Links
Associations & Organisations
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The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Website for Australian government’s archival mission of preserving its audio-visual history.
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Poética do cinema
New blog by Brazilian film scholar Marcelo Moreira Santos which is a voice for his research on film semiotics. Blog entries thus far include English translations of sections of his published PhD thesis, and includes helpful film links to relevant film making of and documentaries which support the entries. For example, the blog entry of May 7, 2013, “The Collaborative Authorship in Cinema,” includes brief excerpts of documentary clips from The Shining, Inception, The Dark Knight, etc.
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Electric Sheep Magazine
Subtitled a “deviant view of cinema” Electric Sheep is an intelligent source of serious reflection on all sorts of cinema, but with a concentration on the esoteric. Varied in content too, with blogs, podcasts, interviews, etc.
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Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism
What a wonderful surprise it was to learn of this new (2010) rekindling of the excellent British film magazine Movie, that ran from 1962 to 2000 and published some of the most engaged, constructive and intelligent film criticism of its time. The online version of Movie provides a nice lineage with the original by including a tribute to one of its founding fathers Ian Cameron (who died in January 2010) by V.F. Perkins, another important figurehead of the original magazine, as well as reprinted the essay by Cameron “Films, Directors, and Critics” from Movie #2. The online version (which is refereed and bi-annual) also emulates the style and layout of the original magazine, and includes some excellent frame grabs. Welcome back.
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FIAF
Site for the Journal of Film Preservation. Amazingly, the site includes full text (pdf file) access to the excellent association journal.
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Blogs
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Fangoria
Website that both promotes and adds material to the long running horror magazine.
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Cult Epics
Independent DVD label which specializes in esoteric arthouse, erotica, and horror cinema. Their releases are always a labor of love with care, commitment, and excellent supplementary material.
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Culture.ca
This website is an initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and functions as a one-stop gateway to all aspects of the Canadian cultural scene, including history, politics, sports, and art. Contains an impressive range of up-to-date links and cultural information, including streamed segments from the CBC Television Archives.
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Senses of Cinema
Huge, very well supported film journal that is perhaps the best of its kind. Each new issue has enough material to keep you reading for hours.
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Cineaste
Online link-up for the longstanding film magazine, which now includes web only material that supplements the monthly paper editions. Cineaste continues to publish excellent, well-informed criticism informed by all aspects of film art: the social, political and aesthetic.
By Way of Montreal
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The Artifice
An intelligent, broad ranging cultural criticism journal which impressively covers such diverse popular art areas as art, literature, film, TV, comics, manga, games, and anime. Pleasing jargon free writing that is informed, personal and critically astute.
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Filmmaker Magazine
Online organ for the magazine dedicated to independent cinema. Includes additonal material not featured in the print version.
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Learning Adobe Premiere
If you are a young filmmaker or critic wanting to learn how to make audio-visual essays, this is a good primer.
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European Films.net
Privately run website aimed at promoting European cinema. Covers films that are in-production and recently released across the world. Good source of production credit information with an extensive archive of film reviews.
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Rouge
Rouge, edited by Adrian Martin, is a simple, user-friendly online film journal which is all about the writing, and mantains one of the highest standards of writing of any online film journal.
DVD Review Sites
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Cineroute
A gateway into the National Film Board of Canada’s vast film collection.
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The Italian Page
A one-stop destination for all things Italy related, spanning culture, art, film, education, travel, health, sports, architecture, and history.
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Oddity Cinema
As the title suggests, Oddity Cinema is a webzine which tackles the weird and the wonderful in bite-sized morsels of critical commentary, capsule reviews, interviews, trailers, plugs for upcoming releases, etc. What sets it apart from most online review sites is its interactivity, with readers able to add their own comments to reviews. The design is colorful and attractive, yet remains functional and easy to navigate.
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Stan Brakhage on the Web
Filmmaker red Camper’s labour of love on the late Stan Brakhage. Extensive material covering the life of America’s seminal avant-garde filmmaker.
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Senses of Cinema
Huge, very well supported film journal that is perhaps the best of its kind. Each new issue has enough material to keep you reading for hours.
Filmmakers
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Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema
Excellent website dedicated to pre-cinema and early cinema. The site is based on a book entitled Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema edited by Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, which can be purchased through the website.
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Camera & Pen
An elegantly designed website by filmmaker/writer Tim Cawkwell that features “intelligent” musings on cinema, with an emphasis on avant-garde and spiritual cinema (Bresson, Tarkovsky, Dreyer, the Holocaust, plus Cawkwell has authored a book entitled The Filmmaker’s Guide to God in 2004). The site’s title, which is a reference to Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo,’ and is appropriately subtitled “Intelligible writing about intelligent film,” also includes snippets of Cawkwell’s aborted (he stopped making films in 1987) practical creative career under the heading “own work.” A site well-worth visiting.
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Film Sound
Extensive, one stop location for everything you wanted to know about film sound.
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Eurochannel
Eurochannel is your one-stop subscription online portal for European music, television, cinema, fashion, and art. The Eurochannel cinema features a wide variety of feature length films, shorts, and documentary, with 70 films a month, three new films every week.
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The Daily
David Hudson’s invaluable diary of recent releases, publications, retrospectives, and other related news in the world of international cinema.
Journalism and Criticism
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The Glorious and The Grotesque: Horror Cinema of the 70s and 80s
The first of what we hope to be many websites sponsored by Offscreen. This one looks at the social, political, aesthetic and cultural aspects of one of the high points of American horror, the horror films of the 1970s and 1980s. Included are the many contemporary remakes of this by now classic horror films.
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Women Make Movies
A non-profit organization which promotes and distributes films from all over the world made by and about women. Their catalogue contains over 400 titles in all genres, with an emphasis on documentary and experimental.
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Caracult and Fuorivista
Two interesting linked Italian websites, one, Caracult, exploring the broader cultural sphere with a slant toward the esoteric and the anthropological, and the other, Fuorivista, a cinema journal featuring varied approaches to marginalized cinemas and an inclusive understanding of cinema (the journal is interested in all aspects of cinema, aesthetic, industrial, spectatorial, etc.).
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Ingmar Bergman Face to Face
English version of the award winning Swedish website on Ingmar Bergman, launched on May 22, 2006. An excellent reference site for works by and about Bergman.
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caboose
Montreal-based independent publishing company that specializes in cinema publications. Owned and operated by Timothy Bernard. caboose also has initiated a fascinating project called “Planetary Projection,” an ongoing meta-commentary on the history and evolution of film projections as experienced by projectionists the world over.
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Publishers, Labels, and Retailers
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Incite! Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics
“INCITE! is a new journal dedicated to the discourse, culture, and community of experimental film, video, and new media. Merging handmade and online platforms, this hybrid publication addresses the lack of critical attention afforded film and media artists working today. In addition to scholarly articles, INCITE! publishes aesthetic statements, manifestos, artist projects, multiples, archival documents, interviews, reviews, and hastily drawn plans. Stationing ourselves at the cross-flow of research, scholarship, and creation, we encourage personal writing, critical poetics, and radical approaches to film and media (editor, Brett Kashmere).
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FIPRESCI: The International Federation of Film Critics
Website for the important film critics organization, FIPRESCI. Includes a link-up to their relatively new online film journal, “Undercurrents,” an interesting section where film critics write about film books that influenced their intellectual history, and much more.
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Film Festival World
Excellent, valuable online resource for everything connected to the world of the film festival. By far the most complete, organised, and up-to-date resource on film festivals from all over the world. Resources include a listing of International film academies and awards bodies and links to film journals and e-zines.
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Eurochannel
Eurochannel is your one-stop subscription online portal for European music, television, cinema, fashion, and art. The Eurochannel cinema features a wide variety of feature length films, shorts, and documentary, with 70 films a month, three new films every week.
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The Artifice
Slick, likeable, readable online journal that covers a wide range of entertainment areas, including Film, TV, animation, Games, Arts, Literature, and Art.
View all Publishers, Labels, and Retailers →
Theory, History, and Analysis
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Panorama-cinema
A Quebec based French language webzine with impeccable taste and an astute critical sense. Their individual film reviews may not be exceptionally long but treat each word as a precious commodity in distilling the necessary elements of the film. The zine has spread out to include interviews, podcasts, and has recently emerged as a publisher, thus far with two books under its wing: their first L’Humanisme D’Après-Guerre Japonaise (Humanism in Post-War Japan) and the second Vies & Morts du Giallo (Lives and Deaths of the Giallo). I have looked at the latter and am impressed with its scope and scholarship. It is an important contribution to the critical literature on the giallo.
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Cineroute
A gateway into the National Film Board of Canada’s vast film collection.
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The Criterion Collection
Home of the DVD company committed to the promotion of International cinema. The name has become synonymous with quality, and the yardstick by which other DVD transfers are measured.
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Rouge
Rouge, edited by Adrian Martin, is a simple, user-friendly online film journal which is all about the writing, and mantains one of the highest standards of writing of any online film journal.
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Giallo Fever
Keith Brown’s excellent analysis of the Italian giallo. Entries are normally on a singular film, but reference previous entries and are part of a broader aesthetic and stylistic understanding of the giallo (Brown is a PhD student and I imagine his thesis is on the giallo).
