Unstable Platforms Film Moving Image Studies Papers from MIT7 Media in Transition

Teaser image, courtesy of Warner Brothers, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 out on July 15  (David Yates, 2011). Read Debora Luis paper on Harry Potter: The Exhibition.

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you links to film and moving image related papers from the conference proceedings of the seventh annual Media in Transition conference, which will take place next week, May 13-15, 2011, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Heres the conferences mission statement:

Has the digital age confirmed and exponentially increased the cultural instability and creative destruction that are often said to define advanced capitalism? Does living in a digital age mean we may live and die in what the novelist Thomas Pynchon has called “a ceaseless spectacle of transition”? The nearly limitless range of design options and communication choices available now and in the future is both exhilarating and challenging, inciting innovation and creativity but also false starts, incompatible systems, planned obsolescence. How are we coping with the instability of platforms? 

FSFF particularly liked "“Make Any Room Your TV Room:” Media Mobility, Digital Delivery, and Family Harmony" by film and media studies scholar and blogger extraordinaire Chuck Tryon, film and television scholar and media studies blogger extraordinaire Michael Z. Newmans paper The Television Image and the Image of the Television", and "Who Told You You Were Special Edition? The Commercialization of the Aura" by Justin Mack.

There are other great papers online connected to the conference theme of unstable platforms and the experience of mediatic transitions that dont treat moving image topics and you can access those here.

• Teaching Smart Cinema: DVD Add-ons and New Audience Pleasures, Pat Brereton

• The Digitization of Memory at the National Film Board of Canada,
  Morgan Charles

• Promise and Problems: Independent Production in Periods of Change, Aymar Jean Christian

• How New Media Change Our Experience of Stories, Teun Dubbelman

• Making Selves/Making Citizens in the Age of YouTube, Megan Fulwiler and Kim Middleton

• Virtual Bliss, Analog Horrors: Reading the Imperfect Digital Image in Film and the Video Game, Robert Furze

• Hoarding the Ethereal: How We Have more Things but with Less Clutter, Gayle Gatchalian

• Lessons from the Front: Rio’s War against Drug Trafficking, Participatory Culture and New Media Paradigms for Brazilian Soap Operas, Leandro Gejfinbein, Rejane Spitz

• Stories with Choices: Artist´s Multimedia Narratives, Raivo Kelomees

• Piracy, Circulation, and Cultural Control in Cyber-Age China, Jinying Li

• From the Theater to the Gallery: Harry Potter Engagements within the Museum, Debora Lui

• Who Told You You Were Special Edition? The Commercialization of the Aura
  Justin Mack

• New Platforms: More Choice – Less Freedom?: Mediated Narratives of Human History, Klaus Peter Muller

• Conserving Digital Art for the Ages, Francis Marchese

• The Television Image and the Image of the Television, Michael Newman

• A Story about Random Memories and Fragmented History on Screens, Katharina Niemeyer

• Remembering the Past in the Dynarchive: The State of Knowledge in Digital Archives, Julia Noordegraaf

• Preserving Digital Narratives in an Age of Present-Mindedness: the View from Toronto, Kamilla Pietrzyk

• Indiana Jones Fights the Communist Police: Text Adventures as a Transitional Media Form in the 1980’s Czechoslovakia, Jaroslav Svelch

• "Make Any Room Your TV Room:” Media Mobility, Digital Delivery, and Family Harmony, Chuck Tryon 

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Journal of the Moving Image Indian and South Asian cinema and media studies

Image from Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Anil Sharma, 2001). 

For more on this film, read "Beyond Partition: The Political Horizons of Contemporary Indian and Korean War Films" by Bhaskar Sarkar

Film Studies For Free just came across a really good e-journal that it hadnt bumped into before: Journal of the Moving Image, an annual publication of the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. 

It was launched in print format in 1999, but its print and online versions now co-exist. As its mission statement puts it,

JMI seeks to represent critical work on the state of contemporary screen cultures. There are many regions in the world with large viewing populations, often with vast production infrastructures for film and television; but corresponding institutions or forums for critical engagement with such audio-visual regimes are still highly inadequate. JMI seeks to address a broad set of issues ranging from formal properties of the moving image to the social foundation of its production, transmission and reception. There will be a special focus on India and South Asia, and on issues of transnational media transactions, but we would like to offer a wider range of discussion on film and television from various parts of the world made from different perspectives.

FSFF wanted to share its contents with you promptly, so direct links to all items so far online are pasted in below, with the most recent issue first. The first three issues of JMI are also being prepared for online publication. 

There are some excellent items here (you might try out Ravi Vasudevans The Meanings of ‘Bollywood’ just for starters). So FSFF heartily recommends that you subscribe to JMI ready for its next issue in December. 

(Also, please check out, if you havent yet, FSFFs own related entry: "Bollywood" for Beginners and Beyond: Introductions to Popular Hindi Cinema Studies)

JMI, Number 8, December, 2009

• Editorial Note

• Preserving Film (on Film) in a Digital Age Josef Lindner

• Together against the Mafia: Godard, Scorsese, Bit Torrent Sebastian Lutgert

• Cinema’s Floating Point Matt Hanson

• Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship Nishant Shah

• Photoshop Landscapes: Digital Mediations and Bollywood Cities Madhija Mukherjee

• Special Feature Conjunction and Flow: The Gendered Temporalities of (Media) Disasters Kumkum Sangari

JMI, Number 7, December, 2008

• Editorial Note

• Querying the ‘Traditional’ Roots of Silent Cinema in Asia  Kaushik Bhaumik

• Beyond Partition: The Political Horizons of Contemporary Indian and Korean War Films Bhaskar Sarkar

• The Subject of Representation in Korean Cinema: Two Limit Cases  Earl Jackson, Jr.

• Meet John Doe’s Order: Piracy, Temporality and the Question of Asia  Lawrence Liang

• Missing in the Original: Twin Dragons Remade in India S.V. Srinivas

• Theorizing New Asian Cinemas: Problems of the Historicist Approach Manas Ghosh

• Student Paper New Urban Spaces: Films of Tsai Ming-liang Michelle Baitali Bhowmik

• Special Feature The Meanings of ‘Bollywood’ Ravi Vasudevan

JMI, Number 6, December, 2007

• Editorial Note

• An Aesthetic for Film Sound in India? Ashish Rajadhyaksha

• Communication and Signification: Voice in the Cinema M. Madhava Prasad

• Early Indian Talkies: Voice, Performance and Aura Madhuja Mukherjee

•  Musical Contests: Reflections on Musical Values in Popular Film Amlan Das Gupta

• Speaking through Troubled Times Moinak Biswas

• Seeing through the Sound: Certain Tendencies of the Soundtrack in Satyajit Rays Films of the 1970s Anindya Sengupta

• Student Papers Sound Memories: In Search of Lost Sounds in Indian Cinema Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and  Sound of Horror: Sound and Dread in Hindi Cinema Shubham Roy Choudhury

• Special Feature  Space, Interiority and Affect in Charulata and Ghare Baire Supriya Chaudhuri

JMI, Number 5, December, 2006

• Editorial Note

• The Curious Case of Bombay’s Hindi Cinema: The Career of Indigenous ‘Exhibition’ Capital Ashish Rajadhyaksha

• Acceleration and Conflicts: Comments on the Cinematic Object in the 1990s and After Jeebesh Bagchi

• Persistence of the Feudal: Star and Film Form in Post 1970s Telugu Cinema S V Srinivas

• Mourning and Blood-Ties: Macbeth in Mumbai Moinak Biswas

• Live(li)ness and Network Publics in Post-Liberalization Indian Popular Films Abhijit Roy

• Memories of Development: The Fantastic Non-Presence of Kolkata in Post-Liberalization Bangla Cinema Sovan Tarafder

• The Middle Class: Consuming and Consumed: The Romance of Bombay Cinema Neha Chadha

JMI, Number 4, November, 2005

• Editorial Note

• The Apparatus and its Constituencies: On India’s Encounters with Television Abhijit Roy

• Panoramas of Asia and the Electronic Hearth: Michael Palin’s Connections John Hutnyk 

• The Subjects of News Television M. Madhava Prasad

• Kyunki Main Bhi Kabhi Tulsi Thi : Opening and Using the Black Box of Primetime Telereality Ipsita Chanda

• Media Trials and Courtroom Tribulations : The Battle of Images, Words and Shadows in the 13 December Case Suddhabrata Sengupta

• Television, Nationalism and Indian Cricket in the Era of Global Media Manas Ghosh

• Development (without) Communication: Viewing Doordarshan Methodologically Dipankar Sinha

• Reading Television: Towards a Definition of Audio-Visual Literacy Nilanjana Gupta

• Remote Control Nationalism: Media politics in Guyana Atticus Narrain

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