stark, played by James Dean, stumbles to the foreground of the wide, Cinemascope image and lays down to play with a miniature toy monkey. After winding it up and childishly watching it march and clap its cymbals, he paternally makes a bed for it out of assorted litter and puts it to sleep under a blanket of wrinkled paper. This brief moment not only provides immediate insight into Dean’s character, but it also foreshadows the entire story to come: young Jim’s paternal drive to ‘be a man,’ induced in part by a pathetically weak father figure, leads him to adopt Plato [Sal Mineo] as a younger sibling/child whom he can protect (like he wishes he was protected). In fact, Plato acts as a direct visual stand-in for Jim’s toy, as is clear from the latter’s attempt to give Plato his jacket in the police station moments after the opening sequence, a gesture that Plato would finally accept seconds before his death at the end of the film, when Jim would put him to rest—like his cherished toy that had run out of energy—by zipping up his jacket for the cold beyond. Jim’s own father surprisingly repeats this gesture by putting his jacket over his son’s shoulders in an inaugural act signaling his desire to protect his child from the gratuitous cruelty of the world. [Gabriel Rockhill, 'Modernism as a Misnomer: Godard’s Archeology of the Image', Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XVIII, No 2 (2010) pp 107-129: 110-111]

Today, inspired in part by the appearance yesterday of Serena Bramble's video tribute (above), Film Studies For Free collects snippets from and links to scholarship and critical writing on the films of Nicholas Ray.

This year marks the centenary of Ray's birth. Interestingly, the years since are remarkably short on online and openly accessible scholarly studies of his work, but mightily longer, luckily, on some really excellent film critical work. The below list aims to link to the best and most interesting of both those categories, but if you know of great items missing from this selection, please feel free to tell FSFF about them in the comments. Thank you!

• Michael J. Anderson, 'Nicholas Ray's Least Seen Signature Features: Wind Across the Everglades, Party Girl and The Savage Innocents', Tativille, July 31, 2009


• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, '[Archive for the 'Directors: Ray, Nicholas' Category], Observations of Film Art, [various dates]
  


• Serena Bramble, 'The Heart is a “Lonely” Hunter: On Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• David Cairns, 'The Split Screen: "We Can't Go Home Again" (Ray, 1976)', The Auteurs (now MUBI Notebook), August 11, 2009 


• Rose Capp, 'Nicholas Ray, a Sentimental Bloke', Senses of Cinema, Issue 20, 2002


• Marilyn Ferdinand, 'King of Kings (1961)', Ferdy on Films, March 31, 2008


• George Kaplan, 'They Live By Night', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• Glenn Kenny, 'Underneath the Bottle: In A Lonely Place and Alcoholism', The Auteurs (Now MUBI Notebook), July 15, 2009


• Kevin B. Lee, 'Video Essay: An Arena of Hurt: Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men', The Auteurs (now MUBI Notebook), August 5, 2009 


• Kevin B. Lee, 'Nicholas Ray: A Webliography', Shooting Down Pictures,  March 20, 2009


• Kevin B. Lee, 'The Lusty Men (1952, Nicholas Ray)', Shooting Down Pictures, March 20, 2009


• Kim Morgan and Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Video essay on In A Lonely Place - Please Don't Let Me Love You', Sunset Gun, July 16, 2009


• Kim Morgan, 'Reading, Writing, Romance And Rage', Sunset Gun, January 18, 2008
  


• V. F. Perkins, 'Moments of Choice', originally published in The Movie, ch. 58, reprinted in Ann Lloyd (ed.), Movie Book of the Fifties, Orbis, 1982) republished Rouge, Issue 9, 2006


• Jon Rainey, 'The Cinematic Savior: Jesus Films and Related Literature', Theological Librarianship: An Online Journal of the American Theological Library Association, Volume 3, Number 2, December 2010


• Gabriel Rockhill, 'Modernism as a Misnomer: Godard’s Archeology of the Image', Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2010


• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Circle of Pain: The Cinema of Nicholas Ray', Sight and Sound, Autumn 1973


• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Nicholas Ray', Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, 2002


• Steven Rybin, 'Party Girl', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• David Sanjek, 'Johnny Guitar', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• Robert Schultz, 'Celluloid History: Postwar Society in Postwar Popular Culture', American Studies, 31.2, 1990


• Self-Styled Siren/Farran Smith Nehme, 'Macao (1952', Self-Styled Siren, April 19, 2007


• Christopher Sharrett, 'False Criticism: Cinema, Bourgeois Society, and the Conservative Complaint', Film International, April 18, 2011
  


• J. David Slocum, 'Rebel Without A Cause', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• Farran Smith Nehme/Self-Styled Siren, 'Macao (1952', Self-Styled Siren, April 19, 2007


• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Homeless on the Range: The Lusty Men and the "Great American Search"', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, 2008


• Fiona A. Villella, 'Shadows on the Horizon: In a Lonely Place', Senses of Cinema, Issue 10, 2000


• Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 'Nicholas Ray's The Janitor', Sound, Images, February 2, 2009


• Brad Weismann, 'Knock on Any Door', Senses of Cinema, Issue 59, 2011


• Chris Wood, 'Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel Without a Cause', Senses of Cinema, Issue 5, 2000

V. F. Perkins, 'The Cinema of Nicholas Ray', in Movies and Methods. Edited by Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 351-352

Dana Polan, 'On the Bad Goodness of Born to be Bad', in Murray Pomerance (ed.), Bad: infamy, darkness, evil, and slime on screen (New York: SUNY Press, 2004)

Evan Meeker's video The Rebel Within uses experimental editing techniques "to probe Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause analyzing scenes and dialogue with the intention of drawing out hidden themes and character traits easily glanced over in the original."