"Making films anyhow": On Glauber Rocha's DIY cinema

Terra em Transe/Entranced Earth (Glauber Rocha, 1967)

Glauber said more: "We are going to make our films anyhow: with handheld cameras, in 16mm if there is no 35mm, improvising in the street to get people's true gestures"; "..a cinema on the basis of whatever means are possible, at low cost and in a short time"; "..a political cinema that intends to inform not by logic, but by poetics."

Making films anyhow. Not making films anyhow. In fact, filming with a hand-held camera revealing its nervous presence in the scene more than the scene itself properly speaking, was not a way of simplifying and impoverishing cinematographic writing, but a creative intervention to make it more complex and rich. Glauber's Earth Entranced (Terra em Transe, 1967) is a good example, the scene improvised, not because it had not been thought through properly beforehand in the screenplay, but because it continued being thought through there in the shooting; the image tremulous; not because of any failure or lack of skill on the part of the photographer, but because at that time reality was being discussed like that in speech, nervous and tremulous.

In fact, this cinema, with an idea in its head and a camera in its hand, enriched the speech of itself. It helped people think of screenplays as a challenge to shooting, of shooting as a response to the challenge of the screenplay, of the camera as a challenge to the eye. It helped people think of cinema as an expression finished, on the screen and, at the same time, unfinished, just in the imagination, part of a process that does not end with the film on the screen; it helped people think of film as a work print, a not yet finished print for the spectator to clean up and bring order to; cinema as an inventor and stimulator of images.

José Carlos Avellar, 'Writing the Speech', FIPRESCI, 2006

The links list offered up today is Film Studies For Free's customary tribute to Glauber Rocha, a political and aesthetic leader of the Cinema Novo movement which emerged in Brazil in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Known above all for the trio of films Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, 1964), Terra em transe (Earth Entranced/Land in Anguish, 1967), and O dragão da maldade contra o santo guerreiro (Antonio das Mortes, 1969), the latter about a legendary gunman hired to kill a group of rebelling peasants, Glauber Rocha's work -- made according to his DIY dictum 'An idea in your head and a camera in hand...' -- has been an inspiration for much cinema in Brazil and elsewhere.

This post is also intended to support and publicise a (for charity) screening of Glauber Rocha's Terra em Transe in London by Latin America House/CasaLatina.org on April 8. Do please go along if you can, and find out more about about this important filmmaker's work and about Brazilian cinema, politics and culture more generally.

• Glauber Rocha, 'Aesthetic of Hunger'

• Tempo Glauber comprehensive website in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French

• José Carlos Avellar, 'Writing the Speech', FIPRESCI, 2006

• Scott L. Baugh, 'Manifesting La Historia: Systems of 'Development' and the New Latin American Cinema Manifesto', Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 34.1 (2004) 56-65

• Graham Bruce, 'Music in Glauber Rocha's films', from Jump Cut, no. 22, May 1980, pp. 15-18

• Julianne Burton, '"The Camera As "Gun": Two Decades of Culture and Resistance in Latin America', Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 1, Culture in the Age of Mass Media. (Winter, 1978), pp. 49-76

• Julianne Burton , 'The old and the new: Latin American cinema at the (last?) Pesaro Festival', from Jump Cut, no. 9, 1975, pp. 33-35

• Julianne Burton, Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, 'Brazilian cinema update: Annotated filmography', from Jump Cut, no. 22, May 1980, pp. 22-24

• João Cezar de Castro Rocha, 'Brazil as Exposition', Ciberletras, No. 08, December 2002

• Michael Chanan, New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995)', from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996

• Michael Chanan, 'The Changing Geography of Third Cinema', Screen Special Latin American Issue, Volume 38, number 4, Winter 1997)

• Carlos Diegues, 'A Dream that came true', FIPRESCI, 2006 

• Julio Diniz, 'Brazil and issues of cultural and national identity in Latin America', Diálogos Latinoamericanos, No. 2, 2002

• Jack Draper, 'Brazilian Popular Culture as Process and Product: Politicizing the Popular in Música Popular Brasileira, 1950-2003',  “Latin American Music and Dance” Panel, Latin American Studies Association Conference, March 28, 2003

• Michèle Faguet, 'Pornomiseria: Or How Not to Make a Documentary Film', Afterall, Issue 21, Summer 2009

• Catherine Grant, 'Studies of 'Third Cinema' and anti-Eurocentric film culture', Film Studies For Free,August 10, 2009
  

• Simon Hartog, 'There's Nothing More International Than a Pack of Pimps: A [1970] Conversation between Pierre Clémenti, Miklos Janscó, Glauber Rocha, and Jean-Marie Straub', first published in Cinematics, No. 4, Rouge, 3, 2004

• Randal Johnson, The film industry in Brazil: culture and the state (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1987)

• Gabe Klinger, 'Glauber Rocha', Senses of Cinema, January 2005

• Michael Korfmann, 'On Brazilian Cinema: From Mário Peixoto’s Limite to Walter Salles', Senses of Cinema, Issue 40, 2006

• Gabriela Martínez, 'Cinema law in Latin America: Brazil, Peru and Colombia', Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Nicola Marzano, 'The Art of Hunger: re-defining Third Cinema', 16:9, November 2009

• Lúcia Nagib, 'Reframing Utopia: Contemporary Brazilian Cinema at the turn of the century', Vol. 0, Winter2006

• Emanuelle K F Oliveira, 'An ethic of the esthetic: racial representation in Brazilian cinema today', Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies, Vol. 4, 2008 

• Hans Proppe and Susan Tarr, 'Pitfalls of cultural nationalism in cinema novo', from Jump Cut, no. 10, 1976, pp. 45-48

• Peter Rist, 'A Brief Introduction to Brazilian Cinema', Offscreen Journal, Volume 9, Issue 6 (June 30, 2005)

• Robert Stam and Randal Johnson, 'Brazil renaissance, introduction Beyond Cinema Novo', from Jump Cut, no. 21, Nov. 1979, pp. 13-18 (Part 2)

• Robert Stam , 'Land in Anguish: Revolutionary lessons', from Jump Cut, no. 10-11, 1976, pp. 49-51

• Robert Stam, 'Censorship in Brazil', from Jump Cut, no. 21, Nov. 1979, p. 20

• Robert Stam, 'Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Garbarge', E.A.I.L, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1998 

• Robert Stam, 'Blacks in Brazilian Cinema: A Comparative Methodology', Critical Arts, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1983

Obstinate Battles for Documentary Memory: Patricio Guzmán Resources Online

Regular readers will know, hopefully, that Film Studies For Free issues forth only on the topics that take its fancy. It receives no commercial or other patronage, and it does not respond to 'prompts' for its hypertextual-utterances: nor does it want any! It loves and supports free online culture, and it prefers to make its own reading, viewing and blogging choices. Sometimes, though, it does get independently inspired by commercially-available film releases or new offline publications of a very worthwhile kind, as was the case today. And the result is a little bit of unsolicited free advertising...

FSFF was so HAPPY to hear that Chilean documentarist Patricio Guzmán's films The Battle of Chile (1975-1978), The Pinochet Case (2001) and a particular personal favourite, Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997 - see the opening sequences above) have been released on a new DVD by a great and longstanding supporter of Latin American film culture -- Icarus Films -- that it decided to mark this very auspicious occasion with a related scholarly links-list in honour, and warm appreciation, of Guzmán's hugely important films.

• Articles on Guzmán's website:

• MOVIES THAT MARKED ME FOREVER
• When I was about eight or nine years old (I really don’t remember exactly)...
• THE DOCUMENTARY EXPLOSION
• THE LOST IMAGES
• PIECES OF LIFE
• STAINS ON THE NEGATIVE
• OBLIVION AS A CENTRAL THEME
• THE CHILEAN DOCUMENTARY, A PANORAMIC LOOK

• Pat Aufderheide, 'Interview with Patricio Guzmán', Center for Social Media, Oct. 25, 2002

• Pamela Biénzobas, 'Patricio Guzmán's Salvador Allende: The Personal Painting of a Universal Myth', Senses of Cinema, Issue 34, January 2005

• Katherine Bliss, 'Review of Chile, Obstinate Memory/Battle of Chile', The Public Historian, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 1999

• Judy Branfman, 'Poking in the wound or reclaiming history? Documentary Films as Gendered Historical Memory in Post-Dictatorship Chile and Spain', CSW Update, October 2007
  

• Michael Chanan, 'The Changing Geography of Third Cinema, originally published in Screen Special Latin American Issue (edited by Catherine Grant and Jackie Stacey), Volume 38 number 4 Winter 1997

• Michael Chanan, 'The economic condition of cinema in Latin America ', Third World Affairs 1985, London: Third World Foundation, pp.379-389

• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90s. Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema', E.I.A.L. ESTUDIOS INTERDISCIPLINARIOS DE AMERICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE, Vol. 9, No. 1, enero-junio 1998 (Cultura visual en América Latina, Editor invitado: John Mraz)

• Michael Chanan, New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995), from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996

• Hugo Chaparro Valderrama, 'Patricio Guzmán according to Jorge Ruffinelli', El ojo que piensa, 2002
  

• First Run/Icarus Films Presskit for THE BATTLE OF CHILE (1975-1978), CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY (1997), THE PINOCHET CASE (2001), Films by Patricio Guzmán
  

• First Run/Icarus Films Presskit for SALVADOR ALLENDE (2004), Film by Patricio Guzmán

• Jim Hillier, 'The Battle of Chile/La batalla de Chile, Patricio Guzmán, 1975–9', 100 Documentary Films (London: BFI/Palgrave, BFI Film Guides, 2009 (scroll down to Ch. 14))
  

• Sarah Kessler, 'An Imperfect Cinema', The Brooklyn Rail, September 2009
  

• Nicola Marzano, 'Third Cinema Today', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 6, 2009
  

• Nicola Marzano, 'The Art of Hunger: re-defining Third Cinema', 16:9, November 2009 - 7. årgang - nummer 34

• Zuzana M. Pick, 'Chilean cinema: ten years of exile (1973-83)', from Jump Cut, no. 32, April 1987, pp. 66-70
  

• Margaret Power, 'Chile, Obstinate Memory', H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. September, 1998
  

• Margaret Power, 'The Battle of Chile', H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. August, 1998
  

• Juan Carlos Rodríguez, The Postdictatorial Documentaries of Patricio Guzmán: Chile, Obstinate Memory, The Pinochet Case, and Island of Robinson Crusoe, PhD Thesis, Duke University 2007
  

• Antonio Traverso, 'Unsettled Screens: The Cinema of Latin America', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 9 No. 12, March 2005
  

• And a very special bonus for French or Spanish speakers: … à Valparaiso (1963 France/Chile 29 mins, directed by Joris Ivens, with a script by Chris Marker and assistance from Patricio Guzmán). See Adrian Danks' Senses of Cinema article on this film here.

Peruvian Cinema (in the age of transnational film finance)

Image of Fausta/Magaly Solier, in La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa, Spain/Peru, 2009) - see a review of this film here

Film Studies For Free's author attended a very stimulating seminar yesterday given by Sarah Barrow of Anglia Ruskin University, entitled 'Transnational Film Financing in the Hispanic World: A Peruvian Case Study'.

Barrow presented a fascinating overview of Peruvian cinema in the last five years, and, in particular, of the efforts made by an emerging set of filmmakers to take advantage of new international funding and support opportunities. These include the regional Ibermedia programme, Rotterdam Film Festival’s Hubert Bals project, the Berlin World Cinema Fund (WCF), and the Cannes screenwriting residency awards for developing writer-director talent from developing economies. Barrow focused on the career trajectories of two Peruvian writer-directors: Josué Méndez (Días de Santiago [2004]; Dioses [2008]) and Claudia Llosa (Madeinusa [2006]; La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow [2009], Winner of the Golden Bear Award at the Berlinale 2009 and 2009 Foreign-Language Oscar Nominee).

FSFF wanted to follow up on Barrow's valuable seminar with some online resources for researchers working on Peruvian cinema as well as on transnational film finance. Below, then, are some links to high-quality, openly-accessible, scholarly work on these topics, most of them in English. See also FSFF's earlier post on Studies of 'Third Cinema' and anti-Eurocentric film culture

• Buzz Alexander, 'Interview with Pancho Adrienzén: Radical film in Peru today', from Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983, pp. 27-30

• Sarah Barrow, 'Images of Peru: A National Cinema in Crisis', from Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and Nationhood. Ed. Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005: 39-58

• Scott L. Baugh & Michael Schoenecke, 'Special Issue Introduction: Historical Reflection/Cinematic Projections of Latin American Film', Film & History, Vol. 34.1 (2004)

• Jon Beasley-Murray, “Subalternity, Betrayal, and Flight: Three Recent Films from Peru”, essay draft (2007). See also Beasley-Murray's blog: Posthegemony

• Michael Chanan, 'The economic condition of cinema in Latin America', from Third World Affairs 1985, London: Third World Foundation, pp.379-389

• Tamara Falicov, 'Programa Ibermedia: Co-Production and the Cultural Politics of Constructing an Ibero-American Audiovisual Space', Spectator, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2007, Special Issue on Media Co-Productions, 21-30

• Francisco da Gama, 'Filming the war with Sendero', Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007

• Gabriela Martínez, 'New Readings of Past and Recent Latin American Cinema', A Contra corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America [Review of Lisa Shaw and Stephanie Dennison (Editors), Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity. (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2005)], Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall 2006, 163-174

• Gabriela Martínez, 'Cinema law in Latin America:Brazil, Peru and Colombia ', Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, No. 50, spring 2008

• Sophia A. McClennen, 'The theory and practice of the Peruvian Grupo Chaski', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Jeffrey Middents, Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru (UPNE, 2009: Google Books Limited Preview) Also see Middents' blog
  

• Violeta Núñez, 'PERUVIAN CINEMA : An ongoing battle', Cinema Journal/El ojo que piensa, 2007
  

• Miriam Ross, 'Social Engagement, Empowerment and Change - Grupo Chaski’s Microcines: Engaging the Spectator', eSharp, Issue 11, 2008

• Libia Villazana, [Audio file of soundtrack of] 'Latin America in Co-production' (46 minute long documentary directed by Villazana, UK/Peru 2007, partly in English, partly in Spanish), followed by a panel discussion at the Tate Modern Film Synergies event (November 25, 2007) added Nov 2, 2009

• Libia Villazana, 'De una política cultural a una cultura politizada: La República Bolivariana de Venezuela y su revolución cultural en el sector audiovisual', ZiF: Center for Interdisciplinary Research, 2007 added Nov 2, 2009

• Libia Villazana, 'Hacia un cine peruano de coproducción Entrevista con Francisco “Pancho” Lombardi', Contratexto digital. Año 4, N° 5, 2007
  

Studies of 'Third Cinema' and anti-Eurocentric film culture

Subtitled introduction to the first part of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's 1968 Third Cinema classic La hora de los hornos/The Hour of the Furnaces (made by the Grupo Cine Liberación collecive), 1968 on YouTube. Also see the first part ('Neocolonialismo y violencia'/'Neocolonialism and Violence') in its entirety, without subtitles, HERE.

Two events in particular provoked Film Studies For Free's posting, today, of a webliography of openly accessible, online material about Third Cinema and anti-Eurocentric film culture: the revamping of the website of Michael Chanan, one of the most important anglophone writers on Third Cinema (note the updated page for his online essays and papers and his new blog address); and the publication of a new issue of online film journal Offscreen (volume 13, issue 6), with an article on Third Cinema by Nicola Marzano.

The film-studies links are below, but first, here are links to three essential 'Third Cinema' Manifestos: Julio García Espinosa, 'For an Imperfect Cinema' ; Glauber Rocha, 'Aesthetic of Hunger'; and Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, 'Towards a Third Cinema' (Published online courtesy of Revolutionen aus dem Off: EINE RETROSPEKTIVE DES DRITTEN KINOS IM AUFBRUCH, ZEUGHAUSKINO BERLIN, April 18-May 27, 2009)

• William Alexander, 'Jorge Sanjinés and Tomás Gutierrez Alea: Class, film language and popular cinema', from Jump Cut, no. 30, March 1985, pp. 45-48

• Megha Anwer, 'Close Up on the Colony, Inside History, through the Camera Lens', Wide Screen, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2009)

• Patricia Aufderheide, 'Cross-Cultural Film Guide: Films from Africa, Asia and Latin America at The American University', 1992

• Scott L. Baugh, 'Manifesting La Historia: Systems of 'Development' and the New Latin American Cinema Manifesto', Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 34.1 (2004) 56-65
  

• Desmond Bell, 'Shooting the Past? Found Footage Filmmaking and Popular Memory', Kinema, Spring 2004
  

• Chris Berry, 'Chinese left cinema in the 1930s: Poisonous weeds or national treasures', from Jump Cut, no. 34, March, 1989, pp. 87-94
  

• Michael Chanan, 'The Changing Geography of Third Cinema, originally published in Screen Special Latin American Issue (edited by Catherine Grant and Jackie Stacey), Volume 38 number 4 Winter 1997

• Michael Chanan, 'The economic condition of cinema in Latin America ', Third World Affairs 1985, London: Third World Foundation, pp.379-389
  

• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90s. Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema', E.I.A.L. ESTUDIOS INTERDISCIPLINARIOS DE AMERICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE, Vol. 9, No. 1, enero-junio 1998 (Cultura visual en América Latina, Editor invitado: John Mraz)
  

• Michael Chanan, Cinema in Latin America (1930-1960) and New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995)Two chapters on Latin American cinema from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996

• Michael Chanan, 'Screen Memory in Cuban Cinema', [as Word file] International Institute for the Study of Cuba, Guest Seminar, London Metropolitan University, February, 2008

• Michael Chanan, 'Remembering Titón [Tomás Gutiérrez Alea]', from Jump Cut, no. 41, May 1997, pp. 126-129

• Saayan Chattopadyhay, 'Framing Frontiers: The Suspended Step towards Visual Construction of Geopolitical Borders', Sarai Reader 2007: Frontiers
  

• Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, 'Memory, Ideology, and Exile: J. M Kibushi's Mwana Mboka', Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)
  

• Armando Cristóbal, 'Documentary in Cuba: Santiago Alvarez, a Paradigm', cubanow.net, 2007
  

• Ann Cross, 'Contemporary Cuban cinema', The International Journal of Cuban Studies, Issue 1, June 2008

• Manthia Diawara, 'Sub-Saharan African film production: Technological paternalism', from Jump Cut, no. 32, April 1987, pp. 61-65

• Hyginus Ekwuazi, 'Towards the Decolonization of the African Film', Africa Media Review Vol. 5 No. 2.1991
  

• Thomas Elsaesser, "Hyper-, Retro-, or Counter-: European Cinema and Third Cinema Between Hollywood and Art Cinema," J. King, A. Lopez, M. Alvarado (eds.), Mediating Two Worlds: The Americas and Europe 1492-1992 (London: BFI Publishing, 1992) 119-135

• Julio García Espinosa, 'Long journey towards the light', translated by Stephen Hart, The International Journal of Cuban Studies, Issue 1, June 2008 [in Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart (eds) When Was Latin America Modern? Palgrave Macmillan, 2007]
  

• Leonardo García-Pabón, 'The Clandestine Nation: Indigenism and national subjects of Bolivia in the films of Jorge Sanjinés', translated from the Spanish by Maura Furfey, from Jump Cut, no. 44, Fall 2001 (and 2 3 of this essay)

• Michel Gobat, 'The Legacies of Revolutionary Filmmaking in Sandinista Nicaragua [review of Jonathan Buchsbaum, Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003]', A Contra corriente: A Journl on Social istory and Literature in LatinA America, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 2005 / Invierno 2005, pp. 156-166
  

• Trevor Griffey, 'Internal Colonies, Third World Revolution, and the Culture of the Left in the 1960s and 1970s [Review of Cynthia Young. Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006]', HNet ONline, May 2007
  

• Clifford Hilo, 'Negotiating Global/Local Identities: Jia Zhang-ke's The World', Mediascape, Spring 2007
  

• David E James, 'An Impossible Cinema? The Proletarian Avant-Garde in Los Angeles', Filmint., Issue 2, Reprinted from Looking for Los Angeles: Architecture, Film, Photography, and the Urban Landscape, eds. Charles G. Salas and Michael S. Roth, Issues & Debates (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001)
  

• Chuck Kleinhans, 'Third world media: introduction', from Jump Cut, no. 32, April 1987, p. 56
  

• Chuck Kleinhans and Manji Pendakur, 'Learning together: Synthesizing economic and cultural analysis in the Marxist study of Third World film and video', from Jump Cut, no. 33, Feb. 1988, pp. 82-90
  

• Samuel Lelièvre, 'Review of Frank N. Ukadike. Questioning African cinema: questioning African filmmakers. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002', Screening the Past, December 2004
  

• Julia Lesage, 'The Other Francisco: Creating history', from Jump Cut, no. 30, March 1985, pp. 53-58 and contd. here

• Chris List, 'El Norte: Ideology and immigration', from Jump Cut, no. 34, March, 1989, pp. 27-31

• Laura U. Marks, 'Loving a Disappearing Image', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 8, n° 1-2, 1997, p. 93-
  111
  

• Gabriela Martínez, 'New Readings of Past and Recent Latin American Cinema', A Contra corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America [Review of Lisa Shaw and Stephanie Dennison (Editors), Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity. (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2005)], Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall 2006, 163-174
  

• Nicola Marzano, 'Third Cinema Today', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 6, 2009
  

• Sophia A. McClennen, 'The theory and practice of the Peruvian Grupo Chaski', from Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Zinaid Meeran, 'Inch'Allah Dimanche vs. Lila dit Ca: Transnational Feminism Counters the Streamlining of Accented Cinema', Mediascape, Spring 2005

• Mariano Mestman, 'From Algiers to Buenos Aires: The Third World Cinema Committee (1973-1974)', New Cinemas Journal of Contemporary Film, Vol.1, Number 1, London, 2002; p.40-53

• John Mraz, 'Visual style and historical portrayal in Lucía', from Jump Cut , No. 19, 1978
  

• Lúcia Nagib, 'Reframing Utopia? Contemporary Brazilian Cinema at the turn of the century', P: PORTUGUESE CULTURAL STUDIES 0 Winter 2006
  

• LaShonda Naté Long, 'Evoking the Kuxa Kenema[1]: Reconstructing History and Memory through Cinema Novo in Mozambican Cinema', Powerlines, 2002

• James Neil, 'Third Cinema and the World: Some Stations on the Journey', Vertigo, Vol.3 No.9 - Spring / Summer 2008
  

• Onookome Okome, 'Introducing the Special Issue on West African Cinema: Africa at the Movies', Postcolonial Text, Vol 3, No 2 (2007)

• Joseph Palis, 'Of Non-Places and No Man’s Lands', aether: the journal of media geography, Vol. 1, November 2007
  

• Marcus Power,'Post-colonial cinema and the reconfiguration of Moçambicanidade', Lusotoipie 2004 : 261-278
  

• Charles Ramirez Berg, 'Strategies for Latino screenwriters: ¡Ya basta con the Hollywood paradigm!', from Jump Cut, no. 38, June 1993, pp. 96-104
  

• Robert A. Rosenstone, 'History in images/history in words: Reflections on the possibility of really putting history onto film', Screening the Past, April 1999 [First published American historial review 93, no.5 (December 1988): 1173-1185]
  

• Raúl Rubio, 'Political Aesthetics in Contemporary Cuban Filmmaking: Fernando Pérez’s Madagascar and La vida es silbar', Ciberletras, Vol. 13, July 2005

• Michael Sicinski, 'A Fragmented Epistemology: The Films of Abderrahmane Sissako', Cinemascope, Issue 29
  

• Antonio Sison, 'Perfumed Nightmare and Negative Experiences of Contrast: Third Cinema as Filmic Interpretation of Schillebeeck', JOurnal of Religion and Film, Vol. 6 No. 1 April 2002
  

• Antonio D. Sison, ' 3rd World Hero: Rizal and Colonial Clerical Power Through the Lens of Philippine Third Cinema', Senses of Cinema, no. 36, 2005

• Robert Stam, 'Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Garbage: the Case of Brazilian Cinema', E.I.A.L. ESTUDIOS INTERDISCIPLINARIOS DE AMERICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE, Vol. 9, No. 1, enero-junio 1998 (Cultura visual en América Latina, Editor invitado: John Mraz)

• Hito Steyerl, 'Is a Museum a Factory?', e-flux, Journal 7, 06, 2009

• Helga Tawil, 'Coming Into Being and Flowing Into Exile: History and Trends in Palestinian Film-Making', Nebula 2.2, June 2005
  

• Clyde Taylor, 'One struggle, many fronts', from Jump Cut, no. 23, Oct. 1980, pp. 10-11

• Paul Ugor, 'Censorship and the Content of Nigerian Home Video Films', Postcolonial Text, Vol 3, No 1 (2007)
  

• Ravi S. Vasudevan, 'An Imperfect Public Cinema and citizenship in the ‘third world’, Sarai Reader 01: Public Domain, 2001

• Jerry White, 'LOCATION, LOCATION: Fatherlands - On Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Africa and an evolving political cinema', Vertigo, Vol.3 No.5 - Spring 2007

• Paul Willemen, 'An Introduction to Framework', Framework 42, 1999

• Jing Yin, 'Toward a Confucian Feminism: A Critique of Eurocentric Feminist Discourse', China Media Research, 2(3), 2006
  

Classic Latin American film studies in memory of Mario Benedetti

Sequence from El lado oscuro del corazón (The Dark Side of the Heart, Argentina, 1992, directed by Eliseo Subiela) featuring Mario Benedetti's poem 'No te salves'/'Don't Save Yourself' (recited by Oliverio/Dario Grandinetti to Ana/ Sandra Ballesteros) and starring Benedetti himself as 'El poeta alemán'/'the German Poet' reading his poem 'Corazón coraza'

Film Studies For Free was just going to post today on three classic Latin American film studies texts that are now fabulously available as free e-books from the wonderful people at University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions:

• Julianne Burton, The Social documentary in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1990)
• Randal Johnson, The film industry in Brazil: culture and the state (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1987)
• Eva Paulino Bueno and Terry Caesar, Imagination beyond nation: Latin American popular culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1998)
  

But then FSFF's author heard of the sad death at 88 of the great Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti, who devoted his life to demonstrating, so beautifully, that 'the South also exists', in literature, politics, and the cinema.

As the BBC website reports: 'Born to Italian immigrants, Benedetti wrote more than 80 novels, poems, short stories and essays during a career spanning six decades. His 1960 novel [La tregua] The Truce was translated into 19 languages and made into a film', La tregua directed by Sergio Renán based on a script by Benedetti and Aída Bortnik (the film was also remade in 2003) .

While Renán's La tregua was probably the most important film based on Benedetti's writing (at least in terms of its political impact), he was, in FSFF's opinion, the most cinematic of South American poets, with over eighteen screenplays to his name. He had a particular association with the highly lyrical film work of Argentine writer-director Eliseo Subiela (an auteur on whose work FSFF's author has published), especially the films El lado oscuro del corazón (1992, sequence embedded above; also see here) and Despabílate amor (aka Wake Up Love, 1996).

Below, as is FSFF's wont, are links to some online and freely accessible studies of the 'Benedettian' films of Subiela, as well as of Uruguayan and Southern Cone cinema more generally.

Nunca te salvaste, Mario... Gracias.

• Michael Chanan, Cinema in Latin America (1930-1960) and New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995) both essays from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996
  
• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90s. Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema', E.I.A.L, Vol. 9, no. 1, Enero-Junio, 1998
• Michael Chanan, The Changing Geography of Third Cinema (Screen Special Latin American Issue, Volume 38, number 4, Winter 1997) The history of the concept of Third Cinema, from the introduction of the term by Solanas and Getino in 1968 to the 1990s.
• Tamara L. Falicov, 'Film Policy under MERCOSUR: The Case of Uruguay', Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 27, No 1 (2002)
• Catherine Grant, 'Giving up Ghosts: Eliseo Subiela's Hombre mirando al sudeste and No te mueras sin decirme a dónde vas', Changing Reels: Latin American Cinema against the Odds, ed. Rob Rix and Roberto Rodríguez-Saona (Leeds: Leeds Iberian Papers - Trinity and All Saints/University of Leeds, 1997), pp. 89-120
• Gustavo Iribarne, 'El último tren: Uruguayan cinema for the new millenium?, El Ojo Que Piensa, 2002
• Geoffrey Kantaris, 'The Last Snapshots of Modernity: Argentine Cinema after the '"Process"' Bulletin of Hispanic Studies [Glasgow] (April 1996)
• Geoffrey Kantaris, "The Repressed Signifier: the Cinema of Alejandro Agresti and Eliseo Subiela". Originally published in Identity and Discursive Practice. Ed. Francisco Domínguez. London: Peter Laing Publishers, 2000
• Geoffrey Kantaris, "Holograms and Simulacra: Bioy Casares, Subiela, Piglia". Web resource based on a seminar paper given at the Science and the Creative Imagination conference, Institute of Latin American Studies, London (22-Mar-2001). Includes video clips
• Jill S. Kuhnheim, Spanish American Poetry at the End of the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004, via Google Books preview - on the sequence embedded above)
• David Oubiña, 'Between Breakup and Tradition: Recent Argentinean Cinema', Senses of Cinema, March 2004
  
• Joanna Page, 'Postmodernism, history and social critique in post-dictatorship Argentine cinema: a reading of Eliseo Subiela's El lado oscuro del corazon', The Modern Language Review, 2001; 96 (2)
  

Touching on Touch of Evil: Projecting Latin America at the Movies

Film Studies For Free (returning after a short unplanned break filled with unfortunate technical hitches of the sick computer kind) is happy to bring its loyal readers news of a wonderful weblog devoted to studying

the ways in which Latin America has figured in Hollywood and European cinema. Rather than lamenting the distance between stereotype and reality, it is interested in the functions served by the innumerable projections of fantasized Latin Americas onto the silver screen.

This website - Projections - was founded in 2005 by the renowned Latin-Americanist scholar Jon Beasley-Murray, currently Assistant Professor in the Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. As his university website testifies, Beasley-Murray is a longstanding practitioner and exponent of Open Access scholarship with numerous of his excellent publications archived online. He is also author of the important weblog Posthegemony.

Projections' project is to write about Hollywood and European movies 'in which Latin America plays a part, however small'. Beasley-Murray asks: 'Is there some shared element beyond the contingent commonality of location or theme? My wager is that there is, and that it's something worth writing about. Indeed, my suspicion is that when Hollywood goes Latin, it reveals something essential about cinema tout court.' The index by title of the many films so far examined can be found by clicking HERE.

For Spring 2009, this project has been aided by a UBC grant to hire three undergraduate student researchers to expand this online database of Latin America on screen. As Beasley-Murray notes in a blurb on the UBC website of his encouragement of students to write blogs

The idea is in large part to get beyond the ghetto of closed, proprietary educational software (WebCT and the like), to give students a sense that they are producing research on a public stage, and to integrate their learning with their own real world experience of the internet.

Important work, indeed. To conclude its celebration of the achievement of Projections, Film Studies For Free decided to drill down and produce an extensive series of high-quality, online-resource links pertaining to one of the films studied on that blog (and a great favourite of this blogger, too): Orson Welles's 1958 Touch of Evil. The list is headed by Projections's great entry on this film.
Online analyses of and information about Touch of Evil:

• Touch of Evil (at Projections) by Jon Beasley-Murray
• Touch of Evil: Orson Welles, Director (via Google Books) by Terry Comito
• Touch of Evil: A Cognitivist Approach (Offscreen, Volume 11, Issue 12 ) by Benjamin Paquette
• Great Beginnings and Endings. Made by Orson Welles (P.O.V. , 2, Nov. 1996) by Edvin Kau
• Touch of Evil: Crossing the Line (at Parallax View) by Robert C. Cumbow
• Touch of Evil review (at the Chicago Reader) by Fred Camper
• The Master Touch (at Moving Image Source) by Tom Charity
• This Way, Myth (at Moving Image Source) by Jonathan Rosenbaum
• John W. Hall on Psycho and Touch of Evil (Bright Lights Film Journal)
• Touch of Evil (1958) weblog post (at f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g) by Doug Cummings
• Unnerving Cinema: Touch of Evil (1958) (at The Art and Culture Of Movies) by Matt Barry
• Touch of Evil page at FilmReference.com
• Touch of Evil page at Wikipedia
• Touch of Evil pages at the Internet Movie Database

Online discussions of and information about the making, remaking, and DVD production of Touch of Evil:

• Orson Welles's memo to Edward Muhl (at Wellesnet)
• Orson Welles on the use of Wide Screen processes (at Wellesnet)
• Cahiers du Cinéma Interview with Orson Welles by André Bazin and Charles Bitsch (at Senses of Cinema) translated and annotated by Sally Shafto
• The Making, Unmaking and Reclamation of “Touch of Evil” (at Parallax View) by Sean Axmaker
• “Actors loved him” - Charlton Heston on Orson Welles and Touch of Evil (at Parallax View) by Sean Axmaker
• “A rough, jagged, jarring, shaking-you-up kind of movie” - Janet Leigh on Touch of Evil (at Parallax View) by Sean Axmaker
• “A tremendous piece of filmmaking” - Walter Murch on Touch of Evil (at Parallax View) by Sean Axmaker
• “Let’s give them something to really work with” - Rick Schmidlin on revising Touch of Evil (at Parallax View) by Sean Axmaker
• Why Murch’s Touch of Evil Doesn’t Make the Cut! (at Bright Lights After Dark) by C. Jerry Kutner (also see comments)
• Potential Perils of the Director’s Cut by Jonathan Rosenbaum
• Touch of Evil (at Cinemasparagus) by Craig Keller
• Whose fingerprints are on 'Touch of Evil'? (at Scanners) by Jim Emerson
• “Mirrors are the doorways through which death enters the world” (at Shadowplay) by David Cairns

On Orson Welles, with significant discussion of Touch of Evil:

• Orson Welles: Ten Years After His Death, A Reflection on His Work (Kinema, Fall 1995)by Kevin Tierney
• Orson Welles overview (at Senses of Cinema) by Jaime N. Christley
• Orson Welles links and discussion at mardecortesbaja.com by Lloyd Fonvielle

Also see the wonderful Wellesnet, the Orson Welles Web Resource, together with its sister project The Museum of Orson Welles which continues to 'compile and present the available radio and recorded works of Orson Welles'.

Free podcasts (and video podcasts/webcasts) of film-scholarly note

Film Studies For Free now has a listing of links to free podcasts (and video podcasts/webcasts) of film-scholarly note. It is currently headed by a link to the podcast page of the website feminism 3.0 (also accessible via the blog New Research in Feminist Media Art/Theory/History) run by my friend Vicki Callahan of the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee). The podcast currently posted is of an interview with the media artist Cecelia Condit in which she discusses her work. Some of Condit's video work is posted to her website. A nice Afterimage article about Condit's work, by Kelly Mink (Jan-Feb., 1998), is available HERE.

I've also posted a link to the hugely rich Tate Galleries listing of podcasts. Film-scholarly related highlights on this enormous listing include a podcast of the Tate Modern event 25-11-2007 Film Synergies which discussed the practice of Latin-American film co-production with Europe, which became widespread in the 1990s. The event included the screening of the 46-minute documentary Latin America in Co-production (Libia Villazana, UK/Peru 2007), which explores the mechanisms of this practice.

There's a podcast of the Tate Modern event 22-07-2007 Patrick Keiller in which Keiller presents and discusses material from Londres, Bombay (2006), his multi-screen video reconstruction of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) in Mumbai.

There's a podcast of the Tate Modern event 16-06-2007 Surrealism and Film: Study Day, held on the occasion of that gallery's major exhibition 'Dalí & Film', which explored the work of Salvador Dalí in relation to the wider links between surrealism and film.

There's a podcast of the Tate Modern event 24-02-2007 Robert Beavers, about the season dedicated to this American film artist's work.

And there's a whole host of great podcasts on animation (beginning with this one) drawing on the three-day international conference at the Tate Modern 02-03-2007 Pervasive Animation which united speakers from a wide range of research agendas and creative practices, and thus facilitated '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.'

Any suggestions of further links to good film-related podcasts (and video podcasts/webcasts) from FSFF's readers would be most welcome.