Associations & Organisations

• Electronics Arts Intermix (EAI)

  Non-profit resource for film, video and interactive media art. Includes substantial video streaming samples of many of their artists, including Chris Marker, George Kuchar, Ken Jacobs, Carolee Schneemann, Michael Snow, and Douglas Gordon.

• British Film Institute

  Excellent and in-depth site from the venerable British Film Institute. Highlights include the series “BFI Archive Interactive” which includes excellent interactive studies on British cinema. A recent one was Paul Merton on Early British Comedy.

  

• 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.

• 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.

• Index DVD

  Independent video distribution label which strongly promotes Austrian (mainly) and East European political and avant-garde artists. Their DVDs are beautiful works of art in themselves, with stylish see-through covers, copious (bilingual) liner notes and artist bios.

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Blogs

• Film Studies Association of Canada

  Organ for Canada’s long running Association that brings together film scholars, students, researchers, and teachers from all over the country.

  

• Cinemasparagus

  Craig Keller’s eclectic musings on a broad range of intelligent (with a slant on European), auteurist cinema.

• Girish

  Blog written by Film and Cultural critic Girish Shambu which is simple and straightforward: perceptive thoughts on all things relating to cinema, with each blog entry capped off by a useful series of “recent readings” which links you to other film writing which has caught the bloggers mind for one reason or another.

• Cine Outside

  Well organized site that focuses on recent new release reviews but also features longer think pieces on broader cinema related issues.

• Filmmaker Magazine

  Online organ for the magazine dedicated to independent cinema. Includes additonal material not featured in the print version.

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By Way of Montreal

• Fangoria

  Website that both promotes and adds material to the long running horror magazine.

• The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

  Website for Australian government’s archival mission of preserving its audio-visual history.

• 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.

• 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.

• Cinephilia and Beyond

  Cinephilia is plain and simple a great and unique film website that oozes love of cinema, its meaning, human value and entertainment value. Unique because you never know what you will find, snippets, interviews, video essays, short films, documentaries, essays, old and new stuff, anything that has or can touch someone about cinema. Or should it be called sinema?

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DVD Review Sites

• Digitalarti

  Your one-stop online source for everything digital art. Portal to events across Canada and Europe, live performances, lectures, and online journal dedicated to digital art available as a free pdf journal. Latest issue (Mag. No. 5) includes an interesting essay on the permutations of meanings on the internet. What is most important. What people read? How they read? Where the information is saved? How it is transmitted? Where are all these servers served? What is the environmental footprint of these ‘data centers’? You’ll be surprised.

• 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.

• Bright Lights Film Journal

  Once a print magazine, now an intelligent journal of film criticism. Equally compelling with popular film and the more esoteric. Manages to nicely blend a scholarly yet readable approach to a variety of subjects ranging in equal measure from the horror genre to experimental cinema.

• Cinema Scope

  Cinema Scope is one of, if not the, best Canadian film magazines on the market, featuring intelligent criticism, festival coverage, and interviews. Their website offers content information on current and back issues, subscription information, and some web only content.

• 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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Filmmakers

• Images: a journal of film and popular culture

  Intelligent analysis of popular genres. Includes an excellent “In Focus” section on Italian Gothic Horror film.

• Digitalarti

  Your one-stop online source for everything digital art. Portal to events across Canada and Europe, live performances, lectures, and online journal dedicated to digital art available as a free pdf journal. Latest issue (Mag. No. 5) includes an interesting essay on the permutations of meanings on the internet. What is most important. What people read? How they read? Where the information is saved? How it is transmitted? Where are all these servers served? What is the environmental footprint of these ‘data centers’? You’ll be surprised.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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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Journalism and Criticism

• 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.

• Paracinema

  Edited by Christine Makepeace, Paracinema is the online organ of the magazine that is made for, to paraphrase its tagline, “People who love genre movies.” Although many of the back issues (since 2007) are unfortunately sold out, the online presence fills in the space in-between new issues with exclusive editorials, links, festival reports, etc. Taking its name from the term coined by media theorist Jeffrey Sconce (which itself owes a debt to Michael J. Weldon’s ‘psychotronic cinema’), Paracinema prides itself in its writing, which is the right blend of serious, scholarly (without the leaden jargon), well-written, personal, and fun

• Truth-in-Cinema

  Quirky but intense website dedicated to the cinematic spiritual heavyweights (Tarkovsky, Bergman, Ozu, Sokurv, etc.).

• David Bordwell’s Film Blog

  There are many film blogs on the web, some good, some not so good. As you might expect from one of the pre-eminent film scholars of his generation, this one from David Bordwell is good, very good.

• Film-Philosophy

  Film academia meets the web. The most extensive free online archive of book reviews and theoretical essays.

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Publishers, Labels, and Retailers

• Digitalarti

  Your one-stop online source for everything digital art. Portal to events across Canada and Europe, live performances, lectures, and online journal dedicated to digital art available as a free pdf journal. Latest issue (Mag. No. 5) includes an interesting essay on the permutations of meanings on the internet. What is most important. What people read? How they read? Where the information is saved? How it is transmitted? Where are all these servers served? What is the environmental footprint of these ‘data centers’? You’ll be surprised.

• 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 Beaver

  A website specializing in DVD quality control. The place to go if deliberating between competing DVD issues of a film. You’‘ll get the technical comparison, complete with bit rate compression, film stills, and commentary.

• Cinemasparagus

  Craig Keller’s eclectic musings on a broad range of intelligent (with a slant on European), auteurist cinema.

• 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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Theory, History, and Analysis

• David Bordwell’s Film Blog

  There are many film blogs on the web, some good, some not so good. As you might expect from one of the pre-eminent film scholars of his generation, this one from David Bordwell is good, very good.

• 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).

• Infliction Film

  Website where you can get information on films made or produced by Mitch Davis, who also programs for Fantasia, and the Cinema du Parc theatre. Great links page.

• Film Studies For Free

  Run by Catherine Grant, this is an invaluable resource which does exactly what its title would suggest: it brings together in one place links to scholarly and intelligent articles and essays on a wide range of subjects that are available for free. The site is dangerous. Why? Well because when you visit this site you will always spend more time perusing the many interesting links and connected tangents than you can afford!

• Images: a journal of film and popular culture

  Intelligent analysis of popular genres. Includes an excellent “In Focus” section on Italian Gothic Horror film.

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