Links
Associations & Organisations
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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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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.
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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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Screening the Past
One of the few refereed online film journals.
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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.).
View all Associations & Organisations →
Blogs
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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.
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Short Ends
A small Montreal-based socially committed film collective that encourages personal writing on films that are off the mainstream path.
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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.
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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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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).
By Way of Montreal
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Film Int.
Online organ to the excellent, longstanding Swedish based film magazine, Film International (Filmint.).
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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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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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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.
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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.
DVD Review Sites
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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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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.
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Screening the Past
One of the few refereed online film journals.
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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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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.
Filmmakers
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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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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.
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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.
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Screen Directors Guild of Ireland
“Established in 2000, the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI) is the representative body for directors involved in the Irish and international audiovisual industry. These include directors of feature films, fiction, animation documentary, television drama, short films, video art and commericals.”
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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.
Journalism and Criticism
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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.
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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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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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Filmmaker Magazine
Online organ for the magazine dedicated to independent cinema. Includes additonal material not featured in the print version.
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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.
View all Journalism and Criticism →
Publishers, Labels, and Retailers
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
View all Publishers, Labels, and Retailers →
Theory, History, and Analysis
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Cinémathèque Québécoise
Montreal’s venerable cinema treasure which houses major retrospectives and selections from its own vast archive collection. Also includes an invaluable library of film books, periodicals, newspaper clippings, posters, etc., which is a mine of information for scholars and students.
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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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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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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.
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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.