Cinema Studies // New York University

The Education Department of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University are pleased to invite you to

Woman with a Movie Camera: Alice Guy Blaché Symposium
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, New York University
36 East 8th Street, New York

Trailblazer, inventor, and innovator, Alice Guy Blaché (1873-1968) was cinema’s first female director and first female film studio owner. Her legacy extends to groundbreaking filmmaking techniques, novel approaches to narrative, and original directorial style. This symposium explores her imaginative and pioneering approach to film alongside present-day innovations in the spirit of her work.

10 am: Alice Guy Blaché as Cinema Pioneer
Richard Koszarski (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Alison McMahan (Homunculus Productions, LLC)

1 pm: Women in the Archives: On Film Preservation
Terry Lawler (New York Women in Film and Television)
Kim Tomadjoglou (Moving image preservationist, curator, historian)

2:30 pm: Emerging Media: Now and Then
Rick Altman (University of Iowa)
Virginia Heffernan (New York Times)

Admission
FREE for Whitney Museum members and NYU students, faculty, and staff
$6 for students of other institutions and senior citizens
$8 for general admission

For more information and to purchase a ticket, please visit whitney.org

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 6, 2009 – January 24, 2010.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Education Department, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. This symposium is made possible by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Additional support provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer is sponsored, in part, by American Express. Significant support is provided by Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine. Additional support is provided by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, and an anonymous foundation donor.

Richard Allen was hosted by South Asian Studies and the Institute for Cinema and Culture at the University of Iowa on a lovely fall day in the midwest for a talk on recognition narratives in Hindi cinema. That is, for example, when the mother suddenly rediscovers the son she lost as a child (as in Amar, Akbar, Anthony), or the father acknowledges the son whom he never knew (as in Awaara). Cinema, with its unique visual and aural resources, can give peculiar potency and drama to moments of recognition or missed recognition and this is especially true of Hindi cinema. In case you couldn't be there, he will be giving a version of the talk on April 14th, 2010, in the Cinema Studies Department.

by Paul Fileri

On Friday, October 9th, the Graduate Forum series, organized by students in the Cinema Studies Ph.D. program, hosted a panel discussion on the current state of publishing in the fields of cinema and media studies. The event brought together a number of the discipline’s most notable editors of scholarly journals and university press book series: John Belton (Professor of English at Rutgers University, associate editor of Film History: An International Journal, and editor of a series of books on film and culture for Columbia University Press), Heather Hendershot (Professor of Film and Media Studies at CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College, and editor of Cinema Journal), Drake Stutesman (editor of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media), and Anna McCarthy (Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Cinema Studies at New York University, and co-editor of the journal Social Text). Paul Fileri, a Ph.D. student in the Cinema Studies department, moderated the conversation.

The forum offered an opportunity for each of these distinguished editors to describe the distinctive perch afforded by his or her journal and to elaborate on the practical and intellectual perspectives each had on the scholarly work being published in the field today. The conversation developed in related directions as well, as the panel commented on the practical mechanics of the submission and editing process and layout and design, and moved on to address a host of issues that perennially preoccupy those in academic publishing, such as copyright, the prevalence of jargon (including a few of the panelists’ most detested written tics), and the possibilities and challenges emerging in work with new media, web, and digital publishing.

Anna McCarthy spoke first and addressed how Social Text—celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this fall with a large issue looking back at the journal’s collective history—has remained devoted to left-oriented cultural critique in the humanities, underpinned by the journal’s practice of collective editorial decision-making. While the journal hardly focuses on film and media studies, Professor McCarthy explained that it seeks out writing on film, media, and moving-image-related work that engages with other disciplines and topics of concern.

Heather Hendershot underlined a number of the changes evident in the pages of Cinema Journal since she assumed the editorship of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ official publication in 2008: the introduction of a book reviews section, a redesign, an effort to develop the professional association’s website, and a renewed determination to spotlight especially vital and emerging topics in the dossier provided in every issue’s In Focus section. Drake Stutesman highlighted the storied history of Framework and its connection to independent film cultures and cinemas, both in its first incarnation, when it was based in various universities in England from 1974 to 1992, and since its re-launch in 1999 with Wayne State University Press. She mentioned recent interviews with filmmakers that the journal had published and pointed to feminism, cultural politics, and prejudice as interests she would particularly like to see further addressed in its pages.

In speaking last, John Belton embraced the opportunity to note some of the specific ways that the panel consisted of a range of models for journal publication, distinguished by differing editorial missions, readerships, and institutional affiliations. With Film History: An International Journal, Professor Belton explained, the editors chose not to adopt a peer review process and can thereby take advantage of the ability to organize tightly focused thematic issues and commission articles particularly suited to the journal’s commitment to film historical studies grounded in archival research.

by Marisa Carpico

With Ventura Castro gone, you may be wondering who is supposed to answer all of your Cinema Studies questions. Well, look no further than our new Department Coordinator, Melanie Daly.

Daly, 36, came to Cinema Studies in June by way of Undergrad Film and Television where she worked for six and a half years as a registration assistant. While up on the 11th floor, Daly mostly kept records and occasionally helped advise the Department’s 1,100 students. As she puts it, “I helped them get from freshman year to Graduation.” Just as Film and TV and Cinema Studies approach studying films differently, Daly says the working environment differs between the departments as well. “It was like a 7-11 there,” she says, “we were like a service oriented office.”

As Department Coordinator for Cinema Studies, Daly has had to take on a few more responsibilities. Here, she handles PHD course proposals, oversees graduation for all levels and keeps track of grades and transfers. Most importantly, she holds regular appointments on Mondays from 2pm to 4:30pm and Thursdays from 10am to 12:45pm.

Though Daly says she has “always liked movies,” she was more focused on writing during her own college career. She received her BFA in English from Emerson College and her MFA in Creative Writing and Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Daly says she still writes, though “not as strictly as I did in the past,” and working in Tisch has made her more interested in films. Over the summer she started watching more classic films like Citizen Kane and even read Robert Sklar’s Movie Made America. Despite the classics, her favorite movie is still Richard Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life. “It’s sort of an existential movie,” she says, “it makes you really think.”

About the Writer
Marisa Carpico majors in Cinema Studies and Journalism and minors in French. This is her last semester at NYU. She writes movie reviews and articles for various blogs and for Movie-Thoughts.com, which was started by a former Cinema Studies student. She has also reported on film for Us Weekly and interned for the Entertainment Section at Metro: New York.

Guest Speaker
Laurent Jullier // “French Contemporary Cinema & the Music Video Effect”

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 6:15pm
721 Broadway, 6th floor, Michelson Theater

New York University’s La Maison Française & the Department of Cinema Studies present a guest lecture by Laurent Jullier.

Postmodern cinema synaesthetically associates powerful moments in the music with shooting and editing (what the French call “effet-clip”). It is not surprising that an "authentic" postmodern director like Luc Besson should make extensive use of this third way of conceiving the soundtrack, but this talk will show that young authors of “post-Nouvelle Vague” French cinema almost do the same, trying to combine the Brechtian imperatives of modern cinema and music video effect.

Laurent Jullier is a professor at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and is the author of numerous books and articles on cinema.

This event is free and open to the public.

A special themed issue of The Moving Image (journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists) has just hit the newsstands (and Project Muse database). The Orphan Film issue (officially vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2009) was edited by associate professor Dan Streible. The journal includes twelve articles, all expanded versions of papers presented at the department's Orphan Film Symposium in March 2008.

• Dan Streible, "The State of Orphan Films"
• Paolo Cherchi Usai, "Are All (Analog) Films 'Orphans'? A Pre-digital Appraisal"
• Cinema Studies PhD candidate Jennifer Zwarich, "The Bureaucratic Activist: Federal Filmmakers and Social Change in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Tick Eradication Campaign"
• Juana Suárez and Ramiro Arbeláez, "Garras de Oro (The Dawn of Justice--Alborada de justicia: The Intriguing Orphan of Colombian Silent Films"
• Julia J. Noordegraaf and Elvira Pouw, "Extended Family Films: Home Movies in the State-Sponsored Archive"
• Cinema Studies alum Charles Musser, "Carl Marzani & Union Films: Making Left-wing Documentaries during the Cold War, 1946-1953"
• Devin Orgeron, "Nothing Could Be Finer? George Stoney’s Tar Heel Family and the Tar Heel State on Film"
• Jennifer Horne, "Experiments in Propaganda: Reintroducing James Blue's Colombia Trilogy"
• Craig Breaden, "Carl Sanders and Albert Maysles: Georgia Politics Meets Direct Cinema, 1969-1970"
• Eric Breitbart, "The Army, Newsreel, and The Army Film"
• Paul Cullum, "Old-Time Religion: Christian Experimentalism and Preaching to the 'Unchurched'"
• Mark Quigley, "Between Sign-Off Films and Test Patterns: Insight at UCLA"
• + Tributes to Bill O’Farrell by Rosemary Bergeron & Sam Kula, Ken Weissman, Charles Tepperman, Nancy Watrous, and Karan Sheldon

Coincidentally, the issue includes book reviews by NYU Cinema Studies staffer Zack Lischer-Katz on Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: Color Design in the 1930s by Scott Higgins, as well as alum Mia Firm (M.A. '07) on Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnation by Jonathan Auerbach.

The cover of The Moving Image 9.1 features a frame enlargement from Fox Movietone newsreel item, "Dedication of 'Park Row,'" recorded on the Fox lot in Hollywood, January 27, 1928. An actor impersonating "Leon Trotsky of the Soviet Republic!" (as John Ford introduces him) stands before the microphone. The faux Fox Trotsky is Boris Charsky, an actor in Raoul Walsh’s film The Red Dance (December 1928). Image courtesy of University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections.

PhD candidate Anuja Jain has published an essay entitled "Melodramatic Imaginings: Representations of Sectarianism within Hindi Popular Cinema and Indian Documentaries" in the new anthology Narratives of Indian Cinema. The book is published by Primus Books (2009) and edited by Manju Jain.

About the Book
The anthology attempts to address some of the questions that arise in a consideration of the complex role that cinema has performed and continues to perform in the public sphere in India. The focus of this volume is on issues related to the shifting responses of the colonial state, the Indian nationalists and intellectuals, and the popular press to the emerging medium of cinema and its creative potential. The collection of essays examines the politics of violence, communalism, and terrorism as negotiated in Indian cinema; the representations of identitarian politics; and the complex ideological underpinnings of literary adaptations.

About the Editor
Manju Jain retired as Professor from the Department of English, University of Delhi. She is the author of T.S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years (Cambridge, 1992) and A Critical Reading of the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot (Delhi, 1991). She is currently translating Premchand's novel Rangbhoomi.

Contributors
Ved Prakash Baruah ◆ Nandini Chandra ◆ Seymour Chatman ◆ Rashmi Doraiswamy ◆ Karen Gabriel ◆ Priya Jaikumar ◆ Anuja Jain ◆ Shweta Sachdeva Jha ◆ Lalit Joshi ◆ Sonali Pattnaik ◆ M. Madhava Prasad ◆ Poonam Trivedi ◆ Valentina Vitali

Guest Lecture
Louisa Schein // Affect, Transnational Practice, and Hmong Media Across Borders

Friday, October 30, 2009, 2-4pm
721 Broadway, Room 652

Hmong diasporic media production reveals the fraught junctures at which transpacific co-ethnics meet across difference as well as identification. In this excerpt from her book-in-progress, Schein does a close reading of the production, consumption and texts of Hmong transnational melodramatic videos in terms of the imbrication of structural strains and affective evocation.

Louisa Schein teaches Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers New Brunswick. She has done longterm fieldwork among Hmong Americans for three decades and has worked with the minority Miao on issues of gender and cultural politics in China. She is currently writing a book, based on her on ethnography of Hmong transnational video production: Rewind to Home: Hmong Media and Gendered Diaspora, and working on two documentary films.

Recently Schein has followed very closely the production of Eastwood's film Gran Torino since casting began in Spring of 2008 and, with a Hmong filmmaker, she has two critical articles forthcoming on the film.

Cinema Studies Colloquium
Professor Anna McCarthy // "Television and the Architecture of Integration in Postwar New York"
MIAP Student Jennifer Blaylock // "Preserving Ghana's Film History"

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 6:15pm
721 Broadway, 6th floor, Seminar Room 652

The colloquium is a weekly public gathering of the Cinema Studies community, designed to foster the exchange of ideas between students, faculty, and guests. Anna McCarthy and Jennifer Blaylock will present new work for roundtable discussion.

Refreshments will be served.

Dain Goding, a senior in the Cinema Studies program, has begun hosting his own show on NYU-TV that aspires to expose NYU students to a wide range of important yet entertaining films, ranging from obscure and under-appreciated titles to beloved classics. Each month he programs a series of four movies to be broadcast on NYU's University Channel (channel 14 on the CampusCable network). The theme changes every month and although the four featured films are often quite different from one another, all relate to the theme in some way. The weekly show is programmed until the end of the 2009-2010 school year.

October's theme, "Laughing to Death", concludes its series of horror-comedies with the genre's ultimate classic, Young Frankenstein. In perhaps the most successful parody of all time, uninspired young medical professor Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) returns to his ancestral home in Transylvania and, with the help of assistants Inga (Teri Garr) and Igor (Marty Feldman), follows his grandfather's blueprint for creating a monstrous man (Peter Boyle) out of spare parts from corpses. The plan goes awry when Frederick accidentally implants an abnormal brain.

The movie will be broadcast, along with Dain's introduction, at 8pm on Wednesday, October 28th. Check back every Wednesday for a new film.

For more information, check out the program's website.

About the Host/Co-Creator
Dain Goding is a senior in the Cinema Studies department of Tisch School of the Arts. He is interested in film restoration and the public exhibition of classic films, and his dream is to own his own repertory movie theater. He admires the films of Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Roman Polanski, and Val Lewton, and has a particular interest in American horror films of the 1930s and 1940s. He once saw Cat People on the big screen three times in one week.

[Editor's Note: We hope you will watch Dain's show and provide him with feedback! We've provided his email above and know that he would appreciate hearing from you.]