KOSMORAMA! Great online resources from the Danish Film Institute

Short films from a small nation - marketing postwar Denmark (13 Nov 2014)

Fifty years before Borgen hit British TV screens, Danish directors were making films for British audiences. Driven by the need to market Danish produce and culture abroad after World War II, the government funded hundreds of short films in many languages, encompassing topics from pensions to bacon to handicrafts.

As the Spring break in the UK beckons, Film Studies For Free sparks back into life with some shorter entries.

The first of these results from some correspondence with Claire Thomson of University College London (who features in the excellent videoed talk, embedded above). Dr Thomson very kindly wrote to FSFF to point it in the direction of the following two online resources from the Danish Film Institute. 

The Danish film journal Kosmorama was established in 1954, and since 2011 has been publishing 4-5 issues a year in online open access format, from its base at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen. Most of Kosmorama’s articles are peer-reviewed, but space is also reserved for writing accessible to a wide audience of cinephiles. 

The journal also tries to strike a balance between publishing in English for a global audience, and catering for Scandinavian readers, with articles in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. A clever feature of Kosmorama is its use of embedded film clips, images and documentation to illustrate arguments and analyses. The site also hosts a research blog, which is a place to share news on recent publications and upcoming workshops, lectures, conferences and call for papers, and readers can sign up to a newsletter so as not to miss a single issue. 

Recent content in English includes articles on media in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, metafiction in House of Cards, state-sponsored short films, Mormonism in early Danish cinema, and a theme issue on Body Language in the Moving Image. Article submissions of around 5000 words on any aspect of cinema and television are welcome, and information for potential contributors can be found via Kosmorama’s English homepage: http://www.kosmorama.org/ServiceMenu/05-English.aspx  

The Danish Film Institute is also home to an extensive web resource on the auteur Carl Th. Dreyer.  Carl Th. Dreyer: The Man and His Work combines a growing collection of essays on Dreyer’s life, work and style with an extensively annotated filmography, film clips, stills, posters, and a searchable database of the Dreyer Archive. Whether you want to read about aspects of Dreyer’s style or filmmaking practice, research his correspondence, watch his short films, or find out what  Lars von Trier inherited from Dreyer (answer: some stylistic tricks, and a tailor-made tuxedo), do visit the site here: http://english.carlthdreyer.dk/

Thanks very much to Dr Thomson for these. FSFF readers will be able to find lots of articles online at Kosmorama, but the ones in the latest issue have been listed and are linked to below.

ARTICLES / KOSMORAMA #258 – BODY LANGUAGE IN THE MOVING IMAGE

• BODY LANGUAGE AND MEDIA CONTEXT Lennard Højbjerg
• FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES Casper Tybjerg
• EXPRESSING SUPPRESSION Henry Bacon
• MAKING LOVE DETUMESCENTLY Mariah Larsson
• MOVIE STARS IN THE FLESH Helle Kannik Haastrup

New FILM-PHILOSOPHY!!

Frame grab from Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). Read Ben Tyrer's article on film noir and this film in the latest issue of Film-Philosophy

Film-Philosophy 17.1 (2013): the second to last of the brilliant new film studies e journal issues out in December with which Film Studies For Free will present you in 2013. And the daddy of them all.

There will be two more FSFF posts to appear before the holidays, that is, if you can tear yourself away from reading the below articles and reviews.

Articles

• The Facts Before Our Eyes: Wittgenstein and the Film Noir Investigator Keith Dromm PDF
• 'How Can It Not Know What It Is?': Self and Other in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner  Andrew Norris PDF
• Ghost in the Shell 2, Technicity and the Subject  Daniel Hourigan PDF
• Throne of Blood and the Metaphysics of Tragedy  Henry Somers-Hall PDF
• 'That Man Behind the Curtain': Atheism and Belief in The Wizard of Oz  Justin Remes PDF
• Film Noir as Point de Capiton: Double Indemnity, Structure and Temporality Ben Tyrer PDF
• Shooting for Dead Time in Gus Van Sant's Elephant William Little  PDF
• Bad Memories: Haneke with Locke on Personal Identity and Post-Colonial Guilt Justine McGill PDF
• 'Misfortune's Image': The Cinematic Representation of Trauma in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967)  Mark Cresswell, Zulfia Karimova PDF
• The Ister: Cinema's Interruption Linda Daley PDF
• Otherness and the Renewal of Freedom in Jarmusch's Down by Law: A Levinasian and Arendtian Reading Mark Cauchi  PDF
• Mimesis Reconsidered: Adorno and Tarkovsky contra Habermas  Simon Mussell PDF
• Nietzsche and Bad Conscience on Mosquito Coast James Edward Gough, Sue Matheson PDF
• The Closure of the 'Gold Window': From 'Camera-Eye' to 'Brain-Screen' Morgan M Adamson  PDF
• A New/Old Ontology of Film Rafe McGregor  PDF
• Internal Needs, Endoxa and the Truth: An Aristotelian Approach to the Popular Screenplay Daniel McInerny PDF
• Extreme Makeover: Art and Morality in The Shape of Things Joseph H. Kupfer  PDF
• 'Even the Ghost was more than one person': Hauntology and Authenticity in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There Carolyn D'Cruz, Glenn D'Cruz PDF
• I'm Glad I'm Not Me: Subjective Dissolution, Schizoanalysis and Post-Structuralist Ethics in the Films of Todd Haynes  Helen Darby PDF
• Truth, Autobiography and Documentary: Perspectivism in Nietzsche and Herzog Katrina Mitcheson  PDF
• Left-over Spaces: The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers  Benoit Dillet, Tara Puri PDF
• Homeopathic Repetition and Memories of Underdevelopment: The Dialectic of Subjective Experience and Objective Historical Forces  Trevor James Cunnington PDF
• Charcoal Matter with Memory: Images of Movement, Time and Duration in the animated films of William Kentridge  David H. Fleming PDF
• The Philosophical Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes: The Silent Films of Stan Brakhage   James Michael Magrini PDF
• 'The Epidermis of Reality': Artaud, the Material Body and Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc Ros Murray PDF

Book Reviews

• Hsiu-Chuang Deppman (2010) Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film (Iris Chui Ping Kam) PDF
• Alain Badiou (2013) Cinema and Alex Ling (2010) Badiou and Cinema (David H. Fleming) PDF
• Timothy Corrigan, ed. (2012) Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. 2nd Edition (Shawn Loht) PDF
• Michael Charlesworth (2011) Derek Jarman (Justin Remes) PDF
• Sharon Lin Tay (2009) Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practices (Sheryl Tuttle Ross) PDF
• Todd Berliner (2010) Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (John Anthony Bleasdale) PDF
•  M. Keith Booker (2011) Historical Dictionary of American Cinema (Glen Melanson) PDF  
• Shawn C. Bean (2008) The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking (Carrie Giunta) PDF
• Julian Petley (2011) Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Zach Saltz) PDF
• Suzanne Buchan (2011) The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom (Micki Nyman) PDF
• Khatereh Sheibani (2011) The Poetics of Iranian Cinema: Aesthetics and Modernity After the Revolution (Paul Elliott) PDF

Truly Doing Film Criticism: Online Film Studies by Tag Gallagher

Tag Gallagher: A New Reality. Roberto Rossellini's Francesco, guillare di Dio, (US 2006)

[T]here is no formula for movie criticism. Cinema is not the same cinema in Ford and Rossellini, so you don’t use the same tools to look at it. Frame enlargements can show a lot of Ford’s art -- composition, camera angles rhyming from one shot to the next, lighting – but almost nothing of Rossellini’s art, because Rossellini turns everything into motion. All the feelings, the motivations, the characters’ sense of self, even morality and philosophy are turned into motion. So I published a thousand pages about Rossellini, but I really couldn’t deal with his cinema, until I made my video about his Francesco, giullare di Dio.  ['Truly Doing Film Criticism: Interview with Tag Gallagher', kunst-der-vermittlung.de,  2009]

The first video I made about Roberto Rossellini was [on Francesco, giullare di Dio]. I made it for a company that turned it down because it did not like the quality of the recording of my voice. So I lost the opportunity to publish this essay in that country, and in some others. [...] So I showed my video on Francesco only at some museums and gave some copies to friends, but that was it.  [Excerpts from a January 2012 interview with Gallagher: Elpidio del Campo Cañizares, 'Los «ensayos visuales» de Tag Gallagher como paradigma de nuevos modelos de análisis cinematográfico', Revista Comunicación, No. 10, Vol.1, año 2012: 1334-1347 [PDF]]

Today, Film Studies For Free is delighted to publish online, for the first time, film critic and historian extraordinaire Tag Gallagher's first video essay on a Roberto Rossellini film.

To celebrate and accompany this publication, for which FSFF and its readers have to thank the great Tag himself, below is a list of links to Gallagher's online film studies essays (written and audiovisual), interviews with him about his work, and studies of his work. If there is anything missing from the below lists, please leave a relevant link in the comments section. Many thanks!

Gallagher's Written Work Online:

• Tag Gallagher's website

• Tag Gallagher, John Ford, the Man and His Films, 2007

• Tag Gallagher, 'Geometry of Force: Abel Ferrara and Simone Weil', Screening the Past, 10 (2000) 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Reading, culture, and auteur', Screening the Past, 12 (2001) 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Mizoguchi and Freedom', Screening the Past, 13 (2001) 
• Tag Gallagher, 'All lost in wonder: Edgar G.Ulmer', Screening the Past, 12 (2001)
• Tag Gallagher, 'Going My Way', Screening the Past, December 2001

• Tag Gallagher, 'Josef von Sternberg', Senses of Cinema, Issue 19, 2002
• Tag Gallagher, 'Raoul Walsh', Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, 2002
• Tag Gallagher, 'Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?', Senses of Cinema, Issue 22, 2002
  
• Tag Gallagher, 'Hitchcock, Machines, and Us', Senses of Cinema, Issue 24, 3003 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Rises from the Dead. Again', Senses of Cinema, Issue 26, 2003
• Tag Gallagher, 'The Swine who Rewrote F. Scott Fitzgerald: Joseph L. Mankiewicz as Producer', Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, 2003 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Till '47', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
• Tag Gallagher, 'Making Reality', Senses of Cinema, Issue 32, 2004
• Tag Gallagher, 'Renoir and the Scandal of “First Love” or The Perils of Catherine', Senses of Cinema, Issue 34, 2005
• Tag Gallagher, 'White Melodrama: Douglas Sirk', Senses of Cinema, Issue 36, 2005
• Tag Gallagher, 'Lacrimae Rerum Materialized', Senses of Cinema, Issue 37, 2005
• Tag Gallagher, 'Passage: John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln', Senses of Cinema, Issue 39, 2006
• Tag Gallagher, 'American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, 2007
• Tag Gallagher, 'Straub Anti-Straub', Senses of Cinema, Issue 43, 2007
• Tag Gallagher, How to Share a Hill', Senses of Cinema,  Issue 43, 2007
• Tag Gallagher, 'Chains of Dreams: Carl Th. Dreyer', Senses of Cinema, Issue 45, 2007
• Tag Gallagher, 'Brother Feeney: Francis Ford" Senses of Cinema, Issue 53, 2009
• Tag Gallagher, 'Why Samuel Fuller?', Senses of Cinema, Issue 50, 2009

• Tag Gallagher, 'Reply to Bleasdale', Film-Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 35, October 2002

• Tag Gallagher, 'Letter to Helmut Färber', Lumen, 1, 2011

Gallagher's Video Essays Online:

• Dreaming of Jeanie: Tag Gallagher on Stagecoach  

Online Interviews with Gallagher:

• Toni D'Angela, 'Interview with Tag Gallagher about John Ford', La Furia Umana, No. 3, Winter 2010 
• Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke, and Michael Baute (et al.), 'Truly Doing Film Criticism: Interview with Tag Gallagher', kunst-der-vermittlung.de,  2009

Online Studies or Reviews of Gallagher's Work:

• Elpidio del Campo Cañizares, 'Los «ensayos visuales» de Tag Gallagher como paradigma de nuevos modelos de análisis cinematográfico', Revista Comunicación, No. 10, Vol.1, año 2012: 1334-1347 [PDF]
• Adrian Martin, 'Always a window: Tag Gallagher's Rossellini', Screening the Past, March 2000 

Assorted e-journal and website recommendations

As it is so nice and sunny today, and Film Studies For Free's author (not pictured above) likes the outdoors as much as, if not more than, the dark confines of the cinema, or the equally artificially-lit terrain of her happy, new-media, hunting grounds, she will strive to keep her extraneous comments to a bare minimum as she snappily shares with you the following nods to excellent online resources, before heading for the nearby hills...

• Do, please, check out Gramma/Γράμμα: Journal of Theory and Criticism; it's an international peer-reviewed journal, published in English and Greek once a year by the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It welcomes articles and book reviews from a wide range of areas within the theory and criticism of literature and culture, especially ones with an interdisciplinary approach. The latest issue - Vol. 15, Shakespeare Worldwide and the Idea of an Audience, edited by Tina Krontiris and Jyotsna Singh - has a good article on film: Xenia Georgopoulou's 'Parting “totally sucks”: Filming Romeo and Juliet for Generation X'. Back articles of note include the following very interesting pieces: Joan Copjec, The Object-Gaze: Shame, Hejab, Cinema; Sean Homer, “The Roma do not Exist”: The Roma as an Object of Cinematic Representation and the Question of Authenticity; Sylvia Karastathi, Filming the Dutch Still Life: Peter Greenaway’s Objects; and Mary Jacobus, Cloud Studies: The Visible Invisible.
• eSharp: eSharp is an international online journal for postgraduate research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and education. Based at the University of Glasgow and run entirely by graduate students, it aims to provide a critical but supportive entry into the realm of academic publishing for emerging academics, including postgraduates and recent postdoctoral students. There are fewer articles on film, than Gramma, but still some worthwhile ones, for example: Jessie Gibbs, Road Movies Mapping the Nation: Y tu mamá también; Anna Ball, Writing in the Margins: Exploring the Borderland in the Work of Janet Frame and Jane Campion; Sarah Godfrey, Villainous Victims: The Paradox of the 'Damaged' Man in Naked and Nil By Mouth; and last but not least, Shira Segal, The Masculinization Project of Hospital Birth Practices and Hollywood Comedies.
• Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture is a peer-reviewed journal, published four times a year in hard copy and PDF format, and based at the University of Westminster. Particular interests include, but are not limited to, work related to Popular Culture, Media Audiences, Political Economy, Promotional Culture, New Media, Political communication, Migration and Diasporic Studies. A major goal of the WPCC is to help develop a de-westernised and transcultural sphere that engages both young and established scholars from different parts of the world in a critical debate about the relationship between communication, culture and society in the 21st Century. What's on offer here at WPCC is mostly (excellent) Media Studies but a brilliant film-media 'crossover' piece is Su Holmes' (a former colleague of mine, now at the University of East Anglia) unmissable: `Starring Dyer?': Re-visiting Star Studies and Contemporary Celebrity Culture.
• cinetext is a bilingual internet forum for film and philosophy located at the University of Vienna, addressing students, researchers, scholars, and anyone with an interest in the thoughtful exploration of cinema, film, and television. Check out the index at the site as there are far too many worthwhile pieces (in English and German) here to list, but Film Studies For Free's favourites were Daniel Garrett, The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc; and Mattias Frey, Supermodernity, Capital, and Narcissus: The French Connection to Michael Haneke's Benny's Video
• Finally, for today, a warm recommendation for Critical Studies in Television, a new website connected to the hard-copy journal of the same name, published by Manchester University Press (HERE's a link to that journal's Open Access content), and edited by (among others) Kim Akass and Janet McCabe. As well as running the website, McCabe and Akass are also co-Series Editors of the wonderful Reading Contemporary Television series at IB Tauris . CST online is a scholarly resource and critical forum for studying television, sponsored by the Department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. Its mission is 'to enrich television studies by providing comprehensive access to information, as well as to disseminate knowledge and stimulate debate'. The website is only just up and running but already has great items about and links to news stories, debate, and other media resources about global television. A particularly nice feature is its 'Featured Archive' spot. The site is updated twice weekly with information on new TV books, Calls for Papers and invitations to forthcoming conferences. And there's a space for 'TV Reflections' currently filled by a nice piece by McCabe and Akass themselves, 'Writing TV into Discourse', with a great clip of one of Film Studies For Free's favourite TV shows, Ugly Betty, in Arabic. Good luck to CST online!