Film Studies: Events

Film Studies 6th Annual Postgraduate Conference

Mon 16th May 2011 13:00 to Tue 17th May 2011 16:45

Lecture Theatre 2, The Gateway Building

Dr. Sarah Cooper, Kings College London (Keynote Speaker)

PROGRAMME

Monday 16th May

13:00-13:15

Tea & coffee and welcome to participants and attendees

13:15 - 14:45 SESSION 1

Andrew Dorman, 'Cultural Odour and the Projection of a 'Japanese' cinema'

Raluca Iacob, 'The Emergence of New Romanian Cinema (2001-2003)

Beatriz Tadeo Fuica, 'The emergence of a practically non-existent small cinema: the Uruguayan case (1985-2000)'

14:45-16:15 SESSION 2

Anette Dujisin, 'Braiding War and Cinema: Internationalist Re-Presentations of the Spanish Civil War'

Zehra Ziraman, 'The Lımıtatıons and Possıbılıtıes of a ‘New Turkısh Cınema'

John Trafton, 'We Are Met by the Colour Line': Race and Mythology in the World War II films of Clint Eastwood '

16:15-16:30

Tea and Coffee

16:30-17:00

Feedback on all papers by Dr Sarah Cooper

17:00-18:30

Keynote address: Dr Sarah Cooper (Kings College London)

19:00

Conference Dinner (Venue t.b.c.)

Tuesday May 17^th

9:30-9:45

Coffee and welcome

9:45-11:30 SESSION 1

Chelsea Wessel, 'How the West(ern) wasn't won: fragmentation and the early global western'

Pasquale Cicchett, 'The reworking of consensus. Cinematic spaces in Gran Torino'

Matthew Holtmeier, 'Choosing to Choose, Allowing the Look: Ethics of the Spectator in Slow Cinema'

Tit Leung Cheung, 'Film Festivals for the Local Context, Acting Locally in a Global Era:Two Documentary Film Festivals in the East Asian Region'

11:30-11:45

Tea and coffee

11:45am-13:15 SESSION 2

Michael Franklin, 'New Models in Managing Uncertainty: the Impact of Digial Tools for Marketing and Distributing Independent Films'

Vera Burgos Hernandez, 'Representations of domestic violence in recent Spanish cinema: Take My Eyes'

Paola Monaldi, 'Juan of the Dead: Cuban Zombies and the Transnational'

13:15-14:15

Lunch

14:15-15:45 SESSION 3

Vera Ryzhik, 'Andy Warhol: The Machine Aesthetic and the Manifestation of the Post-Human Representative Apparatus'

Fredrik Gustafsson, 'Girl With Hyacinths - personal cinema as queer cinema'

Kathleen Scott, 'Re(vision)ing Spectatorship: Haptic Visuality and Horror Film'

16:45-16:15

Feedback from Dr Sarah Cooper on sessions 2 and 3

16:15-16:45

Concluding Remarks

ABSTRACTS

Andrew Dorman

Cultural Odour and the Projection of a ‘Japanese' Cinema

My research currently involves a rethinking of national cinema that utilises a ‘non-national' framework according to which national cinemas operate as global products rather than just local ones. This forms an assessment of the ways in which particular national cinemas (in this case Japan) are constructed both internally and externally, and how they are consumed by non-national spectators. My paper traces an ‘imagined nationality' running throughout Japanese films which have been subject to the academic projection of ‘Japaneseness'. This will also involve an analysis of recent cult successes that strive to erase what Koichi Iwabuchi calls ‘cultural odor' in order to appeal to the widest possible markets in ways not dissimilar from other Japanese exports.

Raluca Iacob

The emergence of New Romanian Cinema (2001-2003)

Cristi Puiu has been described by some critics as being essential in establishing a new trend in Romanian cinema, a type of ‘minimalist hyper-realist' cinema, so far as in describing it as B(efore) C.P. and A(fter) C.P. This break point refers to Puiu's first feature film, Marfa si banii [Stuff and dough, 2001], but what this view fails to acknowledge is that around the same time other filmmakers were portraying similar subjects in their films. While different in style, Niki Ardelean, colonel in rezerva [Niki et Flo, Lucian Pintilie, 2003], Filantropica [Philanthropy, Nae Caranfil, 2002], Occident [Cristian Mungiu, 2002], Furia [Joint, Radu Muntean, 2002] and Puiu's Stuff and Dough (2001) revolve around the same thematic subjects, which were all drawn out of issues that were relevant, or current, at that point in time. Thus, I would argue that the period between 2001 and 2003 has been instrumental in the formation of some of these filmmakers (Mungiu, Puiu, Muntean) as first time filmmakers, and is partly responsible for their success four years later (2005-2007).

Beatriz Tadeo Fuica

The emergence of a practically non-existent small cinema: the Uruguayan case (1985-2000)

From 1973 to 1985 Uruguay was ruled by a dictatorship which caused its most promising filmmakers to go into exile. After the re-establishment of democracy, younger generations full of motivation but lacking in training found themselves involved, mainly, in experimental projects. There followed a gap of almost ten years in the national production of feature films. However, in 1994 an ambitious project was released, El Dirigible directed by Pablo Dotta, which turned out to be one of many ‘first' Uruguayan films. In 1995, the Municipality of Montevideo launched a programme -which still exists- to fund national cinema. Una forma de bailar (Álvaro Buela, 1997), funded by this programme, was a more modest production, but received lots of attention from the public. The intention of this presentation is to analyse the first steps of Uruguayan cinema by exploring the ways in which these two relevant pieces engage with Uruguayan identity: how they reflect this historical, cultural and social period of the country and how local and international forces interact with a small emerging cinema.

Anette Dujisin

Braiding War and Cinema: Internationalist Re-Presentations of the Spanish Civil War

This paper aims to discuss the (re)presentation of the Spanish Civil War through internationalist non-fiction filmmaking, focusing mainly on Soviet and North American cinematography. The Spanish Civil War came at a moment when the propagandistic value of cinema was being acknowledged and the introduction of sound was just taking place. In the Soviet Union, the avant-garde movement was being banned and Socialist Realism imposed to the arts. Documentary filmmaking was structured and a new state newsreel production was conceived with specific propagandistic aims. The Spanish Civil War also braided war and cinema, and in the same way that the Iberian country was used as an arena for experimenting warfare, it also served as a test for the later cinematic propaganda mobilization of the Second World War.

Zehra Zıraman

The Lımıtatıons and Possıbılıtıes of a ‘New Turkısh Cınema'

By the second half of 1990s, there had been a noticeable revival in Turkish cinema. The increasing number of productions has been referred as a new wave movement that includes works of independent cinema and art cinema recognised by many critics and researchers. Many of these directors, including Nurı Bılge Ceylan, Reha Erdem and Semıh Kaplanoglu, have been recognised in prestigious and well respected national and international film festivals during the last 10-15 years. These directors, who have found their way out of the conventional cinema scene in Turkey, share some similarities regarding their search of style, yet have so little in common as to constitute a movement.

The main focus of this study is to explore style considering these directors, thus explaining this period of Turkish cinema in relation to their personal styles. In this respect, whether it can be discussed in terms of something ‘new' or not, it's relation with traditional approaches of Turkish cinema or similar examples of world cinema, the work of these filmmakers is of great importance.

John Trafton

We Are Met by the Colour Line': Race and Mythology in the World War II films of Clint Eastwood

Post-9/11 American identity is being renegotiated along the lines drawn by the debate over American Exceptionalism, and American historical
cinema is a privileged site for seeing this debate played out; contemporary Hollywood historical films either acknowledge the multitude of histories that constitute the larger American Story or endorse a reinforced version of American Exceptionalism. Post-9/11 war films, however, have apparently failed to express the varied histories of American servicemen, drawn from a diverse citizenry, or offer a convincing portrayal of American Exceptionalism. Clint Eastwood's recent World War II films, Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), are interesting exceptions, however, because they critique both sides of the American Exceptionalism debate through their deconstruction of hero mythology and their reconfiguration of national identity.

Chelsea Wessels

How the West(ern) wasn't won: fragmentation and the early global western

Many of the conventions commonly associated with the American Western are also found in a range of early films produced in other national contexts. A closer examination of early cinema provides a challenge to established understandings of the western genre, which has long been associated with the emergence of a particular concept of America. By turning to early Australian cinema, we find a film that is arguably wholly unaffected by notions of the West and early American cinema. The Story of the Kelly Gang, made by Charles Tait in 1906, is the earliest known feature length narrative film, once clocking in at nearly 70 minutes. However, less than 20 minutes of this footage has survived, and much of the nitrate is so badly decomposed that parts are nearly unwatchable.

The fragmentation on a physical, narrative, and generic level here typifies the mobility of generic conventions associated with the 'Western' and their potential for not only movement outside of the American West but as an entirely separate generic growth. In examining The Story of the Kelly Gang as an early western, I would like to focus on how its position demonstrates the applicability of three early types of generic conventions: rescues, hold-ups, and visual tourism. The existence of these early genre conventions challenge our understanding of the western as singular product of the American West.

Pasquale Cicchetti

The reworking of consensus. Cinematic spaces in Gran Torino

This paper suggests an interpretation of Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (2008) in terms of socio-symbolic spaces. As it relates the spatial oppositions enacted in the plot to the rhetorics of the national myth, the study argues that the cultural work of the film can be framed in a specific, distinctive line of American tradition. Building on established interpretive models developed by cultural historians such as Richard Slotkin and Sacvan Bercovitch, the interplay of static and dynamic stances involved in the narrative is traced back to a grounding rhetorical pattern, namely, one meant to ‘rescue the myth from history' by the means of a critical re-enactment of the myth itself. Through the scope of spatial semantics, therefore, the investigation points out how Gran Torino engages and reflects the ongoing discourse of American cultural identity, managing to negotiate a delicate balance between co-optation and dissent.

Matthew Holtmeier

Choosing to Choose, Allowing the Look: Ethics of the Spectator in Slow Cinema

Linking Slow Cinema to a line of film scholarship starting with André Bazin, I will examine the ethical implication of Wendy and Lucy (2008) by Kelly Reichhardt and Man Push Cart (2005) by Ramin Bahrani. Each of these ‘US indies' utilizes the formal features of Slow Cinema, and each involves a similarly frustrated protagonist trying to improve her/his position in life (both by seeking better jobs). Both protagonists are thwarted in their goals, bringing on a kind of stasis for the individuals where they are not able to move forward. This encourages a Slow Cinema style aesthetic, but complicates the question of ‘choice' as presented in film. Ultimately, I argue, each film is based around the ethical process of giving, what Sarah Cooper calls ‘a different space and time to the lives of others' and by resisting attempts to eliminate alterity through identification.

Mark Peranson has argued that film festivals can be understood in terms of two models, the business festival model and the audience festival model (2009). As the name suggests, the "audience model" emphasizes audience participation. It is worth noting that the majority of the members of relevant audiences come from the local area in question. As a result it is important to understand the "local-ness" of film festivals.

Cheung Tit-leung

Film Festivals for the Local Context, Acting Locally in a Global Era: Two Documentary Film Festivals in the East Asian Region

This paper will examine two documentary film festivals in the East Asian region, namely the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) in Japan and the Documentary Film Festival China (Dochina) in Beijing. These two festivals have been selected for analysis on account of the distinctive efforts that have been made with respect to local community involvement.The main focus of the analysis will be the structure of these festivals, and the way they interact with the local context. Attention will also be given to the way in which the organizers manifest their aims through the programming and after-screening events. Special attention will be given to the central ambition of cultivating a local documentary culture. Through an analysis of empirical data, I seek to open up a discussion focusing on the "local-ness" approaches adopted by certain film festival organizers. I also seek to draw attention to documentary film festivals of the East Asian region.

Michael Franklin

New models in managing uncertainty: the impact of digital tools for marketing and distributing independent films.

Digital tools are causing a fundamental structural breakdown in the film industry. The traditional conceptual anchor and representational model for the business, the Film Value Chain, is collapsing. Whilst destroying the traditional organisational means of managing uncertainty, the digital revolution has created tools believed by some to have the potential to reduce demand uncertainty. These claims have only begun to be empirically explored in academic literature. Such research generally follows a reductionist, positivistic paradigm also employed by the majority of work in economics and marketing that has explored causality relationships amongst film variables and demand.

This paper discusses the adoption of the analytic framework of Conventions Theory and a constructionist methodology to engage with the management of uncertainty by film producers in the digital era. By providing a practical insight to conceptions and responses to uncertainty, the proposed approach presents a complementary agenda to extant literature that identifies significant correlations in determinants of uncertainty.

Vera Burgos -Hernandez

Representations of domestic violence in recent Spanish cinema: Take My Eyes

Domestic violence constitutes a very severe problem in Spain. However, it has remained a taboo subject until recently. After being denounced in the public sphere by feminist organisations in the 1980s, it only became a subject of concern in the media at the end of the 1990s. Since then domestic violence has been a constant subject in daily news. Also integrated legislation on protection against this type of violence has been established. The objective of my paper is to analyse representations of domestic violence in Take My Eyes/Te doy mis ojos (Icíar Bollaín, 2003), a recent Spanish film that focuses on the issue of domestic violence from a more complex perspective and which has been highly praised for its realistic and unclichéd approach.

Paola Monaldi

Juan of the Dead: Cuban Zombies and the Transnational

Currently in post-production, Juan of the Dead/ Juan de los muertos (Alejandro Brugues, 2011) is considered a revolutionary film in the history of Cuban cinema. It is the first Cuban zombie film ever produced, made with a record budget of 2.3 million dollars. It is being marketed with the expectation that it will be an international blockbuster and displays an innovative visual style and engages with transnational cultural references unlike any other Cuban film before.

Juan shows how Cuban cinema's need to go global is affecting both industrial and textual practices. It also shows how, in a transnational context of production and reception, the national specificity of a cultural product can be preserved and exploited as such.

Vera Ryzhik

Andy Warhol: The Machine Aesthetic and the Manifestation of the Post-Human Representative Apparatus

My research deals with Andy Warhol's early silent cinema and the reframing of it using post-human discourses. I am arguing that Warhol was a profetic influence on the evenutal evolution of information technology and our attitude towards it. What I believe Warhol accomplished, particularly in his film work, was a confluence of the 'machine-aesthetic' and the subsequent reframing of cinema as a mechanical art, rather than an individual vision of the director. I focus on aspects of symbolism, representation, and theory which I am using to formulate the argument that Warhol's cinema functions as a post-human apparatus. By this I mean that his work can be translated as that which reflects the dwindling relevance of the epistemological human presence, and the assention of the infinite machine-time cinematic aesthetic. I am using this reframing of Warhol's work to accentuate his influence on contemporary media as well as cinema as a whole.

Fredrik Gustafsson

Girl With Hyacinths - personal cinema as queer cinema

As so many other filmmakers working in a commercial system, Hasse Ekman had used the strategy to, as John Ford said, make one film for yourself and one film for the studio. His most well-known work, Girl With Hyacinths (1950), is one those personal films. It is also something of a landmark in Swedish queer cinema, and fuelled discussions in Sweden about homosexuality. My paper will be telling the story of the film, placing it in its social and cultural context and explaining why it is a key film, both for Ekman scholars (admittedly a rare breed) and for scholars of Swedish cinema.

Kathleen Scott

Re(vision)ing Spectatorship: Haptic Visuality and Horror Film

The majority of existing scholarship on the horror film is informed by psychoanalytic apparatus theory, and is thus preoccupied with the problematic impact of sexual difference on processes of identification. My theoretically-based project seeks to account for the pleasures of horror film spectatorship by extending beyond the conception of cinema as an institution that forces spectators to identify either sadistically or masochistically with diegetic figures according to a masculine/feminine binary of gender. I explore the political implications of choosing to view horror films with a haptic visuality, a mode of vision in which the material body is shocked by tactile embracement of affective images. Employing haptic visuality allows spectators to experience the visceral pleasures of horrific imagery rather than engage with filmic narratives on an exclusively cognitive level.

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