Has the Video Essay Arrived?
posted March 15, 2017
Publications in both film criticism and academic film studies have historically been in writing, but as affordable lightweight cameras and digital film-editing tools increasingly have put video production into the hands of anyone, that has been changing.
The Soviet View: A Major Archive Comes Online
posted March 9, 2017
Through a communist lens, the 20th Century looked quite different than it did through the eyes of the West. The British Film Institute is collaborating with an imprint of SAGE Publishing to issue a three-“module” set of rare film footage, Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International Propaganda.
How to Tweak Copyright Law?
posted February 24, 2017
Australian copyright law produces some curious outcomes. A national report says it also forces up the cost of access to information and cultural products, hobbles artistic creation and educational innovation, and hinders transition to a knowledge-based economy. It recommends adjustments, but lawmakers are under copyright-industry pressure to maintain a grudging status quo.
Trailers from Hell
posted January 26, 2017
Filmmaker Joe Dante has drafted friends and colleagues to make shorts about movie trailers. The result is an entertaining and informative website.
GIFs Pose the Question: How Did Buster Keaton Survive?
posted January 6, 2017
"I like to watch silent movies, and then make gifs from them," says Don McHoull of Toronto, Canada. He posts them on his Silent Movie Gifs feed on Twitter. Here's his selection of his favorites of 2016 – they provide opportunities to savor the extraordinary acting and film-making craft of shots and scenes in the silent era.
Grants to Preserve Films by Women and about US-Cuba Relations
posted January 4, 2017
The archives of 50 little-known woman filmmakers, as well as films about US-Cuba relations and Iowa birds, are to be digitized and made more readily available thanks to grants from The Council on Library and Information Resources’ second round of support in its Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives program.
When Next You Use Bluetooth, Think of Hedy Lamarr
posted December 26, 2016
An industry group wants to find women who are emulating the film star Hedy Lamarr who, while most remembered for her film roles, more importantly devised a method of scrambling radio signals and ushered in a range of modern-day communications devices.
A Resounding 25 Years of Reviving Early Film
posted December 17, 2016
At the dawn of “talkies,” the leading film recording and projection system conveyed images and sound separately: the images on film, the sound on shellac discs. For the last 25 years, the Vitaphone Project has been locating and reuniting the many films and audio discs that became separated. It has restored some 125 features and short films, many thought lost forever, with many more in the pipeline.
Alice Howell: Her Patchwork Comic Legacy
posted November 20, 2016
The historical record has not done justice to Alice Howell, and it never will. It cannot. Not to her, nor to so many other pioneers of film. More’s the pity, writes veteran early-film historian Anthony Slide in his "She Could Be Chaplin: The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell."
Ten, Nine, Eight… A Countdown of Rock Gold
posted November 3, 2016
David Peck's San Diego-based Reelin’ In The Years Productions has joined with Dutch production company Double 2 BV to buy the rich archives of Countdown, the Dutch television program that from 1977 to 1993 was Europe’s leading showcase of popular rock music, and to make it available for licensing to filmmakers, television producers, and other entertainment-industry clients.