Sunday 31 December 2017

12 Favourite Online Film Studies Items from 2017, and Other Links of Note!

Last updated January 2, 2018

NE ME QUITTE PAS - a new video assemblage focusing on Brief Encounter and Carol by Catherine Grant

To commemorate the somewhat sad and strange outgoing year -- and very much to welcome in 2018 --- Film Studies For Free has selected, below, twelve of its favourite online film studies items encountered (or re-encountered) in 2017 for your delectation and delight - in no particular order of category.

Some of these involved poignant encounters, associated with terribly untimely passings of pathbreaking scholars (see no. 1). Some are amazing new resources from (already) the most generous of brilliant scholars (see no. 2). All come with associated links, and are well worth your time exploring.

Wishing you a radically happy and active 2018!

With openly accessible love (and a brand new video, above) from FSFF xx

P.S. Remember to follow Film Studies For Free on Twitter and Facebook for frequent news and links.



1.
Favourite Online Lecture


Hannah Frank's brilliant illustrated lecture from 2014 "The Traces of Their Hands: Women’s Work at American Animation Studios, 1928-1961" at the Living Labor: Marxism and Performance Studies event, Department of Performance Studies New York University April 11–13, 2014. 

Dr. Frank tragically died on August 28, 2017, at the age of 33. She was one of the most original, accomplished and promising scholars of her generation. She will be hugely missed but much remembered.



See Hannah Frank's Vimeo account; and her Google Scholar citations;

Also see the following tributes to Dr. Frank:

2.
Favourite new website



"Long awaited" doesn't even get close to describing film critic and scholar extraordinaire Adrian Martin's website project to gather much of his published film criticism work and offer it up for free! But it arrived in 2017, starting with over 2000 entries to amazing pieces of writing and thinking, which are being added to every week!

Titled FILM CRITIC: ADRIAN MARTIN, the website also points to a connected 'Patreon' campaign to raise some funds to help keep it maintained and regularly updated. FSFF's author has signed up to do just that.

It's not every day that one of the world's leading writers about film gives away quite so much of his lifetime's work to the public domain. Good on ya, and thank you, Adrian!

3.
Favourite Film and Media Studies Podcast

Film and Media Studies podcasts continued to delight us in 2017. The following three (listed in alphabetical order) tied for their place as FSFF's favourite.





Also, check out new podcast on the block:



4.
Favourite longstanding website



January 2017 entries:
February 2017 entries:
March 2017 entries:
April 2017 entries:
May 2017 entries:
June 2017 entries:
July 2017 entries:
August 2017 entries:
September 2017 entries:
October 2017 entries:
November 2017 entries:
December 2017 entries:


5.
Favourite Online Film Studies Journal




A tie this year between The Cine-Files, which brings some truly wonderful material online, year after year, thanks largely to the amazing talents of Editor-in-Chief Tracy Cox-Stanton, and Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, similarly run by a passionate team of academics, which introduced a brilliant new audiovisual essay section!


FSFF is very much looking forward to the publication of a new Jump Cut issue in Spring 2018 following on from the very sad loss of one of its pioneering editors, Chuck Kleinhans, to whom this blog dedicated its previous entry in tribute



6.
Favourite Video Essay on a Film Studies Topic



This was at the the top of my top ten picks in the end of year Sight and Sound poll: "The best video essays of 2017" expertly and painstakingly gathered by Kevin B. Lee and David Verdeure.

Also check out this top 17 list curated by Jacob Oller for the ONE PERFECT SHOT (now FILM SCHOOL REJECTS) website. 


7.
Favourite video essayist

A two-way tie between:

Cristina Alvarez López and Adrian Martin for MUBI, Filmkrant, and themselves (see also this great video interview with them by Julia Vassilieva from Monash Film and Screen Studies);






8.
Favourite video essay publisher/curator
(ahem...after [in]Transition and Audiovisualcy....)






9.
Best online scholarly collaboration between a filmmaker and a film scholar (who is also a filmmaker!)





10.
Best open access eBook appearing online in 2017

Two-way split between:


and




11.
Favourite online article:


Nina Menkes’s article "The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum," FILMMAKER Magazine’s most popular post in 2017. Menkes' brilliantly uses the work of Laura Mulvey. http://filmmakermagazine.com/103801-the-visual-language-of-oppression-harvey-wasnt-working-in-a-vacuum/


12.
Favourite Film Studies Related Instagram Account:




And finally...

Some very very very  honourable mentions

  • Best Facebook page for Film and Media Studies in 2017: Teaching Media 
  • For its continued brilliance and generosity: Shane Denson's medieninitiative website
  • Best historiographical video essay series: The Per una controstoria del cinema italiano/Towards a Counter History of Italian Cinema project organised by Filmidée and Chiara Grizzaffi with multiple videos and authors. Watch the trailer here.
More to follow as FSFF remembers further 2017 links of great note!

UPDATES:

Sunday 17 December 2017

Rest in RADICAL POWER! In Warm Memory of Chuck Kleinhans, film and media scholar and activist extraordinaire

Last updated December 31, 2017
(screenshot from video embedded below)

Yesterday, the terribly sad news reached Film Studies For Free that radical film and media scholar Chuck Kleinhans had died. Along with his wonderful partner in life and work Julia Lesage, Chuck has been a monumentally good friend to this blog over the years, mostly in his capacity as co-founding co-editor of the brilliant journal JUMP CUT, and as a phenomenal advocate for open access and "small gauge" scholarly and activist publishing. 

Alongside his own foundational work in cinema and media scholarship, Chuck was a remarkable and hugely influential mentor to many very important scholars in our field. If you should need a sense of what he gave us, please just watch the opening five minutes of the first video embedded below in which his friend (and fellow inspiring scholar and activist) Alexandra Juhasz does a great job of conveying his wonderful contributions.

In this blog's humble view, we are losing Chuck just at the very moment when we need great champions of and participants in radical action like him the most. Let us continue his work as best we can, inspired by all that he did, to keep his memory much alive.

FSFF wishes to mark Chuck's passing in its customary way by this entry of links to his work (already amply available online), including to some as yet relatively uncirculated videos of two of his lectures (below) and eventually to online tributes as these appear. Please feel encouraged to leave your own tributes to him (or links to these) via the comments' thread below.

FSFF sends its condolences and warmest wishes to Julia, and Chuck's family and friends. 

Keynote presentation: ‘Imagining Change: a short history of radical film in the USA’,
Chuck Kleinhans (Co-editor, JUMP CUT: A review of contemporary media).
Chair: Alexandra Juhasz (CUNY). Filmed by Mike Wayne for Brunel FilmandTV



CHUCK KLEINHANS' PUBLICATIONS
ONLINE TRIBUTES

More Links to Tributes to Follow