Associations & Organisations

• Film Sound

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

• 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).

• 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.

  

• The Daily

  David Hudson’s invaluable diary of recent releases, publications, retrospectives, and other related news in the world of international cinema.

• The Island of Sokurov

  Offical website for the Russian director.

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Blogs

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.).

• 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.

• Fab Press

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

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By Way of Montreal

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.”

• 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.

• 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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DVD Review Sites

• 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.

• 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.

  

• 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.

• 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.

• Fangoria

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

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Filmmakers

• 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.

• 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!

• Short Ends

  A small Montreal-based socially committed film collective that encourages personal writing on films that are off the mainstream path.

• Cine Outside

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

• 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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Journalism and Criticism

• Short Ends

  A small Montreal-based socially committed film collective that encourages personal writing on films that are off the mainstream path.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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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Publishers, Labels, and Retailers

• Film-Philosophy

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

• The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

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

• 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.

  

• Cinema of Malayalam

  Website dedicated to the cinema of Kerala, the southernmost costal state of India. This website contains an extensive database of national and international award winning films and directors of Malayalam (the language spoken in Kerala) cinema.

• 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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Theory, History, and Analysis

• 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.).

• The Artifice

  Slick, likeable, readable online journal that covers a wide range of entertainment areas, including Film, TV, animation, Games, Arts, Literature, and Art.

• 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?

• The School of Sound

  The School of Sound is an organisation that has staged an annual and now, biennial international 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.

• 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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