Offscreen Notes
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MUSIC & THE MOVING IMAGE VIII
Conference at NYU Steinhardt: May 31-June 2, 2013
CALL FOR PAPERS
The annual conference, Music and the Moving Image, encourages submissions from scholars and practitioners that explore the relationship between music, sound, and the entire universe of moving images (film, TV, video games, mobile media, and interactive performances) through paper presentations.
This year’s conference will feature two roundtables: “Film Scoring: Teaching The Practice,” chaired by Dan Carlin, Dir. Scoring for Motion Pictures & Television Program, USC. The panel will include Paul Chihara, Head of Visual Media Program, UCLA; George S. Clinton, Chair of Berklee College Film Scoring; Halldor Krogh, Dir. Film Scoring, Lillehammer University, Norway; and Ron Sadoff, Dir. NYU Steinhardt Film Scoring.
A panel dedicated to “Music Production Libraries in Television” will feature Doug Wood (composer, COO Omnimusic). We welcome submissions that address TV music.
The Program Committee: Krin Gabbard (Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema); Raymond Knapp (The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity); Katherine Spring (Saying It With Songs (forthcoming)); and coeditors of Music and the Moving Image, Gillian B. Anderson (Haexan; Pandora’s Box; Music for Silent Film 1892-1929: A Guide); and NYU faculty, Ron Sadoff (The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation).
MaMI follows the NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop, May 21-30, 2013.
Abstracts or synopses of papers (250 words) should be submitted to: Dr. Ron Sadoff, mamicon2013@gmail.com chair of the program committee, no later than Dec. 17, 2012.
E-mail ron.sadoff@nyu.edu for more information.
Dept. of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Program in Film Scoring: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/scoring/
NYU – 35 West 4th St, New York, NY 10012
Conference fee: $185.00 – Students: $85.00; NYU Housing Available
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Koji Wakamatsu: 1936-2012
On October 17, 2012, iconoclastic Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu has died after complications following being hit by a taxi cab. This is tragic news, which uncannily recalls Theo Angelopoulos dying by a similar cause earlier this year, 24 January 2012, at the same age as Wakamatsu, 76. Wakamatsu had just completed his latest film, The Millenium Rapture (2012), which is playing at Montreal’s FNC (Festival de nouveau cinema). Offscreen has written on two of Wakamatsu’s seminal political Roman Porno films, Ecstacy of Angels and Go, Go Second Time Virgin. Wakamatsu had made another film in 2012, which also played in Montreal, at Fantasia 2012, about Yukio Mishima 11:25: The Day He Chose His Own Fate. A sad day indeed for world cinema.
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Chris Marker: 1921-2012
Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, the great French filmmaker Chris Marker passed away on July 30, 2012 at the age of 91. Marker was part of the golden age of French intellectual and artistic experimentation in France circa the 1950s, becoming an important figure among the Left Bank artistic community. France in the 1950s was a heady place to be, influenced by the recently deceased philosopher Henri Bergson, and other philosophers and film thinkers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Mounier, Andre Bazin, and Alexandre Astruc. Marker soaked in all of these ideas into what would become one of the most unique contributions to cinema, forming an original essayistic style of filmmaking that shred through established boundaries such as fiction, documentary, and experimental. If Marker would only have made one film, La Jetée (1962) he would have earned his place in film history. Composed almost entirely of still images (showing the influence of photography, the photo-roman, and comic books on Marker), the nearly thory minute La Jetée is arguably one of the greatest meditations on time, memory, and by extension, science-fiction time travel. The themes of time and memory would haunt Marker (as well as his colleague Alain Resnais) for the rest of his life, even extending to the medium of interactive CD art with his now classic ‘Immemory” CD. I urge you to read The Guardian obituary for the details of Marker’s fascinating life history.
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Ernest Borgnine: 1917-2012
I must admit to being one of those people who in the past had prematurely thought of Borgnine as being dead. Well, life has caught up. One of the greatest American character actors ever has passed away at the age of 95 on July 8, 2012. His list of film roles is as long (over 200 films) as it is impressive. My favorite of his standout performances include From Here to Eternity (he’s the guy that beat the stuffing out of Sinatra), Marty, The Wild Bunch, Dirty Dozen, Willard, and I briganti italiani, RIP Ernest.
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Is Canadian Cinema Sexy?
New issue of the Montreal-based online journal Montreal Serai on Canadian cinema. Articles include:“Canadian Cinema: Sexy?” by Mirella Bontempo, “Canada: Culture or Coma?” by Mark Krupa, and “Notes on Film and Concsiousness” by Patrick Barnard.
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Ray Bradbury 1920-2012
The world of fantasy has lost one of its greatest figures, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012 at the age of 91. Bradbury spanned the golden age of Fantasy and carved himself a huge place in the annals of what he would describe “science fantasy” (as opposed to science fiction, hard science or fantasy). His work touched every possible medium, pulp fiction, radio, literature, theater, poetry, television, motion pictures, including great shows like The Twilight Zone, as a mini-series (The Martian Chronicles, his own anthology TV series, the films Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, and many more. I will always remember him along with two of his favorite long time friends, Ray Harryhausen and Forrest J Ackerman. Only Harryhausen the —the only one of them I’ve actually met— is still alive. Soon, but hopefully not too soon, a real era of fantasy will be over.
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Andrew Sarris: 31 October 1928 – 20 June 2012
One of America’s most important and influential film critics/teachers Andrew Sarris passed away on June 20, 2012 at the age of 83. Sarris is survived by her film critic wife since 1969, Molly Haskell. Sarris’ defining achievement was his groundbreaking book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, which helped re-define a generation of cinephiles around the notion that film was an art born out of the same artistic juices of painting or literature: the singular vision of the artist. Throughout the 1970s Sarris engaged in famous critical battles with notorious anti-auteurist Pauline Kael. Sarris wrote for nearly thirty years for the Village Voice (where his student Jim Hoberman also toiled for many years until his recent dismissal), taught film studies at several universities and continued to write in his usually witty and urbane style right up until his death.
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Kaneto Shindô 1912-2012
The great Japanese director, a contemporary of Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, and others, passed away on May 29, 2012 at the age of 100 (born April 28, 1912). As noted in the Guardian obit, Shindo was influenced by his mentor Kenji Mizoguchi (on whom he did an over two hour long documentary, Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, which is available on the Criterion DVD of Ugetsu), and in terms of his outlook on life and art, the bombing of Hiroshima (where he was actually born). My own lasting impressions of Shindo were based on two striking black and white, cinemascope films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968), powerful horror films centered around Japanese supernatural stories of war-time greed, jealousy and retribution.
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Cinéma dans la rue
Following budget cuts by Harper’s Conservative government the decision was taken to shut down the venerable NFB location on St. Denis street, including its groundbreaking, innovative CinéRobothéque. Local filmmakers, cinephiles, critics, teachers and activists have joined together for a three-day celebration of what will be missed if the cuts proceed. The public is invited to partake in a conference, a symbolic ‘joining of hands’ outdoor screenings and more. For info: PRESS_RELEASE_Conference_Cinéma_dans_la_rue_June_4_2012.pdf
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Peter Mettler Retrospective: May 2-May 6
May 4, 2012 to May 6, 2012
The Cinematheque Quebecoise is mounting an impressive complete retrospective of Canadian-Swiss filmmaker/artist Peter Mettler. The event, which will project the films in print versions (16mm, except for two filmed in high definition), also includes an intriguing life musical improvisation with Mettler himself (also a musician) and experimental guitarist Fred Firth, and a Mettler masterclass.
