European Cinema

'The Lure of Antonioni'

by Hamish Ford

Book review, Antonioni: Centenary Essays (eds. Laura Rascaroli & John David Rhodes, Palgrave Macmillan/British Film Institute, 2011), Australian Book Review, June 2012, pp. 34-35.

Five years since Michelangelo Antonioni’s death, the groundbreaking Italian director’s films occupy an increasingly... more Five years since Michelangelo Antonioni’s death, the groundbreaking Italian director’s films occupy an increasingly important but odd position. Exemplifying serious ‘art cinema’ at the peak of its European expression – or, as recent scholarship often prefers to locate it, post-war film modernism – his most famous work continues to compel yet also cause problems for critical reception. How to write about such demanding and endlessly rewarding films without falling back on what we are often told are the old clichés of ‘alienation’ and chilly modernist formalism? A welcome addition to the slowly percolating appreciations of the filmmaker in English, Antonioni: Centenary Essays quite visibly, if not perhaps intentionally, struggles with and exemplifies this challenge.

CFP: International Film and Media Studies Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

by Ágnes Pethő

The International, peer-reviewed, open access journal of the Sapientia University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) invites the submission of original, previously unpublished articles written in English. Articles in all areas of film and media studies are welcome. Deadline for the next issue: June 15, 2012. Previous issue available online here: http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/, and here: http://issuu.com/actauniversitatissapientiae/docs/film4_2011

Languages and Identities In the Contemporary European Cinema

by Dorota Ostrowska

European Cinemas In the Television Age

by Dorota Ostrowska

Magic, Emotions And Film Producers: Unlocking The “Black-Box” Of Film Production

by Dorota Ostrowska

Wide Screen Vol.2 No.2 Special Issue on Production Studies

by Dorota Ostrowska

"An Art That Won't Behave": Film and the Seven Arts, 1907-1921

by Michael Devine

American Literature 84.1 (March 2012): 89-117

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to... more In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to transform the cinema into an indigenous art free from European influence. Precisely because the cinema was “an art that won't behave,” as the journal's first essay on film put it, it depended on the arts as tutor texts in the effort to restrain sensory disorder and reinvigorate communal life. Wholly absent from critical treatments that see film as a model for the most kinetic modernist practices, the journal provides entry to a richly interdisciplinary history of American cinema: in the critical writings and poetry of the journal's contributors, including James Oppenheim, Waldo Frank, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Babette Deutsch, and in the works of artists close to the journal—John Sloan's painting Movies, Five Cents (1907) and Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's abstract film Manhatta (1921). Imagined as a shelter from the most dispiriting forces of urban-industrial modernity, the cinema was at once embraced, challenged, and idealized by these artists who practiced what Wanda Corn has called a “transcendent modernism.”

"Tensional Differences": The Anxiety of Re-Mediation in Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave Films

by Ágnes Pethő

Essay in the recently re-launched Vertigo Magazine, a special issue dedicated to the provocative cinema of Jean-Luc Godard.

This essay discusses the way in which Godard, in his films made during the period of the Nouvelle Vague, addresses the... more This essay discusses the way in which Godard, in his films made during the period of the Nouvelle Vague, addresses the issues regarding the rivalry between the emerging modern cinema and the other arts and media.

Theo Angelopoulos and Greece

by Samraghni Bonnerjee

El ojo, la mirada: representación e imagen en las trazas de la Antropología Visual

by L. Nicolás Guigou

Film als kulturelles Gedächtnis der Arbeitsmigration: Fatih Akins "Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren".

by Dagmar Brunow

In: Ozil, Seyda / Hofmann, Michael / Dayioglu-Yücel, Yasemin (eds): 50 Jahre türkische Arbeitsmigration in Deutschland. Göttingen: V&R Unipress; 2011. p. 183-204. (Türkisch-deutsche Studien, Jahrgang 2011)

Obwohl die Arbeitsmigration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg die deutsche Gesellschaft entscheidend geformt hat, blendet die... more Obwohl die Arbeitsmigration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg die deutsche Gesellschaft entscheidend geformt hat, blendet die nationale Geschichtsschreibung Migration weitgehend
aus. In der kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte um deutsche Erinnerungsorte kam das Thema der Migration und seine Rolle für das kulturelle Gedächtnis bislang entschieden zu kurz.
Hingegen macht sich in den letzten Jahren eine kulturelle Praxis bemerkbar, die den Migrationserfahrungen der so genannten ersten Generation von Gastarbeitern aus der Türkei
einen diskursiven Raum eröffnet, z.B. in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (1998), Feridun Zaimoğlu's Leyla (2006), der KanakHistoryRevue an der Berliner
Volksbühne (2001), oder jüngst in Yasemin und Nesrin Şamderelis erfolgreicher Kinokomödie Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (2010). Auch Fatih Akins Dokumentation Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren (2001) kann als Beitrag zum kulturellen Gedächtnis der Migration gewertet werden.
Der Artikel verfolgt zwei Ziele: zum einen wird dargestellt, wie autobiographischer Film als Erinnerungsarbeit verstanden werden kann, der einen transkulturellen Erinnerungsort für die
Geschichte der Arbeitsmigration nach Deutschland erzeugt. Zum anderen gilt es zu zeigen, wie Akins Film bewusst, zum Beispiel über den Einsatz von Musik, essentialistische
Zuschreibungen, Folklore und den Topos des „zwischen zwei Stühlen“ vermeidet.

Cinema and the Outside

by Gregg Lambert

Pasado y presente, entre la perversion y la crítica esperanzada. Algunas miradas del cine europeo al mundo de la educación

by Pablo Cepero

published in: Rescoldos. Revista de diálogo social, nº11 2º semestre 2004

Digital Time - Recent Work in Film Theory

by Martin Fradley

in 'Film Quarterly' 64:1 (Fall 2010), pp.70-74.

Philistines on the Big Screen: consumerism in Soviet cinema of the Brezhnev era

by Natalya Chernyshova

Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Vol. 5, No 2 (December 2011), pp 227-54

As living standards improved in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the regime was faced with a challenge of growing... more As living standards improved in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the regime was faced with a challenge of growing consumerism among its population, especially young people. In these new circumstances, it became important to define the boundaries between acceptable norm and unacceptable excess in socialist consumption, and cinema took an active part in the public discussion that ensued. This article considers a wide range of popular films by a variety of directors, including those that often fall off the film historian’s radar, to assess this contribution and to investigate the filmmakers’ motives for engaging with the topic of consumption. The article argues that the individual’s relationship with material goods was a very prominent theme in Brezhnev-era cinema, but also one fraught with many contradictions, reflecting Soviet society’s own conflicting attitudes to modern consumption

The National and the Transnational in Contemporary Greek Cinema

by Lydia Papadimitriou

New Review of Film and Television Studies
Volume 9, Issue 4, 2011, p, 493-512.

Due to its limited exportability, Greek cinema has often been examined as a national phenomenon, the cinematic... more Due to its limited exportability, Greek cinema has often been examined as a national phenomenon, the cinematic influences from Western and other cinemas often being derided as weaknesses. The search for an elusive Greekness has often disappointed critics of 1950s and 1960s popular cinema, while the artistic New Greek Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s has self-consciously tried to define itself in national terms. Focusing on contemporary Greek cinema, and in particular on films with box office success, this paper explores the extent to which contemporary Greek films display transnational configurations.

The Film’s setting Notes for a pedagogy of the space/environmental functions of film

by Sara Iommi

Sara Iommi, The Film’s setting. Notes for a pedagogy of the space/environmental functions of film, in AA.VV., Cine clube de Avanca Edition’s “Colecção Comunicação em Debate”, 2011, pp 834 - 842.

The primary target of my work is to investigate the concept of film space, starting from the meanings of words. The... more The primary target of my work is to investigate the concept of film space, starting from the meanings of words. The terms environment and space have different meanings and different implication for film analysis.
During the last century, the technological revolution has changed our way to conceive spatiality. Despite Western anthropocentrism, the “age of simultaneity" brings this topic back to its centrality. A methodological approach based on Cultural Studies and referring to the modern European cinema (Gilles Deleuze, in the eighties, defined it not stricly narrative and found many examples of “empty space”) proposes interesting research material.
Increasing urbanization and space travels have a strong influence on post-modern cinema. If the cinema is the art of visibile, it is therefore very important to investigate the relationships between interiors and interiority and also the boundary line between imagine and imagination. Furthermore, I am interested in the relationship between a character and background in the meaning construction. The aim of my study is to try to define how much the furniture and the various other objects are relevant for the drawing of the different characters. I would investigate in what way the geographical area, the landscapes and even the weather may reflect cultural identity and emotional conditions.

The Use of Music in the Films of Fatih Akın

by Beste Atvur

The Use of Music in the Films of Fatih Akın; Case Studies: Head-On, Crossing the Bridge and the Edge of Heaven

This study investigates the use of music in the films of Fatih Akın and the music’s contribution to the director’s... more This study investigates the use of music in the films of Fatih Akın and the music’s contribution to the director’s narrative, specifically in relation to the issue of migration. Migration here refers to the large-scale immigration of Turks to Germany, which occurred between the 1960s and 1980s. In Akın’s films, music is used to represent the uncompromising and unique relationship between these two societies, Turkish and German, living together in the same country. Through an in-depth textual analysis of three of his films: Head-On (Akın, 2004), Crossing the Bridge (Akın, 2005) and The Edge of Heaven (Akın, 2007), this examination focuses on how music constructs a framework/background concerning immigrant culture in these films, as a contributing layer which parallels the main narrative and as a medium to explore the director’s position as a member of an immigrant family himself.

'Summer with Monika'

by Hamish Ford

Cinémathèque Annotations on Film, Senses of Cinema, Issue 25, 2003.

'Antonioni's Radical Space-Time'

by Hamish Ford

RealTime, no. 61, June-July 2004.