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Showing posts with label film directing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film directing. Show all posts

Friday, 12 October 2012

On David Lean: the Centenary Lectures from Queen Mary, University of London

Section from a frame grab from A Passage to India (David Lean, 1985)

Film Studies For Free only just bumped into the below videoed lectures which have been archived online for some time, possibly even since 2008 when they were recorded. They all treat the topic of David Lean, British film director, editor, producer and screenwriter.

What a truly wonderful resource they are, brought to you by the rather fantastic Film Studies department at Queen Mary, University of London. Two upcoming FSFF blogposts will bring you yet more fabulous resources from the brilliant staff in that department, but in the meantime it hopes that you will enjoy the resources linked to below.

At Queen Mary, University of London,
24th - 25th July 2008

"David Lean is one of the outstanding figures of British film history. A much sought-after film editor during the 1930s, he made his début as a director with In Which We Serve in 1942. He went on to direct such acclaimed films as Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1985). This centenary conference offered an opportunity both to celebrate his career and to evaluate the nature of his achievement."

Click on the images below to launch QuickTime video files of the lectures:
Mark Glancy
Mark Glancy, Queen Mary, University of London
David Lean and Noel Coward: Authorship and In Which We Serve

Anthony Reeves

Anthony Reeves, trustee of the David Lean Foundation

Anthony Reeves gives a brief introduction to the work of the David Lean Foundation
Linda Kaye

Linda Kaye, Senior Researcher, British Universities Film & Video Council

David Lean and the Newsreels (1930-1931)
Jeremy Hicks

Jeremy Hicks, Queen Mary, University of London

In Which We Serve... The Story of a Ship...Those Who Serve at Sea: The International Reception of David Lean's Directorial Début.

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

New Issue of LA FURIA UMANA on Jerry Lewis and much more...

Frame grab image of Jerry Lewis as 'Warren Nefron' in Smorgasbord aka Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis, 1983). Read Steven Shaviro's new article on this film

Smorgasbord (retitled Cracking Up by the distributor) is Jerry Lewis's last self-directed feature film. It first opened in France in 1983; it never received a proper American release. (In the US, it was immediately relegated to cable television -- which is where I saw it for the first time). And Smorgasbord still isn't very well known today -- even among Lewis aficionados. (It is, for instance, the only one of Lewis's self-directed films not to appear in the index to Enfant Terrible, an academic essay collection edited by Murray Pomerance in 2002, which otherwise covers Lewis' film career quite comprehensively). Yet I think that Smorgasbord is one of Jerry Lewis's greatest films; in what follows, I will try to explain why. [Steven Shaviro, 'Smorgasbord', La Furia Umana, 12, 2012; hyperlinks added by FSFF]
Film Studies For Free just heard about the latest issue of the pentalingual film journal La Furia Umana. There are lots of brilliant articles in English, and other marvellous work, too, in other languages that will be entertainingly translated by Google, if you so require.

The particular highlight, this time, is a truly brilliant and wide-ranging dossier on the work of Jerry Lewis, a human fury of an actor if ever there was one... But FSFF also had plenty of thoughts usefully and skilfully provoked by Kim Nicolini writing on the Post-Feminist Possibilities in Lars Von Trier's Melancholia

And there's a lot more to explore and learn from besides the above. Just feast your polyglot eyes on the below...

nota editoriale

rapporto confidenziale
prima linea
histoire(s) du cinéma
l'occhio che uccide
flaming creatures
the whole town's talking
western fragmenta
the new world

Monday, 2 January 2012

New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

Links to all items are set out for you below.

This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

"Mix-Tape Cinema": studies of Wes Anderson's films

Links added May 27, 2010
Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes Anderson at the New York Public Library (Fora.tv)

On the occasion of today's publication by Fora.tv of the above entertaining and informative video, Film Studies For Free presents a (rather) small but (almost) perfectly formed compendium of links to freely accessible studies of the joyous/poignant/whimsical/arch/'scavenger' films of US writer/director Wes Anderson. As usual, if readers know of any other good online material to add to the below list, do please get in touch.


The Substance of Style, Pt 1Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Schulz, Welles, Truffaut) by Matt Zoller Seitz  posted March 30, 2009 

The above video is the first in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style. Part 2 covers Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols. Part 3 covers Hal Ashby. Part 4 covers J.D. Salinger. Part 5 is an annotated version of the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums.


'The Films of Wes Anderson' (great clip 'mix-tape'/montage) by Paul Proulx

"A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I watched a film called Bottle Rocket. I knew nothing about it, and the movie really took me by surprise. Here was a picture without a trace of cynicism, that obviously grew out of its director's affection for his characters in particular and for people in general. A rarity. And the central idea of the film is so delicate, so human: A group of young guys think that their lives have to be filled with risk and danger in order to be real. They don't know that it's okay simply to be who they are." Martin Scorsese, 'Wes Anderson', Esquire, March 1, 2000
"Whenever I am getting ready to make a movie I look at other movies I love in order to answer the same recurring question: How is this done, again? I can never seem to remember, and I don’t mean that to be glib. I also hope people don’t throw it back in my face. Making a movie is very complicated, and it seems like kind of a miracle when it actually works out. Hal Ashby made five or six great movies in a row, and that seems to be practically unheard of." 'Wes Anderson on [Hal Ashby's] The Last Detail' in 'The Director's Director', by Jennifer Wachtel, GOOD, June 18, 2008
"In narrative, whimsy emphasizes the unexpected links that connect disparate ideas or events, but the connections must be meaningful. Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is not whimsical because it never proposes that the links between its scenes are anything more than incidental. It embraces insignificance and ponders the possibility of elevating apathy into anarchy. Wes Anderson’s films are whimsical because their unexpected juxtapositions are imbued with sentimental significance. As a visual mode, whimsy favours busy frames and compositions that distract viewers from the centre. It rewards those willing to explore the edges with jokes buried in marginalia or Dalmatian mice sniffing around in the corner of an elaborately composed shot. In all cases whimsy values the ability to appreciate the aesthetic harmony possible among myriad incongruent objects. It draws attention to the act of perception and the sensibility of the perceiver." Charlotte Taylor, 'The Importance of Being Earnest', Frieze Magazine, Issue 92, June-August 2005
'...[S]tuff like Wes Anderson mix-tape cinema...', Michael Sicinski, 'Songs Sung Blue: The Films of Michael Robinson', Cinema-scope, 33 

Saturday, 10 April 2010

The thrill of transcendence: Kathryn Bigelow Studies

Updated with video and new links on April 12, 2010
Jamie Lee Curtis as Megan Turner in Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990)
[Kathryn] Bigelow’s earliest works are often radical experiments with genres—combinatory, subtractive, subversive, offering a tool for crafting a mode of vital self-reflexive cinema in which the spectator becomes a thrill junkie, like the restless characters in Bigelow’s films. Ultimately, however, the raw exhilaration experienced by Bigelow’s characters must end so they can come to terms with reality and the laws—be they legal or gravitational—that anchor them to society. The later films show an interest in group dynamics as a form of politics or, perhaps, as an ideal of social living contained but not determined by politics. The turning point between these two parts of Bigelow’s career is Strange Days, whose protagonist attempts to wean himself off his addiction to spectacle in order to face the violence of his urban surroundings.
     This is the double bind Bigelow investigates: while thrill is ultimately an alienating form of individualism, the “real world” tends to be a trap, whether confining or merely banal. While Bigelow’s films reveal genre cinema’s promise of glossy escapism to be a dead end, they also pointedly argue that re-engagement with community is tantamount to conformity. One possible escape is offered to Bigelow’s protagonists by seeking out those extreme situations on the bohemian, criminal and physically fraught margins of society, where the rules can be broken and the self fleetingly transcended. Kathryn Bigelow, 'Filmmaking at the Dark Edge of Exhilaration', Harvard Film Archive, 2009
A little while back, Film Studies For Free promised a list of links to openly accessible scholarly essays on the work of filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, recent recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director for Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker (2009; see that film's Press Kit/Production Notes). And now FSFF's Bigelow Study Day has finally arrived - maybe not its longest links list ever, but one full of highest quality material nonetheless. The links follow the wonderful embedded video 'Outlaw Vision: Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker' created for The L Magazine by

      Tuesday, 9 June 2009

      María Luisa Bemberg: online resources


      Still on the subject of film authorship (see here and here), Film Studies For Free chirpily (cheekily?) cross-posts (again, with Directing Cinema - do visit that blog for some great video clips) a little list of choice, freely-accessible online resources pertaining to the Argentine film director María Luisa Bemberg.

      A somewhat late starter as a filmmaker, at the tender age of fifty-eight, Bemberg directed six films against the odds of a hugely difficult economic and political situation in Argentina in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been an important influence on a number of young filmmakers, most notably a favourite of FSFF, Lucrecia Martel (also see HERE). Martel's films have been produced by Bemberg's legendary producer and friend Lita Stantic.

      In honour of Bemberg and her films, below is a list of high-quality and freely-accessible online studies of her work:

      In English:
      In Spanish:

      In Italian:

      Tuesday, 2 June 2009

      On Auteurism and Film Authorship Theories


      Director Jane Campion (right) and cinematographer Laurie Mcinnes on the set of After Hours (1984). Photograph (1981) by Gayle Pigalle

      Film Studies For Free will be concentrating on some shorter (but hopefully still useful) posts in the next few weeks. But here's another long one in the meantime: a whole (shiny) host of links to writing devoted to FSFF's author's main topic of research: film authorship and auteur theory. It has consequently been cross-posted at her other blog Directing Cinema, where lots of discussions of authorship and auteurism may be found. The below list of links to freely accessible online material on these topics will be kept updated, so do consider yourselves warmly encouraged to bookmark this post, and also to suggest further good resources to add to the list (by commenting or via email). Latest update: June 3, 2009