Associations & Organisations

• Fangoria

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

• 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.

• Film Sound

  Extensive, one stop location for everything you wanted to know about film sound.

• 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.

• 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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Blogs

• The Independent Media Arts Alliance

  A national network of independent film, video and new media production centers, distributors and exhibitors from all over parts of Canada.

• Ubuweb

  A wholly independent, wonderful resource on the avant-garde, poetry (in all its forms) and, to quote Ubuweb, “outsider arts.” Includes many sounds, music, books, essays, poems, interviews, radio spots, and critical works that have been salvaged from obscurity, or at least made readily available through their website.

• Intute

  Intute is a free UK-based online resource which acts as a massive storage for the every increasing area on reputable online journals/essays in every conceivable area. Its main target are UK students, lecturers and researchers in higher academics, but obviously anyone seeking research in their particular area will benefit from Intute.

• 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.

• Fangoria

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

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By Way of Montreal

• 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.

• Film Studies For Free

  Great blog that is more than a blog: a wealth of resources for online scholarly writing on film that is ‘open access’ (free). There is a lot of really good stuff written on the web of value and this site does a great service in promoting this.

• Filmsound.org

  The internet’s foremost resource on matters of film sound theory and practice.

  

• 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.

• 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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DVD Review Sites

• 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.

• 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

• Montreal Serai

  A politically engaged cultural magazine that has a growing online presence (over 2000 subscribers). Montreal Serai rightly prides itself on the ethnic and cultural diversity of its writers and subjects. The webzine covers all the arts, both big and small (from cinema to poetry) with equal dedication.

• 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).

• 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!

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Filmmakers

• Movieplayer.it

  Italian language one stop site for all news/info on what is playing and forthcoming across Italy. Although the texts are written in Italian, and consumer geared, there is a huge database of trailers, many in their original languages, which are not easily found elsewhere. Not only are there tons of trailers, but links to biographies of film personalities, event descriptions (like currently a notice of the restored screening of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour playing at the Cinema Ritrovato a Bologna), etc. Where else can you find, as in the ‘Oggi al cinema’ section, what is playing where across all of Italy? I find it particularly useful for discovering recent Italian films, rather than the North American films filling many screens there as elsewhere. The site is very well organized and essential for Italians seeking cinema news, and any one travelling to Italy who doesn’t want to miss out on their film fix.

• The Italian Page

  A one-stop destination for all things Italy related, spanning culture, art, film, education, travel, health, sports, architecture, and history.

• Cineaste

  One of the most venerable American paper film magazine has slowly been upping their online presence, and now has added exclusive online content, a smattering of ‘free’ published material and a valuable always-up-to-date cumulative index.

• Cine Outside

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

• 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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Journalism and Criticism

• Canuxploitation

  All you need to know about Canadian exploitation cinema (and there’s more than you’d expect!).

• The Italian Page

  A one-stop destination for all things Italy related, spanning culture, art, film, education, travel, health, sports, architecture, and history.

• 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.

  

• Vertigo

  Vertigo is an international film magazine covering the best of independent and experimental film. This is the recently added online version of its hard copy magazine of the same name, which has been documenting global screen culture since 1993.

• 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.

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Publishers, Labels, and Retailers

• Montreal Serai

  A politically engaged cultural magazine that has a growing online presence (over 2000 subscribers). Montreal Serai rightly prides itself on the ethnic and cultural diversity of its writers and subjects. The webzine covers all the arts, both big and small (from cinema to poetry) with equal dedication.

• 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.

• Fab Press

  UK publishing house run and operated by the indefatigable Harvey Fenton. Genre material done with passion, style, and intelligence.

• 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.

• Ubuweb

  A wholly independent, wonderful resource on the avant-garde, poetry (in all its forms) and, to quote Ubuweb, “outsider arts.” Includes many sounds, music, books, essays, poems, interviews, radio spots, and critical works that have been salvaged from obscurity, or at least made readily available through their website.

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Theory, History, and Analysis

• Fangoria

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

• Images: a journal of film and popular culture

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

• 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.

• Cine Outside

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

• 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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