Offscreen Notes
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Synoptique Call For Papers
Synoptique is an online film journal run by Graduate students of Concordia University in Montreal. The following is an excerpted summary of a recent notice to solicit a call for papers dealing with one of the more pressing concerns for the future of film, the Moving Image Archive in the 21st Century:
“The archive, as a concept, an action, and a physical repository of historical traces and material fragments, has a central place within contemporary film and moving image studies. The archive is not only a location for historical research; it also functions as a source of images and materials to be mined by filmmakers and media artists. Many studies of the archive have focused on these two dominant approaches to the use and formulation of moving image archives, especially in studies of documentary and avant-garde compilation or found footage cinema. Increasingly, film and media scholars are also turning to the archive to revise histories of film theory, film production, and its distribution and circulation, especially in post-colonial, historiographical, and transnational film scholarship. As such, the archive becomes as much a site of struggle and contested histories, as it is a site of creative inspiration and cultural preservation.
With the transnational and global turn in film scholarship, a greater analysis of the circulation and display of archival materials and moving images is necessary to understand how archival access might impact the current assessment of global and local shifts. In this special issue on the moving image archive, we wish to focus on both the sites of archival preservation and display of moving images (including museums, art galleries, institutional archives, private collections, and the Internet), as well as the circulatory and creative networks that connect them. In doing so, we intend to bring questions of circulation and exhibition into dialogue with the archive, in addition to a focus on the archive as a concept and method of artistic practice.
Submissions may include, but are not by any means limited to, topics such as:
- Archival preservation, access, technologies, and practice
- Archive as concept or methodology (landscape as archive, Internet archive, etc.)
- Archival images in experimental films, videos, and games (compilation, found footage, database films, etc.)
- Archives, gesture, sound, and performance
- Digital archives and digitalization of archival materials
- Documentary and the evidentiary uses of archival moving images
- Colonial and postcolonial archives
- organizations and archival display
- Critiques of archival theory, media studies theory, and film theory
- Global flows and circulation of archival materials and images
- Institutional histories of a specific archive
- New media, remix cultures, and the archive
- Queer and feminist archives
- Spaces of display and archival practice (museums, non-theatrical spaces, online databases, etc.)
Essay submissions for the peer-review section should be approximately 15-30 pages including the bibliography (maximum 7,500 words), and formatted according to MLA guidelines. This special issue is invested in exploring the archive in all its conceptual and practical manifestations, so we also welcome shorter pieces (2-8 pages, maximum 2,000 words) related to archival images or practice for our non-peer review section. This section includes conference or exhibition reports, book reviews, research creation pieces related to archival images or practice (including video essays, photograph series, and other digital projects accompanied by an explanatory text), and interviews with artists or archival practitioners.
All submissions must be in either French or English. Papers should be submitted by October 10, 2014. A link will guide you through the submission process. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have at.”
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Giuliano Gemma: 1947-2013
Italian character actor Giuliano Gemma died at the age of 75 on October 2, 2013, in a car accident. Gemma had a prolific career starting in the late 1950s before gaining popularity as a Spaghetti Western star, notably as the lead hero as Ringo in a series of films, and later with Dario Argento in Tenebre. Gemma also acted in some important art house films, such as Valerio Zurlini’s Desert of the Tartars and Visconti’s The Leopard. Gemma worked also with legendary Spaghetti Western director Sergio Leone, in his sequel For a Few Dollars More.
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POP Montréal
Montreal most eclectic ‘big’ little festival is back for another five days of formidable diversity, September 25th – September 29th. Please check the POP Montreal website for scheduling detail and more info on this year’s adventurous program.
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Michel Brault: 1928-2013
A huge chunk of Quebec and world cinema history comes to an end with the death of Michel Brault, who succumbed to a heart attack on September 21, 2013 at the age of 85.
As has been often stated, Michel Brault was at the forefront of the great cinéma vérité movement of the late 1950s, early 1960s. As a cinematographer for such seminal films and figures as Jean Rouch (who asked him to come shoot his groundbreaking Chronicle of a Summer in Paris in 1960 after meeting him at a Robert Flaherty Seminar), Claude Jutra, Pierre Perrault, and others, Brault was arguably the most important single figure of this vastly important film revolution, helping to innovate techniques such as the hand-held camera (or shoulder-mounted is more accurate) and the lightweight sync sound camera/sound system which would become an integral part of the cinéma vérite filmmaker’s arsenal. Brault was there as one of the creative forces at the French Unit of the NFB in the 1950s and 1960s, which pioneered the techniques and strategies which would cement the French style/version of the cinéma vérité film movement (in English Canada and the United States this movement is usually called Direct Cinema and features a slightly different ‘less intrusive’ philosophical approach to the form). Brault’s legacy includes the collaboratively made Quebec cinéma vérité classics Les Raquetteurs (1958), Golden Gloves (1961), and La Lutte (1961); was a collaborator with Pierre Perrault and Marcel Carrière on the wonderful Pour la suite du monde (1964) and again with Perrault on L’acadie, L’acadie (1971).
The cinéma vérité movement may have began as a non-fiction movement but quickly became appropriated as a stylistic trope in fiction film; and Brault himself moved easily between the worlds of fiction and non-fiction, shooting such important Quebec fiction films as Claude Jutra’s debut feature À tout prendre (1961), Jutra’s Canadian classic Mon Oncle Antoine (a film which is often voted as the greatest Canadian film ever), Jutra’s Kamouraska (1972), Les bons débarras (Francis Mankiewicz, 1980), his own directed feature Entre la mer et l’eau douce (1972), and brilliantly fusing fiction and non-fiction in his Cannes Festival award winning 1974 directed film about the October Crisis, Les Ordres (undoubtedly one of the ten great Canadian films of all-time). All in all Brault contributed to over 200 short and feature length films, a legacy which will be tough to surpass for any future Quebec-based filmmaker.
I met the man briefly when he was at my University for a master class, and got to shake his hand and exchange a few pleasantries. More than this casual meeting, I am pleased to say that I appeared in a film with Brault, sort of. In 2006 I was interviewed for the Canadian documentary series “On Screen” for their episode on Mon Oncle Antoine (1971). In the documentary I make a point about how an establishing shot that pans across the mining area and then zooms into a close-up of the town’s church makes a political point visually by connecting the minority English owned mine to the Church hierarchy (for an extended reading of my thoughts on this film I point the reader to an essay I wrote on Mon Oncle Antoine). The documentary aired on television once or twice and can now be seen as a supplementary feature on the Criterion DVD edition of Mon Oncle Antoine. I could not have been happier when I eventually saw the documentary in its final edited form and discovered that my segment was directly followed by Brault himself corroborating my point, saying, “A zoom is a very significant tool. It has to have a reason to exist. It has to mean something.” Fitting from a man whose life has meant a lot to the world of cinema.
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Arthur Lamothe (1928-2013)
Just heard that three days before Brault’s passing, Quebec (born in France) writer/director Arthur Lamothe also passed away on September 18, 2013, at the age of 84. Certainly a bad week for Quebec cinema. Lamothe’s debut film was the Bûcherons de la Manouane (1962). Although Lamothe had a stab at fiction films, most notably Poussière sur la ville (1965), he quickly settled into a productive career as a documentarist, making films with strong social messages and often dealing with First Nations peoples.
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Otto Sander: 1941-2013
One of the two angels from Wim Wenders’ standout Wings of Desire has passed away at the age of 72 on September 12, 2013. Sander was a constant presence on the Berlin stage and made films with Wenders, Eric Rohmer, Wolfgang Petersen and many others.
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Call for Papers: Gender and Horror
Special Issue on the theme of Issues of Gender within the horror film, guest edited by Molly Langill.
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Vadim Yusov: RIP, 1929-2013
One of the great Soviet artists, cinematographer Vadim Yusov died on August 23, 2013 at the age of 84. Yusov had worked with Andrei Tarkovsky on his first four films, including his diploma film Steamroller and the Violin (1959), and his first three features, all masterpieces, Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), and Solaris (1972). Creative differences saw him break his working relationship with Tarkovsky for his next film, Mirror (1975) —he thought the film was too autobiographical. Not many cinematographers can claim to have filmed in sequence three such startlingly beautiful and magically inventive pieces of cinema. I have seen these films in total well over a dozen times and each new viewing reveals new bits of mystery and poetry.
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Peter Rist Previews World Film Festival 2013
Click here to read Peter Rist’s preview of what to watch at this year’s (2013) World Film Festival.
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Karen Black RIP (1939-2013)
Karen Black has died of cancer at the age of 74 on August 7. I’ll always remember Black as an actress who always gave it her all regardless of the film and who managed to emit a larger than life AND raw to the bone presence. Folks of my generation will always remember her for her turn in one of the most harrowing moments of TV horror, the Zuni doll episode from Dan Curtis’ Trilogy of Terror. Many forget that Black actually played three different roles in that film, appearing in each episode of the trilogy. Black worked non-stop since then and struck me again in another dual role, playing Sandra and Eleanor in teh much under-rated Steve Balderson 2005 film Firecracker. Black’s iconic presence in only a handful of horror roles (House of 1000 Corpses being another recent horror film she appeared in) led to her name being adopted as the stage name for glam rock, burlesque shock performer, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.
