University of St Andrews - Centre for Film Studies

University of St Andrews - Centre for Film Studies
Report on Activities during 2013 / 2014 academic year
Contents
0. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 3
1. PEOPLE ................................................................................................................................ 4
MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................................................ 4
VISITING SCHOLARS AND PART-TIME STAFF .............................................................................. 4
NEW APPOINTMENTS .................................................................................................................. 4
DEPARTURES............................................................................................................................... 5
POSTGRADUATES ........................................................................................................................ 5
ALUMNI………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
2. PUBLICATIONS ................................................................................................................. 7
FILM FESTIVAL YEARBOOK SERIES ............................................................................................ 7
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS FOR THE PERIOD SEPTEMBER 2013/ AUGUST 2014 .................. 7
PUBLICATIONS BY MEMBERS FOR THE PERIOD SEPTEMBER 2013/ AUGUST 2014 ........................ 8
3. TALKS ................................................................................................................................ 12
SEMINAR SERIES ....................................................................................................................... 12
TALKS AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS BY MEMBERS FOR THE PERIOD SEPTEMBER 2013 /
AUGUST 2014 ........................................................................................................................... 12
4. FUNDING AND AWARDS ............................................................................................... 19
5. EVENTS/ACTIVITIES ..................................................................................................... 21
6. POSTGRADUATE ............................................................................................................ 22
7. PROJECTS ......................................................................................................................... 24
REF 2014: IMPACT CASE STUDIES............................................................................................ 24
NEW WEBSITE FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM STUDIES .......................................................... 24
ST ANDREWS FILM STUDIES PUBLISHING .................................................................................. 25
FRAMES: CINEMA JOURNAL ...................................................................................................... 25
THE REEL FILM SOCIETY .......................................................................................................... 25
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8. OTHER / KT/ IMPACT ..................................................................................................... 26
9. FORTHCOMING .............................................................................................................. 28
EVENTS ..................................................................................................................................... 28
THE CRITERION COLLECTION’S ROLE IN DISSEMINATING WORLD CINEMA ............................. 28
PUBLISHING: ST ANDREWS FILM STUDIES ................................................................................ 28
CFS SPEAKER SERIES ............................................................................................................... 28
10. APPENDICES .................................................................................................................. 29
APPENDIX 1 – REEL FILM SOCIETY ........................................................................................ 29
APPENDIX 2 – CFS SPEAKER SERIES ...................................................................................... 30
APPENDIX 3 – RESEARCH SCREENINGS .................................................................................. 33
APPENDIX 4 – THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL IN ST ANDREWS............................... 34
APPENDIX 5 – LEENA MANIMEKALAI, TAMIL FILMMAKER IN ST ANDREWS ....................... 36
APPENDIX 6 – THE CINECLUB JUANPABLO REBELLA ............................................................ 36
APPENDIX 7 – 60 HOUR FILM BLITZ....................................................................................... 37
APPENDIX 8 – PG STUDY DAY ................................................................................................ 39
APPENDIX 9 – PG CONFERENCE ............................................................................................. 43
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0. Introduction
This year saw a continued success for the Centre for Film Studies. There were new
appointments this year, including Chris Fujiwara, Artistic Director of the Edinburgh
International Film Festival, as Honorary Reader in Film Studies (November 2013), Professor
Robert Burgoyne as a Visiting Professor at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (May
2014), and Dr. Michael Cowan will be joining staff in January 2015 as Reader in Film
Studies. There was funding success this year, including grants from The Royal Society of
Edinburgh (Dina Iordanova) and The Carnegie Trust (Dina Iordanova and Brian Jacobson).
The CFS Speaker Series had a strong roster this year, with guests such as Laura Mulvey,
Annette Kuhn, and Diane Negra drawing a significant attendance. Professor Mulvey’s talk
was practically standing room only. Lastly, staff and postgraduate students saw continued
success with publications and conference papers.
There was a continuation of past successes, and growth in confidence in our online presence:
major web-based projects included the online Frames Cinema Journal
(http://framescinemajournal.com/); the further development of a website exploring the history
of local cinema culture in St Andrews: Cinema St Andrews (http://cinemastandrews.org.uk/);
Colour in the Twenties; and the website for the St Andrews Film Studies publishing house
(StAFS, http://stafs.org). In addition, a new website for the Department of Film Studies has
been launched, which encompasses the CFS webpages as well. The major overhaul of the
CFS pages online include a more image-driven lay-out, clearer and more succinct texts as
well as a entirely new, more flexible and navigable structure.
The department also saw a continued success with organising conferences, workshops,
symposia, and other events. Professor Robert Burgoyne delivered the Inaugural Lecture “The
War Film as a Mode of Historical Thinking: Generational Memory in Letters from Iwo Jima”
(October 2013) and followed with a series of prestigious talks around the country. Professor
Dina Iordanova travelled extensively around the globe to deliver talks and keynotes
throughout the academic year, including events in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi.
Other major events were organised on the following topics: “Feminist Film Festival in St.
Andrews” in which Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer delivered a lecture on “Feminist Film Studies in
a Global Context” (October 2013); a symposium on “Mania and Media” in Hilversum,
Netherlands organised by post-doctoral fellow Dr. Bregtje Lameris (September 2013); Dr.
Leshu Torchin presented on her monograph Creating the Witness: Film and Human Rights
Advocacy at a seminar series at the University of York (October 2013); the student organised
screening series The Reel Film Society; and John Trafton organised and hosted our regular
“60 Hour Film Blitz” (March 2014).
There were postgraduate organised conferences too, the annual ‘Postgraduate Conference’
and ‘Postgraduate Study Day’, which this year was dedicated to the subject of Approaching
Animation: Critical Enquiries into the Arts, Artists, and Industry, as well as a postgraduate
run initiative of providing Film Blitz candidates with practical experience – workshops on
storytelling, camera angles and editing were organised in the weeks running up to the
Filmblitz.
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1. PEOPLE
Management
The Management Committee of AY1314 comprises: Mr. Bernard Bentley (Spanish), Prof.
Robert Burgoyne (Film Studies), Prof. Berys Gaut (Philosophy), Prof. Christopher
Hawkesworth (Deputy Principal and Vice Principal of Research), Prof. Dina Iordanova (Film
Studies)) and Prof. Gill Plain (English).
Changes are ahead for AY1415 as Dr Leshu Torchin takes up the role of Director and
Professor Derek Duncan (Modern Languages) and Dr Jeffrey Murer (International Relations)
join the Management Committee.
Visiting Scholars and Part-Time Staff
Pablo Echart, Lecturer in Screenwriting. Director of the MFA in Screenwriting, University
of Navarra (Spain), 9 June – 11 July 2014
Marcia Tiemy Morita Kawamoto, Doctoral Student, Universidade Federal de Santa
Catarina, 1 June 2014 – 1 May 2015.
Jean-Michel Frodon taught FM4204 Asian Cinemas in Semester 2 with Dina Iordanova and
held informal cinema salons (organised by Dennis Hanlon), which were greatly enjoyed and
appreciated by all attendees.
Richard Dyer taught FM4111 The European Crime Film in Semester 2.
New Appointments
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Robert Burgoyne served as Visiting Professor, Department of English and
Comparative Literature, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (May 6-18,
2014)
Michael Cowan was appointed to Reader in Film Studies in May 2014. He will
officially join staff in January 2015
Lucy Donaldson was appointed Teaching Fellow in July 2014, to join the department
in AY1415.
Jean-Michel Frodon taught a 14 days master class (March 17th-29th) at Sarajevo Film
factory about the work and life of Jean-Luc Godard.
Elisabetta Girelli was appointed to Senior Lecturer in Film Studies beginning
September 2014
Dina Iordanova served as Visiting Professor at Palacy University, Olomouc, Czech
Republic (November 2013), Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey (December 2013)
and at Taylors University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (April 2014). She was appointed
as Director of the new Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures. She stepped
down as Director of the CFS in September 2014.
Leshu Torchin received the following appointments:
o Director of the Centre for Film Studies in May 2014
o Global Scholar and Core Member of The Religion in Diaspora and Global
Affairs Humanities Studio Lab, ‘Humanitarian Ethics, Religious Affinities,
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and the Politics of Dissent’, University of California Humanities Research
Institute (2013-15).
o Member of the AHRC Peer Review College (1st June 2014 to 31 December
2017)
o Member of Panel B, AHRC Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities,
beginning February 2014.
John Trafton joined staff as the new Research Coordinator for the period of January
to July 2014.
Joshua Yumibe was appointed Director of Film Studies, and founder of the
Bachelors of Arts in Film Studies at Michigan State University, beginning 2015,
Departures
Stefanie Van Der Peer, Research Coordinator, left the department in January 2014.
John Trafton left after the end of the contract in July 2014.
Postgraduates
Chelsea Wessels successfully defended her PhD thesis, “Once Upon a Time Outside the
West: Rethinking the Western in Global Context.” She will graduate in November 2014.
Andrew Dorman successfully defended his PhD thesis, “Cosmetic Japaneseness: Cultural
Erasure and Cultural Performance in Japanese Film Exports (2000-2010)” He graduated in
June 2014.
Kathleen Scott successfully defended her PhD thesis, “Cinema of Exposure: Spectatorship
and Suffering Female Bodies”. She will graduate in November 2014
Natthanai Prasannam, Philip Mann, Grazia Ingravalle, Amber Shields, Rohan
Crickmar, Alex Taylor, Andrei Gadalean, and Eileen Rositzka started their PhD research
in September 2013.
4 new PhD students will join us in 2014-2015
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Connor McMorran – will work with Dennis Hanlon
Shorna Pal – will work with Dennis Hanlon
Sanghita Sen – will work with Dennis Hanlon
Isabel Segui – will work with Dennis Hanlon
Alumni
Dr Matt Holtmeier, who received his PhD in Film Studies in 2013, has accepted the position
of Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Screen Studies in the Cinema, Photography, and Media
Arts program at the Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College. Matthew will be
teaching students to develop skills in critical media analysis, focussing on the aesthetic,
historical, and ideological elements that make up world cinema. Congratulations to Dr
Holtmeier. We wish him every success.
Ms Emma O’Brien (MA (2011) and MLitt (2012), Film Studies) works as an Assistant
Analyst for global communications agency Way to Blue, where she runs analysis on social
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media sites in order to compile insight reports on the efficacy of marketing campaigns. She
also sits in on the creative team’s brainstorming sessions where ideas for new film campaigns
originate. The campaigns vary in size, from smaller indie campaigns for films like Only
Lovers Left Alive, to larger client campaigns such as How To Train Your Dragon 2.
Dr Chelsea Wessels (PhD 2014) has accepted a post as lecturer in the department of Cinema,
Photography, and Media Arts at the Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College.
This autumn, she will be working with Dr Matt Holtmeier and Prof Patty Zimmermann (who
presented at the Centre for Film Studies in 2011) on the introductory film module where she
will give lectures and hold seminars.
Our Undergraduate alumni are also enjoying success: Cordula Schnuer (MA 2011) sat on
the Press Jury of the Luxembourg City Film Festival in March 2014; Andrew Slater
(MA(Hons) 2010) has been working on the ‘Our War’ series for BBC, with the next series
anticipated this autumn; and Catherine Slater (MA(Hons) 2011)works at the Imaginarium
Studios as PR Assistant to actor Andy Serkis (which also granted her the opportunity to be
present at the first table read of the new Star Wars film).
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2. PUBLICATIONS
The Centre for Film Studies publishing wing, St Andrews Film Studies, continued to expand
its activities this year with a new series. The Film Festival Yearbook Series is now
complemented with a Series entitled Films Need Festivals, Festivals Need Films. Within this
new series, the first publication was Sustainable Projections by Alex Fischer. StAFS
published the sixth volume of the Film Festival Yearbook, this time devoted to Film Festivals
in the Middle East and edited by Dina Iordanova and Stefanie Van de Peer. All of these
books are available from the website, http://stafs.org. Plans are also underway for a seventh
edition of the Film Festival Yearbook.
Film Festival Yearbook Series
Advisory board: Dudley Andrew, Alberto Elena Diaz, Jean-Michel Frodon, Faye Ginsburg,
Andrew Higson, Adrian Martin, Richard Porton, B. Ruby Rich.
Dina Iordanova and Stefanie Van de Peer (eds.) Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals
and the Middle East, St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2014.
Investigating the film culture and the respective film festivals of this wider area, this book
reveals how a culturally informed geopolitical scope can ultimately shape a distinct and
evolving take on the world. Exploring the history and politics of film festivals that are located
in non-Western territories and that are thus often influenced by distinctive ideologues and
agendas permits us to not only register difference but also see the logic that shapes the
diversity. These are festivals that foreground cinematic texts from lesser-known aesthetic and
conceptual traditions and display them in unique contexts. The cinemas and the narratives
featured here reflect the political and cultural dynamics of an area that alternates between
vibrant and volatile.
This book then looks in much detail at the large international and smaller national film
festivals that take place in the Middle East and North Africa: their programming, audience
development and event organisation. This collection of essays investigates the circuit of
films, the impact of festivals and the representation of the Middle Eastern peoples, cultures
and languages on international screens. This is a study of the many festivals that have shaped
the cultural identities of the region in the past, as well as the new and vibrant festivals that
permeate the region.
Books published by members for the period September 2013/ August 2014
Girelli, Elisabetta. Montgomery Clift, Queer Star. Michigan: Wayne State University Press:
December 2013.
Frodon, Jean-Michel and Olivier Assayas, Assayas par Assayas. Paris: Stock, 2014.
Iordanova, Dina. Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media, originally
published by the BFI, was translated in Turkish and released by the prestigious
Istanbul publisher Agora, 2013.
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Iordanova, Dina and Stefanie Van de Pier (eds) (2014) Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film
Festivals and the Middle East. St Andrews Film Studies.
Publications by members for the period September 2013 / August 2014
Bernard Bentley
"Antonio Román’s Fuenteovejuna in 1947: Censorship and the Prisms of the Present,"
Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 2014.
Robert Burgoyne
"Colour in the Epic Film: Alexander and Hero," The Return of the Epic Film, ed. Andrew
Elliot (Edinburgh University Press, 2014): 95-109.
"Gainsbourg: Puppetry in the Musical Biopic," New Directions in the Biopic, ed. Belen Vidal
and Tom Brown (New York and London: Routledge AFI Film Readers, 2014): 259273.
"Haunting in the War Film: Flags of Our Fathers," in Gjelsvik, Anne and Rikke Schubart,
eds, Eastwood's Iwo Jima (Wallflower, 2013): 157-169.
"Suicide in Letters From Iwo Jima," in Gjelsvik, Anne and Rikke Schubart, eds, Eastwood's
Iwo Jima (Wallflower, 2013): 231-244.
Andrew Dorman
“European Nightmares: Horror Cinema in Europe since 1945, edited by Patricia Allmer,
Emily Brick and David Huxley – Reviewed,” Horror Studies Journal 4.2 (2013).
“Japanese Cinema Goes Global: Filmworker's Journeys by Yoshiharu Tezuka – Reviewed,”
Asian Cinema 23.2 (Fall/Winter 2012).
Richard Dyer
"The Pervasiveness of Song in Italian Cinema," in Popular Italian Cinema,. Bayman, L. &
Rigoletto, S. (eds.). (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013): 69-81
"White Enough," in The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture, ed. Siân
Lincoln and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds.) ( Wayne State University Press, 2013):73-85.
Jean-Michel Frodon
Benoit Jacquot (Paris: Institut Française, 2014) http://www.institutfrancais.com/fr/cinemafrancais-temps-forts-2014/retrospective-benoit-jacquot
“From Pen to Camera: Another Critic,” in Tom Conley and T. Jefferson Kline, eds. A
Companion to Jean-Luc Godard. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
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“Le Dernier Métro: A Underground Golden Coach,” in Dudley Andrew and Anne Gillain
eds. A Companion to François Truffaut (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 571583.
“Unexpected but Fertile Convergence” in Richard I. Suchenski, ed. Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Vienna: Filmmuseum Synema Publikationen. No Date.
“Gilsoddeum, Im Kwon-taek’s way” in Jung Sung-il ed. Fly High, Run Far: The Making of
Korean Master Im Kwon-taek. (Busan: Korean Film Archive/Dongseo University,
2013).
“The Film Festival Archipelago in the Arab World,” in Dina Iordanova and Stefanie Van de
Peer eds. Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the Middle East (St Andrews
Film Studies, 2014).
“Du cinema au present,” in Hervé Joubert-Larencin avec Dudley Andrew, ed. Ouvrir Bazin
(Paris: Editions de l’œil. Paris, 2014).
“Violence critique,” in Eric Marty et Jérémie Majorel ed. Critique et violence (Paris:
Hermann éditeurs)
“Considérablement inconsidéré,” in Sébastien Thiery ed., Considérant (Paris: PostEditions/Lignes)
“Ozu, réalisateur de musicals,” in Diane Arnaud and Mathias Lavin, ed. Ozu à present (Paris:
G3j)
“Disponibilité augmentée,” in Anaël Pigeat, ed. Clement Cogitore, Studio Visit (Paris:
Presses du Réel)
“Festivals de cinema dans le monde arabe,” in Revue des mondes musulmans et de la
méditerranée n°134, December 2013. Marseille.
“Francia, un caso unico al mondo”, Otto e mezzo n°13, March 2014. Roma.
Ana Grgic
“Archival film festivals as Sites of Memory,” in Film Festival Yearbook 5: Archival Film
Festivals ed. Alex Marlow-Mann (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2013)
With Raluca Iacob. “Yugoslav (Hi)stories: a country which no longer exists, except on film”,
Issue 4 (On-line). Frames Cinema Journal (December 2013).
Dennis Hanlon
“Making Waves: Anand Patwardhan, Latin America, and the Invention of Indian Third
Cinema,” Wide Screen 5.1 (February 2014)
http://widescreenjournal.org/index.php/journal/article/view/79/123
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Dina Iordanova
“Hushed Histories: Women in Balkan Filmmaking,” in The Celluloid Ceiling: Women Film
Directors Breaking Through, ed. Gabrielle Kelly and Cheryl Robinson (London:
Supernova Books, 2014).
With Stefanie Van de Peer. “Introduction,” Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the
Middle East, ed. Stefanie Van de Peer (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2014).
“Film Festivals as Conduits for Parallel Cinema: Bollywood,” in Film Festival Yearbook 6:
Film Festivals and the Middle East, ed. Stefanie Van de Peer (St Andrews: St
Andrews Film Studies, 2014).
“Carole Zabar’s Other Israel Festival,” in Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the
Middle East, ed. Stefanie Van de Peer (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2014).
“Chronicling and Countering: 20 Years “Balkan Survey,” in Balkan Survey 1994-2013, ed.
Dimitris Kerkinos (Thessaloniki: Thessaloniki International Film Festival): 18-24.
Also available at Film Icon Journal On-line: http://filmiconjournal.com/blog.
“Cinema Is On The Internet?” in BIFF Forum (Busan: Busan International Film Festival,
2013): 114-128.
“Bulgarian Cinema: Optimism in Moderation,” in Cinemas in Transition: Eastern Europe
Since 1989, ed. Peter Hames and Catherine Portuges (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2013).
“Instant, Abundant, and Ubiquitous: Cinema Moves Online,” Cineaste, 39:1 (Winter 2014):
46-51.
“Modern Marriage on Stromboli,” Essay on Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950), with
Ingrid Bergman. Booklet to the Criterion Collection’s (New York) DVD of the film,
September 2013 (http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2908-modern-marriage-onstromboli).
Interview with Professor Iordanova:
Jindriska Blahova, "Empirical research on film festivals is crucial but almost impossible". An
interview with Dina Iordanova. ILUMINACE, 26:1 (2014): 99-105.
Brian Jacobson
“Infrastructure and Intermediality: Network Archaeology at Gaumont’s Cité Elgé,” Amodern:
A Journal on Media, Culture, and Poetics 2 (2013) http://amodern.net/article/infrastructure-and-intermediality/
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“Film, Technology, and Imperialism at the Pan-American Exposition, 1901,” in Meet Me at
the Fair: A World’s Fair Reader, ed. Laura Hollengreen, Celia Pearce, Rebecca
Rouse, and Bobby Schweizer (ETC/Carnegie Mellon Press, 2014): 337-350.
“Fantastic Functionality: Studio Architecture and the Visual Rhetoric of Early Hollywood,”
Film History 26:2 (2014).
Tom Rice
“Review of A Companion to Early Cinema,” Screen 54:4 (December, 2013): 547-549.
Kathleen Scott
“Bearing Witness to the Unbearable: Ethics and the Phallic Gaze in Irréversible,” The Phallic
Eye: Sensational Visual Pleasures in Cinema and Literature, ed Gilad Padva, Nurit
Buchweitz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Leshu Torchin
“Colonial Responsibilities” [Review of The Honourable Woman (BBC-TV, 2014), Souciant
26 August 2014.
[URL: http://souciant.com/2014/08/colonial-responsibilities/]
“The Schlub Problem,” Souciant, 29 May 2014.
[URL: http://souciant.com/2014/05/the-schlub-problem/]
“How Not to Defend Spoilers,” Souciant, 16 April 2014
[URL: https://souciant.com/2014/04/defending-spoilers/]
“The Academy Awards,” Souciant, 7 March 2014s.
[URL: http://souciant.com/2014/03/the-academy-awards/]
“Remembering Genocide,” [On Rithy Panh's L'Image Manquante/The Missing Picture]
Souciant. 8 January 2014. [URL: http://souciant.com/2014/01/remembering-genocide/]
“The Year in Film,” Souciant. 26 December 2013.
[URL: http://souciant.com/2013/12/the-year-in-film/]
“Slap Hillary,” [On The Hillary Project and video games for advocacy] Souciant. 13 August
2013. [URL: http://souciant.com/2013/08/slap-hillary/]
John Trafton
“David Ayer’s End of Watch and the Militarization of U.S. Law Enforcement,” Bright Lights
Cinema Journal 82 (November, 2013).
Stefanie Van de Peer
“Arab Cinema: Women’s Contributions,” The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam and Women.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
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“Damascus and Beirut, or Why Arab Film Festivals Go On and Offline,” in Film Festival
Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the Middle East, ed. Stefanie Van de Peer (St
Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2014): 197-212.
Joshua Yumibe
“Colour Magic: Illusion and Abstraction in Silent and Experimental Cinemas,” The Moving
Image Review & Art Journal 2.2 (2013): 229–237.
With Alicia Fletcher. “From Nitrate to Digital Archive: The Davide Turconi Project,” The
Moving Image 13.1, Special Issue: Histories of Moving Image Archives (2013): 1–
32.
“French Film Colorists,” in Women Film Pioneers Project. Ed. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal,
and Monica Dall’Asta. New York: Columbia University Libraries, Center for Digital
Research and Scholarship, 2013. <https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/essay/french-filmcolorists/>.
3. TALKS
Seminar Series
This year featured 9 talks organised at the CFS as part of the Seminar Series. In addition to
CFS member Brian Jacobson, we featured internationally renowned scholars such as Mark
Glancy (Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London), Charles Barr
(Professor at St Mary’s University Twickenham London), Laura Mulvey (Professor at
Birkbeck University of London), Janet Harbord (Professor at QMUL), Stephen Partridge
(Professor at the University of Dundee), Diane Negra (Professor at University College of
Dublin), and Annette Kuhn (Professor at QMUL).
Full details of all these events can be found in the appendix.
Talks and conference presentations by members for the period September 2013 /
August 2014
Robert Burgoyne
"The Violated Body and the Crisis of the Visible in Zero Dark Thirty," University of Sao
Paolo. May 17, 2014.
"Tim Hetherington and The Body at Risk: Genre Memory in War Photography and Film,"
Federal University of Santa Catarina. May 14, 2014
"The Violated Body and the Crisis of the Visible in Zero Dark Thirty," Federal University of
Rio Grande. May 9, 2014
Panel Chair, "Debating Zero Dark Thirty," SCMS Conference, Seattle. March 23, 2014.
"Impossible Images: The War Photography of Tim Hetherington." The Open Eye Gallery,
Liverpool. November 14, 2013.
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"Somatic War: Re-enchantment and the Body at Risk in the New War Films." Centre for
World Cinemas, University of Leeds. October 30, 2013.
"The War Film as a Mode of Historical Thinking: Generational Memory in Letters From Iwo
Jima." Inaugural Lecture, University of St Andrews. October 23, 2013.
"The Violated Body: Affect and Somatic Intensity in Zero Dark Thirty." Olomouc, Czech
Republic, for the European Research Council seminar, "Re-presenting the Past: New
Methods of History Representation in Arts and the Media." October 2, 2013.
Andrew Dorman
“Japanese Cinema in the 1950s and 1960s,” University of Glasgow. Screen Conference. 201
Richard Dyer
(Keynote) "The Persistence of Textual Analysis," BAFTSS Conference, University of
London. 24-26 April, 2014.
Screening of his film, Desert Island Movie, BAFTSS Conference, University of London. 2426 April, 2014.
Jean-Michel Frodon
Invited Talk
“Poetics of Pedagogy in Revolution: Abbas Kiarostami's First Case, Second Case, ” NYU,
29 January 2014.
“French Cinema and the French Idea of Cinema,” La Femis, 20 August 2014.
Elisabetta Girelli
“Before The Sheik: Rudolph Valentino and Sexual Melancholia,” BAFTSS Conference.
April 2014
Dennis Hanlon
Invited Talk:
“Non-resident Indians and Non-indigenous Genres: Britain as Contact Zone for Bollywood
Experiments with Genre,” Screen Seminars at Glasgow, University of Glasgow, 13 February
2014.
Conferences:
"Second World/Third Cinema: The Chile Cycle of Studio H&S," Chile on Film Symposium.
Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University. 22-23 November 2013.
“Digital Media, Scale, and the Lessons of Imperfect Cinema: A Comparative Approach to
Bolivia and India,” Digital Media, New Cinemas, and the Global South, Michigan State
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University, East Lansing, MI, and The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 3-5 April
2014
Dina Iordanova
Invited Talks
“Cinema is on the Internet?,” Busan Film Forum. Busan International Film Festival, South
Korea, Invited speaker. 12 October 2013.
University of Liverpool, 10 March 2014.
“Ephemeral Abundance: Film Culture Between the Film Festival and the Cyberlocker,”
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 10 April 2014.
“Film Festivals,” Taylor’s University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 7 April 2014.
“Digital Disruption,” Taylor’s University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 4 April 2014.
“Chinese Film Festivals II,” University of Hong Kong. 31 March/1 April 2014 .
“The Film Festival as Inherently Transnational Space,” Transnationalism and Cinema
conference, NYU Abu Dhabi, 10-14 May 2014.
“20 Years Balkan Survey,” Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece,
Guest Speaker:
European studies symposium, University of Pittsburgh, USA, 22-23 February 2014.
“Ephemeral Abundance: Film Culture Between the Film Festival and the Cyberlocker,”
Krakauer Lecture at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, 21 January 2014.
“Film Festivals and the Middle East,’ Film Festivals Conference, Kadir Has University, 27
December 2013.
“Representing Migration and Trafficking: Film, Media, and the Social Sciences,” Kadir Has
University, Istanbul, Turkey. 25 December 2013.
“Cinema is on the Internet,” Sehir University, Istanbul, Turkey. 18 December 2013
Key Notes:
“Making Trafficking Visible,” Conference Crossroads: Europe, Migration and Culture.
University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 24 October 2013.
“Oscar’s® Little Brothers: Europe and the Politics of Invisibility,”| Screen Industries in EastCentral Europe Conference: Industrial Authorship, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech
Republic, 30 November 2013.
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Distinguished Guest Professor, Department of Media, Film and Theatre, Palacky University,
Olomouc, Czech Republic, November 2013 and Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey.
December 2013.
Brian Jacobson
Invited Talks:
“Early Cinema and its Studio Image, ” School of Art History Lecture Series, University of St
Andrews, 16 April 2014.
“Films that Work (on) the Red Carpet: Industrial Film Festivals and the Power of Prestige,”
Centre for Film Studies, University of St Andrews, 11 February 2014
Conferences:
“Art + Technics: Moving Image Culture and its Industrial Applications,” Look Out! Visual
Culture and the Future of the Humanities, University of Southern California Visual Studies
Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, 29-30 August, 2014.
“Of Black Boxes and White Cubes, or, Film Architecture in the Gallery,” Society for Cinema
and Media Studies, Seattle, WA, March 19-23, 2014
“Film and the Politics of Infrastructural Visibility: Total’s Risky Images of North Sea
Drilling,” Society for the History of Technology, Portland, ME, October 10-13, 2013
“French Oil Films in Post-War Africa: Carbon Extraction and its Visual Epistemologies,”
Visible Evidence XX, Stockholm, Sweden, 14-18 August 2013
Tom Rice
Invited Talks
“Colonial Visions: Britain African Empire on Film,” Public Screening and Q&A at Ritzy Cinema,
London, 6 November 2013.
“The Moving Image: Digitising the Colonial Film Archive,” Many Lives of Indian Cinema
1913-2013, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India, January 2014.
“Audiovisual Archives and Contemporaneity: Opportunities, Challenges and Changes,”|
Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds, September 2013.
Conferences:
“Children of the Empire,” Children and Nontheatrical Media: From Film to Video, University
of Glasgow, April 2014.
Heath Iverson
“Curating International Artists Cinema,” University of Edinburgh’s Film Exhibition and
Curating Seminar Series. 5 November, 2013.
15
Rohan Crickmar
“Ręce do góry to Ferdydurke: Navigating the International Co-Productions of Jerzy
Skolimowski”, Contemporary Central and South-East European Cinema in Transition: A
Postgraduate Symposium, University of Southampton, 23rd May 2014
Participation in Panel Discussion after screening of Walerian Borowczyk's restored Dzieje
grzechu, 39th Gdynia Film Festival, Gdynia, 16th September 2014
Phil Mann
"Glasstiger and the Fantasy of American Consumerism", Contemporary Central and SouthEast European Cinema in Transition: A Postgraduate Symposium, University of
Southampton, 23 May 2014.
"The Confrontational Hungarian Landscape in a Post-Socialist Context", Screen Studies
Conference: Landscape and Environment, University of Glasgow, 27-29 June 2014.
"The End of Pluralism in Béla Tarr’s Apocalyptic A torinói ló/The Turin Horse", 3rd Global
Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End, Oxford University, 5-7 July 2014.
Eileen Rozitska
“Maps on Film: Animating Abstraction,” St Andrews Film Studies Postgraduate Symposium
Approaching Animation: Critical Enquiries into the Art, Artists, and Industry, 9 April 2014.
“Cinema's Corpographic Warfare: Sensing the First World War through Film,” St Andrews
Film Studies Postgraduate Conference, 28 April 2014.
“Cinema’s Corpographic Warfare: Sensing the First World War through Film,” Sensing War,
London, 12 June 2014.
“Re-Mapping History through the Body: the Cinematic Corpography of War,” NECS
Conference, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 19 June 2014.
Kathleen Scott
“Spectatorship Ethics and the Suffering “Pregnant Parisian” in French New Extremist
Cinema,” Society for Cinema & Media Studies Conference Seattle, WA, March 2014
Amber Shields
“Animated Folktales as Identity Reformation in Times of Trauma,” St Andrews Film Studies
Postgraduate Symposium 'Approaching Animation: Critical Enquiries into the Art, Artists,
and Industry, 9 April 2014.
“Fairytales of our Past: Shifting Narrative Hegemonies of the Spanish Civil War,” Cardiff
University, Cultural Politics of Memory Conference. May 2014
16
Beatriz Tadeo Fuica
“Left with Money? National Funding Policies for Uruguayan Cinema”
Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) International Conference, University of London,
UK, April 2014
Panel ‘The Latin American Left on Screen’ Co-convener with Dr. Clara Garavelli, University of Leicester,
UK Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) International Conference, University of
London, UK, April 2014
“Digitalisation of S-8 Uruguayan Films,” Collaboration with Simone Venturini, Laboratorio
La Camera Ottica, University of Udine, Italy and Julieta Keldjián, Universad Católica del
Uruguay, Uruguay, March 2014
“Border Films in Uruguay,” Follow-up of the Modern Languages and Film Spring School,
IGRS, University of London, UK, January 2014
“Current Perspectives on Uruguayan Film Heritage,” XX Visible Evidence Conference.
University of Stockholm, Sweden, August 2013.
Natthania Prasannam
“Bloodshed within Laughter: Politicising War Memory and Thainess in Thai World War II
Combat Films.” 8th Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference: ‘Codes, Kitsch,
Camp: Genre in/and Southeast Asian Cinemas’ Film Archive, Thailand, 7-10 July 2014.
“A Missing Piece of Memory: Boys Will Be Boys, Boys Will Be Men (2000) and its
Mnemonic Network.” Postgraduate Conference ‘Mediated Pasts: Visual Culture and
Collective Memory’ De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, 4 June 2014.
Leshu Torchin
Invited Talks:
“Creating the Witness: Film and Human Rights Advocacy,” School of Social and Political
Sciences Seminar Series, York University. 24 October 2013.
Keynote:
“Advance Engagement: Kickstarter, Affect, and Social Change.” Visible Evidence XX.
Stockholm. 15-18 August 2013.
Respondent:
“Documentary in an Expanding Field: Technology and the Mass Subject as Witness.” Society
for Cinema and Media Studies. Seattle, Washington. 19-23 March 2014.
“Visualising Trauma,” Cinematic Traces of Things To Come: The Tenth Tel Aviv
International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies. Tel Aviv, Israel, 8-10 June
2014.
17
Conferences:
“Recovering the Witness: L’Image Manquantes/ The Missing Picture,” Cinematic Traces of
Things To Come: The Tenth Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television
Studies. Tel Aviv, Israel, 8-10 June 2014.
Stefanie Van de Peer
Panel Convener. “Female Suffering and Spectatorship Ethics. Paper: The Ethics of Seeing
and Listening: Rape in the Post-Colony.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference.
Seattle, USA. March 2014.
“Lebanese Experiments with Documentary’s Memory.” Visible Evidence XX Conference.
Stockholm, Sweden. August 2013.
Joshua Yumibe
Invited Talks:
“Chromatic Modernisms: Color Cinema of the Silent Era.” Light Industry, Brooklyn, New
York, May 27, 2014.
“From Hand to Machine: Stencil Coloring in Early Film,” and “Couleurs & féminité.”
Symposium, “Le conservatoire des techniques cinématographiques: Les débuts du cinéma en
couleur,” Cinémathèque française, Paris. December 6 & 8, 2013.
“Colour Cinema and Media,” Visual Narrative Seminar. School of the Visual Arts, New
York. August 15, 2013.
Conferences:
“From Chromo-Pharmakon to the Glass Architecture, and Absolute Film.” Critical M.A.S.S.,
Michigan Alliance for Screen Studies, Michigan State University. April 19, 2014.
“The Glass Architecture: On Scheerbart and Cinematic Space,” On panel “Intermedial
Modernisms: Cinema’s Expanded Horizons in the 1920s.” Co-organized by Sarah Street and
Yumibe. Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. Seattle. March 2014.
“Color, Glass, and Utopia: Media Aesthetics from Scheerbart and Steiner to Absolute Film,”
German Studies Symposium: Visual Cultures, Digital Media: Technology and Film in
Germany from Weimar to the Present. Michigan State University. March 14, 2014.
“Color Magic: Meaning and Illusion in the Cinema,” The Magic of Special Effects. CinemaTechnology-Reception: GRAFICS and Arthemis Conference. Montréal. November 5–10,
2013.
Co-Organizer with David Bering-Porter, Critical M.A.S.S., Michigan Alliance for Screen
Studies, Michigan State University, April 19, 2014.
Co-organizer with Ken Harrow, “Digital Media, New Cinemas, and the Global South,”
Michigan State University. April 3–5, 2014.
18
4. FUNDING AND AWARDS
Richard Dyer
Recipient of the BAFTSS 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ana Grgric
2013 (July)
The Russell Trust Award to cover travel related expenses with archival
fieldwork in the Balkans.
Dina Iordanova
2014 Royal Society of Edinburgh/Caledonian Research Foundation, European scholar
exchange to Paris (France) for the project on Parisian Cinemas. £4000
2013 Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Visiting grant for festival research in
Paris, London, Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong. £2000
Brian Jacobson
2014 Carnegie Trust Small Research Grant (£2,500)
2014 Social Science Research Council, Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship
Alumni Initiative (Principal Organizer - for "Visual Studies and the Future of the
Humanities" conference - $6,500)
Alex Taylor
Awarded a full AHRC Studentship from The AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership Scotland
Studentships 2014/15.
Leshu Torchin
Senior Residential Fellowship at The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University
(AY2012-2013) for the topic “Media and Social Change”. ($40,000/ £24,763) [Omitted from
the last CFS report]
Kathleen Scott
Horton-Hallowell Fellowship, Wellesley College, 2013-2014
Beatriz Tadeo Fuica
Apr 2014 - SLAS (Society for Latin American Studies): PG Conference Bursary. Society for
Latin American Studies International Conference, London. £200
Mar 2014 - University of St Andrews, Library Fund; UCU Uruguay Fund and University of
Udine Fund for the digitalization of Uruguayan S-8 Films. £2100
19
Joshua Yumibe
2014
College of Arts and Letters Research Award, Michigan State University, $3,000
2014
College of Arts and Letters External Connections Award, MSU, $2,000
2013
Humanities and Arts Research Program Production Award, Michigan State
University, $7,000
2012-15 Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, for “Colour in the 1920s: Cinema and
Its Intermedial Contexts”; Co-Applicant with Sarah Street; £246,243 for research support and
postdoctoral funding
20
5. EVENTS/ACTIVITIES
Bernard Bentley hosted a one-day symposium on the work of Spanish actress, screenwriter,
and director Iciar Bollain. The symposium explored her work and featured a screening of her
film Tambien la lluvia/Even the Rain (2010), followed by a Q and A.
In collaboration with the artist and film exhibitor Eshan Fardjadniya, Heath Iverson curated
a programme of experimental film and video for the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice
Biennale in the summer of 2013. The program was devoted to the theme of “Environmental
Romanticism” and explored issues related to climate change and environmental activism.
Dennis Hanlon organised a visit by Leena Manimekalai, Tamil filmmaker, which was
unfortunately cancelled due to Visa issues. We look forward to her visit in the future and
appreciate the films Dennis acquired for the library.
Brian Jacobson organised the conference “Look Out! Visual Culture and the Future of the
Humanities” (http://lookout.vsri.org/) that took place August 29-30 at the University of
Southern California Visual Studies Research Institute with funding from the Social Science
Research Council. The conference brought together junior scholars working across academic
fields and related cultural institutions to examine the importance of visual culture in ongoing
debates about the future of higher education and humanities disciplines
Stefanie Van de Peer delivered the lecture “Feminist Film Studies in a Global Context” at
Feminist Film Festival in St. Andrews, organised by the Feminist Society of St. Andrews. 24
October 2013
In November 2013, Stefanie also hosted, along with Dina Iordanova, the London Korean
Film Festival in St Andrews. Screenings of Secretly Greatly (Jang Chul-soo), Rough Play
(Shin Yeon-sik) and Pluto (Su-won Shin) took place on Thursday evening, 21 November and
Friday afternoon, 22 November at the New Picture House Cinema on North Street, St
Andrews. The screenings were organised in conjunction with Jeongeun Choi, Film Festival
Coordinator of The London Korean Film Festival 2013, with the help of student Hee Kim.
Stefanie also worked again with Africa in Motion Film Festival (http://www.africa-inmotion.org.uk/) to programme their North African film strand. With outstanding films such
as Yema (Djamila Sahraoui, Algeria, 2013), Winter of Discontent (Ibrahim El Batout, Egypt,
2012) and Horses of God (Nabil Ayouch, Morocco, 2012), this programme was extremely
well attended, due in large part to the topicality of the films and the consistent interest of the
media in the region.
Joshua Yumibe received a tremendous honour when the Cinémathèque française dedicated a
screening to Dr Joshua Yumibe’s research, as part of the festival “Toute la mémoire du
monde” (December 3–8). One of the festival's topics this year focuses on early color cinema,
and the screening regarding Dr Yumibe’s work examines color and gender (“Couleurs &
féminité"). As part of the festival, he presented a lecture “From Hand to Machine: Stencil
Coloring in Early Film,” at the related the symposium, “Le conservatoire des techniques
cinématographiques: Les débuts du cinéma en couleur,” Cinémathèque française, Paris
(6/12/13)
21
6. POSTGRADUATE
CFS Research Screenings
Fall Semester 2013
In the fall semester, a select group of PhD students hosted screenings related to their
respective research topics. Eileen Rositzka, Ana Grgic, Heath Iverson, and Rohan Crickmar
introduced their selected films, which were screened in the boardroom for postgraduate
students. A full list of these screenings can be found in the appendices.
Frames Cinema Journal: Commies and Indians
26 February 2014
The postgraduate-run online journal, Frames, released its fourth issue, “Commies and
Indians: The Political Western Beyond Cold War Frontiers.” The editors are Heather Iverson
(editor in chief), Diana Popa (book editor), Pasquale Cicchetti (web editor), and Giles Taylor
(editorial board). Further information can be found at http://framescinemajournal.com/
60 Hour Film Blitz
13 March 2014
Organised by John Trafton, Philip Mann, and Keleigh Sapp
The 60 Hour Film Blitz competition and screening is one of the most highly anticipated
events on the second semester calendar for the filmmakers and film lovers of the student
community. It is not only a fun and frenetic competition where participants must write,
produce and edit a 3 minute film in 60 hours, but is also a celebration of the creative
fecundity of the St. Andrews filmmaking community. The latter was particularly realized this
year as the filmmakers spectacularly rose to the challenging restraints of the competition to
produce some imaginative, witty, and touching shorts.
The event this year was organized by Dr. John Trafton and a committed team of students. The
team included festival directors Phil Mann and Keleigh Sapp, talent manager Emma Mason,
publicist Ben Lealan, and production designer Sammy Bennett; they should be commended
for ensuring that both the organization of the competition and the subsequent screening and
celebrations went off without a hitch. The judges’ panel this year all came from within the
Film department of St. Andrews and consisted of Professor Richard Dyer, Dr. Brian
Jacobson, Amber Shields and Eileen Rositzka. The difficulty of their task was made apparent
at the Buchanan Lecture Theatre as 22 intriguing and thematically diverse shorts were shown
to a packed theatre.
Annual Postgraduate Study Day: Approaching Animation
9 April 2014
Organised by Amber Shields and Philip Mann
The Study Day on Approaching Animation aimed to explore new ways in which thinking
about animation and reinvigorate discussions on animation in a global context. Postgraduate
students Amber Shields and Philip Mann organised the event, and young scholars from
around the country and further afield were present at the study day: Dr. Bella Honess Roe
(University of Surrey) as the keynote speaker in the morning, a workshop on Animation in
the Middle East with Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer, papers from postgraduates (include those
from St. Andrews), a roundtable discussion on Scottish Animation, and a screening of shorts
and Kayla Parker’s (Plymouth University) Her Dark Materials.
22
Annual Postgraduate Conference
28-29 April 2014
Organised by Grazia Ingravalle and Eileen Rositzka
The St Andrews Postgraduate Conference is an opportunity for the PhD candidates to share
their dissertation research projects with staff and postgraduate students within the department.
In 2014 the conference was organized by PhD students Grazia Ingravalle and Eileen
Rositzka. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Pasi Valiaho, Senior Lecturer in Film
Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. His keynote paper was entitled "Kingdoms of
Shadows: Notes on the Archeology of the Projected Image."
The full programme is available in the appendices.
CFS Newsletter
December 2013 and May 2014
Two editions of the Newsletter were produced and distributed to several hundred colleagues
internationally. Ana Grgic, Grazia Ingravalle, and Rohan Crickmar were the editors this
year, and the design of the newsletter is now one of its many prides.
The address list for the CFS newsletter was updated, alphabetised by country and revamped
by Stefanie van de Peer and Karen Drysdale.
23
7. PROJECTS
REF 2014: Impact Case Studies
The first semester of the academic year was for a large part dedicated to understanding and
preparing the REF, and writing two solid Impact Case Studies, as well as an impact and
environment narrative. Director of Research, Robert Burgoyne oversaw the process, the
preparation, and the writing of the environment and impact narratives through to submission.
The two impact case studies have been developed and written by Dina Iordanova working
on one, and Tom Rice and Joshua Yumibe working collectively on the other.
Prof. Iordanova’s case study, entitled Understanding and Linking Global Film Festivals,
focuses on her work on the film festival circuit and starts from research and publications done
by the St Andrews Film Studies publishing house. She received extremely generous
corroborating letters from supporters and collaborators in the film festival world. A section of
the newly created and revamped Film Studies website is dedicated to the Impact case Study
by Prof. Iordanova.
Dr Rice and Yumibe’s Impact Case Study focuses on the work they have developed with
their project entitled Cinema St Andrews. This project examines the history of cinema
within St Andrews from the medium’s origins to the present day. It also examines the history
of cinema through St Andrews, using the town as a case study to explore cinematic
developments over the past one hundred and twenty years. It has its own website dedicated to
it (http://cinemastandrews.org.uk/) and it’s has been presented on the St Andrews impact blog
(http://univstandrews-impact.blogspot.co.uk/) for fostering cultural heritage. The post can be
found at: http://univstandrews-impact.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/fostering-local-filmheritage.html.
In the second half of the academic year, incoming Director of Research, Leshu Torchin
initiated research meetings to discuss current projects and possible impact case studies. These
meetings generated awareness of research clusters within the department that can be
developed and strengthened, particularly with the appointment of Michael Cowan.
New Website for the Department of Film Studies
The department has had an entirely new website since September 9th, 2013. Michael
Arrowsmith, Tom Rice, Lucy Fife Donaldson (AY1213), Leshu Torchin and Stefanie Van de
Peer dedicated some of their time to re-writing and re-structuring the old website, as well as
giving the new website a more visually attractive look. This new website is managed in
Wordpress and will therefore be more accessible to its users as well: members of staff will be
able to change their own profiles online very easily, and news, events, and highlights will be
given prominence on the front page of the site.
New features of the website are: introductory videos for prospective students, created the past
summer by MLitt student Allain Daigle under the supervision of Tom Rice. The structure –
Home, About Us, Prospective Students, Current students, Centre for Film Studies – offers an
easily navigable way into the department and it is hoped that the entire website will be easy
to maintain and update so that prospective and current students feel involved, up-to-date and
directly addressed through our online presence.
24
Every member of staff can login here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/v2/ with their
own login and password.
St Andrews Film Studies publishing
The activities of the Centre for Film Studies publishing wing, St Andrews Film Studies,
expanded further this year with a new edition of the Film Festival Yearbook, this time
devoted to Film Festivals and the Middle East, edited by Dina Iordanova and Stefanie Van de
Peer and featuring chapters from Jean-Michel Frodon, Alisa Lebow, Maryam Ghorbankarimi,
the two editors, and many others.
Frames: Cinema Journal
This year saw the successful continuation and growth of Frames: Cinema Journal, an open
access journal run by our graduate students in Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews.
Editors this year were Heath Iverson, Pasquale Cicchetti, Diana Popa, and Giles Taylor.
The fourth issue, entitled Commies and Indians: The Political Western Beyond Cold War
Frontiers was released in December of 2013. It contained seven critical essays by
postgraduate students, including an introduction by Heath Iverson, an article by recently
minted PhD student Dr. Chelsea Wessels, and a video supplement from the symposium of the
same name from last year—Jonathan Owen on Czech Westerns and Tim Bergfelder on the
“Euro-Western and Collaborations across the Iron Curtain.” For more information, visit:
http://framescinemajournal.com/
Reel Film Society
This semester The Reel Film Society, in collaboration with the Film Studies department,
presented a diverse programme of film screenings showcasing the essential in cinema from
across the globe, and across the history of film. The screenings took place throughout the
semester in School III and was accompanied by talks from academics from a range of
departments within the university.
The first screening was a special one. The series with two silent-era classics: Double
Whoopee (a hilarious Laurel and Hardy short) and The Last Laugh (the brilliant early
masterpiece by F.W. Murnau).
Many of these films had live musical accompaniment. Pianist Jane Gardner, Roderick Long
(percussion), and Hazel Morrison (violin), travelled from Edinburgh to provide music for the
opening screening in the series. Jane Gardner is an accomplished pianist, composer, and
silent-film accompanist who has played major film events and festivals so we are incredibly
lucky to have had her and the rest of the group in St. Andrews. This was a chance to have a
cinema experience like no other, and to get a feel for the way that silent films were screened
before the days of sound.
This project was made possible by QAA Teaching Enhancement Fund (part of CAPOD)
(£200) grant awarded to Dr Tom Rice and Dr Lucy Donaldson in AY1213 S2.
25
8. OTHER / KT/ IMPACT
Robert Burgoyne
Was appointed to the editorial boards of Rethinking History and REBECA (Revista
Braseleira de Estudos de Cinema e Audiovisuel, the official publication of SOCINE.
Preliminary Judge, Irish Research Council, Postgraduate Funding Scheme (April, 2014)
Jean-Michel Frodon
Artistic director of the film Festival “Cris du monde”, La Ciotat, November 20th-23rd.
Artistic director of the omnibus film The Bridges of Sarajevo, directed by Jean-Luc Godard,
Aida Begic, Marc Recha, Criti Puiu, Sergei Loznitsa, Angela Schanelec, Vincenzo Mara,
Leonardo di Costanzo, Teresa Villaverde, Isild LeBesco, Kamen Kalev, Ursula Meier. (First
screening: Cannes Film Festival, May 22nd 2014).
Member of the selection committee of “Open Doors” for Locarno Film Festival.
Vice-president of “Cinema du monde” committee for Centre National du Cinéma and
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Public discussions with Im Kwon-taek (Busan Film Festival), Corneliu Porumboiu (Vuitton
Foundation), Anne Wiazemski (Angers Film Festival), Walter Salles (Cannes Film Festival),
Bruno Dumont (La Rochelle Film Festival), Agnès Varda (Locarno Film Festival).
Provided overview of contemporary French cinema, lecture for Columbia University
summer school in Paris. 7 August 2014.
Continued teaching at Sciences Po Paris.
Beatriz Tadeo Fuica
With the contribution of the St Andrew Library Enhancement Fund and through a
collaboration between Beatriz, Simone Venturini (Università di Udine – Italy) and Julieta
Keldjián (Universidad Católica del Uruguay – Uruguay) copies of two short films made
during the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985)—El honquito feliz (Cineco 1976) and 1o. de
mayo de 1983 (Grupo Hacedor, 1983)—have been digitised and had access copies made.
This is a tremendous benefit to scholars of Uruguayan cinema and the period of the
dictatorship.
Dina Iordanova
Founded Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures. Created within the Faculty of
Arts of the University of St Andrews, it builds on interdisciplinary work focused on global
cinema. The IGCCC capitalizes on achievements, global connections and networks linked to
the so-called ‘economies of prestige’ and on our reputational advantages as leaders in the
study of global culture and digital developments. It seeks corporate and institutional
sponsorships from across Europe and Asia, including dedicated funding for doctoral
studentships. It will increase the University’s visibility and standing by taking our work to the
attention of international audiences. It will be a key unit to deliver in terms of worldwide
26
cultural and social impact for the University of St. Andrews.
Was guest of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greece), the Hong Kong
International Film Festival, the Women’s Film Festival in Creteil (France), the Film Festival
in Douarnenez (France), the Busan International Film Festival (South Korea), and held
meetings at Science Po and the headquarters of the Cannes Film Festival in Paris.
Served on the Board of the Centre for the Moving Image, Edinburgh (EIFF and FilmHouse);
acted as REF consultant; served as Consultant to Universities: Bologna; Hong Kong; Taylors.
Doctoral External examiner doctoral: QUT- Australia; University of Manchester; University
of Sydney, University of Amsterdam. Tenure and promotion cases: at Glasgow, Cork,
Calgary. New editorial boards service appointments: Media Industries, NEXUS. Peer review
for funding bodies: Leverhulme, European Union. Peer review for journals: Cinema Journal,
Slavic Review, Russian Review. Peer review for publishers: Routledge, Indiana UP,
Continuum, MIT Press, Edinburgh UP, etc
Brian Jacobson
"Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic
Space" -- signed contract for publication of monograph with Columbia University Press
(Film and Culture Series)
"French Industrial Cinema" -- research in progress for eventual monograph; received
Carnegie Trust Small Research Grant for Summer 2014 research at French archives.
Leshu Torchin
Was invited to sit on a panel about The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013) at the Pan-Asia
Film Festival in London (26 February- 9 March, 2014), but unfortunately had to cancel the
appearance due to illness.
As Global Scholar and Core Member of The Religion in Diaspora and Global Affairs
Humanities Studio Lab, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Leshu
Torchin participated in a Dissertation Workshop for PhD candidates presenting chapters from
their theses. 17-18 March 2014.
Was interviewed at York on the subject of media and activism, with the video uploaded to
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c_a7OiRgUE
Joshua Yumibe
Dr Yumibe was honoured at the Cinémathèque française, Festival “Toute la mémoire du
monde,” with the program “Couleurs & féminité” dedicated to Moving Color: Early Film,
Mass Culture, Modernism (2013)
He continues to serve on the Executive Committee of Domitor, the International Society of
the Study of Early Cinema and as Co-Director of the Davide Turconi Project, with Paolo
Cherchi Usai, which has an online component, launched in 2011.
27
9. FORTHCOMING
Events
The Criterion Collection’s Role in Disseminating World Cinema
Pending, as of June 2014
Publishing: St Andrews Film Studies
CFS Talks
An exciting line-up of talks and events are being planned for the next academic year. See
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/events.php for details.








Tuesday, October 14th, 2014: Dina Iordanova— Stakeholder Configurations and
Film Festivals: China in the Diaspora
Tuesday, October 21st, 2014: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith – What is film culture, and
what, if anything does the government have to do with it?
Tuesday, November 4th, 2014: Maryam Ghorbankarimi – Women Behind the
Camera; An Institutional History of Iranian Cinema
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014: A screening of Gulabi Gang (Nishtha Jain, 2013)
with Q&A by the director. (Co-hosted with International Relations and St Andrews
Fem Soc)
Tuesday, November 18th, 2014: Alisa Lebow – The Unwar Film
Monday, February 2nd, 2015: Deborah Shaw – European co-production funds and
Latin American Cinema: Processes of othering and bourgeois cinephilia in Claudia
Llosa’s La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015: Rachel Dwyer – Mumbai middlebrow: ways of thinking
about the middle ground in Hindi cinema
Tuesday, April 7th, 2015: Martin Shingler- John Barrymore, Warner Star: 1924-31
28
10. APPENDICES
University of St Andrews, Centre for Film Studies
Special Events, 2013/2014
Appendix 1 – Reel Film Society
Programme
Silent Film Screening with Live Musical Accompaniment and Q&A – January 30th,
2014
Join us for the first of a series of screenings run throughout the spring semester by The Reel
Film Society. Hosted in School III, the evening’s double bill features the Laurel and Hardy
short Double Whoopee (Lewis R. Foster, 1929) and the haunting masterpiece, The Last
Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924). This will be followed by a Q&A with Jane Gardner (piano),
Roderick Long (violin) and Hazel Morrison (percussion), who will provide live musical
accompaniment.
Profondo Rosso/Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975) – February 13th, 2014
Join us for a Valentine’s Day screening with a difference, as we show this classic, hugely
influential thriller, which brought Dario Argento international acclaim. The film will be
introduced by visiting professor Richard Dyer, acclaimed author of ‘Stars’, who has worked
extensively on Italian cinema and, more recently, on the serial killer in European film.
The Servant (Joseph Losey, UK, 1963) – February 20th, 2014
This British classic, starring Dirk Bogarde and written by Harold Pinter, ingeniously infuses a
psychological thriller with a complex study of class. With an introduction from British film
and queer stardom expert Dr Elisabetta Girelli.
Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, USA, 1971) – February 27th, 2014
This iconic American film recounts the romantic lives of college roommates Jonathan (Jack
Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel). Please join us for this fascinating look at the
changing sexual mores of the late 1940s through early 1970s.\
Ta’m E Guilass./Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France, 1997) – April 3rd, 2014
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, TASTE OF CHERRY is a
beautiful, minimalist film from Iranian New Wave director Abbas Kiarostami. Both revered
and reviled for its contemplative pace, the film accompanies a middle-aged Mr Badii
(Homayon Ershadi) as he drives through Tehran in search of someone to bury him after he
commits suicide. Dr Saeed Talajooy of the Department of Arabic and Persian will provide an
introduction.
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Los Olividados (Louis Buñel, Mexico, 1950) – April 10th, 2014
Considered one of Buñuel’s great masterpieces, LOS OLVIDADOS provides a serious
examination of poverty in Mexico in the mid-20th century. It combines strains of social
realism and the surrealist style often found in the auteur’s work. With an introduction by
Professor Will Fowler of the Department of Spanish.
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark/Norway/UK, 2012) – April 17th, 2014
Former Indonesian death squad leaders are asked to reenact their own mass killings in various
cinematic genres in this critically acclaimed, controversial documentary. Dr Jaremey
McMullin of the School of International Relations studies the nature of internal conflict and
the process of post-conflict transition, and will introduce this essential piece of recent
documentary cinema.
Fah Talai Jone/Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sananatieng, Thailand, 2000) – May 8th,
2014
We conclude our first screening series with the Thai western, TEARS OF THE BLACK
TIGER. Noted for its stylised use of colour and violence, it has been compared to works
from directors as diverse as Sergio Leone, Jean-Luc Godard and Sam Peckinpah. Professor
Dina Iordanova, who has written extensively on global film cultures, transnational cinema,
and global film circulation, will provide an introduction.
Appendix 2 – CFS Speaker Series
Mark Glancy – “’Nobody Talks Like That!’: Identity, Image and Performance in Cary
Grant’s Early Career”
September 24th, 2013
Dr Mark Glancy (Queen Mary, University of London) presented the first in the 2013-2014
season of Centre for Film Studies’ talks.
Cary Grant made 72 feature films over the course of four decades and he was ultimately
recognized as one of the most popular and talented of all film stars. However, his first five
years in Hollywood were not so successful, as he struggled to establish an appealing star
identity and screen persona, and gave lacklustre performances in a succession of films made
between 1932 and 1937. This paper examines his early career and explores the first attempts
to define Cary Grant in relation to 1930s norms of nationality, class and gender; and it
explores Grant’s developing performance skills in the later part of the decade. Drawing upon
critical reviews, publicity materials and his films, the paper analyses the key steps and
missteps in Grant’s early career, leading to his breakthrough in the late 1930s with films such
as The Awful Truth (1937), Holiday (1938) and Bringing Up Baby (1938). Ultimately, it
seeks to explain how Cary Grant became, in the words of the film critic David
Thomson, ‘the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema’.
Mark Glancy is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London, where he
teaches American and British film history. He is the author of When Hollywood Loved
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Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939-1945, The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide, and,
most recently, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain, from the 1920s to the present.
He is also a co-editor, with James Chapman and Sue Harper, of The New Film History:
Sources, Methods, Approaches.
Charles Barr—John Ford’s Dialogue
October 1st, 2013
Soundtrack has always been something of a ‘poor relation’ in Film Studies, compared with
analysis of narrative structure and visual style. This is especially true of the critical literature
on directors like the great Irish-American John Ford, who was formed in silent cinema and is
rightly celebrated for his poetic vision of (especially) the American West. But the handling of
dialogue is equally central to his sound-film narratives. This illustrated talk focuses on the
intricate linguistic pattern of names and naming in Ford’s Western and other films, via his
characters’ use of the vocative case: it aims to challenge received ideas about Ford himself
and, through him, about wider conceptions of directorial authorship.
Charles Barr worked for many years at the University of East Anglia, helping to establish
pioneering courses in Film Studies at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has since
taught in St Louis, Dublin and Galway, before returning to England as Professorial Research
Fellow at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham. His publications include books on
Ealing Studios and English Hitchcock, and – in the BFI Classics series – Hitchcock’s Vertigo
(second expanded edition, 2012). His main current project is Hitchcock: Lost and Found, coauthored with the Parisian scholar Alain Kerzoncuf and due for publication in 2014.
Laura Mulvey – “Hitchcock’s Blondes and Feminist Film Theory: A Cinema of
Voyeurism or a Cinema of Self-Reflexivity”
October 15th, 2013
The ‘Hitchcock blonde’ has become an established cliché image within popular culture today,
recognised, recounted and discussed beyond film theory circles. In this lecture Laura Mulvey
returns to the significance of Hitchcock’s blonde heroines and his voyeuristic cinema for the
development her feminist and psychoanalytic approach to film in the 1970s. Recently, after a
gap of 40 years, she has returned to the ‘Hitchcock blonde’ to reflect on his cinema as,
perhaps, revealing and self-reflexive rather than simply misogynistic.
Laura Mulvey is Professor in Screen media at Birkbeck University of London.
Janet Harbord – “Giorgio Agamben and Cinema: an Unlikely Coupling?”
November 12th, 2013
Giorgio Agamben is perhaps best known for his directly political writings on bare life and the
state of exception, providing a framework for thinking through ‘events’ such as the
detainment camp at Guantánamo Bay. Yet his essays frequently give mention to
photographic and film images, and in ‘The Six Most Beautiful Moments in the History of
Cinema’, to the apparatus of cinema itself. This talk explores the ‘and’ between Agamben
and cinema: or, what it is that Agamben’s thought might bring to, and how might it
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transform, an understanding of film?
Janet Harbord writes about film as a constantly changing medium with brief moments of
stability, traced spatially in Film Cultures (Sage, 2002), and through a temporal framework
in The Evolution of Film (Polity, 2007), andChris Marker: La Jetée (Afterall & MIT, 2009).
She is currently writing Ex-centric Cinema: Giorgio Agamben and/on film (Continuum,
2014), and is Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.
Stephen Partridge – “Rewinding the Archive”
November 19th, 2013
Stephen Partridge is an artist and academic researcher at Duncan of Jordanstone College of
Art & Design and an expert in videoart. He currently runs the research project REWIND.
REWIND is a research project (2004 – ongoing) , that provides a research resource to address
the gap in historical knowledge of the evolution of electronic media arts in the UK, by
investigating specifically the first two decades of artists’ works in video.
Diane Negra – “Gendering the Recession”
January 28th, 2014
After a decade and a half of frenetic economic activity in the West now often remembered as
a boom period, the semi-collapse of the global financial system in 2007-2008 inaugurated a
set of profound cultural shifts.
While we may identify particular trends, the post-boom period is a complex one, involving
competing discourses of anger, nostalgia, denial and loss. These discourses are in turn
complexly gendered, mediating shifting patterns of male employment through longstanding
associations between consumption, mass culture and femininity. The conjunction of women’s
increasing legal, educational and economic assertiveness on one hand, and the availability of
cheap female labor on the other ensures that economic change is repeatedly framed in terms
of shifting gender norms. Standard accounts of economic decline frequently privilege male
subjectivity (through such buzzwords as “mancession,” invitations to “man up,” and laments
about “the end of men”) and it is instructive to consider how recession renews longestablished tropes of masculinity in “crisis” (of which feminist scholars have rightly been
sceptical).
In this talk I turn to some of the most taken-for-granted popular culture forms to root an
analysis of everyday recessionary culture and a preliminary mapping of what cultural
geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore would term an “infrastructure of feeling” (Gilmore 2007). I
examine how patterns of intense wealth concentration and the transfer of risk from cultural
and financial elites to the public at large (and particularly to those at lower income levels)
interact with and impact cultural conceptualizations of both femininity and
masculinity. Examining media forms as diverse as reality television, financial journalism,
lifestyle blogs, popular cinema and advertising, I sketch a mediascape dominated by forms
that trade in the repression of the socially destructive aspects of global capitalism, bid for
affective normalcy, and commit themselves to strained fantasies of rejuvenated individualist
enterprise, in particular demonstrating an inability to meaningfully critique the privileged
male.
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Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture and Head of Film Studies at
University College Dublin. She is the author, editor or co-editor of eight books, including the
forthcoming Gendering the Recession (Duke University Press, 2014).
Brian Jacobson – “Films that Work (on) the Red Carpet: Industrial Film Festivals and
the Power of Prestige”
February 11th, 2014
This talk will examine the origins and early history of industrial film festivals and their role
in the development of corporate and sponsored film production in the 1960s.
Dr Brian Jacobson is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews.
Alisa Lebow – “The Unwar Film”
February 26th, 2014 (event cancelled)
Alisa Lebow is Reader in Film at the University of Sussex. She specialises in documentary
and has made some acclaimed documentary films as well. In her talk at CFS in St Andrews,
she will outline what she understand the Unwar film to be: rare films that undermine the
militarist logic of subtrends in most contemporary war documentaries. The essay this talk is
based on will be published in the Blackwell Guide to Contemporary Documentary that she is
editing with Alexandra Juhasz.
Annette Kuhn – “Cultural Memory in Still and Moving Images”
April 1st, 2014
Annette Kuhn’s work on cultural memory is conducted in relation to still and moving images
— photography and film. Professor Kuhn is interested in developing methodologies for
exploring and understanding memory in relation to these and other visual media. To date this
has covered three broad stands of inquiry and investigation:



photography and memory work
memory texts
cinema memory
In this talk, Professor Kuhn will outline each of these strands in turn.
Senior Professorial Fellow in Film Studies at Queen Mary University London since 2006,
Annette Kuhn, has been editor for the journal Screen for many years.
Appendix 3 – Research Screenings
Hands Up!
October 9th, 2013
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Skolimowski, Hands Up / Ręce do góry, Poland,1967 / 1981
Skolimowski directs and stars in his third film in a triptych. It forms an autobiographic
portrait of the postwar generation in Poland, with a radical and sharply political streak.
This screening will be introduced by PhD student Rohan Crickmar. Everyone is welcome to
attend and stay after the film for further discussion.
Blum Affair
November 6th, 2013
Blum Affair, Erich Engel, East Germany, 1948
This early postwar suspense story, based on a well-known 1926 murder trial, with Dreyfuslike overtones, also represents an East German reflection on Nazism.
This research screening will be introduced by PhD student Ana Grgic.
Two Years at Sea
November 20th, 2013
Two Years at Sea, Ben Rivers, UK, 2011
A stunning black and white experimental documentary: After working at sea, a man realizes
his dream of moving to the middle of the forest.
This screening will be introduced by PhD student Heath Iverson.
Hamburger Hill
December 4th, 2013
Hamburger Hill, John Irvin, USA, 1987
Hamburger Hill is a very realistic interpretation of one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam
War.
This Research Screening will be introduced by PhD student Eileen Rositzka
Appendix 4 – The London Korean Film Festival in St Andrews
Last August, Ms. Hye-jung Jeon (project director of the Korean Cultural Centre UK, Artistic
Director of the LKFF, and the Korean cultural attaché) visited St Andrews on her tour of
Britain to scout cinemas and appropriate venues to take part in the LKFF on Tour. St
Andrews was one of the lucky select to have won her over with its local charm, and Prof.
Iordanova’s hospitality. In November, the London Korean Film Festival will come to visit us,
to showcase three wonderful films from Korea in the New Picture House.
For all info on LKFFL http://www.koreanfilm.co.uk/
Screenings of Secretly Greatly (Jang Chul-soo), Rough Play (Shin Yeon-sik) and Pluto (Su34
won Shin) will take place on Thursday evening, 21 November and Friday afternoon, 22
November at the New Picture House Cinema on North Street, St Andrews. These are
organised by Jeongeun Choi, Film Festival Coordinator of The London Korean Film Festival
2013 and Stefanie Van de Peer, Research Coordinator of Centre for Film Studies, with the
help of Hee Kim.
Programme
Thursday 21 November 2013: Pluto (Shin Su-won) Thursday at 5.45pm
Pluto is a story of the lengths that elite High School seniors are prepared to go to guarantee
entry into prestigious universities, and asks what could possibly turn an innocent boy into a
monster. June, a transfer student into an elite school, is driven to despair by the year’s first
examination results. One day he discovers that a mysterious clique of fellow students are
sharing secret notebooks, which contain important exam information. In order to get his
hands on the notebooks he begs the members of the secret circle to include him. They task
him with a series of missions to earn their trust, but at what price is success?.
Recommended by London Korean Film Festival Advisor, Tony Rayns.
Friday 22 November 2013: Rough Play (Shin Yeon-shik) at 1.45pm
Based on a story idea by Kim Ki-duk, Rough Play unfolds like something of a sequel to the
Kimscripted Rough Cut (2008). An aspiring unknown actor aims for stardom with the help of
his manager. But the road to success is filled with traps and there is much he needs to endure.
Oh Young is a young actor who can overshadow his partner when he concentrates on his
performance. He ignores the basic rule of acting—teamwork—but that just demonstrates his
desire for success. His manager knows how to survive show business and sticks with him
until he reaches the top. The problem is, staying at top is much harder than getting there.
Young is surrounded by violent people and becomes increasingly vain. Rough Play makes
clear the illusion of show business. The director moves away from the Kim Ki-duk
screenplay through repeated filming, and makes this story his own. The cross between a stage
set and reality effectively expresses Young’s psychology.
Friday 22 November 2013: Secretly, Greatly (JANG Cheol-soo, 2013) at 3.45pm
Upon its release on June 5, 2013, the film broke several box office records in South Korea:
the highest single day opening for a domestic film, most tickets sold in one day for a
domestic film, the biggest opening weekend, and the fastest movie to reach the 1 million, 2
million, 3 million, and 4 million marks in audience numbers.
As a North Korean sleeper cell agent, Ryu-han infiltrates the South and assumes the role of a
simpleton in a rural town. He observes the townsfolk and waits patiently for his mission. One
day, after 2 years of playing this role, fellow elite spies Hae-rang, posing as a rock star and
Hae-jin, posing as an ordinary student, are dispatched to the same town as Ryu-han. He helps
the other two spies to settle in and teach them how to adjust in the South. There is a sudden
drastic political power shift in the North and all three spies receive an urgent mission: commit
suicide.
Appendix 5 – Leena Manimekalai, Tamil Filmmaker in St Andrews (CANCELLED)
Symposium Dynamics of Global Cinema: Peripheries, Infrastructure, Circulation
November 11, 2013
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Venue: Arts Seminar Lecture Theatre
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/event/leena-manimekalai-tamil-filmmaker-in-standrews/
Organiser: Dr. Dennis Hanlon
The St Andrews Centre for Film Studies is very pleased to host Tamil filmmaker Leena
Manimekalai, in collaboration with the Department of English Literature at the University of
St Andrews.
Leena Manimekalai is an Indian Tamil woman writing poetry, making films and acting in
street theatre and cinema. She has made a dozen documentaries, most of which have a
feminist activist impetus. Her films focus on the socially marginalised, the politically
underrepresented, and strives to give a voice those who have none. Leena does not spurn
controversies in her home country, with an unrelenting critique of patriarchy and the
exploitation of the underclasses.
Her recent film, Sengadal, has been very controversial in Sri Lanka, where it is set. It deals
with a humanitarian crisis in Tamil communities in Sri Lanka. Manimekalai testifies that her
kind of filmmaking is a hard struggle, and that her passion for the underrepresented
sometimes puts her in situations where she feels as if she has chosen a path of selfdestruction. But she remains fearless of the consequences of her idealism, which of course
often leads to controversies.
In her quest to raise awareness and spread news on grass roots initiatives, she has also
become actively involved with local film screenings, training workshops and film festival
activities. Travelling around to make films and attend festivals where her films are screening,
she has made a name for herself as a staunch supporter of her fellow young activist
filmmakers and student filmmakers.
Having her with us in St Andrews will be an unmissable opportunity to meet an energetic,
activist and controversial filmmaker from an area in India that is not often seen, let alone
heard. She will visit us on Monday 11 November, and will speak at the Indian cinema lecture
run by Dr Dennis Hanlon. At a film screening, at 7pm in the Arts Lecture Theatre, she will
also talk about her filmmaking and activism in South India. The screening of her latest film
White Van Stories (2013) will showcase her feminist and indigenous activism, and her
representation of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Appendix 6 – The Cineclub Juanpablo Rebella Presents Visiting Filmmaker Iciar
Bollain
Screening of Tambien la Lluvia/Even the Rain – presented by Professor Bernard Bentley
April 23rd, 2014
Iciar Bollaín, on a script by Paul Laverty, takes a very challenging look at historical films,
Columbus’s achievements and legacies (as well as David MacDonald, Juan de Orduña, John
Glen and Ridley Scott -forget Gerald Thomas!). Presented as a film crew making a film in
Bolivia about the “1492 Discovery” because of the producer’s budget constraints. Tensions
mount. It so happens that 1492 is set in 2000 and the Cochabamba Water War.
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One-Day Symposium – La Mirada de Iciar Bollain
May 30th, 2014 9:00 to 18:00
The University of St. Andrews School of Modern Languages is proud to host a one day
symposium with world-renowned Spanish actress, screenwriter, and director Iciar Bollain.
The symposium will explore her work and will feature a screening of her film Tambien la
lluvia/Even the Rain (2010), followed by a Q and A.
The programme:
9:45 – 10:15 Coffee and tea reception
10:15 – 10:20 Introduction to the symposium Bernard Bentley (University of St. Andrews)
10:20 – 11: 10 Professor Nuria Triana Toribio (University of Kent, Hispanic Studies)
Spanish “realismo social” and Iciar Bollain’s Mataharis (2007)
11:10 – 11:20 Tea/Coffee
11:20 – 12:10 Dr David Archibald (University of Glasgow, Film Studies) Cinematic
representations of anti-fascist women in the Spanish Civil War with close-ups on Tierra y
Libertad (1986)
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch break
13:15 – 15:45 Screening of Tambien la lluvia/Even the Rain (2010), introduced by Iciar
Bollain
15:45 – 16: 15 Tea/Coffee
16:15- 18:00 Q and A with Iciar Bollain, moderated by Bernard Bentley
Appendix 7 – 60hr Film Blitz
60 Hour Film Blitz - http://www.60hourfilmblitz.com/
Buchanan Lecture Theatre
13 March 2014
This year saw a highly successful Film Blitz, with 22 very enthusiastic young filmmaking
teams delivering intriguing and thematically diverse three minute films made in St Andrews
over the course of 60 hours. Research coordinator Dr John Trafton organised the event, and
two postgraduates, Philip Mann and Keleigh Sapp served as the event’s directors.
In the lead-up to the event, John Trafton held a series of three filmmaking workshops that
received a high level of attendance. These workshops focused on the skills and techniques
useful in guerrilla film making and short film production, drawing upon John’s own
experience in Film Studies and over five years of working in the film industry. John taught
students how to effectively tell stories in a short film, how to innovate on a low (or nonexistent) budget, and how to time manage under a ticking clock.
These workshops were held from 5:00pm to 6:30pm in the Film Studies Boardroom on
Wednesday evenings.
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February 12th: Structure and screenwriting
February 19th: Visual Storytelling Part 1 (Cinematography)
March 5th: Visual Storytelling Part II (Editing and Sound)
The 60 Hour Film Blitz started at noon on Thursday March 6th and ended at midnight on
Saturday March 8th. The films were then screened for a panel of judges: Professor Richard
Dyer, Dr. Brian Jacobson, and two of our PhD students (a first in the history of the Film
Blitz), Amber Shields and Eileen Rositzska.
The finished films were then screened as part of a gala event at the Buchanan Lecture Theatre
on Thursday 13 March 2014 in front of a packed audience. The event was emceed by John
Trafton, and the awards were announced by Philip Mann, and Keleigh Sapp.
This year, the award categories were changed in order to emphasize technical innovation and
craft.
The winners were:
Best cinematography
Huong Le for Hereafter
Best editing
Ben Lealan for 3:10 to Leuchars
Best actor
Kristopher Gravning for Gout de Souffle
Best actress
Charlotte Flatley for Run
Best Film (a joint prize)
Huong Le for Hereafter
Scott Patrick for Mindgames
Innovation Award
Scott Patrick for Mindgames
Audience Award
Scott Patrick for Mindgames
Best film, innovation award, and the audience award winners received a £50 cash prize. The
audience award was voted on by paper ballot and through twitter (@2014FilmBlitz) during
the intermission between the screenings and awards ceremony.
After the festival, the Film Blitz screening and awards gala was reviewed in several local
publications, including St. Andrews in Focus.
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Appendix 8 – PG Study Day
PG Study Day: Approaching Animation: Critical Enquires into the Arts, Artists, and
Industry - http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/approaching-animation-criticalenquiries-into-the-art-artists-and-industry/
Wed 9th April 2014 09:00 to 17:00
Gateway Seminar Room
Keynote speaker: Dr. Bella Honess Roe (University of Surrey)
The postgraduate Study Day is a yearly conference at the University of St. Andrews,
organized by the postgraduate students in Film Studies, which aims to explore aspects in the
field of film studies that are not covered by our research projects.
The topic of this year's event was “Approaching Animation.” This exciting one day
symposium on animation featured a key note presentation by Dr Bella Honess Roe
(University of Surrey), a panel on Scottish Animation, a special presentation on Middle
Eastern animation, and presentations from our postgraduate students.
Programme
9:00-9:10 Welcome
9:10-10:10 Keynote Speaker
Dr. Bella Honess Roe (University of Surrey): Everywhere and Everything? Maintaining
Animated Specificity in the Face of Ubiquity.
10:10-10:30 Coffee break
10:30-11:30 Panel 1: New Perspectives and Explorations of Worlds Past and to Come.
Eileen Rositzka (University of St Andrews): Maps on Film: Animating Abstraction.
Lilly Husbands (King’s College London): Animated Alien Phenomenology in David
Theobald’s Experimental Animations.
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11:30-12:15 Workshop:
Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer (University of Stirling): Animation in the Middle East.
12:15-1:15 Lunch
1:15-2:15 Panel 2: Eye on the Spectator: Haptic, Therapeutic, and Exhibition
Approaches to Animation.
Slava Greenberg (Tel-Aviv University): More than Meets the Eye: The Haptic Spectatorship
Experience of Short Avant-Garde Animations about Vision Disabilities.
Victoria Grace (Queen Marys, University of London): Animation: Textural Difference and
the Materiality of Holocaust Memory.
2:15-2:30 Coffee Break
2:30-3:30 Panel 3: Popular Culture Animation: Looking Back and Looking Forward.
Amber Shields (University of St Andrews): Folktales as Identity Reformation in Times of
Trauma
Helen Haswell (Queen’s University Belfast): Nostalgic Animation: Analogue Sensitivities in
Pixar’s Digital Animation.
3:30-4:30 Pioneers of Scottish Animation
Our symposium will conclude with a Roundtable discussion of Scottish animation. Chaired
by Dr. Bella Hones Roe this panel, featuring Dr. Nichola Dobson, (Edinburgh College of
Art), Alan Mason, (Edinburgh College of Art) and Dr. Sarah Neely (University of Stirling),
40
will discuss the works of Scottish animators Norman McLaren, Lesley Keen and Margaret
Tait, their contributions to animation in Scotland and their legacy in the field of animation.
Speakers
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Bella Honess Roe teaches film studies at the University of Surrey. Her book Animated
Documentary came out in 2013 and she has published essays on animation, documentary, the
British workshop movement and transatlantic romantic comedies in edited collections and
journals including Animation: an interdisciplinary journal and the Journal of British Cinema
and Television.
Pioneers of Scottish Animation Panel:
Dr. Nichola Dobson is based in Edinburgh, lecturing part time at Edinburgh College of Art,
University of Edinburgh. Founding editor of Animation Studies from 2006 until 2011 and the
recently established new academic blog Animation Studies 2.0. She has published on both
animation studies and television, most recently The A to Z of Animation and Cartoons (2010)
and Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons (2009) for Scarecrow Press. She has
published in anthologies on Crime Scene Investigation and Life on Mars as well as shorter
works for the online journal FLOW. She is currently working on a book on TV animation
with Paul Ward for Edinburgh University Press and a book on Scottish animator Norman
McLaren. She began a new role as Vice President of the Society for Animation Studies in
autumn 2011.
Alan Mason has been a freelance designer, animator, illustrator and writer for over thirty
years. For the last twenty he's taught in the award-winning animation department of
Edinburgh College of Art. In the 1980s he worked on a series of ground-breaking animated
films for Lesley Keen and Persistent Vision Animation, including the feature length 'Ra: Path
of the Sun God.'
Dr. Sarah Neely is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University
of Stirling, where she is member of the Centre for Scottish Studies and the Centre for Gender
and Feminist Studies. Her research stretches across Scottish and Irish film and literature.
Recent work has focused primarily on Scottish cinema and experimental film. She has been
researching the work of Margaret Tait over a number of years and is editor of a collection of
Tait’s poetry, stories and writings (Carcanet 2012).
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Workshop:
Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer is Teaching Fellow at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and
specialises in Arab Women's filmmaking. With projects on film festivals and animation, she
has been Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, the University of Southampton
and the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Centre in Massachusetts. She also works as
a freelance film festival programmer for Africa in Motion, the Middle Eastern Film Festival
and REEL Festivals in Edinburgh, and has worked for the Boston Palestine Film Festival.
She has published articles on Tunisian, Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian filmmakers, and has
edited a collection entitled Art and Trauma in Africa (IB Tauris, 2013) and one entitled Film
Festivals and the Middle East (StAFS, 2014). She is now preparing her monograph on the
Pioneering Women of Arab Documentary for publication with Edinburgh University Press.
Screening:
From 18:00 – 21:30 on Tuesday 8th April 2014 we will be holding a screening featuring a
number of short films related to following day’s presentations. Works screened will include
a selection of animated documentaries, Middle Eastern animations, and shorts from
filmmakers including McLaren, Tait, and Keen. The screening will also feature a special
video presentation by Kayla Parker (Plymouth University) entitled Her Dark Materials. The
event will take place at the following venue:
School II,
St Salvator's Quad,
North Street,
St Andrews,
Fife,
KY16 9AJ.
Thanks to:
Dr. Bella Honess Roe, Dr. Nichola Dobson, Alan Mason, Dr. Sarah Neely, Dr. Stefanie Van
de Peer, Dr. Dennis Hanlon, Dr. Brian Jacobson, Karen Drysdale, and the St Andrews staff
and postgraduate community for their suggestions, encouragement, and help.
Information:
For more information please email the organizers: [email protected].
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Appendix 9 – PG Conference
2014 Postgraduate Conference
DEPARTMENT OF FILM STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
APRIL 28th – APRIL 29th 2014 | PARLIAMENT HALL
The Film Studies PG Conference is a unique opportunity for doctoral candidates to present
their research projects and exchange views and feedbacks with the St Andrews Film Studies
community at large. Eastern European Cinema, War Films, Bodies on Screen, New Media,
and more to come – two days of debate, to discover new fields of enquiry and research
perspectives.
The conference keynote speaker, Dr. Pasi Väliaho is Senior Lecturer in Film and
Screen Studies at the Department of Media and Communications of Goldsmiths, University
of London. He has worked across the areas of early and pre-cinema, film theory
and philosophy, visual studies, and media and technology. His talk will investigate the
archaeology of the projected image, by focusing especially on the early days of the magic
lantern as well as the context of early cinema. He will explore how technically manipulated
‘hollows in light’ and darkened spaces have become invested in networks of power and
visuality in modernity.
PROGRAMME
April 28th, 2014
9:00—9:30 Coffee and introduction to the 2014 Postgraduate Conference
9:30—11:00 Keynote Address: Dr. Pasi Valiaho (Goldsmiths, University of London):
“Kingdoms of Shadows: Notes on the Archeology of the Projected Image”
11:00—11:30 Coffee break
11:30—13:00 Panel 1: Bodies on Screen: Positioning, Regulating, Liberating
Chaired by Philip Mann
Alex Taylor -- “The End of the Body: The Blob, Bataille, and Formless Subversion”
Eileen Rositzka—“Cinema’s Corpographic Warfare: Sensing the First World War
through Film”
Rohan Crickmar: “Beastly, Immoral and Sinful Cinema: Confronting the Erotic in
Walerian Borowczyk’s Contes immoraux, Dzieje grzechu and La Bete”
13:00—14:00 Lunch
14:00—15:30 Panel 2: Reviewing the Past: Films as Sites of (Contested) Memory
Chaired by Grazia Ingravalle
Natthanai Prasannam –“Into another Site of Memory: Rereading World War II in Thai
Cinema”
Amber Shields—“Fairy Tales of our Past: Shifting Narrative Hegemonies of the
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Spanish Civil War”
Ana Grgic – “The Archeology of Memory: Tracing Fragments of the Past in Eol
Cashku’s Albanie 1912”
April 29th, 2014
9:00—10:30 Panel 3: Media Interaction: Environment, History and the Viewing Experience
Chaired by Eileen Rositzka
Grazia Ingravalle – “EYE Film Institute Netherlands: Discovering Silent Cinema through
Remix”
Heath Iverson – “Towards a Theory of Cinematic Ecopoetics: A Case Study of Richard
Mosse’s The Enclave”
Giles Taylor – “View Master: Immersive Media in Children’s Hands”
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 --12:30 Panel 4: Exploring Eastern European Cinema: Nation, Hegemony, Aesthetics
Chaired by Natthanai Prasannam
Andrei Gadalean—“’Let’s Keep our Mouths Shut, Girls!’: Sex, State, and Cinema in
Romania”
Philip Mann—“Glasstiger and the fantasy of American consumerism”
Diana Popa—“Texture and the aesthetics of slowness in Dupa dealuri/Beyond the Hills
(2012)”
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