Film and media

This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity.

A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void… Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator’s sense of equilibrium. The 'tensive motifs' of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift reflect our fears and dreams and offer embodied forms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of 'Neurofilmology'—an interdisciplinary method that puts filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.

"LaRocca offers a synoptic anthology of essays that brings to our attention how war films can provoke contemplation and meditation because of the ways that such films inevitably focus on the mortality and vulnerability of human beings. The essays, written by an outstanding array of international scholars, work out various ways in which the genre can compel our thinking to become philosophical. This collection of essays constitute a significant contribution to not only the philosophy of the war film, but also to philosophy of film itself."―Daniel Flory, Montana State University

"War is a pervasive condition, a constitutive part of human experience. The war film genre is extensive and multiform. It is no surprise, then, that war films are provocations to philosophical thought. This important and timely edited collection has an extensive introduction that seeks answers to vital questions: What sort of a phenomenon is a war film? What do we think we mean when we speak of a war film? What are war films for? Can war as such be represented by film? The essays that follow illuminate myriad ethical, aesthetic, epistemological and ontological issues as they related to a broad range of representations of war."―Guy Westwell, Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London

"The philosophical reflections compiled in this book look at war films from a variety of perspectives. I commend editor David LaRocca for bringing together scholars who each, in different ways, engage the interdisciplinary mission of the inquiry into how war is depicted on screen. What is the philosophy of film, and then, of war films specifically? Do war films harbor a philosophy – of death, violence, love - or does philosophy enrich the understanding of the cinematic of war? The Philosophy of War Films explores these questions and many more, connecting the reality of war with the art of filmmaking."―Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam

"This volume offers rich and deeply thought-out consideration of the representation of war on film and of the ways filmic and now digital representation is deeply entangled with how we experience and think about war (up close or at a distance) in actual life. The book reaches back in film history but is especially provocative on war and its representation in the last decade―the situation we are living with now. The essays are fresh and surprising, showing the whole subject of war and film to be far more interesting, complex, and disturbing than in the standard thinking about war genre films that we are used to."―Charles Warren, Boston University


Wars have played a momentous role in shaping the course of human history. The ever-present specter of conflict has made it an enduring topic of interest in popular culture, and many movies, from Hollywood blockbusters to independent films, have sought to show the complexities and horrors of war on-screen.

In The Philosophy of War Films, David LaRocca compiles a series of essays by prominent scholars that examine the impact of representing war in film and the influence that cinematic images of battle have on human consciousness, belief, and action. The contributors explore a variety of topics, including the aesthetics of war as portrayed on screen, the effect war has on personal identity, and the ethical problems presented by war.

In film and media production, ambient sound is a standard term that denotes the site-specific background sound component providing locational atmospheres and spatial information of public places. In this article, the specific role of ambient sound to create the context for the spatial experience in film and media production has been thoroughly examined in the light of Sound Studies. The article investigates the capacity of ambient sounds to sculpt the presence of a site by producing an embodied experience of the site. The article brings in a much-needed focus on the complex relationship between sound and site by examining the spatial environments recorded, mediated, and reconstructed by sound practice. Guided by the production studies of sound, the article draws on the theories of diegesis, mimesis, and presence to reformulate the notion of the soundscape while keeping a conceptual base in phenomenology of sound in analyzing the spatial and atmospheric listening experience. The article cites examples from representative Indian films and few of my own sound artworks as case studies to make critical listening and analysis of the processes through which ambient sound practice enhances the spatial and atmospheric sensations. The article draws insights from prominent sound practitioners in the form of long interviews conducted by me over several years and self-reflective insights on my own work. The practice-led inputs make the empirical basis of the article shedding light on the production processes providing links between certain techniques available to specific phases of sound production and aesthetic principles shaped by the respective phases of practice with ambient sounds. The article locates a distinct shift occurring through these trajectories of sound practice and relates this shift to the recent “spatial turn” in Sound Studies, making valuable contributions to the field interested to inquire about the emerging spatiality and public-ness in sound artworks.

This article offers a critical contextualisation of developments in Greek cinema around the nodal date of 2009, which brought together the beginning of the financial crisis, an increased international visibility of certain Greek films, significant grassroot-motivated institutional changes for cinema in Greece, as well as the emergence of Anglophone criticism on Greek cinema. In so doing, it aims to identify key dimensions of contemporary Greek film cultures, and point towards
some possible developments in terms of modes of production and reception of Greek cinema, but also new frameworks for its critical understanding.

Cine Stage, Radio,TV Artist Film Producer, Distributor & Exhibiter Second Lady Cine Director of Pakistan Film Industry 1933-2012
Salma Mumtaz originally belonged to a Muslim conservative Pathan family from both sides. Her native place is a small village of UGGI, Distt: Mansehra. It is very well-known by every Pakistani that the conservative attitude of Muslim social set-up precludes ladies to be out of their homes. But she herself proved a bridge between old and new era. She though circumstantially constrained, but dared to pass upon the gap.

This paper deals with the problem of filmically representing political revolutions. In working out what film can do with and for revolution, it argues that the representation of revolution is not as powerful or mobilizing as the reflection of revolutionary practices and ideas, always at a distance from the realm of representation. Documentary practices, I contend, can serve active reflection on the side and site of struggle. The concept of reflection leads to a deeper phenomenological and historical understanding of such documentary footage, as well as an understanding of the dynamics of revolutionary events themselves. The essay responds to political-theoretical discourse positing the “invisibility” of politics and the People. Its central claim is that film, but also more broadly audiovisual media in all their current proliferation, can have a revolutionary function that is usefully distinguished from the old one of symbolically representing revolutionary unity. The medium’s function need not be reduced to collective self-representation, of imagining the people as ‘One,’ when it is also engaged in the diffuse work of creating revolutionary subjects out of the process of collective reflection. As both a record and a means of this reflection, film can be revolutionary in ways that are as far from the practices of Eisenstein and Vertov as they are from those of Lenin and Mao.

This article examines the history of the aviation film in light of the genre’s contributions to the evolution of ‘the talkie.’ Starting with the first sound newsreel of Charles Lindbergh’s take-off, the aviation film became a crucial but understudied site for the testing and development of sound technologies, as well as for the teaching of sound film literacy. Through readings of three classic aviation films— Wings (1927), Hell’s Angels (1930) and Dawn Patrol (1930 and 1938), as well as one outlier—Dorothy Arzner’s Christopher Strong (1933)—this article examines how the sound of flight was codified and argues that these films participated in what Miriam Hansen has termed Hollywood’s ‘vernacular modernism’ by popularising previously elite listening practices.

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published  in The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television in April 2019 and is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2019.1600917

This paper introduces the concept of 'cultural dimension' as developed in inter-cultural communication, into the field of intercultural narrative studies. Since cultural dimensions describe and explain social human behavior, the question emerges whether they can also help to study narratorial behavior. If so, cultural dimensions may assist scholars to study the cultural localization of global values in narratives. When conceiving of narrative as the representation of characters acting in situations, one may distinguish two levels of narrative behavior: the level of character behavior, i.e. the represented, and the level of a narrator behaving narratively, i.e. the representation. This paper focuses on the level of the narrative agency. Borrowing some classical concepts from narratology (real authors, implied authors, narrator, narratee, implied audience and real audiences), it examines how narratorial behavior may display cultural, i.e. localized values at various levels. By way of conclusion, this essay suggests how the concept of 'cul-tural dimension' could assist a study of cross-cultural audience empathy.

Who or what is la Parisienne? In answering this question, Felicity Chaplin explores the theme of the Parisienne type on film, discussing how cinema has attempted to capture visually her essence.
Synonymous with fashion since her inception, the Parisienne is a fascinating key figure of French modernity, one who never resembles herself. She is associated with elegance, seduction, sophistication and mystery, but also with consumerism, ambiguity, sexuality and danger. “Chic, sophisticated, seductive and enigmatic, the Parisienne possesses a je ne sais quoi which makes her difficult to define’’ (back cover). She belongs to a world apart, without being confined geographically to Paris, as her global identity is not necessarily linked to her nationality.
...

The whole issue open access here:
https://dresshistorians.org/journal

López Gómez, Lidia (2016). La utilización propagandística de los himnos en el cine de la guerra civil española. Himnos y Canciones: imaginarios colectivos, símbolos e identidades fragmentadas en la España del siglo XX. pp. 89 - 98. (España): Comares,  ISBN 978-84-9045-445-9

Global ecocide is usually envisioned as catastrophe of traumatic proportions. One alternative mode of narration is presented in Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E, in which the long-term effects of total global ecocide make for a terrific romantic comedy and biting satire. As an animated feature, WALL-E can approach the aftermath of global ecocide in a much more lighthearted manner than any life-action film centering on the post-apocalyptic fate of humanity ever could. The chapter takes a closer look at WALL-E’s romantic emplotment of ecocide, which deliberately avoids the evocation of eco-trauma. Using the tools of cognitive film theory, it explores how WALL-E’s innocent, at times clumsy, but always ingenious and in the end successful attempts to win the heart of a somewhat belligerent beauty secure the emotional engagement of the audience and provide the much-needed comic relief in the face of global environmental disaster. Combining highly aestheticized images of total environmental devastation and human degeneration with a funny and emotionally engaging love story, WALL-E turns eco-trauma into post-apocalyptic romantic comedy—a fact that makes its scathing critique of American-style consumerism and environmental message palatable for a mass audience.

This chapter investigates the 'badfilm' or paracinema celebration of translational errors in sub-standard subtitling, a practice that Abe Mark Nornes (2007) traces back to "to the silent era when early film critics ridiculed sloppy intertitles,” before discussing its resurgence within international Hong Kong cinema fandom circa the 1970s and 80s. While such B-grade subtitling sits easily within a 'badfilm' frame, I argue that inept subtitles or 'flubtitles' as they are sometimes called, do not simply delineate another genre of badfilm production or appreciation. More tellingly, they testify to the significance of the intercultural within badfilm movements, which they also necessarily destabilize by potentially transforming any film into bad film. With reference to Derridean deconstruction and Lawrence Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility (1995), I outline how B-grade subtitles might provide a means of reconceptualizing badness itself.

This special issue aims at exploring the encounter and intersection between fashion studies and media studies, with particular reference to visual and audiovisual products, e.g. cinema, television, advertising and digital media. Over the past decades, fashion acquired centrality in social and economical dynamics in Western culture for its capability to penetrate and influence both production and identitarian practices. Fashion both fully takes part in artistic processes as an autonomous aesthetic and semantic object (fashion as a medium) and has a pivotal role in creative industry as a provider of fundamental material for the formation of imaginary worlds and characters (fashion as a media industry). At the same time fashion has established as an autonomous and institutionalized social field able to influence and shape contemporary culture. Thanks to both its symbolic and corporeal substance, the outfit can be thought as a vehicle and a means of direct expression of identity (fashion as a social and personal medium) and as a prosthesis of human relational faculty (fashion as a " technology of the body "). Symptom of this centrality is that, although fashion has been part of the cinematic mise-en-scène since the birth of cinema, in recent years new genres have arisen at the encounter between cinema and advertising, e.g. short fashion films. The world of fashion became the theme or the setting of a number of television broadcasting networks or streaming services, programs and genres. Finally, it should be also considered the growing role of social media and the rise of digital influencers such as fashion bloggers, YouTube and Instagram stars, who are challenging the field of traditional fashion media and using multimediality as a resource to establish themselves as celebrities in a new media ecology. We encourage scholars from the fields of both audiovisual media and fashion studies to explore this intriguing intersection and the new horizons of audiovisual fashion. We particularly welcome contributions that discuss how audiovisual studies and fashion studies can cross-fertilize each other and expand the theoretical framework of each approach.

The European Conference on Media, Communication & Film (EuroMedia2019)

Brighton Waterfront Hotel, Brighton, UK | July 12-13, 2019.

Organised by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) in association with the IAFOR Research Centre at Osaka University and IAFOR’s Global University Partners.

Si le cinéma est représenté depuis ses origines comme un média en perdition (Creton 1997), dont le développement a pu être pensé comme une succession de crises (Sadoul 1948, Altman 1995), ce colloque entend analyser la prégnance, les reconfigurations et les usages de cette métaphore à l’heure où celle-ci tend à la fois à se déployer largement, à devenir plus labile et à se couper de son sens originel en étant désormais assimilée à une situation « normale » et « définitive » plutôt qu’exceptionnelle et temporaire (Revault d’Allonnes 2016). Dans ce contexte marqué par l’omniprésence, la généralisation ainsi que l’expansion étendue et sans fin de « la crise » dans tous les domaines (Ibid.), l’usage courant de ce terme par la profession comme les chercheur-e-s pour désigner la « zone de turbulences » que traverserait le paysage audiovisuel à l’ère numérique (Gaudreault, Marion 2013), offre l’opportunité d’interroger de façon critique le sens et la portée d’un tel concept au regard de la situation actuelle et des évolutions, bouleversements ou ruptures dont elle est ou serait porteuse.

Medienbeziehungen sind für die Herstellung medialer Identität fundamental. Seit der Frühzeit des Films wurde dessen mediale Spezifik im Medienvergleich konstituiert. Intermedialität, Remediatisierung und Medienreflexion sind verschiedene Konzepte, anhand derer das Vorkommen anderer Medien in Filmen untersucht wird, wobei sich der Fokus von der Voraussetzung von Medienspezifik zu deren performativer Herstellung verschiebt. Transmedialität interessiert sich dafür, medienübergreifende Phänomene zu denken , Multimodalität hingegen damit die mediale Einheit des Films zu problematisieren.

Este capítulo é uma breve reflexão sobre alguns dos problemas relativos à representação da violência nas imagens contemporâneas, nomeadamente as imagens televisivas e cinematográficas. Pretende-se lançar a dúvida sobre a suposta responsabilidade acrescida e a legitimidade da crítica das imagens ditas violentas para o aumento efectivo da violência social, destacando a tendência para a abstracção dessas imagens dos seus contextos sócio-culturais e políticos. O filme "A Vila" de M. Night Shyamalan (The Village, USA, 2004) é uma das referências cinematográficas para a compreensão de algumas das nossas propostas em estudo.

Today the Christmas movie is considered one of the best-loved genres in modern cinema, entertaining audiences across the globe with depictions of festive celebrations, personal reinvention and the enduring value of friendship and family. But how did the themes and conventions of this category of film come to take form, and why have they proven to be so durable that they continue to persist and be reinvented even in the present day?

From the author of A Righteously Awesome Eighties Christmas, this book takes a nostalgic look back at the Christmas cinema of the 1940s and 50s, including a discussion of classic films which came to define the genre. Considering the unforgettable storylines and distinctive characters that brought these early festive movies to life, it discusses the conventions which were established and the qualities which would define Christmas titles for decades to come.

Examining landmark features such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife and White Christmas, The Golden Age of Christmas Movies delves into some of the most successful festive films ever produced, and also reflects upon other movies of the time that—for one reason or another—have all but disappeared into the mists of cinema history. Considering films which range from the life-affirming to the warmly sentimental, The Golden Age of Christmas Movies investigates the many reasons why these memorable motion pictures have continued to entertain generations of moviegoers.

Montag, 12. März 2018, 19.00 – Depot, Breite Gasse 13, Wien / Eintritt frei – – –

Ein Abend der Kritik, Analyse, Diagnose am Material zu aktuellem Geschichtsfernsehen im (Rück)Blick auf Nationalsozialismus. Was für Inszenierungen, Anredeweisen, IdeoLogiken dienen nach dem History-TV-Boom, zumal im ORF, zur Erschließung zukunftsträchtiger Nazi-Vergangenheit – bis hin zu "Anschluss" (vorm. "Anschluß")-Produktionen im nationalkonservativ regierten Gedenkjahr und burschigen Verrenkjahr?
Ein Abend der Versprecher und Geheimnisse: Welche Sinnangebote werden schlagend, wenn Nazis als Geheimnis-Träger (bzw. "Kenner der Szene") erscheinen, von denen das Fernsehen etwas wissen möchte? Welche Erzählungen sind demgegenüber nicht rätselhaft genug, von wem möchte das Fernsehen also nichts wissen? Und wie sind rezente, mehr konzentrierte denn zerstreute, wört- und bildliche Versprecher – von Kanzler Kurzens März '38-"Jubiläum" abwärts – zu verstehen? Weniger als Defekt denn Projekt, als Wendung/Investment, Aussprechen von Versprechen und Vorhaben. Intention als Television: Vorsehen in die Ferne...
Mit Präsentationen von
– Renée Winter, Historikerin und Kulturwissenschafterin, Uni Wien
– Drehli Robnik, Theoretiker in Sachen Film und Politik, Wien
– Moderation: Monika Bernold, Dozentin für Medien- und Zeitgeschichte,     
        Uni Wien

Konzipiert von Drehli Robnik
für "PolitikProjektionen–>Viel*im*Film"
und das Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien (VWI)

France-based Austrian documentary filmmaker Hubert Sauper is not used to retrospectives of his work. But things may soon change, as the critical acclaim and gradual release of his latest film We Come as Friends (2014) in different territories highlights the intensity, sharpness and deeply critical approach of his work. I met Hubert at the 17th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival during which five of his films were shown as part of a tribute to his work. Apart from We Come as Friends and the Oscar-nominated Darwin’s Nightmare (2004), this included Kisangani Diary (1998), his first film shot in Africa, Alone with our Stories (2001), a film about women abused by their partners, and On the Road with Emil (1993), his portrait of a circus director. Screenings were sold out, and lively Q&As followed with an audience keen to engage with films exposing the catastrophic implications of the West’s apparently well-meaning interventions in (not-so) faraway lands. By the time my interview slot arrived, Sauper was tired, but still very keen to engage to a discussion that allowed him to unpack further his approach to filmmaking. By sheer good luck, I bumped into him later at the festival party, and – refreshed as he was by then – we carried on the conversation until the early hours. So what follows is a combination of “formal” interview and “informal” information gathering. A bit like how he gets access to his topics in his films, as he pointed out to me; but, clearly, without the risks, the commitment or the scale of his projects.

This paper will explore recent developments in documentary filmmaking in Greece since the advent of the financial, political and social crisis in 2009. It will draw examples from a range of films in order to foreground the different techniques and strategies that filmmakers have adopted in order to communicate aspects of the crisis. It will also examine some of the independent means of financing and disseminating the films adopted by filmmakers, esp. in the light of the abrupt closure of the national television station (ERT) in June 2013. The paper will focus in particular on the highly contrasting work of Marco Gastine and Aris Chatzistefanou, both of whom have addressed political dimensions of the crisis in their work. It will explore the different functions of documentary as a distinctive – albeit very varied – format for ‘representing reality’ and will raise a number of questions with regard to the potential role of documentary to shape perceptions and help contribute towards positive social change.