Workshop Series on Filmmakers - Andrzej Wajda

Come join us to pay tribute to....

Andrzej Wajda, the late Polish filmmaker

Workshop details:
Tuesday 28 March 2017
6.15 pm – 10 pm 
Meeting Room, School of Economics Castlecliffe
The Scores, KY16 9AR St Andrews, Scotland 
Includes as showing of: ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958)

Andrzej Wajda was a titan of a filmmaker whose visual range spanned iconography that went far beyond the country it represents, locating his work within the global socio-political discourse surrounding the turbulent history of the Twentieth century and specifically the volatile experience of his native Poland.

His politically engaged films often focused on the tribulations of working class life under authoritarian conditions. Globally, Wajda is possibly best-known for ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958), part of his war trilogy, which references the Warsaw Uprising and its aftermath. We will show the film, with an introduction of the war trilogy by Prof. Dina Iordanova of the Department of Film Studies.

Visit the workshop series Facebook page.

This will be followed by presentations offering an insight into Wajda’s other influential films – from EVERYTHING FOR SALE (1969) and THE WEDDING (1973) to KATYN (2007) and WALESA: MAN OF HOPE (2013), as well as, of course, MAN OF MARBLE (1977) and MAN OF IRON (1981).

Acclaimed poet and author John Burnside – who is also Professor of Creative Writing at St Andrews – will approach his interest in Wajda from a unique angle, involving the fate of ASHES AND DIAMONDS star, Zbigniew Cybulski, as featured in his most recent novel.

With original contributions and video essays by Rohan Crickmar and Tomasz Hollanek.

Congratulations! 4 Publications Shortlisted for the BAFTSS Publications Awards

The British Association of Film and Television Studies Scholars (BAFTSS) has unveiled the nominees for its Outstanding Achievement Awards 2017. The Department of Film Studies is widely represented with four of the twenty-five nominations. Dr Tom Rice's White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan is nominated for best monograph; Prof. Dina Iordanova and Jean-Michel Frodon's Cinemas of Paris is included among the nominees for best edited collection; and two articles by postgraduate students are nominated for best publication by a doctoral student: Ana Grgic for 'Rediscovering Nationalism in the Balkans: the early moving image in contemporary memorial spaces' and Grazia Ingravalle for 'Remixing Early Cinema: Historical Explorations at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands'.

See also:  http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/congratulations-4-publications-shortlisted-for-the-baftss-publications-awards/

Workshop Series on Filmmakers at St Andrews

Abbas Kiarostami

KIAROSTAMI AT ST ANDREWS

Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures,

University of St Andrews

Tuesday, 21 February 2017

School I, 17:00 – 21:00

Abbas Kiarostami, the most notable auteur of contemporary Iranian cinema who passed away in July 2015 at 76, is fondly celebrated by global cinephiles for his aesthetics, visual poetry and humanistic politics.

His films draw from history, sociology, anthropology, geopolitics, religion and philosophy. Masterpieces like Where is My Friend's House? (1987), Close-up (1990), and Through the Olive Trees (1994) – to name just a few -- are regarded worldwide as some of the most important works of cinema.

We invite you to spend an evening viewing and discussing Kiarostami work. The director’s films necessitate keen attention because of the superb dialectics between local and global. His portrayal of a concrete (Iranian) history, culture, and politics is structured in a way that expands the experteintial horizons to the universal.

It is this transformative potential of Kiarostami’s films that earned him a most notable position in the annals of cinema.

For the event, we chose to show the Palme d'or winning Taste of Cherry (1997): a philosophical masterpiece and a marvelous example of film craft.

A video essay that builds on sequences from Kiarostami’s films and other aspects of his versatile artistic legacy will also be screened.

Programme:

17:00 – 17:10 Welcome address and introduction to the “Workshop Series on Filmmakers at St Andrews” by Prof. Dina Iordanova, Director, IGCCC.

17:10 – 17:45 Professor Jean-Michel Frodon, ‘The oeuvre of Kiarostami: A Personal Tribute’

17:45 – 19:20 Screening: Taste of Cherry (1997, Iran,  Abbas Kiarostami, 95 minutes)

19:20 – 19:40 Tea Break/ Display of Shorna Pal’s video essay on Kiarostami

19:40 – 20:15 Two brief presentations by Shorna Pal (on ceating the video essay) and Sanghita Sen (on the Koker trilogy)

20:15 – 21:00  Discussion, moderated by Dina Iordanova and Jean-Mchel Frodon

Related recent research:

Frodon, Jean-Michel. The Kiarostami effect. Honar va cinéma n°3. Tehran. March 2016. Pp 68-75.

OUR NEW WORKSHOP SERIES

KIAROSTAMI AT ST ANDREWS is the inaugural event in a series that will see the presentation of other similar events where we will dedicate a single evening to the work of a recently deceased single personality from global cinema.

Forthcoming workshops will be dedicated to WAJDA AT ST ANDREWS (March 2017) and PURI AT ST ANDREWS (April 2017).

Conceived and curated by the Institute of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures (University of St Andrews) the series will celebrate the artistry of those whose names are synomymous with global film.

Along with film enthusiasts who like to go beyond the mainstream, we will get together to view and discuss the work of the masters whilst their charismatic presence is still fresh on our minds.

And whilst the focus will be on the films of one filmmaker, actor or other creative personality, we will invoke examples that will keep in check the context of transnational film culture, in which global cinema appears and thrives.

The workshops will be lead by Professor Dina Iordanova, alongside personalities such as Prof Jean-Michel Frodon, Prof. John Burnside, and others, and involving contributions from our wonderfully global student cohort.

The sessions will be loosely structured around screenings, short presentations, videos, provocations, and interventions. Everybody will have the chance to take part.

Celebrating innovation in global popular cinemas

The Institute of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures (IGCCC) at the University of St Andrews invites you two days of celebrating innovation in global popular cinemas, shifting the paradigms of the 'original' and 'the ripoff', and re-imagining the global 'remake'.

'The Rest and The West: RipOff or Resourceful Creativity?' 

Innovation over Imitation in Popular Cinema Beyond the West 

Film screening/discussion+Workshop - 7 to 8 October, 2016 

Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures, University of St Andrews 

We seek to challenge the traditional vantage points of the West as the 'source' of global 'derivatives' with academics from the St Andrews' Department of Film Studies community, such as Prof. Dina Iordanova, Dr Dennis Hanlon and Dr Anjua Jain, guests such as Dimitris Eleftheriotis (Glasgow), Iain Robert Smith (London), Savas Arslan (Istanbul), Ahmet Gürata (Ankara) and Turkish-German director Cem Kaya, as well as the amazingly diverse cohort of our PhD students, including contributions related to the Gulf countries, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, China, Poland, India, Turkey, and more....

7 October 2016, The Arts Lecture Theatre, 6 p.m. 
The event will kick off with a screening of the acclaimed documentary 'Remix, Remake, Ripoff' / 'Motör'(2014), followed by a Q&A session with director Cem Kaya. Cem Kaya's documentary takes us into the heart of the quirky, mysterious, innovative bylanes of the Yeşilçam cinema of Turkey. At once notorious for is "rip-offs" of The Exorcist and Star Wars, yet inherently subversive by using creative means to bypass political censorship, Yeşilçam brought joy, adventure and thrills to generations of Turkish audiences. 'Remix, Remake, Ripoff' is the incredible story of Turkey's popular cinema - 7 years in the making and constructed from hours of archival footage. This screening will be followed by a Q & A with director Cem Kaya.

8 October 2016, Students Union, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
A day of provocations, interventions and contributions from international scholars and observers, intended to turn the tables and challenge the traditional patterns that rely on the hierarchical positioning of "originals" from the West and "ripoffs" in global cinema cultures. Along with a special focus on Turkish and Indian popular cinemas, we will explore the 'uplifting lifting' found in the hot territories of other traditions of popular cinema, and will foreground innovation over imitation, making important methodological interventions. The full programme can be found at the end of this message.

The event is open to all interested parties. Join us, as we seek to chart the transnational journey that binds global audiences together through cinematic experiences.

Tickets (inclusive of the screening and conference-day refreshments) are available at: http://onlineshop.st-andrews.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=29&catid=31&prodid=467


Ticket prices: £10 (Regular) £6 (Unwaged/Student)

For any information or queries, please contact the organisers at: Shruti Narayanswamy (sn52@st-andrews.ac.uk) & Sanghita Sen (ss309@st-andrews.ac.uk)

For event updates on Facebook, please follow the Screening page: https://www.facebook.com/events/306068843104052/ and the Conference page: https://www.facebook.com/events/703610053127247/.

The Functions of Film in the British Empire

In 1941, William Sellers, the head of the recently formed Colonial Film Unit (CFU), published an article about African audiences, entitled ‘Films for Primitive Peoples’, in which he proposed a model for mobile film shows in Africa. Sellers suggested that a good way to get the crowd’s attention was for the commentator to ‘ask a question to which the obvious answer is “yes”.’ Such a question, Sellers suggested, might be “Are you proud to be British?”. The question would be asked three times, he explained, ‘almost every member of the audience will reply and their answer comes back in a roar.’ A decade later, when Sellers revisited these plans, the suggested question had intriguingly changed from “Are you proud to be British?” to “Are you all well?”

So why begin with this example? First, it provides a neat illustration of the shifting political situation within Africa in the last decade of colonial rule. The initial question (‘Are you proud to be British?’) also hints at the ways in which the CFU saw these film shows as political events, as a way of monitoring, addressing and homogenising disparate groups of colonial subjects. Film shows were imagined here as a microcosm of the empire; a way of organising the colonial space, for example through carefully outlined seating plans that reaffirmed traditional hierarchies. Reports also suggest that some government officials took most pride in discovering that the crowd had learnt to stand to attention at the end of the show and sing the British National Anthem.

Dr Tom Rice of the Department of Film Studies is currently working on a book on the Colonial Film Unit, which produced, distributed and exhibited film across the British colonies from the 1930s until independence in the 1960s, but his interest in this topic began almost a decade ago when Tom worked on a major 3-year AHRC project on colonial film. The project provided the perfect opportunities for a (then relatively) young researcher: working with major archives, part of a great team, multiple academic and public events, and the chance to research, write and publish extensively. However, there were also limitations here. As the project was focused on the individual films held within the British archives, inevitably there were ‘missing’ films and histories. It also became increasingly apparent that the government films told a partial story – they are often most interesting for what they don’t show – and that many of the histories that most intrigued Tom appeared beyond the screen.

The opening example provides a case in point. Sellers’ writing hints at the integral role of the local film commentator, who might set up the screening, provide an introductory lecture, answer questions, and translate and talk over the films. The commentator would offer call and responses, ask questions of the audience, outline the intended message of the film and direct where the audience looked on screen. He might talk over or replace the British voice on the soundtrack and, in this way, represented a new voice within African cinema. Audience responses show how the commentator could completely transform a film, even prompting widespread laughter during a film on venereal disease.

Looking at audience reports and government documents further confirms that audiences did not always respond as the authorities expected. At the height of the Emergency in Malaya (Malaysia), the government cancelled screenings of a propaganda film made by the Malayan Film Unit after reports that cinemagoers had cheered the onscreen appearance of communist leader Chin Peng. In Nyasaland (Malawi), the mobile unit was blocked from reaching its destination, while on other occasions nationalist leaders took to the microphone. In Ghana, a lamp was actually fitted to the screen to prevent unrest amongst the audience, using the cinema screen to light up political dissidence; an example of the film watching the audience.

Tom is now beginning a Leverhulme Fellowship, which will allow him to move further beyond the British archive (with research trips in Ghana and Jamaica) and access additional materials (films, interviews, government files, and has collaborated with the BFI to digitise the CFU’s quarterly magazine). In examining film’s role in administering, controlling and visualising a rapidly changing Empire, the book will provide a new historical perspective on the last decades of the British Empire. It will also offer a fresh take on British cinema – instructional and educational, often run by civil servants and sanitary inspectors – and, as we see the formative moves towards film production and exhibition in a number of countries, new insights into global film history.

You can view a number of the CFU films at www.colonialfilm.org.uk

Research: ‘Are You Proud to Be British?’: Mobile Film Shows, Local Voices and the Demise of the British Empire in Africa: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2015.1049863?src=recsys&

SCMS Dissertation Award received by Film Studies lecturer

Dr. Brian Jacobson, lecturer in the Department of Film Studies, has received a major award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, winning the prestigious Dissertation Award for his work, "Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and Early Cinema." Dr. Jacobson's dissertation was completed at The University of Southern California in 2012 and links
film studies with the history of architecture, and science and technology studies to examine the manner in which the early motion picture studio, as developed by Edison, Méliès, and other pioneers, interpreted developments in urban modernism while also having an impact on early film aesthetics. The formal announcement of the award was made at the Award Ceremony of the 2013 SCMS Conference in Chicago on Friday afternoon, March 8, 2013.

Silver screen exhibition at Old Course

Bing Crosby (1950)

The Department of Film Studies has collaborated with Dunhill on an exhibition at the Old Course Hotel, which features images of film stars in St Andrews. The exhibition, entitled 'From Silver Screen to the 18th Hole', reveals the establishment of St Andrews as a 'star site', as film stars engage with and contribute to the culture, heritage and economy of the town. Film Stars including Bing Crosby, Will Fyffe, Bob Hope, Sean Connery and Rita Hayworth are featured. The exhibition is part of the Department of Film Studies' 'Cinema St Andrews' project, which examines the history of cinema in St Andrews. The project has uncovered evidence of the first appearance of moving images in town at the Grand Fancy Bazaar of August 1895. This University event was intended to raise money for the Students’ Union and included, as The Citizen termed it, ‘Edison’s three latest marvels – the Phonograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophone.’

Prof. Iordanova elected to prestigious Danish post

Prof. Dina Iordanova, of the Department of Film Studies, has been elected a member of the Danish Council for Independent Research for the Humanities (DFF). The 12 members of the Council are recognised researchers and officially appointed by the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation within their personal focus areas. The Danish Council for Independent Research funds specific research activities, within all aspects of culture, aesthetics, language, history and cognitive disciplines, that are based on the researchers' own initiatives and that improve the quality and internationalisation of Danish research.

Success for Film Studies at the British Association for Film, Television and Screen Studies Awards

Three members of the Department of Film Studies have been placed on the shortlist for the inaugural annual BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) awards for scholarship. Dr David Martin-Jones has qualified for the Best Academic Book published in 2011 for Deleuze and World Cinemas; Dr Joshua Yumibe has qualified for the Best Essay published in 2011 with his essay 'Visual Diplomacy: Projections of Power from the Field in Ethiopia'; and John Trafton, PhD student, has been shortlisted for his essay, 'Things That Almost Killed Me: Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker, and the Influence of 19th Century Spectacle Art' in the Student Writing Award category. The University of St Andrews is is the only unit shortlisted in more than one category for these prestigious awards, and we have placed finalists in all three categories of competition. There were a large number of entries in each of these categories, and our success in this competition is a powerful endorsement from the increasingly important BAFTSS, the professional society of Film and Media Studies programmes in the UK.

Film Screening: The Old School of Capitalism

The Byre Theatre and The Centre for Film Studies are delighted to welcome veteran Serbian director Želimir Žilnik, famed for his bravery in speaking out about political repression, to St Andrews to present his latest film, The Old School of Capitalism, at the Byre Theatre on Sunday 6 November at 7.30pm.

In a career spanning four decades Mr Žilnik has achieved widespread international acclaim and numerous awards and festival prizes. Through his work he was an outspoken critic of censorship during the Yugoslav communist era and later of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Serbia. His work was sometimes banned for its depiction of student protests and messages in favour of free-speech.

His new film, The Old School of Capitalism, deals with the misery-inducing effects of both local and global capital – a theme as relevant to Britain in the ‘age of austerity’ as it is to Žilnik’s own Serbia.

Žilnik will introduce the film and then take questions from the audience following the screening. Tickets are available on the door or in advance from the Byre Theatre. Price: £5

Beacon Lecture Thurs 3rd Nov

The new series of lectures, the Beacon lectures are free and open to all, and take place on Thursday evenings from 6-7pm in Physics Lecture Theatre C in the Physics building at the North Haugh. The lectures highlight post-doctoral researchers from various departments showcasing the cutting edge research being undertaken at the University. [Complete lecture series list]

3rd November 2011

Neapolitan cinema, old and new: an overview of regional cinema from Naples, Italy
Dr Alexander Marlow-Mann, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies
Naples is a city with a unique cultural identity, distinct from that of Italy as a whole and readily identifiable around the world. But why is it that such a medium-sized city beset by social and economic problems should also be such a prolific producer of films? And what is it that makes the cinema of Naples so unique? In this talk, Alex Marlow-Mann will give an overview of the history of filmmaking in Naples and explain how that history led to the international success of Gomorrah and filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino.
Dr. Alex Marlow-Mann is Research Co-ordinator at the Centre for Film Studies and author of the first English-language book on the subject, The New Neapolitan Cinema (EUP, 2011)

Next lecture: 
17th November 2011
How to design an invisibility cloak: what gravity can teach us about optics
Dr Simon Horsley, School of Physics and Astronomy