Links
Associations & Organisations
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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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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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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.
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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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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!
View all Associations & Organisations →
Blogs
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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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Screening the Past
One of the few refereed online film journals.
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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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Cinemasparagus
Craig Keller’s eclectic musings on a broad range of intelligent (with a slant on European), auteurist cinema.
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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.
By Way of Montreal
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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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The School of Sound
The School of Sound is an organisation that has staged an annual
and now, biennialinternational symposium on the creative use of sound in the arts and media. The next SOS takes place in London in April 27-30, 2011. You can learn more about their related activities, including their journal, “The Soundtrack,” at their website. -
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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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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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.
DVD Review Sites
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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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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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Canuxploitation
All you need to know about Canadian exploitation cinema (and there’s more than you’d expect!).
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Fangoria
Website that both promotes and adds material to the long running horror magazine.
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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.
Filmmakers
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
Journalism and Criticism
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Tim Cawkwell’s Cinema
A sounding board for former filmmaker Tim Cawkwell, on the more esoteric and contemplative aspects of film thought (religion, theology, the imagination, etc.). Cawkwell writes with the general reader in mind, not necessarily the arcane academic. As his logo states, “Intelligible writing about intelligent film.”
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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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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.
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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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Fangoria
Website that both promotes and adds material to the long running horror magazine.
View all Journalism and Criticism →
Publishers, Labels, and Retailers
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Korean Film
Excellent site on Korean cinema. Includes book/film reviews, purchasing links, festival updates, industry analysis, etc.
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Cinema du Parc
An important Montreal venue for alternative and independent cinemas. Not afraid to mix the popular with the esoteric.
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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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The Island of Sokurov
Offical website for the Russian director.
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Masters of Cinema
Serious, erudite in the best sense possible. Covers art house DVD releases across all DVD regions. Great for making your mouth water over DVD’s you don’t have but would die for.
View all Publishers, Labels, and Retailers →
Theory, History, and Analysis
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Tim Cawkwell’s Cinema
A sounding board for former filmmaker Tim Cawkwell, on the more esoteric and contemplative aspects of film thought (religion, theology, the imagination, etc.). Cawkwell writes with the general reader in mind, not necessarily the arcane academic. As his logo states, “Intelligible writing about intelligent film.”
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Shocks to the System
Excellent blog by writer Jon Towlsen that specializes in horror films that can be considered subversive in their approach to genre norms of style, formal approach, theme or social consciousness. The blog is an extension of a book on the subject of ‘Subversive Cinema’ which is slated for publication from McFarland press in 2013. Chapter descriptions for the book are available on the blog.
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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.
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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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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.
