Jumat, 21 Maret 2014

The Man from Pécs Béla Tarr Resources

Posted by Garber on 03.30 with No comments so far
Béla Tarr and film critic Howard Feinstein discuss the formers innovative filmography, punctuated by clips from his films (Walker Art Center, December 22, 2008).

With Béla Tarrs Werckmeister harmóniák/Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) making lots of the recent flurry of top-ten-films-of-the-decade lists (see Andersons and Broads great ones, for example), and his latest film A londoni férfi/The Man from London (2007) beginning to be screened more widely, Film Studies For Free brings you its own tribute to the Hungarian master.

HarryTuttle at Unspoken Cinema has already assembled an amazing list of online written resource links (see also Unspoken I: Tarr. May, 2009, (eds.) Yvette Biró, Edwin Mak & HarryTuttle at Unspoken - Journal for Contemplative Cinema).

FSFF wanted to add to this valuable existing list with some more scholarly links, as well as some embedded videos (above and below) which help contribute to understanding of this filmmakers work.



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Kamis, 20 Maret 2014

On Pleasure free Perkins in new Film Quarterly

Posted by Garber on 02.30 with No comments so far

Image from Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls, 1952)

Thanks to The Auteurs Daily, Film Studies For Free heard about the new issue of Film Quarterly (Vol. 63, No. 1, Fall 2009) which comes with a wonderful, freely-accessible article by V.F.Perkins: Reconsideration: Le Plaisir: "The Mask" and "The Model". Its a fabulously illustrated study of Max Ophüls’s 1952 film Le Plaisir, an adaptation of three short stories by Guy de Maupassant: Le Masque, La Maison Tellier, and Le Modèle.

Other freely-accessible items in this issue include: Rob White, Editors Notebook: Against Nature; Joshua Clover, Marx and Coca-Cola: The Future in Labor; Danny Birchall, Talking Point: The Avant-Garde Archive Online
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Rabu, 19 Maret 2014

In the Hands of Fate Existentialism in Film

Posted by Garber on 01.45 with No comments so far
Image from I’m a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) [See Sam Mithanis thesis, The Hollywood Left: Cinematic Art and Activism in the 1930s for reflections on the existentialism of this films director]

Viewing (30:43): In the Hands of Fate: Existentialism in Film (October 18, 2010)

Cinema condenses actions and their consequences. It puts the viewer into someone elses shoes. Dilemmas tend to be urgent, up-close and personal: ergo, all films are existential. But several films in this years [London Film Festival] programme specifically emphasise philosophical struggles with circumstance. Veiko Õunpuus The Temptation of St Tony makes drama out of the very discourse of existential thought. Xavier Beauvois Of Gods and Men follows monks whose faith is shaken by fear of execution. Michelangelo Frammartinos Le Quattro Volte links a dying mans end, to the fate of a lost kid (as in goat) and a felled tree. Finally, the dying man in Apichatpong Weerasethakuls Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives accepts his fate yet the past makes its own demands on him. Its more than just mortal thoughts that brings these films together; its a heightened sensitivity to our sense of purpose. We are very excited that directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Michelangelo Frammartino [joined] Dr David Sorfa (Senior lecturer in Film Studies at Liverpool John Moores University and managing editor of the journal, Film-Philosophy) on a panel chaired by Ian Haydn Smith, Editor of International Film Guide.
Film Studies For Free wanted to alert its readers to the above linked-to, wonderful BFI video on the topic of  existentialism and cinema. In its usual good faith, and as a perfect accompaniment, FSFF also brings you a little list of links to great, openly accessible, scholarly reading, much of it book-length, on the very same theme.
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Selasa, 18 Maret 2014

Liquid Atmospherics On the cinema of Wong Kar wai

Posted by Garber on 00.30 with No comments so far

ENVOI (2011) from Elaine Castillo on Vimeo. The above video is a ficto-biographical essay-film taking two looped scenes from two Wong Kar-wai films (HAPPY TOGETHER and DAYS OF BEING WILD) as its point of departure, arrival (also: non-departure, non-arrival). On grief, migration, the romantic, hyper-specificity, sentimental time, queer space, Asian celebrity gossip, fantasies involving Maggie Cheung, covers and translations, the writing body, the filmmaking body, readability, speakability.
Almost devoid of irony, Wong’s films, like classic rock and roll, take seriously all the crushes, the posturing, and the stubborn capriciousness of young angst. They rejoice in manic expenditures of energy. They celebrate the momentary heartbreak of glimpsing a stranger who might be interesting to love. The best comparison is surely not with Godard, whose romantic streak has a bitter edge. In Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong may have its Truffaut, the director who in Tirez sur le pianiste and Jules et Jim concentrated on not-quite-grown- up characters brooding on eternally missed chances. In any case, Wong stands out from his peers by abandoning the kinetics of comedies and action movies in favor of more liquid atmospherics. He dissolves crisp emotions into vaporous moods. For all his sophistication, his unembarrassed effort to capture powerful, pleasantly adolescent feelings confirms his commitment to the Hong Kong popular tradition.
David Bordwell, Avant-Pop Cinema Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express in Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Second edition: e-book; Wisconsin: Irvington Way Institute Press Madison, 2011), pp. 178-179

Today, Film Studies For Free massively updates its existing entry on the cinema of Wong Kar-wai. 

There are two compelling reasons for this: the first is there are lots more scholarly resources available, or discoverable, now on this filmmakers work that are worth listing, including some great items on video. 

The second is that this is the first of two posts in celebration of the online publication, as a PDF, of a full colour, second edition of the peerless David Bordwells book Planet Hong Kong, an opus well worth its $15 pricetag, in FSFFs humble and, usually, frugal opinion.
 
FSFF doesnt normally celebrate, or promote, pay-to-own resources. But, apart from the fact that this is a highly interesting development in online Film Studies publishing in its own right, no one has given so generously online, either of his already published work or of his ongoing scholarly work, as David Bordwell. 

What is more, Bordwells PHK chapter entitled Avant-Pop Cinema, with its lyrical and beautifully illustrated section on Wongs work: Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express, is worth the download price alone. If you need to save up to purchase Planet Hong Kong first, you can enjoy, in the meantime, several excellent posts at Observations on Film Art on Wongs work, including Ashes to Ashes (Redux) and Years of being obscure.

Video material:
Written material:
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Minggu, 16 Maret 2014

Comic Book INTENSITIES

Posted by Garber on 23.15 with No comments so far
Screenshot of the new issue header for INTENSITIES


Way back in the dim mists of online time (on January 23, 2013, to be precise), Film Studies For Free publicised its discovery of the new online incarnation of Intensities, the wonderful journal of cult media studies.

Not only are four existing issues of the journal freely available at its website, but a new issue has recently been published there, with lots of items of film studies related interest. The table of contents is pasted in below with links to these excellent items.

Of related interest: FSFFs entry on Studies of the Remediation of Films, Comics and Video Games.



INTENSITIES, Issue 5: Comic Book Intensities (Spring/Summer 2013) 

Articles
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Sabtu, 15 Maret 2014

Double Vision Links in Memory of Raúl Ruiz a Filmmaking Legend

Posted by Garber on 21.31 with No comments so far
Updated Sunday August 21, 2011
The late Raúl Ruiz in conversation with Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli at the University of Aberdeen in 2007. One of the most prolific directors of the last 50 years, having written over 100 plays before starting in the cinema, Ruiz films have been characterized as ironic, surrealistic and deeply experimental.

Here is my own theoretical fiction: in the waking dream that is our receiving the film, there is a counterpart; we start projecting another film on the film. I have said to project and that seems apt. Images that leave me and are superimposed on the film itself, such that the double film - as in the double vision of Breton traditions - becomes protean, filled with palpitations, as if breathing. [Raúl Ruiz, The Face of the Sea (In Place of an Epilogue), Poetics of Cinema 2]
Every time that a general theory or a fiction is elaborated I have the impression that ... there is a painting stolen, a part of the story or puzzle missing. The final explanation is no more than a conventional means of tying together all the paintings. It’s like the horizon: once you reach it, there is still the horizon.  [Raúl Ruiz in L’Hypothèse du Tableau Volé/The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Ruiz, 1979)]
... Raul Ruizs comments on filmmaking outside metropolitan centres are revealing. He tells us how, when he was studying theater and film in Santiago with the aid of American textbooks, he was surprised to find "that the films we loved the most were badly made" - because they were not made according to the set of assumptions about action and behaviour in Central Conflict Theory." This led him to strategise that "every film is always the bearer of another, a secret film" and that "the strong points [of the inexplicit film] are found in the weak points of the apparent one." This argument seems to be not just about how fascination presents itself in film; it also suggests that fascination (Ruiz calls it "the gift of double vision that we all possess") is not just an aesthetic project: It is, above all, a social and political project. [MA Abbas, Dialectic of Deception, Public Culture, 1999, v. 11 n. 2, p. 347-363, p. 360 citing Ruiz, A Poetics of Cinema, trans. by Brian Holmes, (Paris: Editions Di Voir, 1995); p. 11, 111, and 109 respectively:]
Film Studies For Free is very sad to pass on news of the death of Chilean film director Raúl Ruiz in Paris after a long illness. 

Film critic Dave Kehr points to the report in Le Monde in which Ruizs producer, François Margolin, informed the French newspaper that the director "was in the midst of finishing the editing of a film he has shot on his childhood in Chile ... And he was preparing another film in Portugal, on a famous Napoleonic battle.”  Perhaps we will get to see the first of these tantalising projects. FSFF very much hopes so.

Below is this blogs sincerely felt tribute to the brilliant Ruiz, one of the most memorable and talented of prolific filmmakers (and one of the most prolific of filmmakers against the odds): a list of links to online studies of the directors work, as well as to interviews with him, and writing by him. Further links will continue to be added here in the days and weeks to come.

Links to posthumous tributes to Ruiz, along with other material about his films, are being gathered by David Hudson at the Mubi Notebook.

Update (August 21, 2011): The list below was expanded with many additional entries, including, at the foot of the post, a number of documentaries about (and/or recordings of) Ruiz. Of particular note is the documentary Exiles: Raoul Ruiz Chilean Film Director (BBC, 1988, directed by Jill Evans), which contains many marvellous excerpts from Ruizs films. 

Also see Jonathan Rosenbaums marvellous tribute to Ruiz, Ruiz Hopping and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites.

You can watch Ruizs Three Crowns of a Sailor (1983, circa 117 mins) online at present for free, too!

And Girish Shambu has just posted "A Ghost at Noon",  a remarkable and very personal tribute to Ruiz by Adrian Martin (author or editor of many of the essays below).






Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen: Tuesday 13th June 2006, Mr Raoul Ruiz, the distinguished film director spoke to us in broad terms about his work in film (he has directed almost 100 films) and film theory (he is the author of a multi-volume book entitled "The Poetics of Cinema").
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Jumat, 14 Maret 2014

Dangerous Cinematic Women Studies

Posted by Garber on 20.45 with No comments so far
The above is a short video primer by Catherine Grant. It offers an audiovisual introduction to issues of gender, sexuality and movement in relation to Rita Hayworths performance as Gilda in Charles Vidors 1946 film.
The femme fatale is a product of the male imaginary, which emerges in literature and the visual arts under contingent socio-political conditions as a challenge to coherent and stable identities. [...]
     The emergence of the femme fatale motif in literature, art and cinema generally coincides with periods of social or political instability and is not specific to a culture, society or era, but exhibits countless masks as she may manifest herself in diverse historical or geo-political contexts, and through a variety of artistic and literary forms. She embodies traces of a myriad of powerful, as well as menacing, historical, biblical and mythical female figures, such as Cleopatra, Salome, or the Sirens; yet this wicked and barren creature is always imbued with an alluring beauty and rapacious sexuality that is potentially deadly to man. The femme fatale figure is a recurrent patriarchal construct, a projection of all that exists beyond that which is normal, familiar, or safe. As Rebecca Stott observes, she is a multiple sign, or ‘the Other around whom the qualities of all Other collect in the male imagination’ (1992: 39). As such, her appearances are always symptomatic of a society in crisis. [Eva Bru-Domínguez, The Body as a Conflation of Discourses: The femme fatale in Mercè Rodoreda’s Mirall trencat (1974), Journal of Catalan Studies 2009]
[I]s it possible that the tangled webs of violence, sexuality, pathology, and intrigue at the core of certain film noir offer moments of reversal and exception which challenge womens role as eternal victim? How is an anti-feminist backlash or male anxiety around womens power projected into these paranoid film scenarios? To what extent can such disruptions be contained through conventional "happy family" closure - or through the violent death of the (anti-)heroine whose glittering image lingers as the credits rolls? Working against the inescapable grain of the "repressive rule" of female victimhood, I choose here to seize on the exceptional figure of the "fatale femme." While the exception may help define the rule, she also keeps alive the possibility, the inevitability, of transformation in gendered relations of power. [Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir: reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993: 6-7]
Rather than promoting images of women that emphasize their spirit and unknowable power, and rather than promoting images of women that rely on their bodies, finally, we need to illustrate the contexts that inform women’s experience. I want to suggest some of the reasons why we’ve grown accustomed to identifying film noir’s “femme fatale” without examining these contexts that inform her presence in film noir, by doing just that: examining the settings—social, psychological, political, physical, and geographical—that define her experience, which is, I want strongly to suggest, a far better thing to define than “woman” herself.
     This study seeks to modify the tone of feminist discussions about film noir’s women by reorienting our attention to the narrative, social contexts, and mise-en-scene that show the relationship between women’s powers and the limits placed on them by social rules. Both the view of the “femme fatale” as misogynist projection and the view of the “femme fatale” as opaque yet transgressive female force emphasize her status as object or symbol (as object of scorn or as the mysterious and opaque “other” that threatens to destroy the male subject). My aim is to adjust our focus on film noir and gender so that we illuminate these women’s narratives rather than mystifying women as objects or images. [Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009): 5. Book info.]
Film Studies For Free wishes its reader a very happy International Womens Day with a varied curatorial selection of online scholarly work touching on possibly the most studied object in all of feminist film theory: the dangerous woman, sometimes fatal, sometimes a fatality...

If you are a film goer you know her kind. She is attractive, alluring, enigmatic, enticing, teasing, siren-like. Totally tautological. You might come across her dancing in a cinematic cabaret or show, smoking in a private detectives office, gracing a film noir alleyway, or haunting a difficult to decipher flashback. Or turning up like a beautiful but bad penny, provoking your scopophilia (and/or your epistemophilia), just about anywhere in almost every period of international film history.

Just what is it about these cinematic women? There certainly isnt one answer to that question, but the studies linked to below might very well help you to begin to tackle it.

If there are any important online resources that FSFF has missed, please do list them in the comments thread.
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