MODL3055
Module Reading List
Current Enquiries into Film Studies,
2021/22, Semester 1
Vlad Strukov
v.strukov@leeds.ac.uk
Tutor information is taken from the Module Catalogue
Vlad Strukov
v.strukov@leeds.ac.uk
Tutor information is taken from the Module Catalogue
On this page:
Week 1 'Introduction'
There is no core reading or viewing for this week.
Week 2 ‘Film Festivals’
Core reading
- De Valck, Marijke. 2016. “Introduction: What Is a Film Festival? How to Study Festivals and Why You Should.” Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice. pp. 1–11.
- Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. “Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe.” European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press. pp. 82–107.
- Johnson, Rachel. 2020. “A Brutal Humanism for the New Millennium? The Legacy of Neorealism in Conemporary Cinema of Migration”. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies. [forthcoming].
Core viewing
- Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016)
Further reading
- Make yourself familiar with the Film Festival Studies Network website: http://www.filmfestivalresearch.org/ Here you will find bibliographies; blog posts; lists of film festivals, film festival associations and publications; and much more.
- De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
- Dovey, Lindiwe (2015). Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals: Film Festivals, Time, Resistance. Framing Film Festivals 1. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Iordanova Dina, ed. 2012. The Film Festival Reader. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies.
- Jenkins, Tricia. 2018. International Film Festivals: Contemporary Cultures and History Beyond Venice and Cannes. London: Bloomsbury.
- Wong, Cindy Hing-Yuk. 2011. Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Further viewing
- Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008) Available on Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Week 3 ‘Participatory Filmmaking and International Development’
Core reading
- Bill Nichols (2001) Introduction to Documentary - full text here:
- http://skola.restarted.hr/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Bill-Nichols-Introduction-to-documentary.pdf
- Shannon Walsh (2016) ‘Critiquing the politics of participatory video and the dangerous romance of liberalism’, Area, 48.4, 405–411
- Stephen Crocker (2008) ‘Filmmaking and the Politics of Remoteness: The Genesis of the Fogo Process on Fogo Island, Newfoundland’. http://www.globalislands.net/userfiles/_canada_Newfoundland6.pdf
Core viewing
- Chronique d'un été/Chronicle of a summer (1961, Rouch, Jean and Morin, Edgar)
- The Born-Free Generation, Phendulani’s Story and Me, (2018, Phendulani Manyala, Paul Cooke) Available online at https://filmfreeway.com/TheBornFreeGenerationPhendulanisStoryandMe
Further Reading
- Jamie Berthe (2018), ‘Disruptive forms: the cinema of Jean Rouch', Studies in French Cinema, 18, 248-251
- Barbara Bruni (2002) ‘Jean Rouch: Cinéma-vérité, Chronicle of a Summer and The Human Pyramid’, http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/rouch/
- Paul Cooke and Inés Soria-Donlan (eds) (2019) Participatory Arts in International Development, Routledge, 2019
- Elizabeth-Jan Milne et al (eds) (2012), Handbook of participatory video, AltaMira Press.
- J. Ten Brink (2007). Building bridges : the cinema of Jean Rouch. London: Wallflower.
Week 4 ‘Feminist Media Historiography’
Core reading
- Shelley Stamp, ‘Feminist Media History and the Work Ahead’, Screening the Past, Issue 40 (Sept. 2015). Available at: http://www.screeningthepast.com/2015/08/feminist-media-historiography-and-the-work-ahead/
- Women’s Film and Television History Network (Christine Gledhill, Laraine Porter, Debashree Mukherjee, Melanie Bell, Ulrike Sieglor, Rashmi Sawhney).
- ‘Researching Women’s Film History’, The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, (Wiley Blackwell, 2019) – copy available on Minerva.
- Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight (eds.) Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future (Illinois: Illinois University Press, 2015). ‘Introduction’ (pp. 1-12)
- For accessible case studies/examples of methodology also see articles in this collection by Michele Leigh, ‘Reading Between the Lines: History and the Studio Owner’s Wife’ (pp. 42-52) and Luke McKernan, ‘Searching for Mary Murillo’ (pp. 78-92).
Viewing List / Websites
This type of research doesn’t take the ‘film’/text as its object of enquiry per se. In lieu of viewing I would like students to consult the following websites:
- Women Film Pioneers Project https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/
- Women’s Film and Television History Network (UK/Ireland) https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/
Further reading
- Melanie Bell, ‘Learning to listen: histories of women’s soundwork in the British film industry’, Screen, Volume 58, Issue 4, Winter 2017, (pp. 437–457).
- Erin Hill, Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2016). ‘Introduction’ (pp. 1-15)
- Natalie Wreyford, Shelley Cobb, ‘Data and Responsibility: Toward a Feminist Methodology for Producing Historical Data on Women in the Contemporary UK Film Industry Feminist Media Histories, Vol. 3 No. 3, Summer 2017; (pp. 107-132)
- Vicky Ball and Melanie Bell (eds), ‘Working Women, Women’s Work: Production, History, Gender’. Special Edition for Journal of British Cinema and Television, Vol. 10.3: 2013 (including ‘Introduction’, pp. 547-562).
Week 5 ‘Approaches to Genre’
This session will focus on genre as a concept in film studies, moving from early film theories use of the term (Bazin, Schatz), historical perspectives and critical inflections via a consideration of the film Girlfight (2000).
Core reading
- Mary Beltràn ‘Mas Macha: The New Latina Action Hero’ in Yvonne Tasker ed. Action and Adventure Cinema, Routledge, 2004.
- Yvonne Tasker “Bodies and genres in transition: Girlfight and Real Women Have Curves” in Christine Gledhill (ed) Genre and Gender: Cross-Currents in Postwar Cinema, University of Illinois Press, 2012, pp.84-95.
Core viewing
Girlfight (Karyn Kusama, 2000)
Further Reading
- César Alberto Albarrán-Torres and Dan Golding, ‘Creed: legacy franchising, race and masculinity in contemporary boxing films’ in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 33:3, 2019, 310-323.
- Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Social Implications of the Hollywood Genres’ (1971) in Barry Grant ed. Film Genre Reader IV. OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (CHG 10/10/2019)
- Barry Grant, Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology, 2007.
- Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: formulas, filmmaking, and the studio system, 1981.
Further Viewing:
Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015) Available on Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Week 6 ‘Videographic Criticism’
Core reading
- Chris Keathley and Jason Mittell, ‘Criticism in Sound and Image’, in Keathley, Mittell and Grant, The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound & Image (Montreal: Caboose, 2019), pp. 11-29 The volume is available open access at http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/contents
- Jason Mittell, ‘Videographic Criticism as a Digital Humanities Method’, in Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, ed. by Matthew Gold and Lauren Klein (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019) https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-f2acf72c-a469-49d8-be35-67f9ac1e3a60/section/b6dea70a-9940-497e-b7c5-930126fbd180
- Alan O’Leary, Creator’s statement for ‘Occupying Time: The Battle of Algiers’, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 6.3, 2019, at http://mediacommons.org/intransition/occupying-time-battle-algiers
- Thomas van den Berg ‘Aims’, in Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video (2016), at http://scalar.usc.edu/works/film-studies-in-motion/aims?path=introduction-1
Core viewing (videoessays)
- The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966; 180 minutes)
- Alan O’Leary, ‘Occupying Time: The Battle of Algiers’, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 6.3, 2019 at http://mediacommons.org/intransition/occupying-time-battle-algiers
- Alan O’Leary ‘No Voiding Time: A Deformative Videoessay’ (37 minutes)
- Please also view the two short introductory videos on the definition of videographic criticism and the venues for it here:
Further reading and viewing
Videoessays
- Have a look at some of the video essays, creator statements and peer reviews in the online [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies at http://mediacommons.org/intransition/archives
- Catherine Grant, ‘SCREEN MEMORIES: A Video Essay on SMULTRONSTÄLLET / WILD STRAWBERRIES’
- kogonada, ‘What is Neorealism?’
- Kevin B. Lee, ‘TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE (a desktop documentary)’
- Jason Mittell, ‘Object Oriented Breaking Bad’
Listening and reading
- Listen to some of the interviews done by Will DiGravio on his Videoessay Podcast at https://thevideoessay.com/work
- Christine Becker (ed.), ‘Videographic Criticism’, ‘In Focus’ batch of articles in Cinema Journal 56: 4 (201). Available at https://cdn.ymaws.com/cmstudies.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/in_focus_archive/InFocus_56-4.pdf
- David Bordwell, ‘Parametric Narration’, in Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 274-310
- Catherine Grant, ‘Screen Memories: A Video Essay on Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries’, Cinergie: Il cinema e le altre arte 13 (2018). Text available at https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/view/7914/8115
- Christian Keathley, ‘La Caméra-stylo: Notes on video criticism and cinephilia’, in The Language and Style of Film Criticism, ed. by Andrew Klevan and Alex Clayton (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 176-91
- Christian Keathley, ‘Creator’s Statement’ [sic] for kogonada’s ‘What is Neorealism?’, http://mediacommons.org/intransition/2014/02/28/what-neorealism-kogonada, [in]Transition 1:1 (2014)
- Christian Keathley, Jason Mittell and Catherine Grant (eds.), The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image (Montreal: Caboose, 2019). The volume is available open access at http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/contents
- Alan O’Leary, Chapter 4 in The Battle of Algiers (Milan: Mimesis International, 2019)
- Alan O’Leary and Dana Renga, ‘Teaching Italian Cinema and Television and Videographic Criticism’, The Italianist 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/02614340.2020.1790276
- Matthew Solomon (ed.), ‘Audiovisual pedagogies', Special section of Screen 60:3 (2019), pp. 449-482
- Thomas van den Berg and Miklós Kiss, ‘Aims’, in Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video (Groningen: University of Groningen, 2016), available at https://scalar.usc.edu/works/film-studies-in-motion/aims?path=introduction-1
Week 8 ‘Film Culture’
Core reading
Stephanie Dennison, "Cinema and Public Security: The Elite Squad Phenomenon", in Remapping Brazilian Film Culture in the 21st Century (Routledge 2019).
Core viewing
Elite Squad (Jose Padilha, 2007)
Further reading
Janet Harbord, Film Cultures (Sage: 2002)
Turner, G. (ed) The Film Cultures Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
Further viewing
Elite Squad: the Enemy Within (Jose Padilha, 2010)
Week 9 ‘Facing the Mind in French Cinema’
Core reading
- Doane, Mary Ann (2003) 'The Close-Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema', Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Volume 14, Number 3, pp. 89-111
- Ezra, Elizabeth (2010) 'Cléo's Masks: Regimes of Objectification in the French New Wave', Yale French Studies, No. 118/119, Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture, pp. 177-190
Core viewing
- Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962)
Further reading
- Elsaesser, Thomas (2010) 'Cinema as Mirror and Face' in Film theory : an introduction through the senses (New York: Routledge), pp. 55-82 (available on library website)
- Steimatsky, Noa (2016) 'Preface: face moving image' in The Face on Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp.1-26 (available on library website)
- Coplan, Amy (2006) 'Catching Characters’ Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction Film', Film Studies, Volume 8, pp. 26-38 (attached) Available from https://hbkportal.co.uk/FilmStudies/documents/Emotionalcontagion.pdf. [CHG Library, 11/10/2019]
- B Lee, Kevin (2011) 'The Spielberg Face' [online] available at: https://vimeo.com/199572277
Further viewing
- Le samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
- Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Available on Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Week 10 ‘Reenactment’
Core reading
- Bill Nichols, Documentary Reenactment and the Fantasmatic Subject, Critical Inquiry Vol. 35, No. 1 (Autumn 2008), pp. 72-89.
- Re-enactment, history of violence and documentary film. in: ten Brink, J. and Oppenheimer, J. (ed.) Killer images: documentary film, memory and the performance of violence New York Columbia University Press, pp.176-189.
Core viewing
- S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Rithy Panh, 2003). Available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uBA1UGI5JE
Further Readings
- Ivone Margulies, In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2019).
- Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains Art and war in times of theatrical reenactment (New York: Routledge, 2011).
- Oppenheimer, Joshua, Michael Uwemedimo (2009), ‘Show of force: a cinema-séance of power and violence in Sumatra’s plantation belt’, Critical Quarterly, 51: 1, 84–110 OCR REQUESTED BY LIBRARY (HT 23/11/2020)
This list was last updated on 30/09/2020