Realism and reality, intermediality and film space, new waves: three volumes of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Film and Media Studies

Frame grab from Il gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963). Read Ivo Blom's article on "Frame, Space, Narrative. Doors, Windows and Mobile Framing in the Films of Luchino Visconti"

Film Studies For Free is immensely indebted, as it so often is, to the hawkeye skills of legendary film critic and scholar Adrian Martin. He has discovered an online treasure trove of fabulous film and media studies at the Romanian, English language journal Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. 

Three great volumes have been published to date: on issues of cinematic reality, intermediality and film space, and cinematic new waves. All the contents are linked to below, and ACTA has been added to FSFF's permanent listing of online film and moving image studies journals.

Keep 'em coming, Adrian! And grazie!

Contents of Volume 1 , 2009

• M. Szalóky
  The Reality of Illusion. A Transcendental Reevaluation of the Problem of Cinematic Reality
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 7-22     Full text in PDF
  
• M. Sághy
  Subborn realism. What Kind of Fiction is Reality?
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 23-33     Full text in PDF
  
• I. Füzi
  "Where is Reality?" Photographic Trace and Infinite Image in Gábor Bódy's Film Theory
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 34-46     Full text in PDF
  
• Á. Pethő
  (Re)Mediating the Real. Paradoxes of an Intermedial Cinema of Immediacy
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 47-66     Full text in PDF
  
• Zs. Gyenge
  Illusions of reality and Fiction on the Desired Reality of Fiction: Dogme 95 and the Representation of reality
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 69-79     Full text in PDF
  
• A. Virginás
  Between "Facts" of Genre and "Fictions" of Love. Happy Together (1997) and In The Mood for Love (2000)
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 80-91     Full text in PDF
  
• A. É. Tóth
  Appearance, Presence and Movement in Benedek Fliegauf's Milky Way
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 92-105     Full text in PDF
  
• E. Buslowska
  Cinema as Art and Philosophy in Béla Tarr's Creative Exploration of Reality
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 106-116     Full text in PDF
  
• Z. Gregus
  Images of Strangeness in András Jeles's Films
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 117-135     Full text in PDF
  
• A. Szekfü
  Reality and Fiction in Classical Hungarian Documentaries
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 136-148     Full text in PDF
  
• M. Blos-Jáni
  In and Out of Context. On the Reality Effect and Evidentiary Status of Home Videos
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 149-166     Full text in PDF
  
• E. Szabó
  The Official and Hidden Scenarios of Role-Playing in István Dárday's The Prize Trap (1974)
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 167-180     Full text in PDF

Contents of Volume 2 , 2010

• Ginette Verstraete
  Introduction. Intermedialities: A Brief Survey of Conceptual Key Issues
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 7−14     Full text in PDF
  
• Jürgen E. Müller
  Intermediality and Media Historiography in the Digital Era
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 15−38     Full text in PDF
  
• Ágnes Pethő
  Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 39−72     Full text in PDF
  
• Annika Wik
  Experiences. The Transmedial Expansion of the Matrix Universe
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 73−90     Full text in PDF
  
• Ivo Blom
  Frame, Space, Narrative. Doors, Windows and Mobile Framing in the Films of Luchino Visconti
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 91−106     Full text in PDF
  
• Jens Schröter
  The Politics of Intermediality
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 107−124     Full text in PDF
  
• Klemens Gruber
  An Early Staging of Media. Gustav Klutsis's Loudspeaker Stands
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 125−132     Full text in PDF
  
• Jens Schröter
  Volumetric Imaging as Technology to Control Space
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 133−144     Full text in PDF
  
• Antonio Somaini
  Visual Surveillance. Transmedial Migrations of a Scopic Form
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 145−159     Full text in PDF
  
• Maaike Lauwaert
  Intermedialities in Policy Making & Funding
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 161−166     Full text in PDF

Contents of Volume 3, 2010

• Yvonne Spielmann
  New and Novelty in Contemporary Media Cultures
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 7−18     Full text in PDF
  
• Doru Pop
  The Grammar of the New Romanian Cinema
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 19−40     Full text in PDF
  
• Marco Grosoli
  Hélas pour Nouvelle Vague
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 41−54     Full text in PDF
  
• Daniel Fairfax
  Birth (of the Image) of a Nation: Jean-Luc Godard in Mozambique
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 55−67     Full text in PDF
  
• Ágnes Pethő
  Intermediality as Metalepsis in the "Cinécriture" of Agnes Varda
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 69−94     Full text in PDF
  
• Marco Grosoli
  Moral Tales from Korea. Hong Sang-Soo and Eric Rohmer
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 95−108     Full text in PDF
  
• Jacqui Miller
  The French New Wave and the New Hollywood: Le Samourai and its American legacy
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 109−120     Full text in PDF
  
• André Crous
  True and False. New Realities in the Films of Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 121−131     Full text in PDF
  
• Hajnal Király
  Abbas Kiarostami and a New Wave of the Spectator
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 133−142     Full text in PDF
  
• Thomas Schick
  A "Nouvelle Vague Allemande"? Thomas Arslan's films in the context of the Berlin School
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 143−155     Full text in PDF
  
• Maria Vinogradova
  The Berliner Schule as a Recent New Wave in German Cinema
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 157−168     Full text in PDF
  
• Zsolt Győri
  Waves of Memory: Cinema, Trauerarbeit and the Third Reich
  Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 3 (2010) 169− 181     Full text in PDF

"Between Past and Future": ROME, OPEN CITY Studies

Updated November 19, 2011

Frame grab from Roma, città aperta/Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Projected on the war torn landscape for a weary people, Rome Open City poetically serves the goals of unification and restoration. In many respects, this film both conforms to and promotes an ideal image of a courageous, Resistant and unified population – from communist intellectuals, to catholic priests, to working class women and their children. Open City maintains the comfortable melodramatic schema of Rossellini’s earlier Fascist-era films in which the forces of good (the Italian people) struggle triumphantly against the forces of evil embodied in the Nazi general Bergmann and his deviant cronies. The director’s fondness for his people culminates in an apologetic portrayal of Italian fascists as either wretched or unwilling collaborators. However, in the end, Open City’s epic scope effectively precludes the possibility of another film like it: all the “fathers” (Manfredi, Pina, Don Pietro) are dead and the child soldiers are abandoned to the city, suspended “between past and future”. The conclusion, the partisan priest’s execution, witnessed by the children of his parish, forewarns of the fragmentation, destitution, and moral poverty to come. With his last words, “non è difficile morire bene, è difficile vivere bene” (it’s not difficult to die well, it’s difficult to live well”), Don Pietro intimates the struggles ahead. [Inga M. Pierson, Towards a Poetics of Neorealism: Tragedy in the Italian Cinema 1942-1948', PhD Thesis, New York University, January 2009  97-98] 

Another teaching week beckons, and Film Studies For Free's author looks forward to pondering, for the umpteenth, pedagogical time, that intensely strange film Roma, città aperta/Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945).

There are some excellent resources on this film, and on related issues of (neo)realism, that are openly accessible online. So, andiamo felicemente with one of FSFF's regular studies of a single film.

• John Bleasdale, 'The Unrealistic Rossellini', Film Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 34, 2002 
• Gian Piero Brunetta, 'Introduction', The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)
• Peter Brunette, Roberto Rossellini (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
• Peter Brunette, 'Rossellini and Cinematic Realism', Cinema Journa1, 25, No. 1, Fall 1985
• Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, 'Open City, Rossellini and neorealism: Sixty years on', Screening the Past, 20, 2006 
• Tag Gallagher, 'Reply to Bleasdale',  Film-Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 35, October 2002
• Ora Gelley, 'Europa '51: The Face of the Star in Neorealism's Urban Landscape', Film Studies, Issue 5, Winter 2004
• Sidney Gottlieb, 'Introduction: Open City: Reappropriating the Old, Making Way for the New', in Gottlieb (ed.), Rome, Open City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 
• A. S. Hamrah, '[Interview with Tag Gallagher] From Italy to Iran', Hermenaut, October 20, 2000
• Marcia Landy, 'Introduction', Italian Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 
• Adrian Martin, 'Always a window: Tag Gallagher's Rossellini', Screening the Past, March 2000
• Adrian Martin, 'What is Modern Cinema?', 16:9, September 2010
• Daniel Morgan, 'Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics', Critical Inquiry, 32 (2006) 
• Brent J. Piepergerdes, 'Re-envisioning the Nation: Film Neorealism and the Postwar Italian Condition', ACME, 2007
• Inga M. Pierson, Towards a Poetics of Neorealism: Tragedy in the Italian Cinema 1942-1948', PhD Thesis, New York University, January 2009 
• Luca Prono, '[Review of] Rome Open City (Roma Città Aperta) By David Forgacs, London: BFI Publishing, 2000; Roberto Rossellini: Magician of the Real, Edited by David Forgacs, Sarah Lutton and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, London: BFI Publishing, 2001', Scope, November 2002
• Luca Prono, '[Review of] Celluloide, Dir: Carlo Lizzani, 1996', Scope, 2000
• Hugo Salas, 'Roberto Rossellini', Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, 2002
• Erica Sheen, 'Un-American: Dmytryk, Rossellini and Christ in Concrete', Film Studies, Vol. 7, Winter 2005
• New Jonathon Kyle Sturgeon, 'The Film of Tomorrow will be an Act of War [on ROME OPEN CITY and its legacy]', Idiom Magazine, October 17, 2011 
• Martin Walsh, 'Rome, Open City, The Rise to Power of Louis XIV: Re-evaluating Rossellini', from Jump Cut, no. 15, 1977
• Jonathan David York, 'Open Spaces, Liminal Places: the Deployment of the Sacred in Open City', JCRT, 10.3, Summer 2010

Michael P. Rogin, 'Mourning, Melancholia, and the Popular Front: Roberto Rossellini's Beautiful Revolution', in Sidney Gottlieb (ed.), Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Jaimey Fisher, 'On the Ruins of Masculinity: The Figure of the Child in Italian Nerealism and the German Rubble Film', in Italian neorealism and global cinema, eds. Laura E. Ruberto, Kristi M. Wilson (Wayne State University Press, 2007)

Animation Studies: Three Fabulous Online Resources

Updated with a call for papers on November 15

Lignes verticales/Lines Vertical (Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, 1960). Read Aimee Mollaghan's article on McLaren's Line Films here.

Pervasive Animation - Video of conference sessions.

The conference was held at the Tate Modern, London in 2007.

Animation has an unlimited potential to visually represent events, scenarios and forms that have little or no relation to our experience of the 'real' world. Implemented in many ways, in many disciplines, it is increasingly influencing our perception and experience of the world we live in. This timely and groundbreaking international conference unites speakers from a wide range of research agendas and creative practices. It facilitates much-needed dialogue centred on the ubiquitous and interdisciplinary nature of animation, its potentially radical future development, and its ethical responsibilities for spatial politics in moving image culture. The conference's contributors include Norman Klein, Michael Snow, Vivian Sobchack, Tom Gunning, Anthony McCall, George Griffin, Suzanne Buchan, Beatriz Colomina, Edwin Carels, Siegfried Zielinski, Lisa Cartwright, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie. Especially since the digital shift, the uses of animation are no longer exclusive to cinema, and animation's origins in pre-cinematic optical experiments through avant-garde experimental film continue to evolve in fascinating ways. Artists increasingly incorporate animation in installations and exhibitions, architects use computer animation software to create narratives of space in time, and scientists use it to interpret abstract concepts for a breadth of industries ranging from biomedicine to nanoworlds. Pervasive Animation provides a dynamic international forum to explore animation's myriad forms and applications across a wide band of creative and professional practice. Organised by Suzanne Buchan, Reader in Animation Studies and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University College for the Creative Arts, and Stuart Comer, Curator of Film at Tate.

Film Studies For Free animatedly highlights three fabulous Animation Studies resources today. First up, through the second of the two videos embedded above, you can access the entire, recorded proceedings of a very high quality conference on animation held in 2007 at London's Tate Modern.

FSFF heard about those videos through the fantastic Experimental Animation website which houses, and links to, many more animation treasures, like Lignes verticales/Lines Vertical,  Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart's brilliant 1960 opus embedded at the top of this post.

Finally, the third amazing resource du jour are the below contents of the volumes of Animation Studies, the online, Open Access and peer-reviewed Journal of the Society for Animation Studies (also on Twitter as @anistudies). See also the Society's Call for Papers for an upcoming conference at the foot of this post.

"Th-th-th-that's all folks!"

Animation Studies - the Journal of the Society for Animation Studies

• Volume 6, 2011
  • Shannon Brownlee – Masculinity Between Animation and Live Action, or, SpongeBob v. Hasselhoff
  • Maria O’Brien – The Secret of Kells (2009), a film for a post Celtic Tiger Ireland?
  • Aimee Mollaghan – "An Experiment in Pure Design:" The Minimalist Aesthetic in the Line Films of Norman McLaren
  • Hannes Rall – Tradigital Mythmaking: New Asian Design Ideas for Animation
  • Colleen Montgomery – Woody's Roundup and Wall-E's Wunderkammer: Technophilia and Nostalgia in Pixar Animation
  • Pierre Floquet – Actors in Sin City’s Animated Fantasy: Avatars, Aliens, or Cinematic Dead-ends?

• Volume 5, 2010
  • Van Norris – Touching cloth...Considering Satire and the Clergy in Popular Contemporary British Animation
  • Alison Loader – We're Asian, More Expected of Us:Representation, The Model Minority & Whiteness on King of the Hill
  • Meg Rickards – Uncanny breaches, flimsy borders: Jan Švankmajer’s conscious and unconscious worlds
  • María Lorenzo Hernández – Through the Looking-Glass: The Self-Portrait of the Artist and the Re-Start of Animation
  • Michael S. Daubs – Subversive or Submissive? User-Produced Flash Cartoons and Television Animation

• Volume 4, 2009
  • Adam de Beer – Kinesic constructions: An aesthetic analysis of movement and performance in 3D animation
  • Sheuo Hui Gan – To Be or Not to Be – Anime: The Controversy in Japan over the “Anime” Label
  • Max Bannah – Revolutionary cels: The Sydney waterfront, Harry Reade and Cuban animation
  • Paul St. George – Using chronophotography to replace Persistence of Vision as a theory for explaining how animation and cinema produce the illusion of continuous motion
  • Alan Cholodenko – Animation (Theory) as the Poematic

• Volume 3, 2008
  • Van Norris – Taking an Appropriate Line
  • Laura Ivins-Hulley – The Ontology of Performance in Stop Animation
  • Alan Cholodenko – The Spectre in the Screen
  • Timo Linsenmaier – Why animation historiography?
  • María Lorenzo Hernández – Visions of a Future Past: Ulysses 31, a Televised Re-interpretation of Homer’s Classic Myth
  • Birgitta Hosea – TV 2.0: Animation Readership/Authorship on the Internet
  • Lynne Perras – "Steadier, happier, and quicker at the work"? Women in Canadian Animation
  • Sheuo Hui Gan – The Newly Developed Form of Ganime and its Relation to Selective Animation¹ for Adults in Japan
  • Amy Ratelle – Half-breed Dog, Half-breed Film: Balto as Animelodrama

• Animated Dialogues, 2007
  • Amanda Third and Dirk de Bruyn – An Animated Dialogue
  • Paul Wells – Battlefields for the Undead
  • Adrian Martin – In the Sand a Line is Drawn: A Reflection on Animation Studies
  • Alan Cholodenko – (The) Death (of) the Animator, or: the Felicity of Felix, Part I
  • Dirk de Bruyn – Performing a Traumatic Effect: The Films of Robert Breer
  • Michael Broderick – Superflat Eschatology: Renewal and Religion in anime
  • Katharine Buljan – The Uncanny and the Robot in the Astro Boy Episode “Franken”
  • Matthew Butler and Lucie Joschko – Final Fantasy or The Incredibles
  • Cordelia Brown – Flowerpot Men: The Haptic Image in Brian Cosgrove and Richard Hall’s Animations
  • Andrew Buchanan – Facial Expressions for Empathic Communication of Emotion in Animated Characters
  • Peter Moyes – Behind the Flash Exterior: Scratching the Surface of Online Animated Narratives
  • Cathryn Vasseleu – The Svankmajer Touch
  • Miriam Harris – How Michaela Pavlatova both incorporates and rebels against the Czech animation tradition
  • Zhi-Ming Su – Reaching Out to Touch: Animation and Aboriginal Children in Taiwan
  • Dan and Lienors Torre – Recording Australian Animation History

• Volume 2, 2007
  • Gunnar Strøm – The Two Golden Ages of Animated Music Video
  • Pamela Turner – Early Connections Between Film and Emerging Media as Evidenced in the Animated Worlds of Adam Beckett
  • Maria Lorenzo Hernandez – The Double Sense of Animated Images. A View on the Paradoxes of Animation as a Visual Language
  • Leslie Bishko – The Uses and Abuses of Cartoon Style in Animation
  • Caroline Ruddell – Breaking Boundaries: The Representation of Split Identity in Anime
  • Alan Cholodenko – (The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part II
  • Tom Klein – Animated Appeal: A Survey of Production Methods in Children’s Software

• Volume 1, 2006
  • Pierre Floquet – What is (not) so French in Les Triplettes de Belleville
  • Marina Estela Graça – Cinematic Motion by Hand
   

Call for Papers:
‘The Animation Machine’ - The 24th Society for Animation Studies Conference

Date: June 25-27, 2012

Hosted by: RMIT University
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Keynote speakers include:

•         Thomas Lamarre (McGill University, Canada)

•         Tomotaka Takahashi (The University of Tokyo, Japan)

The Society for Animation Studies (SAS) invites submissions of proposals for individual papers and panels for its 24th Annual Conference, which will be held in Melbourne, Australia at RMIT University, 25-27 June 2012.

Animation production and consumption has continued to grow as animation itself has become ever more prevalent and visible in recent years. In parallel, the field of animation studies has expanded excitingly and dramatically, bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines.

The theme of this year’s conference, ‘The Animation Machine’, reflects the wide range of processes, technologies, histories and structures in animation. As movement is an essential aspect of animation, whatever creates that movement may constitute an animation machine and one could conceive that animation is itself a machine. The animation machine can be considered from both the production process and the end product. Therefore, it refers to the machines of animation presentation, be these pre-20th century animation devices, movie or video screens, or even automata. The animation machine also relates to the multitude of animation production processes – from animating technologies (animation stands, cameras, computers), through to the animator’s individual creative practice. Ultimately, the animation machine can be described quite broadly and we welcome your own interpretations.

With the centenary of Australian animation approaching, the 2012 conference will also provide an opportunity to highlight some of Australia’s animation heritage. The conference will coincide with the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) and a number of crossover events are planned.

We invite proposals on a wide range of animation topics on all aspects of animation history, theory and criticism for 20-minute conference presentations. Proposals may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:


•         Australian Animation

•         Animation and the Asia-Pacific Region

•         Animation Histories

•         Future Forms of Animation

•         Industrial Methods and Changes

•         Materiality of Animation

•         Algorithmic Animation (including Games)

•         Philosophy and Animation

•         Motion Graphics

•         Scientific Visualisation

•         Contemporary Art and Animation

•         Architecture and Animation

•         Drawing and Animation

•         Web Animation

•         Narrative and Non-Narrative Animation

•         Obsolescence and Questions of Materiality

•         Augmented Reality and Vision

•         Automata (including Robotics)

•         Animation and Pedagogy

•         Documentary and Animation

•         Animation Fringes and Counter-Cultures

•         Sound and Animation

Please include with your individual submission the following:


•         Title and abstract of no more than 250 words (suitable for publication).

•         A brief biographical statement (suitable for publication).

•         Complete contact information, including name, institutional affiliation (if any), postal address, e-mail address and telephone number.

•         A head shot photo of yourself that will be suitable for publication (optional).

For panel proposals of 3-4 presenters, the chair of the panel should submit the following:


•         Overall panel title/theme, plus a 100-word description suitable for publication.

•         Name and contact information for the panel chair.

•         Titles and abstracts for each paper (as noted above).

•         Biography statement for each member (as noted above).

•         Name and contact information for each member (as noted above).

•         Photo of each presenter suitable for publication (optional).

Submit abstracts to: animation.conference@rmit.edu.au
Submission deadline: December 12, 2011
Conference website: http://www.rmit.edu.au/sas2012
Conference Chair: Dr Dan Torre, RMIT University

Great Video Lectures by Friedberg, Dupin, Rodowick, Chateau, Nowell-Smith, Stewart, Grieveson, Furstenau, Zryd, and White

Image from Grbavica: Land of My Dreams/Esma's Secret: Grbavica (Jasmila Žbanić , 2006), an example of 'global women's cinema' as explored by Patricia White in a 2008 lecture and in a forthcoming book (you can see a clip from this film about 36 minutes into White's talk, and the film's website is here)

Thanks to the website of the Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory, which Film Studies For Free featured yesterday, FSFF heard about another highly worthwhile online resource (although one that appears not to be being updated, currently): the website of Advanced Research Team for the History and Epistemology of Moving Image Study (ARTHEMIS).

ARTHEMIS is dedicated to the study of the evolution of film studies as a discipline. Based at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Concordia University and initiated by Martin Lefebvre, it gathers scholars from Canada, the United States and Europe. The group organizes, among other things, monthly seminars related to the different axes of research. [Some] are available on this site. We invite you to listen to the conferences and submit your comments. In addition, you will find on this site an evolving bibliography and book reviews.

The ARTHEMIS project also investigates the study of film and moving images by looking at three of its most important 'possibility conditions': Conceptual conditions; Institutional conditions; Material Conditions.

There are plenty of items worth exploring at ARTHEMIS. But FSFF was most struck by the series of online lectures from 2008/9 that are archived at the site. Here's the list of links to these - some truly wonderful items. FSFF particularly liked Patricia White's lecture on "Globalizing Women's Cinema". 

• Anne Friedberg, Conversation on her book "The Virtual Window" Video Lecture, 2008-09-23
• Christophe Dupin, BFI (part 1) Video Lecture, 2008-09-24 
• D.N. Rodowick, An Elegy for Theory Video Lecture, 2008-09-24 
• Dominique Chateau - Do Film Studies Form a Discipline Video Lecture, 2009-06-18
• Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, BFI (part 2) Video Lecture, 2008-09-24
• Jacqueline Stewart, The Politics of Film Archiving (part one) Video Lecture, 2009-04-14
• Jacqueline Stewart, The Politics of Film Archiving (part two) Video Lecture, 2009-04-14 
• Keepers of the frame (J.Stewart presentation) Video Lecture, 2008-12-09
• Lee Grieveson, Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct Video Lecture, 2008-09-24 
• Marc Furstenau, Design and Use Video Lecture, 2008-09-23 
• Michael Zryd, Experimental film as Pedagogical Cinema Video Lecture, 2008-10-21 
• Patricia White, Globalizing Women's Cinema Video Lecture, 2008-09-24

Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory

Picture of Sergei Eisenstein, pioneering Soviet film director and theorist

Thanks to Michał Oleszczyk, Film Studies For Free found out about a truly fascinating, and highly promising, project: the Permanent Seminar on the Histories of Film Theory.

The Seminar is

an open network of film scholars interested in rediscovering and re-reading historical contributions and debates on film. Special attention is devoted to early writings on cinema, as well as more recent reconsiderations of film's role in the new media landscape. The Permanent Seminar is affiliated with the Film Theory in Media History book series published through the Amsterdam University Press.

The very high quality of the project is guaranteed by its coordinators -- Jane Gaines (Columbia University) and Francesco Casetti (Yale University & University of Milan) --  as well as by its scientific board: Dudley Andrew (Yale University); Chris Berry (University of London-Goldsmiths); André Gaudreault (University of Montréal); Vinzenz Hediger (University of Bochum); John McKay (Yale University); Markus Nornes (University of Michigan); David Rodowick (Harvard University); Philip Rosen (Brown University); Leonardo Quaresima (University of Udine); Maria “Masha” Salazkina (Concordia University, Montréal); and Petr Szczepanik (University of Brno).

There's not much up on the website yet as the project has just begun, but FSFF recommends that its readers take a look and then keep on going back for further film-theoretical delights of the kind linked to below.

• Sergei Eisenstein, "Forthcoming] "Unpublished “Notes for a General History of Cinema” – New York, 2010

• Francesco Orestano, "Motion Pictures and Scholastic Education" (Italy, 1914)

• Giovanni Papini, "Philosophical Observations on the Motion Picture" (Italy, 1907)

• Mario Ponzo, "Certain Psychological Observations Made During Motion Picture Screenings" (Italy, 1911)

• Emilio Scaglione, "Motion Pictures in Provincial Towns" (Italy, 1916)

• Enrico Thovez, "The Art of Celluloid" (Italy, 1908)

• Giuseppe d’Abundo, "Concerning the Effects of Film Viewing on Neurotic Individuals" (Italy, 1911)

The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years

A very quick post at Film Studies For Free today to bring you a fascinating futurological film and film studies resource: the video of a very well informed panel discussion on where cinema is going.

It features, among others, film scholar extraordinaire David Bordwell, who, as a phenomenal researcher of (practically) the entirety of cinema's past and present, is definitely one of the best qualified people in the world to comment on cinema's future.

The video is a must see if you're interested in the future of film technologies of production and especially of distribution and exhibition. It is part of the 2011 Vancouver International Film Festival collection at Vimeo.

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years
Event description:

The first few chapter headings in a film we did not program at this year's [Vancouver International Film Festival] VIFF are: “Technology Is Great”, “The Industry Is Dead”, “Artists Have the Power”, and “The Craft Is Gone.” To which celluloid-loving film festival organizers might ask: Is it? Do they? Where on earth are we headed? And why?

VIFF has come a long way in its 30 years and never has the future of cinema--and VIFF's future--been more uncertain. Will it be bright and splendid and fair or will it move so quickly that a great deal of what is valuable will be lost before we know it? There are now dramatically more “film festivals” and “films” being made than ever, yet some fear that the industry may be dead. Filmmakers are acutely worried for funding, yet need to operate on a growing number of fronts. Given that the numbers of hours in a day and the numbers of days in a life remain fixed, what limits should we council for our own appetites? Why might we miss the Hollywood Theatre and Videomatica? Given that cultural agencies seemingly have shrinking resources but more new media and film festival applicants every year, will the centres hold or is babble ascendant? Will VIFF's function as an annual international universalist festival be superseded by myriad niche events?

Technology is indeed great in that it has put the means of creative motion picture production in almost everyone's hands, but will the best artists be the ones to be recognized? The entrepreneurial spirit tends to favour change in hopes that it may profit from it, but will artists have the power? When entrepreneurs benefit, will consumers benefit? Will cultural institutions that have taken years to build remain viable? Will cinema, metrics of quality and craftsmanship and, ultimately, quality of life be improved or even be sustainable? What do you personally care about for the future of cinema to offer? What should VIFF 2020 aim to be?

Here to wrestle with these sorts of questions—and yours—will be a distinguished group of panellists including: David Bordwell, film critic, academic and author of numerous books on cinema; Simon Field, film producer and former Director, International Film Festival Rotterdam; Andréa Picard, film critic and programmer, formerly of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Ontario; Tom Charity, film critic and Vancity Theatre program coordinator; and Alan Franey, director, Vancouver International Film Festival.

New Issue of SCOPE!

Image of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982). Read Elizabeth Abele's article about transgendered fantasy films, including Tootsie, here

Film Studies For Free always loves it when a new issue of the high quality, Open Access, film and television studies journal SCOPE slips out online without any fuss.

That's just what happened with the latest issue - number 21 - so let FSFF toot out its own fanfare to yet another excellent collection of film and television studies work. All the contents are linked to below.

SCOPE Issue 21, October 2011

Articles

• Becoming a Better Man as a Woman: The Transgendered Fantasy in 1980s-1990s Popular Films Elizabeth Abele  
• TV Similes: Language, Community and Comparative Poetics in Northern Exposure David Scott Diffrient  
• Let's Get Found: Music Sampling, Found Footage and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts David Laderman  
• Interracial Romance Revisited: Chinese Box and Tomorrow Never Dies Jing Yang  
• [ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

• History by Hollywood by Robert Brent Toplin (plus Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush-Cheney Era) Reviewer: Brian Faucette  
• What Cinema Is! by Dudley Andrew  (Plus The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay) Film Reviewer: Daniele Rugo  
• All about Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema by Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki (eds) (Plus Stephen King on the Big Screen) Reviewer: Edmund P. Cuev  
• Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema by Joanna Page (Plus Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru) Reviewer: Rowena Santos Aquino  
• Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies by Warren Buckland (ed) (Plus Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style and Ideology Since 1945) Reviewer: Steen Christiansen  
• The British Cinema Book by Robert Murphy (ed) (Plus A Short History of Film) Reviewer: Paul Quinn 
• 100 Film Noirs (BFI Screen Guides) by Jim Hillier and Alastair Phillips (Plus Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the Cultures of Globalization) Reviewer: Keith James Hamel  
• Fame by Mark Rowlands (Plus American Idolatry: Celebrity, Commodity and Reality Television) Reviewer: Melanie Kennedy  
• Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel by Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis (eds) (Plus Film Sequels: Theory and Practice from Hollywood to Bollywood) Reviewer: Stuart Henderson
• Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear by Julian Hanich (Plus Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd: A Post-Jungian Perspective) Reviewer: Flavia Monceri
• [ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

• I AM: Afia, Megha, Abhimanyu and Omar Reviewer: Rohit K Dasgupta  
• Phineas and Ferb Reviewer: Derek Jones  
• The Turin Horse Reviewer: Philip Phillis  
• The Monk Reviewer: Simon Dawes  
• That Girl in Yellow Boots Reviewer: Sukhmani Khorana  
• [ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

• The Diasporic Family in Cinema, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 21 May 2011 Reporter: Deniz Günes Yardimci  
• NECS Conference 2011, King's College and Birkbeck, University of London, 23-26 June Reporter: Celia Nicholls and Richard Wallace  Screen Studies Conference 2011: Repositioning Screen History, University of Glasgow, 1–3 July 2011 Reporter: Linda Hutcheson and Natália Pinazza  
• Images of Whiteness, InterDisciplinary.Net, Oxford University, 12–14 July 2011 
• Screen Studies Conference, July 2010 [File not yet accessible}
• [ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]