Tomorrow, Thursday March 3rd, Welcome to the Smiling Coast, the documentary produced by Film Faculty member Emiel Martens, will be screened at the AfricanBamba Human Rights Film Festival in Dakar, Senegal. After the world premiere at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles last month, tomorrow’s 7pm showing at Centre Culturel Jacques Chirac in Thiaroye (situated in the suburbs of Dakar) marks the African premiere of the film. Alhagie Manka, one of the Gambian crew members, will be present to do a Q&A after the screening: ‘these are exciting times for the film and I hope we are going to make Gambians proud by going out into the world.’
A film by the Coen brothers is easily recognizable. The Big Lebowski, Fargo, No Country for Old Men and the new Hail Caesar! – it does not matter which genres the directors mix together, they are unmistakably Coen brothers movies. But what is it exactly that makes them like that? And how do the two filmmakers succeed in creating complete caricatures of their characters but get away with it? VPRO radio reporter Emmie Kollau spoke with Film Faculty member Gerwin van der Pol, director Michiel ten Horn (Aanmodderfakker, DeOntmaagding van Eva van End) and his cameraman Joost Wolf to answer this question.
On March 11th, 2016, the book Exposing the Film Apparatus – The Film Archive as a Research Laboratory will be launched at an international seminar in EYE. The book was compiled by Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever and consists of a collection of essays on historical and contemporary film equipment and media technologies.
Today, an interview with Film Faculty member Patricia Pisters has been published in Folia, the weekly magazine of the University of Amsterdam: ‘Film scholar Patricia Pisters investigates the intersection of film studies and neuroscience. The director of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis coined the term neuro-thriller for a new type of thrillers which works directly on our brains.’
Today a new essay by Film Faculty member Patricia Pisters has been published in Aeon, a digital magazine of ideas and culture. The essay is entitled ‘Neurothriller’ and deals with the question why and how horror films are nowadays much more scary than they were in the past.
The documentary Welcome to the Smiling Coast: Living in the Gambia Ghetto is selected for the Pan African Film Festival (PAFF), the largest black film festival in the United States. The film, produced by Film Studies faculty member Emiel Martens, receives its world premiere at the festival, which will be held from February 4-15 in Los Angeles.
After a great success in Korzo last December, Ensemble Modelo62 will present Ways of Seeing in Theatre De Nieuwe Regentes in The Hague on February 7th at 17:00, during the Sounds of Silence Festival for silent film and live music. Ways of Seeing is a program of four works by different composers where sight, next to listening, plays a substantial role not only for the audience, but also for the musicians, who at some point play blindfolded on a darkened stage. Before the concert, at 16:00, trumpet player and music composition PhD Justin Christensen, along with UvA profesor of Media Studies Patricia Pisters, will present lectures on ‘The Synesthesia of Sound and the Moving Image’.
On Wednesday February 24 at 4pm the film Simondon of the Desert (2012, 110 min.) will be screened for the first time in the Netherlands, in the presence of filmmaker François Lagarde and philosopher Pascal Chabot. The screening, which will be held at the Universiteitstheater (Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam), will be followed by a discussion (Q&A). For more information and reservations, please contact Marie-Aude Baronian (lousbaronian@uva.nl).
Today, after five years or so in the making, the special issue on contemporary Caribbean cinema has been published in the open access Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. The issue consists of a combination of interviews and critical essays that provides a diverse and necessarily eclectic glimpse into recent developments in Caribbean cinema.
The Webcams as an Emerging Cinematic Medium is the title of the first PhD in Artistic Research involving a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. This research combines theory and art practice to analyse video surveillance as form of filmmaking and the consequent impact on processes of subjectification in urban spaces.
Friday January 15th Cinéart in collaboration with NALACS and Fiesta Latinoamericana will host the Dutch premiere of the award-winning Chilean documentary El botón de nácar (The Pearl Button, 2015) directed by Patricio Guzmán. The film will be screened at 21.00 hrs in De Balie in Amsterdam, after which there will be space to talk, network and dance in the bar area.
From February 4 to March 10, EYE and the University of Amsterdam present This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice, a series of public lectures at EYE reflecting on exceptional film restorations and film heritage projects. Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at EYE and Professor of Film Heritage at the UvA) addresses, in the course of six lectures, a wide range of restoration and presentation projects, spanning from pre-cinema to recent experimental films and Hollywood Classics. The topics include not only regular theatrical projections, but also film installations and exhibitions of film apparatus. Each weekly edition features a guest speaker, a Q&A session and film screenings, often also accompanied by live music.
The 8th issue of Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies on ‘vintage’ is now online! The issue fearues a special section that is guest edited by Kim Knowles. You are able to read and download all contributions in Open Access at www.necsus-ejms.org.
Film Studies student Mashya Boon has won the Science in the City Award for her master’s thesis Cinematic Clones, Illusive Identities and Mercurial Memories (Master Film, UvA, 2015). The jury consisted of Erik Scherder, Liza Mügge (UvA) en Felix Rottenberg.
By Bram Overbeeke and Nataša van de Laar, students at the Research Master in Media Studies.
Last Friday, November 20th, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) hosted American filmmaker Errol Morris for a masterclass in a fully packed Tuschinski theatre. The festival’s central guest discussed his work and his ideas on documentary film with moderator and prominent documentary scholar Bill Nichols. The dialogue focused mainly on the intersections between theory and practice of documentary filmmaking, in relation to the ground-breaking work of the director himself. Reality, truth, and their representations were recurring themes throughout the meandering discussion.
Yesterday the first copies of Filming for the Future – The Work of Louis van Gasteren by Patricia Pisters were handed over to Van Gasteren and NFF director Willemien van Aalst at Paradiso in Amsterdam.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) has invited EYE to compile two special film programmes for the annual MoMA Festival of Preservation. To Save and Project is an international film festival showcasing recently preserved and restored film works from November 4 through 25.
“Dissolves of Passion”? Materially thinking through editing in digital videographic film and moving image studies
Thursday 26 November 2015, 17.00 – 19.00, OMHP D 0.09
Focusing on a number of videographic explorations of matters of film editing (including several of her own), Grant’s talk will ask what such practical, digital and audiovisual modes of research and presentation — ones which themselves evidently turn on editing — might add to the study of a cinematic feature that (with a number of key exceptions) has not received much sustained attention to date in written film scholarship.
Film Studies faculty member Dr. Charles Forceville will give a plenary lecture in October at the “International Conference on Communication Styles” Philological Faculty, Krosno State College, Krosno, Poland (org. Dorota Brzozowska & Władysław Chłopicki).