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Sergei Eisenstein: The Anthropology of Rhythm, a conversation with curators Marie Rebecchi and Elena Vogman

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The exhibition Sergei Eisenstein: The Anthropology of Rhythm (Nomas Foundation, Rome, 20 September 2017 – 19 January 2018) explores the intersecting artistic, anthropological, and political dimensions of the unfinished film projects of Sergei Eisenstein: Que viva Mexico! (1931-1932), Bezhin Meadow (1935-1937), and Fergana Canal (1939). Curated by art and film historians Marie Rebecchi (Paris) and […]

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The journeys of a film phenomenologist: An interview with Vivian Sobchack on being and becoming

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by Julian Hanich Introduction Vivian Sobchack, born in 1940 in New York City, is one of the most influential American film theorists of the last 25 years. At the beginning of the 1990s she was the main driving force behind the recuperation of phenomenology as a viable methodology in film studies with her book The […]

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For a radical media archaeology: A conversation with Wolfgang Ernst

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by Elodie A. Roy In his numerous writings on archives, technologies, and time media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst indefatigably interrogates the ways in which technical and digital media do not only exist in time but produce temporalities – and temporealities – of their own.[1] This interview sheds light on media archaeology as a discipline emerging within […]

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Even today there are people who think these harmless little books are dangerous: An interview with David Bordwell

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by Malte Hagener Following the conversation with Richard Dyer featured in the Spring 2016 issue of NECSUS, we continue our series of interviews with key figures in the field of media studies. This time we turn to David Bordwell, one of the most prolific scholars in film studies, but also a controversial figure who was […]

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How do film festivals work?: A conversation with Joshua Oppenheimer

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Few documentary filmmakers have been as widely discussed in recent years as Joshua Oppenheimer. He burst onto the scene in 2012 with The Act of Killing, one of the more powerful feature-length debuts of any genre in recent memory. The documentary is about politically-motivated, state-sponsored killings in the 1960s in Indonesia and the residue of […]

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Pleasure | Obvious | Queer: A conversation with Richard Dyer

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by Catherine Grant and Jaap Kooijman How to introduce Richard Dyer? One could start by recognising that he is an academic star, as Su Holmes and Sean Redmond have done in their introduction to Framing Celebrity. Referring to Dyer’s 2006 SCMS keynote lecture, they write: [h]is entrance was greeted with ecstatic applause and he delivered […]

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A philosophy of weaving the web: An interview with media theorist Sebastian Giessmann

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by Geert Lovink Unlike predictions, ‘networks’ are on their way out. The reason for this is the unprecedented concentration of money, power, and infrastructures in the hands of a few monopoly players. Instead of ‘social networks’ we speak of ‘social media’, and that is no coincidence. In fact, ‘network theory’ has followed this trend for […]

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Temps mort: Speaking about Chantal Akerman (1950-2015)

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by Eric de Kuyper and Annie van den Oever On 5 October 2015 the esteemed Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman passed away unexpectedly. Her sudden death created an outpouring of tributes in journals and blogs all over the world, full of sadness about the loss of an extraordinary  filmmaker who has been celebrated ever since she […]

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Strong positioning on the international festival circuit: An interview with Diana Iljine of Filmfest München

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By setting a new attendance record, showing remarkable growth in the number of film professionals and media representatives, as well as a significant increase in media coverage, the 33rd Filmfest München (25 June – 4 July 2015)[1] confirmed its growing relevance as the second largest film festival in Germany. In addition, the introduction of two […]

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Dredging, drilling, and mapping television’s swamps: An interview with John Caldwell on the 20th anniversary of ‘Televisuality’

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by Markus Stauff It has now been 20 years since John Caldwell’s Televisuality: Style, Crisis and Authority in American Television was published. With its combined attention to television’s aesthetic, economic, and technological aspects, it was a highly innovative book that questioned a great deal of conventional wisdom. The book’s central claim that, during the 1980s, […]

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Dispatches from the dark: A conversation with Neil Young at the 2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam

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Most large film festivals contain a constellation of attendees: casual moviegoers, devoted cinephiles, filmmakers, distributors, sales agents, and programmers – all of these figures help form the rich culture of film festivals. Central to this culture is the film critic, who travels the festival circuit filing film reviews and reports for media outlets.[1] The festival […]

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Feminist film studies 40 years after ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, a triologue

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by Laura Mulvey, Anna Backman Rogers, and Annie van den Oever Forty years after the publication of her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Screen, Laura Mulvey, together with Anna Backman Rogers, has edited Feminisms: Diversity, Difference, and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures (Amsterdam University Press, 2015), which is the latest instalment of […]

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Shell shock cinema: A discussion with Anton Kaes on the First World War, cinema, and the culture of trauma

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by Francesco Pitassio Anton Kaes is the Class of 1939 Professor of German and Film & Media at the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored a number of fascinating books, placing films and related discourses within a broader frame: the confrontation of German literati with cinema in the early 20th century, the contradictory relationship […]

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Oberhausen: An interview with Lars Henrik Gass

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by Enrico Camporesi Founded in 1954, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen) is one of the pioneering film festivals for short films and a major venue for experimental, documentary, and artist’s film and video. Throughout the decades Oberhausen has been the site of crucial turning points in film history. In 1962, during […]

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Trans* film festivals: An interview with Eliza Steinbock

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by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck On a sunny August afternoon in Amsterdam, Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist of the Film Festival Research Network met cultural analyst, festival programmer, and filmmaker Eliza Steinbock (currently working as a lecturer and researcher at Maastricht University). The discussion ranged from Amsterdam-based transgender film festivals to issues […]

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Editorial Board

Martine Beugnet
University of Paris 7 Diderot

Greg de Cuir Jr
University of Arts Belgrade

Ilona Hongisto
University of Helsinki

Judith Keilbach
Universiteit Utrecht

Skadi Loist
Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf

Toni Pape
University of Amsterdam

Maria A. Velez-Serna
University of Stirling

Andrea Virginás 
Babeș-Bolyai University

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