Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love

50+ new links added on February 27, 2011

The above is a short video primer by Catherine Grant. It offers an audiovisual introduction to issues of gender, sexuality and movement in relation to Rita Hayworth's performance as Gilda in Charles Vidor's 1946 film.

Private Property - Joseph Losey's The Prowler by Matt Zoller Seitz 
at The L Magazine, March 2010
(also see Justin Stewart's essay on this film in the same issue)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to present its own contribution to the remarkable fundraising effort for the Film Noir Foundation that has been taking place in the last week, namely the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blog-a-thon, organised by film critics Farran Smith Nehme (Self-Styled Siren) and Marilyn Ferdinand (of Ferdy on Film).

Awed by the contributions so far, FSFF proffers (above) a little video-primer on its favourite noir - Gilda - together with a reposting of Matt Zoller Seitz's fabulous audiovisual essay on The Prowler (also above), and a whole host of direct links (below) to openly accessible scholarly reading and viewing on Film Noir, and on all varieties of Neo-Noir, too - taken altogether, some of the most essential of film studies topics.

The Film Noir Foundation works to preserve and restore movies in its chosen mode from many eras and from many countries. The film nominated to be restored with monies raised this year is a fine and important noir called The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me) directed by Cy Endfield (1914–1995).

One of the resources FSFF links to is an excellent interview with Endfield, conducted in 1989 by Brian Neve, in which he discusses that film in the context of his career as a whole and the historical events which formed the background to his work. Here's what Endfield concludes about The Sound of Fury.

I consider that my talent for making pictures was best expressed in two pictures, Zulu and The Sound of Fury. I think the one big talent I have is to make big pictures. There is a sense of structure about something of dimension that I have found lacking even in pictures that were supposed to be big. [...] The Sound of Fury was made mostly from my blood circulation and nervous system. 

FSFF knows that feeling only too well! It can't wait to see the restored film. So, please, if you love Film Noir, join this blog's author in donating some of your hard-earned dough (or even some of your ill-begotten gains...) on this occasion. Just click here. Thank you!

• New Jason Ambrosiano, '"The Ties That Bind and Bless the Soul": Grace and Noir in Schrader's Light Sleeper', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998

• John Belton, 'Film Noir's Knights of the Road', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 54, November 2006

• New Jamaluddin Bin Aziz, 'Future Noir', Crimeculture, Summer 2005

• New John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008

• New Zoe Bolton, 'Entertainment and Dystopia: Film Noir, Melodrama and Mildred Pierce', Crimeculture, 2005

• David Bordwell, 'Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce',  Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Vol. VI, No. 2, Spring 1992

•  Dominique Bregent-Heald, 'Dark Limbo: Film Noir and the North American Borders', The Journal of American Culture, 29:2, 2006

• New Kurt Bullock, 'Vertical Apocalypse: Altered Noir Cityscape within Blade Runner’s Dystopia', SBCC.edu 

• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• New Tessa Chudy, 'Cinema: Noir: The Darkest Vision', M/C Reviews, November 4, 2004

• Angela Curran, ' Review of Dan Flory, Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir', Notre Dame Philosophical reviews, March 10, 2009

• 'Dossier: An Interview with Cy Endfield', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21

• Dan Flory, 'Introduction: Philosophy and the Blackness of Film Noir', Philosophy, Black Film08, Film Noir, Penn State University Press, 2008

• Dan Flory, 'The Epistemology of Race and Black American Film Noir: Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam as Lynching Parable', In: Film and knowledge: essays on the integration of images and ideas / edited by Kevin L. Stoehr. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002

• Vincent M. Gaine, '‘We’re on Flashdrive or CD-ROM’: Disassembly and Deletion in the Digital Noir of Collateral', Networking Knowledge, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009

• Saverio Giovacchini, 'Introduction: Taking Hollywood Seriously', Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Temple University Press, 2001)

• New John Hall, 'Touch of Psycho: Welles' Influence on Hitchcock', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 14, September 1995

• Daniel Herbert, Transnational film remakes: Time, space, identity, University of Southern California, PhD Thesis, 2008

• Ken Hillis , 'Film Noir and the American Dream: The Dark Side of Enlightenment', first published in Velvet Light Trap 55, Spring 2005 (1-18). Reprinted (2006) in Multicultural Film: Essays, Pearson Publishing

• New Katharine and Lee Horsley, ‘Mere Fatales: Maternal Guilt in the Noir Crime Novel’,
  Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999) 369-402

• New Lee Horsley, 'Fatal Women in the Hard-Boiled Fifties' An extract from The Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001; 2009)

• New Images Journal Special Issue (No. 2): 10 Shades of Noir, including essays on The Big Heat; The Big Sleep; The Big Combo; Double Indemnity; Force of Evil; Gun Crazy; Lady from Shanghai; Pickup On South Street; Shadow of a Doubt; Sweet Smell of Success; Some Additional Choice Noirs.

• New Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 10 (3), 2004: Special Issue on crime cinema and television, including essays on Deep Cover, NYPD Blue and Law and Order, among others.

• D.B. Jones, 'Review of Wheeler Winston Dixon, Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia', Screening the Past, Issue 25, 2009

• New Edvin Kau, 'Great Beginnings and Endings. Made by Orson Welles." P.O.V. , Issue 2, Nov. 1996

• New Matthew Kennedy, 'On Commies, Stoolies, and Other Assorted Lowlifes', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 44, May 2004

• New Naomi King, ‘Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine’, Crimeculture, 2002

• John Kraniauskas, 'Noir into history James Ellroy’s Blood’s a Rover', Radical Philosophy 163 (September/October 2010)

• Jennifer E. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)

• Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, 'Negotiating the Studio System: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Anti-Fascism in Cornered', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• New Scott Loren, 'Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir', European Journal of American Studies, 1, 2008

• New Michael Mills,  'High Heels on a Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale', Modern Times (date unknown)
  

• New Richard Misek, 'Wrong Geometries in The Third Man', Rouge, No. 11, July 2007

• Gary Morris, 'Film Noir.",' In: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2002

• New Gary Morris, 'Out of the Past: A noir classic revisited', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 29, July 2000

• Brian Neve, 'The Hollywood Left: Robert Rossen and Postwar Hollywood', Film Studies Volume 7, Winter 2005, pp 54-65

• John S. Nelson, 'Four Forms for Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003

• John S. Nelson, 'Realism as a Political Style: Noir Insights', Poroi, 5, 2, November, 2008

• Stanley Orr, 'Connected Guys: The Reconstructed Subject of 1990s Film Noir', in Darkly perfect world: colonial adventure, postmodernism, and American noir (Ohio State University, 2010) scroll down in PDF to p. 198

• Chris Pallant , 'Review: Mark T. Conrad, ed. (2007) The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• New Bryan D. Palmer, 'Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness',  Left History 1997

• Fred Pfeil, 'Revolting Yet Conserved: Family "Noir" in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2', Postmodern Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1992

• Brock Poulin, 'Dark time (s): non-linear narratives in the postmodern film noir', Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, April 2005

• Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993

• Robert J. Read,  The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University, 2003

• Nathaniel Rich,  "San Francisco in Film Noir,", Conversations with History, 6/23/05 (direct video link here)

• David Ross-Gerling, 'Spanish Cinema Noir and Novela Negra: A Case Study on Racial Profiling',  (scroll to p. 1263 in PDF), History and Civil Rights Monograph, Vol. 11

• New José Luis Sánchez Noriega, 'Psychoanalytical Culture in the American Film Noir', Journal of Medicine and Movies, No. 4, 2008

• Torben Schmidt, 'Christopher Nolan’s Memento – Analysis of the narrative structure of a noirish revenge film', Seminar: “Decadence and Modernism in Late 20th Century American Cinema, 2003

• New Alain Silver, 'Introduction', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• New Alain Silver, 'Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a Style', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996) (Go to Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of A Style, Part Two)

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Past Sunset: Noir in the West', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 66, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Plumbing the Depths of Capitalism: On Force of Evil', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 62, November 2008

• Peter Stanfield, 'A Monarch for the Millions: Jewish Filmmakers, Social Commentary and the Postwar Cycle of Boxing Films', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Peter Stanfield, 'Review of Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity', Film Studies, Vol. 6, Summer 2005 (Scroll down in PDF)

• New Scott F. Stoddart, '"Queer Eye" for a "Straight Dick": Contextualized Homosexuals in Film Noir', MLA Convention, Philadelphia, 2004

• Stephen Swanson, The Stranger inthe Dark: the Ethics of Levinasian-Derridean Hospitality in Noir, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2007

• Grant Tracey, 'Force of Evil' (10 Shades of Noir) Images, Issue 2 (scroll down for full index)

• New Anja Christine Rørnes Tucker,  "Teen Noir" A Study of the Recent Film Noir Revival in the Teen Genre, MA Thesis, University of Bergen, 2008

• Jans B. Wager, 'Percolating Paranoia: Fritz Lang's The Big Heat', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 27, January 2000

• New Elizabeth Ward, 'The Post-Noir P.I.: The Long Goodbye and Hickey and Boggs', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• Deborah Walker, 'Re-reading the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: an evolutionary perspective', The Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 5, No. 6

• New Nancy West and Penelope Pelizzon, 'Snap Me Deadly: Reading the Still Photograph in Film Noir', American Studies, 43:2, 2002

• New Emma Whiting, 'Dangerous Women and the Abject in the Noir Thriller', Crimeculture, 2005

Note: The first video essay (by Catherine Grant) embedded at the top of this post was made according to principles of Fair Use/Fair Dealing, primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in February 2011. If you found this video or FSFF's Film Noir entry useful or enjoyable, please consider supporting with a donation the valuable work of the Film Noir Foundation. Thank you.

For the Love of Film (Noir)

This time last year, Film Studies For Free was thrilled to support the For the Love of Film Preservation fund-raising blogathon organised by peerless, online, film critics Farran Smith Nehme (Self-Styled Siren) and Marilyn Ferdinand (of Ferdy on Film).

The grand total of money raised for film preservation last year was more than $30,000 in contributions and matching funds; those funds saved films through the National Film Preservation Foundation.

This year, the chosen theme for the blogathon is Film Noir, so you can expect many fine entries on that topic to be appearing all over the film internets in the immediate aftermath of Valentine's Day.

Donations will go to the Film Noir Foundation, which works to preserve and restore movies in this mode from many eras and from many countries. The film to be restored this year is a fine and important noir called The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me) directed by Cy Endfield, possibly more well-known (if not better remembered) for Zulu (1964).

As Marilyn Ferdinand writes:

A nitrate print of [Endfield's] film will be restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, using a reference print from Martin Scorsese’s personal collection to guide them and fill in any blanks. Paramount Pictures has agreed to help fund the restoration, but FNF is going to have to come up with significant funds to get the job done. That’s where we come in.

Do check out the wonderful promotional trailer for the event created by Greg Ferrara of Cinemastyles, who also made the e-poster above. The blogathon Facebook page is here. Also, please make sure to visit the all-important donation link.

And do watch out for a further, snazzy entry on film noir by FSFF, in upcoming weeks, as its own original contribution to the whole shebang...

The Hollywood Left and the Blacklist Era

Private Property - Joseph Losey's The Prowler by Matt Zoller Seitz 
at The L Magazine, March 2010
(also see Justin Stewart's essay on this film in the same issue)

A ghost town also frames the haunting final scenes of Joseph Losey's The Prowler, when an adulterous couple (Evelyn Keyes and Van Heflin) take refuge in an abandoned Mojave desert village so that the woman can secretly give birth to their child. Webb killed Susan Gilvray's husband, successfully making it look like an accident, and he fears that proof of their affair will put him under suspicion.

He's a shady, disaffected cop who first meets Susan when he responds to her report of a prowler. She's a lonely housewife whose husband is an all-night DJ, a disembodied voice on the radio, unable to provide her with the child she craves. Webb takes one look at the wistful blonde and her luxurious Spanish-style suburban palace and decides he wants both. Reluctantly Susan succumbs to his aggressive persistence, as he keeps turning up to investigate an imaginary intruder, finally gunning down her husband, ostensibly by mistake. Fragile and passive, Susan believes Webb's story and marries him; their wedding is mirrored by a funeral at the church across the street.

Isolated in the desert ruin, Susan struggles through a difficult labor. The refuge turns deadly, with dust storms raging, and in desperation Webb finally fetches a doctor to save his wife, and she learns the truth about him when she realizes he plans to kill the man who saved her. The setting is appropriate: though they conceived a child, their relationship built on greed and deception is more barren than Susan's first, childless marriage.   Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009 [my emphasis]

Film Studies For Free, a born "fellow traveller" blog if ever there was one, today brings you some choice links to high quality material pertaining to the study of the Hollywood Blacklist era.

The post begins with Matt Zoller Seitz's latest video essay - a wonderful dissection of Joseph Losey's 1951 film noir thriller The Prowler. This was one of the last films Losey made in Hollywood before fleeing the US, refusing to inform on his friends to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Zoller Seitz compellingly teases out The Prowler's concerns with social class and property; these would become even more central themes in Losey's film work after his exile to England.  

• Peter Biskind, 'Hollywood, the Blacklist, the Cold War The way they were', from Jump Cut, no. 1, 1974
• Dan Callahan, 'Joseph Losey', Senses of Cinema, February 2003
• J.M. Caparros-Lera and Sergio Alegre, 'Cinematic Contextual History of High Noon (1952, dir. Fred Zinnemann)', Film-Historia, VoI. VI, No.1 (1996): 37-61
• 'Dossier: An Interview with Albert Ruben', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005) 
• 'Dossier: An Interview with Cy Endfield', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Arthur Eckstein, 'The Hollywood Ten in history and memory', Film History, Volume 16, pp. 424-436, 2004 
• David Eldridge, 'Hollywood Censors History', 49th Parallel, Vol.20 (Winter 2006-2007)
• Myron Coureval Fagan, Red stars in Hollywood: Their helpers, fellow travelers, and co-conspirators (1948) 
• Jack R. Fischel, Reds and Radicals In Hollywood [review of Radical Hollywood, by Paul Buhle and David Wagner. The New Press. And Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s, by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley]', Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2003
• Dan Gilbert, Moscow over Hollywood (1948) 
• Saverio Giovacchini, 'Introduction: Taking Hollywood Seriously', Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Temple University Press, 2001)
• Sam B. Girgus, 'Hollywood and American Politics: The Play's the Thing [Review of RONALD REAGAN IN HOLLYWOOD: Movies and Politics. By Stephen Vaughn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994.]', American Studies,
• Heather Heckman, 'Gray or Black? Howard Koch and the Elusive Architecture of the Hollywood “Lists”', Mediascape, Fall 2008
• John Hess and Chuck Kleinhans, 'Reds on Reds', from Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983
• Jake Hinkson, 'At the center of the storm: He Ran All the Way and the Hollywood Blacklist', Noir City Sentinel, Nov/Dec 2009
• Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, 'Negotiating the Studio System: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Anti-Fascism in Cornered', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Karen McNally, '"Sinatra, Commie Playboy": Frank Sinatra, Postwar Liberalism and Press Paranoia', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Steve Neale, 'Swashbucklers and Sitcoms, Cowboys and Crime, Nurses, Just Men and Defenders: Blacklisted Writers and TV in the 1950s and 1960s', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005) 
• Brian Neve, 'The Hollywood Left: Robert Rossen and Postwar Hollywood', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Erica Sheen, 'Un-American: Dmytryk, Rossellini and Christ in Concrete', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009 
• Jeff Smith, 'Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Christian?: The Strange History Of The Robe As Political Allegory', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Peter Stanfield, 'A Monarch for the Millions: Jewish Filmmakers, Social Commentary and the Postwar Cycle of Boxing Films', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)
• Brad Stevens, 'Review of A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky And The Hollywood Left by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner (University of California Press, 2001)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 15, 2001

New Brights Lights Film Journal

Delphine Seyrig (as A) in L'Année dernière à Marienbad/Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France 1961)

A quick post to begin the blogging week: Film Studies For Free is delighted to flag up that Issue 66 of Bright Lights Film Journal is now online. Below are all the relevant links. There are some very good articles, written as always in BLFJ's entertaining, but still scholarly-critical, house style, including ones on Polanski, Chaplin, Delphine Seyrig, Kubrick, Tarantino, and a great interview with Jonas Mekas. Keep up with Bright Lights between issues by visiting its companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark. Those of you on Twitter might also like to follow the BLF Journal  @blfj

From the editor

• Keep watching the lights...

Articles

• Roman Polanski: What's on Trial? By Karin Luisa Badt

• Looking at Charlie: Modern Times An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin "Buck up! Never say die! We’ll get along!" By Alan Vanneman

• Past Sunset: Noir in the West "I don't need other people. I don't need help. I can take care of me." By Imogen Sara Smith

• On the Escarpment, Off the Escarpment: It Helps When the Love Is Strong Especially when the lovers aren't, By D. J. M. Saunders

• Porno to the People: The Danish Revolution That Liberated America "Tease was out, honesty was in." By Jack Stevenson

• The Dead Things We Already Are: Pod People, Body Snatching, and the Horrors of Business as Usual "We keep returning to this story about pod people because we're terrified of the continuing erosion of our physicality in the postmodern era." By Jesse Stommel

• The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover: Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover How a movie exposé of "abuse of power" defends those in power and their institutions, By Jay Rothermel

• Contagious Homosexuality: Cruising and Sodom and Gomorrah "In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality — and its alternate currents — is caught with a glance." By Rob Faunce

• Can't Repeat the Past? Of Course You Can't — and Shouldn't Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century, By Suzanne del Gizzo

• Blake Edwards vs. Hollywood: Sunset and the Myth of Hollywood's Golden Age A tour of Edwards' curious 1988 film, with side trips to variations by James Ivory, John Schlesinger, and others, By Barry Wurst II

Actors

• Delphine Seyrig: The Eternal Return "Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice." By Dan Callahan

• Sean Connery: A "Natural Thrust" "Connery, never a martyr to false modesty, remains as voluble and combative as ever." By Christopher Sandford

Directors

• Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men "I'm shitting bricks, thinking he's onto me." By Damon Smith

• Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas "One who knows how to, as they say, 'read' the images, can tell everything about me." By Jon Lanthier

Columns

• Bright Sights: Play Time, Gaumont Treasures, Diary for My Children, Winstanley, Marlene, Bill Douglas Trilogy An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases, By Gordon Thomas

• Letter from New York (c. 1980) "The problem is other people — crazy people." By Howard Mandelbaum

Movies

• Film Kills: Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 1 "Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates." By Vlad Dima

• "Do You Find Me Sadistic?" Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 2 "This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them." By Lee Weston Sabo

• Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick's The Killing "His plan mirrors Johnny's, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place."" By Robert Castle

• Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11 "Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being 'about' 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp." By Devan Goldstein

• Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann's Public Enemies "Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances." By Joan McGettigan

• "They Come in Peace": Andy Fickman's Race to Witch Mountain "Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . .", By Jay Rothermel

• Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff's Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up"I told him, 'I'm not gay. My neck was cold.'"By Gary Morris

Festivals

• After the Surge: The 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival "An alternative agenda for the festival might be: what can we make of modernism?", By Lesley Chow

• Bucking the Tide: The 2009 New York Film Festival This year's strong, idiosyncratic line-up reminds us that moviegoing can still be more than "a museum experience", By Megan Ratner

• Lucky 13: The 2009 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival Getting out of the ghetto, By Gary Morris

• From Air Dolls to the Anchorage: The 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival "VIFF remains the unspoiled oasis for cinephiles looking to get away from it all." By Ben Cho

Books

• In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, by Chris Welles Feder, By Joseph McBride

• Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, edited by Robert Politot, By Jon Lanthier

• America’s Film Vault: A Reference Guide to the Motion Pictures Held by the U.S. National Archives, by Phillip W. Stewart, By Matthew Kennedy

• Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor, by Dan North, By Deborah Allison

Concordia cinema studies resources freely accessible online

The woman at the window: image from Jane Campion's Bright Star (2009); a trope explored in Julianne Pidduck's PhD thesis on the costume film now accessible online

Film Studies For Free was excited to hear last week that Concordia University has launched its online Institutional Research Repository Spectrum, with 6,000 full-text theses and dissertations. It was excited because it knows that based at Concordia is the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of the Faculty of Fine Arts, the largest, university centre for the study of film animation, film production and film studies in Canada.

FSFF also specifically knew that highly significant Canadian scholars, such as Julianne Pidduck (now a professor at the Université de Montréal) and André Habib (also at the Université de Montréal) had produced graduate theses there.

So, it is delighted to bring you the below links to the fabulous (mostly) Film Studies thesis resources accessible via the repository, including ones by Pidduck on the costume film (and also on contemporary film noir), Habib's brilliant francophone thesis on Jean-Luc Godard, and great work by other (now) well-known scholars such as Liz Czach.

• Babineau, Dan (2003) Stairs in cinema : a formal and thematic investigation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Ballantyne Tree, Tanya (1989) Formative evaluation of a documentary film on the effects of poverty on a Montreal family. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bambic-Workman, Helen (1986) Development and evaluation of an instructional manual concerning the Nagra 4.2 film sound tape recorder. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Baric, Stephanie (2001) Yugoslav war cinema : shooting a nation which no longer exists. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bird, Charles (1979) The making of 8mm film loops. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Black, Joel Elan (2003) 'Arrested for selling poetry!' or 'You wouldn't want your children reading this' : the historical significance of the "Howl" obscenity trial. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine (2003) Manufacturing culture in Cuba, an ethnography. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Brook, Glenn Leonard (2002) Canada, a people's history : an analysis of the visual narrative for a colonial nation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bruce, Jean Marietta (2003) A melodramatic imagined nation : the unruly subject of Canadian cinemas. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Castiel, Élie (2003) Pour une esthétique du plan-séquence dans Le Voyage des comédiens de Theo Angelopoulos. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Chang, Sandra (2003) Children's pretend play with television and film-scripted character toys. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Cheryl., Dabreo-Ramharack (1998) Uplifting The Black Race - only males need apply : Black male militancy in Malcom X, Panther, Boyz n' the hood, and Get on the bus. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Clarke, Jocelyne (1989) Moving peripheries and marginal cultures : cinema and the "Dark Continent". Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Curcin, Nikola R (1983) Investing in Canadian feature films : production and evaluation of a video-tape for potential investors. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Czach, Elizabeth (2000) Home movies then and now. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• D'Amboise, Paul (2002) "Tinseltown as teacher" : a case study of historical feature films as interpretive sources of history within an educational context. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Dancsok, Michael (1998) Transcending the documentary : the films of Arthur Lipsett. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• De B'béri, Boulou Ebanda (2003) Africanicity in Black cinema : a horizontal labyrinth of trans-geographical practices of identity. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Deschamps, Lisa Anne (2002) The effects of popular culture on youth sub-culture and how it plays a role in the school environment. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Dorland, Michael (1991) The discursive economy of the emergence of the Canadian feature film : discourses of dependency and the governmentalization of a displaced national cinema, 1957-1968. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Dufour, Marianne (2000) Through the looking glass : the therapeutic potential of videotaping as an adjunct tool in non directive art therapy in an object relations perspective. Other thesis, Concordia University.
• Egan, Catherine M (1973) Films for art programmes at the secondary level. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Frigon, Martin (2003) La fonction historique de la figure du patriote dans le cycle abitibien de Pierre Perrault. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Gasher, Mike (1999) The Grey Fox meets Jumanji : the emergence of the feature-film industry in British Columbia. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Gilbert, Sylvie (2000) Sortir de table : les performances alimentaires de Carmen Miranda, Louise Mercille et des religieuses du Moyen Âge. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Gupta, Dipti (1998) Confronting the challenge of distribution : women documentary filmmakers in India. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Habib, André (2001) Origine et fin : Méthode(s). À partir et autour des Histoire(s) du cinéma de Jean-Luc Godard. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Jaafar, Nisrine (2001) The blue flame and the red flame: love and eroticism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Jordan, Randolph (2003) Starting from scratch : turntables, auditory representation, and the structure of the known universe in the films of David Lynch. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Katadotis, Katina (1995) Quebec's Cinema act : policy and practical perspectives. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Keightley, Keir (1996) Frank Sinatra, hi-fi, and formations of adult culture : gender, technology, and celebrity, 1948-62. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Kolomeir, Harriet T (1987) The neighbourhood movie house in Montreal, 1925-1929 : the harmonious whole. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Kristmanson, Mark (1999) Plateaus of freedom : nationality, culture and state security in Canada, 1927-1957. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Laakso, Hanna Maria (2002) DOGMAtic iconoclasm : performative aspects of realism and excess in Lars von Trier's Breaking the waves and The idiots. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Marsh, Susan (2003) As easy as 1,2,4-- : the space of ambiguity in art and teaching. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• McKee, Tracey L (2000) Good girls do it too! : a look at the representation of women who kill in made-for-TV movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University
• McLeish, Anna (2003) To recycle is to author is to create is to recycle : transitory film authorship, from popular European cinema to post-new Hollywood cinema. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Moen, Kristian (2001) "About as shapeless as the Man in the Moon" : the representation of desire and transition in six films of Charles Laughton. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Nagy, Judy (1996) Home grown remedies : in-house innovation in the film-making industry. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Nichols, Robert Darcey (2003) From monuments to cinema : the question of the counter-monument in two works by Mark Lewis. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pidduck, Julianne (1997) Intimate places and flights of fancy : gender, space, and movement in contemporary costume drama. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Pidduck, Julianne (1993) The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pinsonneault, Michael (1999) Social dimensions of Hollywood movie music. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Preville, Philip (1997) The effort to forget : collective memory and documentary film in Québec. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Primeau, François (2001) Enquête sur la représentation de la masculinité et la Méthode dans le cinéma états-unien des années mille neuf cent soixante-dix : vers une nouvelle conception de l'acteur cinématographique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pycock, Elizabeth (1992) Memory and anger : teen films and the female body. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Read, Robert J (2003) The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Ryan, Cyril (1996) Black movie : five picture deal to make gun movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Schyngera, Wes (1993) Experiencing media : the resonance of post(modern) culture. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Shalinsky, Bernard (1977) Multi-sensory exploration of the natural environment : production and evaluation of a super 8 film-based videotape. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Simon, Cheryl Inez (1998) Gender, genre and globalization : discourses of "Femininity" in the popular culture of the 1990's. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Sinkinson, Susan (1999) The self as "other" : accessing issues of difference in Trinh T. Minh-Ha's Reassemblage. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Smith, Donna Lee (1989) Mombasa days : a feature-length film script. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Smith, Matthew (1996) Introducing a new medium : newspaper reviews of the first film screenings in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto and New York in 1896. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Spivak, Robert (1991) Christopher Durang : satire and beyond. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Stober, JoAnne (2001) That's not what I heard : synchronized sound cinema in Montreal 1926-1931. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Stoianova, Christina (1999) The Eastern European crisis of self-knowledge (1948-1989) : the relationship between state and society as reflected in Eastern European film : a genre approach. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Suchet, Simone (1994) Le cinéma rural et la société italienne des années soixante-dix : représentations idéologiques et impuissance politique : étude sur Novecento de Bernardo Bertolucci, Padre, padrone de Paolo et Vittorio Taviani, [et] l'Albero degli zoccoli de Ermanno Olmi. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Verma, Tina (1999) Re-imagining multiculturalism : how newness enters the world. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Weir, Jodi (1999) Performing gender : transgenderism as critique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Zhou, Hao (2003) Application of 3D facial animation techniques for Chinese opera. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Zielinski, Ger (1996) Towards the "Utopie film" : aspects of Adorno's thought in Alexander Kluge's antagonistic concept of realism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.