Split Screen Studies

The above is a FILMANALYTICAL, REQUIEM // 102 and FILM STUDIES FOR FREE video essay by Catherine Grant. It explores the use of split screens in some early sequences in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Darren Aronofsky, 2000).

    The essay was made according to principles of Fair Use (or Fair Dealing), primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in November 2010.

Today, Film Studies For Free presents an entry of links to online studies of the cinematic split screen. Rather excitingly (for this blog, at least), the resources include the above video essay on this very topic ... by FSFF's author. 

The essay is a contribution to the Requiem for a Dream // 102 Project, conceived by its inventor Nick Rombes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit, Mercy, as a form of "collective, distributed film criticism". Requiem // 102 is modelled loosely on Rombes' ongoing 10/40/70 project, in which he “reads” three screen captures from a given film taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks.

In this case, Nick has invited 102 contributors from across the film criticism spectrum to look at, or otherwise be inspired by, one frame from each minute of Darren Aronofsky’s 102 minute-long film Requiem for a Dream (2000), a movie that unsettled many audience members when it was first released in cinemas ten years ago.

To learn more about Requiem // 102, check out the 102 Project’s “About” page and/or follow it on Twitter. Chuck Tryon's great first post on the film is here. For an accompanying written text for the above video essay on the frame capture from 02:09 of Requiem for a Dream, visit FSFF's little sister site, Filmanalytical.

• Jim Bizzocchi, 'The Fragmented Frame: The Poetics of the Split-Screen', [Draft] MIT 6, 2009
• Jim Bizzocchi, 'Ambient Video: The Transformation of the Domestic Cinematic Experience', [Draft] in Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools, eds. Byron Hawk, David Rieder, and Ollie Oviedo. University of Minnesota Press, February 2008
• Dave Boothroyd, 'Cinematic heroin and narcotic modernity', Symbolism: Journal of Critical Aesthetics Vol.VII , 2007
• Nadia Bozak, 'Four Cameras are Better than One: Division as Excess in Mike Figgis’ Timecode', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Cormac Deane, 'The Embedded Screen and the State of Exception: Counterterrorist Narratives and the “War on Terror”', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Sergio Dias-Branco, 'The Mosaic-Screen: Exploration and Definition', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008 
• Tessa Dwyer and Mehmet Mehmet, 'Double Trouble: Editorial', Refractory, Vol. 14, 2008 
• Paul Eisenstein, 'Devouring Holes: Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and the Tectonics of Psychoanalysis',  International Journal of Žižek Studies, 1.3, Autumn 2007
• Ian Garwood, 'Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Catherine Grant, 'Establishing Split [video essay and text on Requiem for a Dream]', Filmanalytical, November 2, 2010
• David Grevin, 'Medusa in the Mirror: The Split World of Brian De Palma’s Carrie', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Andrew Grossman, 'Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 62, 2008
• Malte Hagener, 'The Aesthetics of Displays: How the Split Screen Remediates Other Media', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Ingrid Hoofd, 'The Threat of Modernity; Comments on Theories on the Impact of Modernity', Klari.net, March 5, 1998 
• Kirsten Johnson and Jim Bizzocchi, 'Lost Cause: An Interactive Film Project', International Digital Media and Arts Association Beyond Boundaries, October 30, 2007
• Adrian Jones, 'Meaning and the Interactive Narrative: In the context of Object-Oriented Interactive Cinema', Readings in Non-Linear Narrative (date unknown)
• Craig B. Knowles, 'The Temporal Image Mosaic and its Artistic Applications in Filmmaking', MSc Thesis, Queen's University, Ontario, December 2003
• Bruno Lessard, 'Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008 
• Tim Snelson, '“What Am I… Beloved or Bewitched?” Split Screens, Gender Confusion, and Psychiatric Solutions in The Dark Mirror', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Lorenza Mondada, 'Video Recording Practices and the Reflexive Constitution of the Interactional Order: Some Systematic Uses of the Split-Screen Technique', [Uncorrected proof], Human Studies, 32, 1, 67-99 
• Kim Louise Walden, 'Double Take: Rotoscoping and the Processing of Performance', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Maria Walsh, 'The Double Side of Delay: Sutapa Biswas’ film installation Birdsong and Gilles Deleuze’s Actual/Virtual Couplet', Refractory, Volume 14, 2008
• Birk Weilberg, 'Beyond Interactive Cinema', Keyframe, August 2002 

Split Screens and Refractory Journal

In memoriam

Jason Simpkins

a young American scholar of British cinema

Images and sounds (put together by ostmusicmix) from The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968)/'The Windmills of Your Mind' (Michel Legrand [music] with Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman [lyrics], sung by Noel Harrison )

News of the Open Access publication of an article by a colleague, friend, and fellow blogger, Sergio Dias-Branco, alerted Film Studies For Free to the existence of another excellent online Film and Media Studies periodical: Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media.

Refractory, is 'a refereed, peer-reviewed, e-journal that explores the diverging and intersecting aspects of current and past entertainment media.' The journal is published by the Cinema/Screen Studies Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

Sergio's excellent work on the Mosaic-Screen is the lead article in Volume 14, 2008: Double Trouble - a brilliant Special Issue of Refractory on Split and Double Screens, edited by Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet.

Full List of Refractory Volume 14 Contents:

1. Double Trouble: Editorial - Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet
2. The Mosaic-Screen: Exploration and Definition – Sergio Dias-Branco
3. Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie – Ian Garwood
4. The Embedded Screen and the State of Exception: Counterterrorist Narratives and the “War on Terror” – Cormac Deane
5. “What Am I… Beloved or Bewitched?” Split Screens, Gender Confusion, and Psychiatric Solutions in The Dark Mirror – Tim Snelson
6. Medusa in the Mirror: The Split World of Brian De Palma’s Carrie – David Greven
7. The Double Side of Delay: Sutapa Biswas’ film installation Birdsong and Gilles Deleuze’s Actual/Virtual Couplet – Maria Walsh
8. Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema – Bruno Lessard
9. Four Cameras are Better than One: Division as Excess in Mike Figgis’ Timecode – Nadia Bozak
10. The Aesthetics of Displays: How the Split Screen Remediates Other Media – Malte Hagener
11. Double Take: Rotoscoping and the Processing of Performance – Kim Louise Walden

For a full list of articles from all the other volumes of Refractory FSFF heartily recommends that you click HERE. And click HERE for the useful Wikipedia entry on Split screen (film)