Silhouette is a lively film magazine with a range of interesting articles published from Kolkata (Calcutta) and is available free as an ebook. To obtain it email Amitava Nag (amitava.nag@gmail.com) or download it from its home at Wikidot (link).

Still from film

Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako is an audacious film. It encourages us to ponder over the conceit of rational argumentation and the irrationality of rations for the world’s poorest. The film presents a trial of the IMF and World Bank, set in the courtyard of a multi-family dwelling in the capital of Mali with the African civil society acting as plaintiff. Though Bamako runs the risk of being labelled a “festival film” due to the subject and treatment, the film’s modest juxtaposition of modernist argumentation in a courtyard filled with the banal, the sick and the low-brow lays bare the futility of discussions about ethics in the African public sphere. [Read more →]

Calling all fanatical and passionate film producers, flamboyant cultivators of the moving image! Five Minutes of Fire challenges you to create and submit short films around the theme of desire. Part of ‘The Compass of Desire Festival’, Five Minutes of Fire will bring together film-makers from far and wide to exhibit their work here in Bristol, UK. [Read more →]

Call For Papers – Special Issue of Wide Screen [Read more →]

NEMLA, April 7-11 2010, Montreal, Canada

Cinematic Representation of Immigration, Spaces and Identities: The representation of immigration and immigrants through films is very often linked to the space in which they choose to live. How could we define the dynamic between the notions of immigration, spaces and identities through movies in today’s cinema from different countries? How do immigration spaces foster the immigrants that live in them? How do these spaces affect their identity? Do immigrants also reshape the place where they have found asylum? This is the main frame of analysis that this panel will explore. [Read more →]

Virginia Bonner/SAMLA 2009 Conference in Atlanta

In keeping with the theme of the 2009 SAMLA Atlanta convention, this panel seeks papers that address the link between human rights and the humanities via national cinema(s). Possible topics may include but are not limited to: Ethics, Theories of Spectatorship, Documentary, Memory and Trauma, Individual vs. Collective Consciousness, Living in Exile, and Politics and Humanities. By June 14, 2009, please send proposals of approximately 500 words with presenter’s name, academic affiliation and contact information (including e-mail and mailing addresses) to Virginia Bonner, Clayton State University, at vbonner@clayton.edu

One of the founder members of The Independent, UK, David Lister offers a frank description of the state of apple polishing, er film criticism, which could perhaps be now called a universal affliction — journalists who truckle at the sight of film stars and producers. A sample:

I will never forget the press conference given by Charlton Heston a few years ago, when the late actor was still performing. This was the first “question” from a Lebanese film critic: “Mr Heston, you are a god in my country. You are my father, my mother, my sister and my brother.”

For more read here (link)

A delight for anybody interested in film culture: Deniz Pinar from Turkey has started a blog on Turkish film posters. Visitors will relish the set of “Turkish Fantastic Cinema”. My favourite is Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (Turkish Star Wars movie).

Head over to:

http://turkishposters.blogspot.com/

Music, Sound, and the Moving Image is the first international scholarly journal devoted to the study of the interaction between music and sound with the entirety of moving image media – film, television, music video, advertising, computer games, mixed-media installation, digital art, live cinema, et alia. [Read more →]

Editor: Leah A. Murray

In 2008 we saw a continuation and maybe even an acceleration of the trend of popular culture having a real effect on politics. From The Daily Show ,to Obama’s Blackberry, to candidates’ use of Facebook and MySpace, we have seen politics opening up to new ways of thinking and acting as we come online for the next generation. As this next generation grows up in a politicized popular world (or perhaps a popularized political world) where issues like torture are dealt with on shows like 24 and we have fictional presidents on The West Wing who deal with real-life policy choices, it is in our interest to understand how this coverage affects the discourse. This edited collection seeks to enhance the discussion of the popular culture effect on our understanding of politics. [Read more →]