On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 10:46:04 -0400 Mike Frank said: >The following is a call for papers for a special session at the MLA >convention in December of 1996. > > >TEACHING FILM THEORY IN THE AGE OF MTV: > > Conventional histories of cinema take as central a distinction seen >as going back to Lumiere and Melies, the distinction between cinema as a >document of the "real" and cinema as an artifice of images. In this history >the two archetypal--if not seminal--figures are Bazin and Eisenstein, and the >touchstone issue is the nature and purpose of montage. > > But whatever claims earlier arguements about montage may have, recent >developments in the actual practice of film require a rethinking of this >touchstone issue. Recent mainstream [Holywood] cinema--perhaps under the >influence of MTV--has either deviated from or reconfigured the invisible >editing of the classical system of continuity. It's been a long while since I read Bazin, Eisenstein, and Pudovkin but memory has it that Pudovkin describes what has come to be called "classical cinema." The technique is one that is suited to an industrial style of film production where different specialists write, direct, and edit films -- all under the supervision of a manager, i.e., producer. My memory further is that Eisenstein's writings can be readily analyzed to encompass the mtv style. One example (still from memory): Eisenstein's description (and practice) of the steps sequence of POTEMKIN includes (horrors!) jump cuts. See particularly the scenes of the woman whose eyeglasses are broken. There is a direct cut between the woman with intact glasses followed directly by a closely similar shot of the woman with her glasses broken and blood streaming down her face. Others have examined numerous versions of this sequence in libraries around the world. Regardless of whatever other discrepencies exist, this jump cut appears in all versions. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]