Repulsive Film Studies? New issue of FILM-PHILOSOPHY on Cinematic Disgust

Life's Work: The Films of Roman Polanski - Chapter 5: Repulsion, the Dark Art of Desire written and narrated by Kim Morgan and edited by Matt Zoller Seitz. Video Essay Series hosted by PressPlay at IndieWire

[Tarja] Laine’s insights on disgust have important implications for thinking about the aesthetic paradox of unpleasure. In her assessment, [Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)] offers a particularly pertinent limit-case in which disgust is not readily convertible into pleasurable cognitive satisfaction. Ultimately, her reading of the film suggests that we may need to re-think theories that construct unpleasure as antithetical to aesthetic experience. In this, she joins Korsmeyer and other thinkers who have recently suggested that we may need to abandon the pleasure-unpleasure binary, in favor of thinking about disgust as ‘modifier of attention, intensifying for a host of reasons some experience that the participant would rather have continue than not’ (Korsmeyer 2011, 118). Indeed, as Laine puts it, it is possible that what we value in cinematic renderings of disgust is precisely the ‘vivid and immediate experience’ that it offers us, ‘regardless of its non-pleasurable, non-rewarding features’. [Tina Kendall in her editor's 'Introduction: Tarrying with Disgust' for the Film-Philosophy special issue on Disgust, discussing Tarja Laine's brilliant article for that issue, as well as citing Carolyn Korsmeyer's Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)]

Many of you will already have heard about the new issue of Film-Philosophy that came out in late December, but Film Studies For Free is obsessively completist in its mission to bring you news of notable, open access, film studies, hence this, otherwise possibly superfluous, entry.

Besides, it's a brilliantly provocative special issue which successfully takes explorations of filmic disgust well beyond the, to date, canonical or entrenched Film Studies approaches to film horror. Despite some of the attractions of these approaches, for those of us marking undergraduate essays on horror cinema and television from time to time, this greater plurality of conceptual pathways into these topics is a Very Good Thing - that is, in FSFF's ever so humble view.

Thanks so much for that, and more, Film-Philosophy!

Vol 15, No 2 (2011): The Disgust Issue

Guest Editor: Tina Kendall

Articles

• Introduction: Tarrying with Disgust PDF Tina Kendall
• Toward a Poetics of Cinematic Disgust PDF Julian Hanich
• Imprisoned in Disgust: Roman Polanski's Repulsion PDF Tarja Laine 
• Laura Dern’s Vomit, or, Kant and Derrida in Oz PDF Eugenie Brinkema 
• Chew on This: Disgust, Delay, and the Documentary Image in Food, Inc. PDF Jennifer Marilynn Barker
• Body Horror and Post-Socialist Cinema: Gy?rgi P?lfi’s Taxidermia PDF Steven Shaviro

Book Reviews

• Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones and Bel?n Vidal (2010) Cinema at the Periphery PDF Rowena Santos Aquino
• Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, eds. (2010) Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead PDF Caroline Walters
• Joseph Mai (2010) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne PDF R. D. Crano
• Boaz Hagin (2010) Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema PDF Richard Lindley Armstrong
• Peter Lee-Wright (2010) The Documentary Handbook PDF Wes Skolits
• William Brown, Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin (2010) Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe PDF Alison Frank
• Richard Misek (2010) Chromatic Cinema PDF Robert Barry
• Alain Badiou (2010) Cin?ma PDF Manuel Ramos
• Annie van den Oever, ed. (2010) Ostrannenie PDF Lara Alexandra Cox
• David Martin-Jones (2010) Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities PDF John Marmysz

New Issue of CINEMA: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image

Jeff Wall's photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Today, in its continuing series of catch up posts on new offerings from open access film e-journals, Film Studies For Free brings you links to the contents of the latest issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image.

Of particular interest, this time, are Tom McClelland's clear-eyed account of the respects 'in which the medium of film and the discipline of philosophy can intersect', Agust?n Zarzosa's detailed evaluation of Ranci?re’s criticism of Deleuze, and Temenuga Trifonova's terrific discussion of the ways in which contemporary photography, like that of Jeff Wall mentioned above, 'seeks to reclaim the cinematic within the photographic from within the twilight of indexicality'.

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, No. 2 (2011)

Abstracts and Contributors

Articles

• Tom McClelland, 'The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy'

• Agust?n Zarzosa, 'Layering Images, Thwarting Fables: Deleuze, Ranci?re and the Allegories of Cinema'

• Temenuga Trifonova, 'The Twilight of the Index'

• Flore Chevaillier, 'Semiotic Images'

• Gabriella Calchi-Novati, '“Biopolitics on Screen”: Aernout Mik's Moving-Image Installations' ONLINE

Interview

• Questions for Jacques Ranci?re around his book Les ?carts du cin?ma (English version and French version): Conducted by Susana Nascimento Duarte

Conference Report

• William Brown on the Film-Philosophy Conference (Liverpool John Moores University, 6-8 July, 2011)

In Portuguese: 

• Leonor Areal, 'Para uma teoria do clich?' 

• Teresa Pedro, 'T?cnicas cinematogr?ficas e actos mentais: The Photoplay de Hugo M?nsterberg'

Translation

• Mauro Carbone, trad. D?bora Quaresma e Davide Scarso, 'Merleau-Ponty e o pensamento do cinema'

New Issue of MOVIE: Lang, Preminger, découpage, PSYCHO and its remake, and filmmakers' choices

Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

Film Studies For Free was thrilled that a new issue of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism -- the best yet of this relaunched journal -- has recently hit the online newstands.

Issue 3 contains part 2 of the marvellous Fritz Lang Dossier, with contributions by, among others, V. F. Perkins, Adrian Martin, Peter Evans, Stella Bruzzi, Ed Gallafent, and Deborah Thomas.

There are also excellent articles on Preminger's film art, Psycho and its remake, and filmmakers' choices by Christian Keathley, Alex Clayton and John Gibbs.

Links to all items are set out for you below.

• The Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 2
  

• Rush to Judgement: Imperfect Justice in Fury (1936)
  Stella Bruzzi
• You Only Live Once (1937)
  V. F. Perkins
• Going Straight: The Past and the Future in The Return of Frank James (1940)
  Edward Gallafent
• The Woman in the Window (1944)
  Mark Rappaport
• Guess-Work: Scarlet Street (1945)
  Adrian Martin
• The Big Heat: Acts of Violence (1953)
  Peter William Evans
• Human Desire (1954)
  Deborah Thomas
• Lang With Lacan: The Power of the Gaze in Moonfleet (1955)
  Peter Benson

• Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of D?coupage
  Christian Keathley
• The Texture of Performance in Psycho and its Remake
  Alex Clayton
• The Cry of the Owl: Investigating Decision-Making in a Contemporary Feature Film
  John Gibbs

This issue edited by Douglas Pye and Michael Walker. Designed by Lucy Fife Donaldson, John Gibbs, and James MacDowell.

New WORLD PICTURE on 'Wrong'

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo

A Fire in My Belly is an awkward work that at first glance can appear to be both hyperbolic or overreaching and inconsistent or contradictory. This short film resembles a travel log, an illustrated lecture, or an educational slide show that mixes the unpitying gaze of a mondo cane film (unwrapped mummies with gaping mouths, unusually disabled bodies performing daily tasks, animals forced into fighting by their human captors) with the deliriously overwrought expressionism of 1980s music videos (spinning eyeballs aflame, strobed flashes of milk splashes). The film also recalls major moments in the visual avant-garde of the twentieth century by invoking 1920s surrealist iconography, aping Eisenstein’s clunkier intellectual montages, and echoing the idolatry of Kenneth Anger’s films which themselves borrow from the formal idioms religious and exploitation films. A Fire in My Belly overtly conflates symbolic registers and gains momentum by joining documentary footage of workers performing precarious tasks or snakes devouring their prey to staged studio shots of symbolic transactions involving leaking blood, throwing money, spinning globes, or torched marionettes.  [from Karl Schoonover's essay 'David Wojnarowicz's Graven Image: Cinema, Censorship, and Queers'; hyperlinks added by FSFF]

Following its much appreciated seasonal break, a rather bleary-eyed but well-rested Film Studies For Free wishes its readers a very happy new year.

Its first few posts of 2012 will be devoted to catching up with some new issues of online film and moving image studies related journals, starting with a listing of links to a new collection of work from one of the most original of such journals: World Picture on the concept of 'wrong'.

FSFF particularly liked Schoonover on Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly, (as above), Schwartz's riff on Pasolini, Malsky on dystopian sound, and Manon and Temkin on glitch art.

WORLD PICTURE 6, 2011: Table of Contents

• Mark Andrejevic: Estrangement 2.0
• Bishnupriya Ghosh: Governing by Wrong
• Seb Franklin: Is Attention Really Immaterial? Visual Culture after Post-Fordism
• Danny Hayward: The Essential Standpoint of Man: An Autopsy, In Three Parts
• Sam Lipsyte in conversation with Brian Price and Meghan Sutherland: Acategorical Imperatives
• Matt Malsky: Being Heard: Listening In–Sound and Our Dystopian Present
• Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin: Notes on Glitch
• Daniel Temkin—gl1tchw0rks gall3ry
• Davide Panagia: The Notion of Pantry: A Speculative Defense of Unuse
• Brian Price: A Theory of Regret
• Lucy Raven: Tech City
• Scott C. Richmond: “Dude, That's Just Wrong”: Mimesis, Identification, Jackass
• Karl Schoonover: David Wojnarowicz's Graven Image: Cinema, Censorship, and Queers
• Louis-Georges Schwartz: A Futher Explanation of My Last Error By Pier Paolo Pasolini
• A. L. Steiner: WELCOME TO MY RECTANGLE

FSFF's Favourite Online Film Studies Resources in 2011

Insightful interview (in English) with filmmaker and academic Clio Barnard about her experimental documentary The Arbor on the life and work of Andrea Dunbar, British writer of the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob, too. The Arbor was one of Film Studies For Free's author's favourite films seen in 2011 (interview December 5, 2011)

Not since its December 2008 blog entry A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs has the otherwise intrepid Film Studies For Free ventured into the rather crowded, online territory of end-of-year lists.

But, as it signs off on its seasonal break until the first few days of 2012, FSFF thought the time was right for a listing of links to its favourite, openly accessible, online Film Studies resources in 2011.

Thanks so much to all who worked hard to bring you these openly accessible treasures in the first place. And thanks also, dear readers, for being there to appreciate them.

FSFF very much looks forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

1. Top seven film and moving image studies history resources online in 2011: 
1. The Colonial Film Project archive plus two freely accessible chapters by those involved in the project: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 32 sample pages; and Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire (BFI/Palgrave, 2011) and 25 sample pages
2. Media History Digital Library
3. The Turconi Project
4. EU Screen
5. European Film Gateway
6. The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories
7. The Kracauer Lectures website
2. Top five, most consistently brilliant Film Studies bloggers:
1. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson for Observations on Film Art
2. Luke McKernan for The Bioscope (also see McKernan's two new ScoopIt! projects: The Bioscope and Screen Research)
3. Roland-Fran?ois Lack for The Cine-Tourist, The Daily Map and The BlowUp Moment (also see The Autopsies Group website) and also on Twitter
4. Dan North for Spectacular Attractions (also see The Cinema of Puppetry) and also on Twitter
5. Tie between Michael J. Anderson and Lisa K. Broad for Tativille and Ten Best Films; and  Omar Ahmed for Ellipsis
3. Best new Film Studies blog: Katherine Groo's Half/Films
4. Best 'media studies approaches to film and moving image studies' blog - tie between:
1. Just TV by Jason Mittell (also on Twitter)
2. Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style by Anne Helen Petersen (also on Twitter)
3. The Chutry Experiment by Chuck Tryon (also on Twitter)
4. The Negarponti Files by Negar Mottahedeh (also on Twitter and Facebook)
5. Most consistently original, Film and Moving Image Studies writer active online - a tie between: 
1. Adrian Martin (e.g. see all the links here)
2. Nicholas Rombes (e.g. see here and here)
3. Amanda Ann Klein (also see here)
4. David Bordwell
5. Kristin Thompson (also see here and here)
6. Jeffrey Sconce (also see here)
6. Best Film Studies informed, commercial film criticism website: Alternate Takes
7. Best new online film journal in 2011 - a tie between:
1. LOLA edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu
2. ALPHAVILLE edited by Laura Rascaroli and others at the University of Cork
3. JOAN'S DIGEST edited by Miriam Bale
8. Best recently established online academic Film Studies journal: MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism
9. Top twelve established, online, (mostly) English language, Film Studies journals:
1. Screening the Past
2. Film-Philosophy
3. SCOPE
4. Jump Cut
5. Senses of Cinema
6. MEDIASCAPE
7. Participations
8. Bright Lights Film Journal
9. CINEPHILE
10. Offscreen
11. La Furia Umana 
12. World Picture Journal
13. For links to one hundred more journals (including some brilliant, primarily non-English language journals, like Transit: Cine..., see here)
10. Most generous, Open Access Film Studies author: Thomas Elsaesser for the below freely accessible e-books and for the hundreds of further resources linked to from his website:
1. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), A Second Life : German Cinema's First Decades (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
2. Elsaesser, Thomas (ed), Harun Farocki: Working on the Sight-Lines (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
3. Elsaesser, Thomas,  Jan Simons, Lucette Bronk (eds), Writing for the Medium: Television in transition (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
4. Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)
5. Elsaesser, Thomas, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
6. Elsaesser, Thomas, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
11. Best online cinephile news and criticism site: MUBI Notebook (thanks so much to David Hudson and Daniel Kasman for their brilliant work)
12. Best cinephile salon site - a tie between:
1. Dave Kehr's place
2. Girish Shambu's place
13. Best seven multimedia/multiplatform/multichannel-style film and moving image studies websites:
1. FlowTV
2. In Media Res 
3. Moving Image Source 
4. Screen Machine 
5. Screen Culture
6. Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture 
7. Critical Studies in Television
14. Most impactful online Film Studies work in 2011 - a tie between:
1. Tim Smith's work on how movie viewers watch, showcased here as well as on his blog Continuity Boy and his research site.
2. Matthias Stork's video essays on Chaos Cinema (see FSFF's original post on this)
3. Aitor Gametxo's video essay: Variation: THE SUNBEAM, David W. Griffith, 1912
4. Steven Shaviro's work on Post-Cinematic Affect: see here for lots of links
15. FSFF's favourite Film Studies academic links on Twitter: @filmdrblog (also see the Film Doctor's actual blog)
16. FSFF's favourite non-academic, film studies-informed, online film critics - a tie between:
1. Srikanth Srinivasan (also on Twitter)
2. Matt Zoller Seitz (also on Twitter
3. Kevin B Lee (also on Twitter here and here)
4. Jim Emerson (also on Twitter)
5. Jonathan Rosenbaum (also on Twitter)
6. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (also on Twitter)
7. Farran Smith Nehme (also on Twitter)
8. Marilyn Ferdinand and Roderick Heath (also on Twitter here and here) and see Rod's blog
9. Anne Billson (also writing for the Guardian and on Twitter)
10. David Cairns (also on Twitter)
17. FSFF's ten favourite FSFF blogposts (and blogpost clusters) in 2011: 
1. On 'Affect' and 'Emotion' in Film and Media Studies
2. Double Vision: Links in Memory of Ra?l Ruiz, a Filmmaking Legend and ¡Viva Ra?l Ruiz!
3. V.F. Perkins on FILM AS FILM and More Victor Perkins Video Interviews Online from Saarbruecken 
4. The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andr?a Picard and Alan Franey 
5. The Tree of Links: Terrence Malick Studies 
6. Ingmar Bergman Studies 
7. Viewing Modes and Mise en Scene: 50 YEARS ON by Christian Keathley and The Obscurity of the Obvious: On the Films of Otto Preminger 
8. On Figural Analysis in Film Studies 
9. Liquid Atmospherics: On the cinema of Wong Kar-wai 
10. Its own video essay posts: Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE (1944); Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love; Links on videographical film criticism, editing, 'intensified continuity', 'chaos cinema', 'hapticity' and (post) cinematic affect; and Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film Studies 
18. FSFF's most read post in 2011 by some distance was "An incarnation of the modern": In Memory of Miriam Bratu Hansen, 1949-2011
19. Most popular resource at FSFF: Open Access Film E-books List
20. Best search engine for Open Access Film Studies (and other Arts and Humanities resources): JURN (thanks, as ever, to the indefatigable David Haden)