Seeing through Avatar: Film Allegory 101

Links updated February 17

Two wounded men: an image of some of Avatar's polysemic screen layers...

"[F]or an allegory to be effective, there must remain some sense that it is actually an allegory" Jeffrey Sconce, Ludic Despair, January 3, 2010

"I'm analogizing race and species here because Cameron's space fable encourages me to do so with all the subtlety of a fry pan upside my head" Scott Eric Kaufman, Acephalous, December 20, 2009

Like/unlike (delete as appropriate) rather a lot of other spectators, Film Studies For Free's author very much enjoyed her recent absorbing encounter with James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar in 3D.

In fact, her immersion in the story-world of this film served to remind her -- in this, the age of more permanent film 'possession' (DVDs, downloads) -- that what we have always been purchasing with our cinema ticket, especially as regards a first-time film viewing, is a one-off and unrepeatable experience. 

Just as in the good old days of old-fashioned cinematic spectatorship, Avatar really has created the space for a thrilling, phenomenological ride. Thanks for the sense-memories, Mr Cameron. 

As for Avatar's plot, however, it is not so much absolutely fabulous as overwhelmingly fabular... Indeed, coming away from the cinema, it's very easy to understand the utter fascination, bordering on obsession, in reviews and discussions of Avatar, with the notion of the 'messages', 'allusions', 'analogies', 'parallels', and, especially, 'allegories' seemingly conveyed by Cameron's film. 

Here's a list, in a nice Na'vi blue, of ten of the 'allegories' most frequently detected by the reviews, together with direct links to an example or two (note: many more, online, allegory-reading reviews are listed further down the post): 

• A rainforest destruction allegory (e.g. Morningmayan, 'Pandora Lives in Us - The Allegory of Avatar' YouTube video essay) 

• A more general, "slash-and-burn extractive industries"/Neo-colonialist allegory (e.g. Neely, 'Avatar: an allegory of the West?'; 'Calder Williams, 'Mining the Unobtainable')  

• An even broader Gaia-hypothesis allegory (e.g. Rundkvist, 'Avatar and the Gaia Hypothesis'; North, 'Gaia and Dolls: James Cameron’s Avatar') 

• An allegory of the genocide and continued oppression of indigenous peoples (A) in the Americas by European/'post-European' colonialism (e.g. Monbiot, 'The Holocaust We Will Not See'; Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Cowboys and avatars',) and (B) in Africa under the multinational slave trade (e.g. Free Republic comments thread)

• A White Messiah allegory (Huang, 'Avatar Review'; Brooks, 'The Messiah Complex'; Newitz, 'When will white people stop making movies like "Avatar"?'. But also see Bill the Lizard, 'What Does Avatar Tell Us About Masculinity and Disability?' for the opposite view) 

• A Postcolonial allegory (Tiso, 'Postcolonialicious') 

• An Iraq War/War on Terror allegory (Hoyle, 'War on Terror backdrop to James Cameron's Avatar'; Lafleur, 'Avatar: A Critical Assessment'; Nolte, ' ...Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy'; Fisher, 'They killed their mother: Avatar as ideological symptom',) 

• A more general American foreign-policy allegory (e.g. Sconce, 'Avatard', Gardiner, 'Avatar: the most expensive piece'...'; Nolte, ' ...Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy') 

• An allegory of the cinema (e.g. Sconce, 'Avatard')

• A related allegory to the latter: of cultural understanding through total immersion (e.g. Cohen, 'Next-Generation 3-D Medium of ‘Avatar’ Underscores Its Message')
  

The reviews are frequently (if by no means always) characterized by a sense that the above allegories are 'inherent' and obvious. Evidently, such critical moves obviate the need for much, if any, detailed discussion as to how we read, or do not read, particular allegories in particular films.

This is absolutely fine, of course, for journalistic, or, indeed, any "instant impression" reviews, based as they invariably are on just one viewing of the film. Taking on complex questions, such as how Avatar's subtexts might have found their expression through their particular "patterns of metaphorical substitution" (Jeff Smith, p. 1 [pdf]), is not their usual purpose - Jeffrey Sconce's hilarious demolition of some of these fabular processes in his own rapid response to the film notwithstanding ('Before racing the hare, the tortoise does not stop to opine, “By participating in this unlikely contest, I hope to teach you some important lessons about hubris, determination, complacency and the work ethic."').

But, being an earnestly scholarly blog, Film Studies For Free is not happy with any dearth of understanding on this earth. So, as heroic Jake Sully might also say, it's 'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more', as FSFF humbly proffers the following notes on film allegory, together with a handy and extensive listing of online and openly accessible resources on Avatar and allegory, and also of (generally, more scholarly ones) on allegory in film.

The evidence base for allegorical interpretation?

"Allegory -- from the Greek, allos, "other" and agoreuein, "to speak in public" -- figuratively unites two orders, one of which is shown and the other of which is kept out of view, establishing relationships of resemblance between them such that the reader or spectator may construe meaning over and above the literal. Allegory stages the relationship between personal and political, private and public, which is often central to the production of political meaning in art." Joanna Page, Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 182

Film allegory paradoxically requires spectators to take up a particular vantage point from which a story "kept out of view" (to use Page's words) can clearly be seen. As Ismail Xavier writes in Allegories of Underdevelopment, in the case of allegory, it's a particular 'narrative texture [that] places the spectator in [this] analytical posture' (FSFF's emphasis).

This 'texture' -- including repeated or repetitious story-elements, such as, sometimes, seemingly gratuitous features of characterization, dialogue (e.g. "shock and awe"), etc. -- eventually provokes in the spectator the question "why are you telling me that when you are supposed to be (necessarily and literally) telling me this (direct) story?"

The salience of the elements and their patterning, together with their hermeneutic journey from 'unnecessary' to 'necessary', are essential in the triggering of "our operations of decoding". This latter phrase comes from cultural theorist Fredric Jameson. In his many discussions of allegory, Jameson makes clear that allegorical reading is a kind of pattern recognition, involving our imaginative capacities.

For Jameson, political and historical facts and realities external to films find themselves

inscribed within the internal intrinsic experience of the film in what Sartre in a suggestive and too-little known concept in his Psychology of Imagination calls the analogon: that structural nexus in our reading or viewing experience, in our operations of decoding or aesthetic reception, which can then do double duty and stand as the substitute and the representative within the aesthetic object of a phenomenon on the outside which cannot in the very nature of things be 'rendered' directly. [Fredric Jameson, 'Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film', College English, Vol. 38, No. 8, Mass Culture, Political Consciousness and English Studies (Apr., 1977), pp. 843-859, p. 858(pdf) (hyperlinks added by FSFF)]

Allegorical recognition works best when a film's patterns of allusiveness (Jameson's 'structural nexus') offer ‘clear configurations for the essential pieces of its game'; when there's a 'graphic isolation of the [allegorical] elements put into relation’, as Xavier again puts it (p. 20): 'The greater the pedagogic impulse of the allegory, the more unmistakable is [the signalling]' (Xavier, p. 16).
 
This is probably why Avatar, with what many critics of the film have noted are its 'cardboard cutout' characters and at times 'clunky dialogue', has provoked so much discussion about its allegoricalness: the excessive signalling of its 'other stories' is, indeed, completely unmistakable. 
 
But that doesn't explain the proliferation of these stories, or why there is complete lack of agreement on what the film's 'principal allegory' is, other than Avatar's own Unobtainium, perhaps.
 
As Joanna Page continues in her theoretical exploration of allegory, it

marks a gap between representation and referent, the essential otherness of two planes of signification that is precisely the quality that permits them to be aligned in the production of meaning. Reflexivity, on the other hand, enacts a conflation of the two and a collapse of possible distinctions between them. Joanna Page, Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 182, 189

A polysemic text par excellence, as befits one designed to draw in the largest possible global audience, Avatar literally cannot afford to convey only one allegory, to provide only two vantage-points for its stories, because it is a reflexive film -- not an especially complex one, but a reflexive one nonetheless.

As such, it chooses to conflate and collapse many of the distinctions between its literal stories and its 'hidden' ones. In other words, nothing much is really hidden, everything is seen through: indeed, Avatar veritably lets it all hang out. 

In one of the best critical assessments of Cameron's film so far, Jörg Heiser writes

Avatar is an amalgam, as if in a strange dream, of many of these kinds of allusions and associations, and you can look at it being very clever[ly] calculated to capture the widest possible audience globally, playing many cards at once; but by way of the very same strategy, it also could be seen as capturing the widest possible 3-D panorama shot of collective anxieties about the future (ecology, war, loss of social love and security etc.). And in the same contradictory way, it is this all-encompassing ambition that is interesting about it, but also what is off-putting." Jörg Heiser, Editor's Blog, Frieze Magazine, January 26, 2010

On Avatar and Allegory: 

• Bill the Lizard, 'What Does Avatar Tell Us About Masculinity and Disability?', Open Salon,December 23, 2009 
• David Brooks, 'The Messiah Complex', New York Times, January 8, 2010
• Evan Calder Williams, 'Mining the Unobtainable', Socialism and/or Barbarism,January 24, 2010
  
• Adam Cohen, 'Next-Generation 3-D Medium of ‘Avatar’ Underscores Its Message', New York Times, December 25, 2009 
• Ross Douthat, 'Heaven and Nature', New York Times, December 21, 2009 
• Gregg Egan, 'Avatar Review', GreggEgan.net, December 20, 2009 
• Thomas Eddlem, 'Avatar: A Visually Stunning and Perfect Historical Allegory' The new American, December 21, 2009 
• Jim Emerson, 'Avatar, the French New Wave and the morality of deep-focus (in 3-D)', Scanners, February 10, 2010
• Blake Eskin, David Denby and Richard Brody, 'Review of Avatar', New Yorker: Out Loud, January 4, 2010, Podcast (Mp3) 
• Mark Fisher, 'They killed their mother: Avatar as ideological symptom', k-punk, January 6, 2010 
• Nile Gardiner, 'Avatar: the most expensive piece of anti-American propaganda ever made', The Telegraph, December 25, 2009 
• Jörg Heiser, 'Extraterrestrial Irish Pub Type', Editor's Blog, Frieze Magazine, January 26, 2010 
• Ben Hoyle, 'War on Terror backdrop to James Cameron's Avatar', The Australian, December 11, 2009
• Adrian Ivakhiv, 'Avatar: Panthea v. the Capitalist War Machine', immanence blog, December 21, 2009 
  
• Adrian Ivakhiv, 'Avatar's global affects', immanence blog, February 15, 2010
• Huang Zhangjin (黄章晋) - Avatar review cited by Andy Yee, 'China: Bloggers' Reviews of Avatar' Global Voices Online, January 11, 2010 
• Dave Itzkoff, 'You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses!', New York Times,January 20, 2010 
• Henry Jenkins, 'Five Ways to Read Avatar', Confessions of an Aca-Fan, February 1, 2010
• Boris Johnson, 'Stop pining for life on Pandora and come back to planet Earth', The Telegraph, January 25, 2010 
• Shaun Joseph, 'A look at Avatar's Achilles' heel', SocialistWorker.org, January 12, 2010 
• Daniel Kasman, 'Avatarcraft', The Auteurs: Notebook, January 17, 2010 
• Scott Eric Kaufman, 'Intentions be damned, Avatar is racist (as is praying for and/or to "JaMarcus Manning")', Acephalous, December 20, 2009 
• Roz Kaveney, 'Avatar', Strange Horizons, January 6, 2010 
• Glenn Kenny, 'James Cameron's "Avatar"', The Auteurs: Notebook, December 11, 2009 
• Steve Lafleur, 'Avatar: A Critical Assessment', Lafleur's Film Blog, December, 2009
• 
China Miéville,'Why the Na’vi Are Making Me Blue', Speakeasy, January 13, 2010 
• George Monbiot, 'The Holocaust we will not see', The Guardian, January 11, 2010 
• Nicholas Neely, 'Avatar: an allegory of the West?', The Goat Blog, January 12, 2010 
• Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Cowboys and avatars', AP at the Movies, January 3, 2010
• Annalee Newitz, 'When will white people stop making movies like "Avatar"?', IO9, December 18, 2009 
• Annalee Newitz, 'Is Avatar Too Realistic For Its Own Good', IO9, January 21, 2010 
• John Nolte, ' REVIEW: Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy', Andrew Breibart Presents Big Hollywood, December 11, 2009 
• Dan North, 'Gaia and Dolls: James Cameron’s Avatar', Spectacular Attractions, December 23, 2009 
• Dan North, ''Digesting Avatar', Spectacular Attractions, January 6, 2010
• Bert Olivier, 'The ecopolitics of Avatar', Thought Leader, January 25, 2010 
• Bert Olivier, 'Avatar (Take Two)', Thought Leader, February 8, 2010
• Jo Piazza, 'Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues', CNN Entertainment, January 11, 2010 
• John Podhoretz, 'Avatarocious', WeeklyStandard.com, December 28, 2009 
• Andrew Price, 'Does Avatar's Political Agenda Matter?', GOOD Blog, January 16, 2010 
• Bob Rehak, 'Watching Avatar', Graphic Engine, December 30, 2009 
• Richard Roeper, ''Avatar' is no 'Star Wars' -- or leftist allegory', Chicago Sun-Times, January 7, 2010 
• Martin Rundkvist, 'Avatar and the Gaia Hypothesis', Aardvarchaeology, January 16, 2010 
• Jeffrey Sconce, 'Avatard', Ludic Despair, January 3, 2010
• Mayank Shekhar, 'D’ya really need this review?', Hindustan Times, December 18, 2009 
• Giovanni Tiso, 'Postcolonialicious', Bat, Bean, Beam, January 25, 2010 
• Chuck Tryon, 'Avatar', The Chutry Experiment, January 17, 2010 
• Jeffrey Weiss, 'Politics and Religion on Pandora: Why 'Avatar' is Crummy Allegory', Politics Daily, December 21, 2009 
• Armond White, 'Blue In the Face: James Cameron delivers dumb escapism with his expensive special effects in "Avatar"', New York Press, December 15, 2009
• Evan Calder Williams, 'Mining the Unobtainable', Socialism and/or Barbarism,January 24, 2010
• Andy Yee, 'China: Bloggers' Reviews of Avatar' Global Voices Online, January 11, 2010 
• Leela Yellesetty, 'Avatar is a great starting point', SocialistWorker.org, January 15, 2010 
• Steven Zeitchik, ''Avatar': Red-state politics + blue aliens = box-office green', January 5, 2010

On Film Allegory:

• Stephanie Baric, 'Yugoslav War Cinema: Shooting A Nation Which No Longer Exists', MA Thesis, Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 2001
• Felicity Collins, 'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 276–286  
• Felicity Collins, 'Historical fiction and the allegorical truth of colonial violence in The Proposition', Cultural Studies Review, March 2008  
• Felicity Collins, 'Michelle Langford, Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gesture in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2006', Screening the Past, Issue 23, 2008 
• Sérgio Dias Branco,"Dead Inside: Allegory and Subjectivity in Abel Ferrara's The Addiction", originally published in Renegade Visions: Films and Filmmakers that Defy Popular Cinema, ed. Matthew Edwards. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010 
• Catherine Grant, 'Questions of national and transnational film aesthetics, ethics, and politics in Costa Gavras's Missing (1982)', Paper at Study day on 'The National/Transnational in Hispanic and Latin American Film and the Telenovela' , Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, November 17, 2007
  
• Catherine Grant, 'Still Moving Images: Photographs of the Disappeared in Film about the "Dirty War" in Argentina', in: Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative, eds. Alex Hughes and Andrea Noble (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), pp. 63-86 
• 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  
• Mike Ingham, 'History in the Making: Allegory, history, fiction and Chow Yun-fat in the 1980s Hong Kong films Hong Kong 1941 (Dir. Po Chieh-leong) and Love in a Fallen City (Dir. Ann Hui)', Screening the Past, Issue 24, 2009  
• Fredric Jameson, 'Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film', College English, Vol. 38, No. 8, Mass Culture, Political Consciousness and English Studies (Apr., 1977), pp. 843-859  
• Michelle Langford, 'Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema by Negar Mottahedeh', Senses of Cinema, Issue 52, 2009 
• Ryan Lizardi, 'Repelling the Invasion of the "Other": Post-Apocalyptic Alien Shooter Videogames Addressing Contemporary Cultural Attitudes', Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2009; 3 (2), p. 295-308 
• Bernhard Malkmus and Ian Cooper, 'Introduction: "The Third" and Modernity', in Third Agents: Secret Protagonists of the Modern Imagination, Edited by Ian Cooper, Ekkehard Knörer and Bernhard Malkmus (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008)  
• Lúcia Nagib,'Reframing Utopia: Contemporary Brazilian Cinema at the Turn of the Century', P: Portuguese Cultural Studies 0 Winter 2006   
• M.A. Ouellette, 'I Hope You Never See Another Day Like This': Pedagogy & Allegory in 'Post 9/11' Video Games. Game Studies 8.1, 2008  
• Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 'State of Horror: the Films of José Mojica Marins and the Brazilian Dictatorship', Tropical Gothi: Latin American Gothic Manifestations, March 9, 2009  
• Jeff Smith, 'Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Christian?: The Strange History of The Robe As Political Allegory', Film Studies, Issue 7, Winter 2005  
• Øyvind Vågnes, 'Inside the Zapruder Museum',‘Show/Tell: Relationships between Text, Narrative and Image’ Working Papers on Design 2 (2007)  
• Maurizio Viano, 'Life is Beautiful: Reception, Allegory, and Holocaust Laughter', Jewish Social Studies 5.3 (1999) 47-66 
• Ester Võsu, Ene Kõresaar, Kristin Kuutma, 'Mediation of Memory: Towards Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Current Memory Studies - Preface to the special issue of Trames', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 243–263 

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The Chris Marker Issue of IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE

Image from Owls at Noon (Chris Marker, 2005)

Film Studies For Free can barely contain its excitement as it rushes you news of the latest IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE (Vol. 11, No. 4, 2010) - a special issue devoted to philosophically informed discussion of the work of Chris Marker.

The names of the esteemed contributors to the issue (Christa Blümlinger, Sarah Cooper, Matthias De Groof, Sylvain Dreyer, Sarah French, Adrian Martin, Susana S. Martins, and editor Peter Kravanja) provide a very clear guarantee to the reader of the extremely high quality of the work on offer here. So, there's nothing more to say, other than: enjoy! Direct links to their essays are given below, but be sure to visit the IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE website for some remaining (non-Marker-related) articles in this wonderful issue.

• 'Introduction', Peter Kravanja Abstract PDF

• 'The Imaginary in the Documentary Image: Chris Marker's Level Five', Christa Blümlinger AbstractPDF
  

• 'Montage, Militancy, Metaphysics: Chris Marker and André Bazin', Sarah Cooper Abstract PDF

• 'Statues Also Die - But Their Death is not the Final Word', Matthias De Groof Abstract PDF

• Autour de 1968, en France et ailleurs : Le Fond de l'air était rouge', Sylvain Dreyer Abstract PDF
  

• '“If they don’t see happiness in the picture at least they’ll see the black”: Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil and the Lyotardian Sublime', Sarah French Abstract PDF
  

• 'Crossing Chris: Some Markerian Affinities', Adrian Martin Abstract PDF
  

• 'Petit Cinéma of the World or the Mysteries of Chris Marker', Susana S. Martins Abstract PDF

Happy Saturday Reading: New 'World Picture Journal'

Song of Youth (Qingchun zhi ge, directed by Cui Wei and Chen Huai’ai, 1959)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to report that the new Summer 2009 issue of World Picture Journal (number 3) has just been posted at its website. The issue is on 'Happiness'

Below are direct links to its three film-related articles. The issue also includes other wonderful essays on Adorno and John Stuart Mill, and a fabulous interview with Adam Phillips:

• Sara Ahmed, Happiness and Queer Politics (includes reference to the Canadian lesbian film, Lost and Delirious [Léa Pool, 2001])


• Jason McGrath, Communists Have More Fun! The Dialectics of Fulfillment in Cinema of the People's Republic of China


• Brian Price, On Compromises (on film theory and political philosophy)

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
  

Adam Curtis Links

Image from Pandora's Box (Adam Curtis, 1992)

Film Studies For Free concurs with David Bordwell's recent assessment that Adam Curtis is one of the most remarkable documentarians working today ('Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares, [is] one of the great docs of recent years').

If you haven't yet heard of him, Curtis is a British television documentary producer who has written and directed a number of hugely influential, multi-part, political film essays, including the award-winning Century of the Self, the aforementioned The Power of Nightmares, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.

FSFF was really excited, therefore, to hear of Curtis's new blog hosted at the BBC website (news courtesy of David Hudson at The Daily and also from a nice post at the great Screen Research website, which FSFF promises to profile in more detail really soon).

Curtis's blog muses mostly about his new project which Charlie Brooker, writing for The Guardian, describes as follows:

He's made a new documentary called It Felt Like A Kiss. Except it isn't just a documentary. It's also a piece of interactive theatre, with music composed by Damon Albarn and performed by the Kronos Quartet. And it doesn't take place in a cinema or concert hall, but across five floors of a deserted office block in Manchester [as part of the Manchester International Festival]July 2-9, 2009]. [...]

In summary, from what I can gather, It Felt Like A Kiss is both the craziest yet crookedly rational project I've ever heard about. Hearing Curtis talk about that huge subject, that huge building, that brink-of-madness, reality-blurring feel, there are a few unmistakeable parallels with Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's recent film, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman takes control of an infinitely huge Manhattan warehouse and attempts to stage a boundary-shattering show that will sum up the entirety of human experience. He over-reaches and winds up creating a work of ever-expanding fractal madness. Curtis, I think, has gone a bit mad, too - but to precisely the right degree.

Curtis himself wrote in a post on June 17 - which also carries a longish trailer for the project - that

It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world.

Film Studies For Free will, in its downtime, fantasize about a little visit up to Manchester. Meanwhile, below are some of the most interesting, freely accessible, scholarly resources, websites, and online essays about Curtis's work and related matters:

• Adam Curtis films free to view or download from the Internet Archive (e.g. films either in the public domain or licensed under a license that allows redistribution, such as those offered by Creative Commons)

• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 1 - end missing)
• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 4)
• The Century of the Self (three parts - 2002)
• The Power of Nightmares (three parts 2005)
• The Trap: What happened to our idea of freedom - Part 1 (2007)
  

• Zygmunt Bauman, 'The Demons of an Open Society', London School of Economics, October 20, 2005
• Graham Coulter-Smith and Maurice Owen, 'Introduction', Art in the Age of Terrorism (Paul Holberton publishing/University of Washington Press, 2005)
• David Crawford, 'Realism vs. Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks as Models of Interpretation', Geometer, January 19, 2009
• Adam Curtis, Panel Discussion on'Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age' in association with Routledge and King's College London, and sponsored by the Body&Soul section of The Times, An Institute of Ideas symposium at King’s College London, 22 November 2003
• Mark Jensen, 'DOCUMENTARY: 'The Power of Nightmares' by Adam Curtis -- summary of argument ', United For Peace, September 11, 2005
• Jonathan Kahana, excerpt from Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2008)
• Peter Knight, 'Conspiracy Theories about 9/11', Centre for International Politics Working Paper Series, No. 34, August 2007
• Robert Koehler, 'Neo-Fantasies and Ancient Myths: Adam Curtis on The Power of Nightmares', Cinema Scope Issue 23, 2005
• Laurie A. Manwell, 'Faulty Towers of Belief: Part II. Rebuilding the Road to Freedom of Reason', Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2007
• Sharon Lin Tay, (2008), long excerpt from ʻUndisclosed Recipients: documentary in an era of digital convergenceʼ, Studies in Documentary Film 2: 1, pp. 79–98

Also see: Erroll Morris's interview with Curtis HERE; Andrew Orlowski's recent article about Curtis for THE REGISTER HERE.

Direct Cinema? Innovative Documentary Studies Online

Image from Subdivided (Dean Terry, US 2007)

Film Studies For Free is keepin' it real today with a choice selection of links to mostly very recent, definitely innovative, and freely-accessible online documentary studies (last updated April 10, 2009):

• On the 'Rocumentary': Keith Beatty, 'It's Not Only Rock and Roll: 'Rockumentary', Direct Cinema, and Performative Display', Australasian Journal of American Studies. December 2005
• On Animation and Documentary: David Bordwell, 'Showing What Can't Be Filmed', Observations on Film Art and Film Art, March 24, 2009


• On Spectacle and Documentary: Elizabeth Cowie, 'The Spectacle of Reality and Documentary Film,' Documentary Box, #10 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) (1997) (Also see HERE; and do visit the main site Documentary Box Online Journal for many other great articles on documentary)


• On Music and Documentary: Leonardo D'Amico, 'People and sounds”: Filming African music between visual anthropology and television documentary', Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review, #11 (2007)
• On Direct Address and Documentary: Alex Gerbaz, 'Direct Address, Ethical Imagination, and Errol Morris’s Interrotron', Film-Philosophy, 12.2, September 2008


• On Activism and Documentary: John Haynes, 'Documentary as Social Justice Activism: The Textual and Political Strategies of Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films', 49th Parallel, Vol.21 (Autumn 2007)


• On 'the Personal' in Japanese Documentary: Nada Hisashi, 'Self-Documentary: Its Origins and Present State', Documentary Box, #26 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival), 2005


• On Adaptation and Documentary: David T. Johnson, 'Playgrounds of Unlimited Potential: Adaptation, Documentary, and Dogtown and Z-Boys', Adaptation Vol. 2 , No. 1 , pp. 1 – 16 (2009) (a free sample article from this new Oxford Journals periodical)


• On Performativity and Science Documentary: John Arthur Little, 'The Power and Potential of Performative Documentary Film', e-thesis April 2007, Montana State University
• On New Approaches to Documentary: B. Ruby Rich, 'Documentary Disciplines: An Introduction'
  
• On New Media and Documentary: Bjørn Sørenssen, 'Digital video and Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo: the new avant-garde in documentary realized?', Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 2, no. 1 (March 2008): 47-59 (see abstract; temporarily free online. Thanks a lot to Watching YouTube for the link)


• On Stylization, Abstraction and Documentary: Billy Budd Vermillion, 'The "Wondrous Truth" of Microcosmos', 16:9 - April 2007 - 5. årgang - nummer 21

Also see the great articles for the 'New worlds of documentary' Special Section of Jump Cut, issue no. 48, winter 2006, edited by Julia Lesage:

Introduction: new worlds of documentary by Julia Lesage; Emergency analysis, Terri Schiavo: introduction The cutting edge: emergencies in visual culture by Janet Staiger; Schiavo videos' context and reception: timely triage by Diane Waldman; Emergency analysis: the academic traffic in images by Catherine L. Preston; The videographic persistence of Terri Schiavo by Janet Walker Walker; A walk on the wild side: the changing face of TV wildlife documentary by Richard Kilborn; Strange Justice: sounding out the Right: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and constructing spin in the name of justice by Steve Lipkin; Giving voice: performance and authenticity in the documentary musical by Derek Paget and Jane Roscoe; Video Vigilantes and the work of shame by Gareth Palmer; Audio documentary: a polemical introduction for the visual studies crowd by Chuck Kleinhans; TV news titles: picturing the planet by Sean Cubitt; Les Archives de la Planète: a cinematographic atlas by Teresa Castro; Cinephilia and the travel film: Gambling, Gods and LSD by Catherine Russell; Dark Days: a narrative of environmental adaptation by Joseph Heumann and Robin L. Murray; Feminist history making and Video Remains by Alexandra Juhasz.