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February 2008, Week 1

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From:
Phil Powrie <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 6 Feb 2008 08:36:54 -0000
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1. New book: Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression

2. PhD studentships (NTU)

3. Film Studies Under Threat at Canterbury, NZ

4. Conference: Women's Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran: 'The Representation of Women in Middle Eastern Cinema'


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1. New book 

Edinburgh University Press is pleased to announce: Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression by Martine Beugnet

Click through to the EUP website <http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/edition_details.aspx?id=12434>  or read on for more information.

All EUP books are available online or through your local bookshop.

'Cinema and Sensation is a powerful account of the cinema of our time, a time in which thought, and hope, can only arise from a compassionate and unflinching immersion in reality. With an exquisite attention to important new works of French cinema, this book restores cinema's qualities of being, and becoming, in the world.' - Laura U. Marks, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University.

'Starting with a fascinating list of recent Francophone films, Beugnet brings Deleuzian and other French theory, along with references to recent Anglophone analyses of sensation, to bear on how this cinema creates "deeply sensual, synaesthetic effect[s] of the film image and sound-track". This book provides a useful approach to this group of films, as well as a skilful summation of a trend in recent theory.' - Maureen Turim, Professor of English and Film and Media Studies, University of Florida.

This book looks at a much-debated phenomenon in contemporary cinema: the re-emergence of filmmaking practices (and, by extension, of theoretical approaches) that give precedence to cinema as the medium of the senses.

France offers an intriguing case in point here. A specific sense of momentum comes from the release, in close succession, of a series of films that exemplify a characteristic awareness of cinema's sensory impact and transgressive nature: Adieu; A ma soeur; Baise-moi; Beau Travail; La Blessure; La Captive; Dans ma peau; Demonlover; L'Humanité; Flandres; L'Intrus; Les Invisibles; Lady Chatterley; Leçons de ténèbres; Romance; Sombre; Tiresia; Trouble Every Day; Twentynine Palms; Vendredi soir; La Vie nouvelle; Wild Side; Zidane, un portrait du XXIème siècle. These films, amongst others, typify a willingness to explore cinema's unique capacity to move us both viscerally and intellectually.

Martine Beugnet focuses on the crucial and fertile overlaps that occur between experimental and mainstream cinema. Her book draws on the writings of the likes of Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty and Bataille, but first and foremost, she develops her arguments from the films themselves, from the comprehensive description of specific sequences, techniques and motifs which allows us to engage with the works as material events and as thinking processes. In turn, she demonstrates how the films, envisaged as forms of embodied thought, offer alternative ways of approaching those questions that are at the heart of today's most burning socio-cultural debates: from the growing supremacy of technology, to globalisation, exile and exclusion, these are the issues that appear embedded here in the very texture of images and sounds.

Martine Beugnet is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she heads the Film Studies Section.

October 2007, 208pp, Hb 978 0 7486 2042 5, £45.00

To view the full range of Film Studies books published by Edinburgh University Press please visit our website at www.eup.ed.ac.uk <outbind://4/www.eup.ed.ac.uk> .


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2. PhD studentships (NTU)

Nottingham Trent University Graduate School Vice Chancellor's PhD Bursaries The University is inviting applications for twelve fully funded PhD studentships, commencing in October 2008, to include the following field:

Arts, Humanities & Education (including International Relations; Geography; Modern Languages (applications welcome in the area of French cinema)

The studentships will pay UK / EU fees, and provide a maintenance stipend of £12,940 for up to three years. 
For further information and an application pack please contact
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Tel: +44 (0)115 848 8117
Web: http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/ <http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/> The closing date for applications is 3 March 2008. 


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3. Film Studies Under Threat at Canterbury, NZ

Last week, the University of Canterbury announced the disestablishment of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies and the American Studies programme.  The proposed staff cuts, to be effective from Jan 1, 2009, will mean the loss of 13.5 academic positions and eight general staff, which include technicians and administrators.  Students will also be denied the opportunity to receive a degree in one of the most vital, relevant, and dynamic academic disciplines in the contemporary world.

Full proposal at http://www.arts.canterbury.ac.nz/artsfuture.shtml (look at the "Change Proposal" document).
 
The staggering thoughtlessness of this decision beggars belief and displays a deep seated ignorance of the role of performance, media literacy and visual culture in general within the university and within the wider culture.  You'll undoubtedly share our grave concerns about the logic, let alone the very real effects upon careers, lives and the quality of a degree in the arts, of such a misguided action.
 
We have six weeks to respond to the proposed closure of Theatre and Film Studies.  If you wish to support the campaign to defend our programme, you can send a message to me directly or respond using the submission form at the bottom of the attached "Change Proposal" document that outlines the rationale behind the cuts.  My Film Studies colleague Alan Wright and I would both love to see the international community of media educators and practitioners use this forum to engage in a debate about the value of our discipline, which as the example of Canterbury shows, in under threat.  
 
Should you have colleagues that would care to contribute, please feel free to forward this message to them as well.  If you should have ideas, recommendations, or advice for us in how to wage this battle successfully, please write to me.
 
Dr Mary Wiles
Lecturer
Theatre and Film Studies
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch
New Zealand
Phone:  0064-3-364 2987 ext. 7296 

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4. Conference: Women's Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran: 'The Representation of Women in Middle Eastern Cinema'

A Film Symposium offering academics, students and interested members of the public an opportunity to discuss the representation of women in the new cinemas from North Africa and the Middle East. Co-hosted by Institut français, Parallax Media and the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), Edinburgh University

Sat 23rd February 2008
10.30am
Institut français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
Tel: 020 7073 1350

www.tangierstehranfilm.org
www.institut-francais.org.uk


For opportunities to present papers, published or otherwise, please contact:

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