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editorial
welcome to Issue 21 of our journal!
Senses of Cinema is growing and changing. Our philosophy of cinema remains the same: to stay outside the mainstream system of distribution and promotion that rules public film culture, and to champion what is innovative, challenging, personal and under-recognised in the art of cinema. With all the usual provisos, of course – that we seek to find art in entertainment and exploitation and underground cinema, not just at the market's designated 'art houses'; and that a fierce love of cinema often entails just as fierce a critique of it.
In recent months, Senses of Cinema has undergone an internal re-organisation. The new format began in our last issue. There are now three sections, each with their own Editor.
The General section - which comprises the coverage of Australian cinema, spotlights on directors, genres and national cinemas, Film Festival reports, film and book reviews, and film criticism itself - is edited by Fiona A. Villella.
The Special Dossiers are edited by Adrian Martin. This new feature began in the last issue with the “Festschrift for Raymond Durgnat”. It continues in this issue with a focus on “Performance”, and in the next issue – our special Women's Cinema issue – with a tribute to the legacy of actor-writer-filmmaker Zoë Lund. The aim of the Special Dossiers is to offer a sustained, 'curated' focus on a single topic.
The Great Directors database, which also began in the previous issue, is edited by Bill Mousoulis. This section offers introductory, career-survey essays on a vast range of auteurs. Over time, we hope it will grow into a major, Internet-based reference-text.
There is a whole, collective team that puts Senses of Cinema together. Apart from the Editors, there are the Editorial Assistants, Mairead Philips (General section), Grant McDonald (Special Dossiers) and Michelle Carey (Great Directors). Albert Fung handles the Links page. Presiding over Web design and maintenance for the publication is Chris Howard. We also welcome, with this issue, our newly appointed Manager, Jan Chandler. And we will soon have a Board in place to further oversee the operations of
the magazine.
In this issue, Senses continues to explore the changing maps of a newly-defined 'world cinema'. German cinema is highlighted through discussions of Romuald Karmaker, Valeska Grisebach, and most prominently Harun Farocki. The Farocki focus comprises an ensemble of articles presented by Thomas Elsaesser, as a preview of his forthcoming book on this too-often overlooked master of radical cinema (locally – here in Melbourne, Australia – this focus coincides with screening of Farocki's recent video works at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival). Paraguay, too, is canvassed in the interview with, and article by, Hugo Gamarra Echeverry.
From Paraguay to Australia: the importance of film festivals in enriching one's knowledge and appreciation of cinema cannot be underestimated. And a good deal of the coverage in this issue – from the Joseph Losey spotlight to contemporary Iranian cinema to avant-garde cinema – ties in with program material screening at several local film festivals.
'Film culture' is, in Australia and perhaps elsewhere, a frequently misused and abused term. A recent book, the independently published Straight Roads and Crossed Lines: The Quest for Film Culture in Australia? by Barrett Hodsdon, follows the question mark at the end of its title all the way to a pessimistic conclusion, making it one of the most extensive and pointed critiques of any national cinema ever published. Several observers and participants in Australian film culture respond to Barrett's book and raise important issues relating to the past, present and future of local film culture.
Where much talk of film culture necessarily targets the social conditions enabled (and disabled) by government, institutions, big business, etc, an older tradition in film criticism takes a step away from this 'materialist' fray, to revel in the visions of special auteurs. Although it is often said that no one believes anymore in the aura of 'the artist', the response to our call for contributions to the Great Directors project has been overwhelming. Naturally, we mean 'great' here in an open-ended, not rigidly canonical sense. We are interested in not just those directors who are long venerated - although there is no lack of passionate support for figures such as Robert Bresson, judging from the entries so far - but, equally, the major figures
(criminally little-known as they may be) in any sector or mode or geographical region of cinema: animation (Chuck Jones), independent (Todd Haynes), film-essay (Chris Marker), 'new Asian cinema' (Edward Yang), experimental, 'third cinema', B-films, underground, women's cinema…
Alongside directors, nations and material cultures, there are also specific themes – sometimes less materialist and more tuned in to the utopian possibilities of the imagination - that can be drawn out from the ever-swirling mass of experiments in filmmaking and creative writing about film. This issue's Special Dossier, on “Performance”, gives a glimpse of a new, evolving kind of critical discourse that downplays dramatic naturalism and character psychology in favour of attention to body, gesture, 'presence', physical energy and intensity. Although what has been called a 'cinema of the body' (canvassed in Senses since our first issue) has been queried in some quarters as apolitical, this Dossier suggests how the new language that is being developed to describe and discuss the physicality of cinema offers ways to break the impasses of a rigid 'identity politics'. And the political – mixed with every kind of human, desiring, everyday contradiction - is nowhere more evident than in the featured interview with actor-director Lou Castel. The cinema, as always, beckons as the place where the merely material can be transformed, and opened to the wildest possibilities.
Thanks for this issue go to Timothy Mathieson, Anna Dzenis, William D. Routt, and Anne Démy-Geroe.
Adrian Martin (Special Dossiers Editor) – Bill Mousoulis (Great Directors Editor) – Fiona A. Villella (General Editor)
go to Contents, Issue 21
Senses of Cinema is
an online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion
of cinema. It has been set up to address a lack of cinephilic writing
in local discourse, that is, writing sprung from the desire to think and
write seriously, knowledgeably and passionately about film.
Senses of Cinema is unique in its eclecticism: it encourages articles of all styles
(casual, personal, academic, critical, impressionistic and poetic - or a
combination of these), analytical approaches (thematic, psychoanalytic,
etc) and subject matter. The only criteria that we prescribe are that all
articles are demonstrably passionate, serious, intelligent and insightful
reflections and/or analyses on the topic of cinema.
Senses of Cinema promotes various divergent "voices" that speak to a wide and
diverse audience. It aims to bring together a mix of writers: established
and emerging, theorists and un-published cinephiles, filmmakers and
film programmers, and local and international writers.
We are particularly
committed to discussing art, independent, experimental and third world cinemas
(everything from Renoir to Antonioni to Solàs to Oshima to Morrissey
to Jost to Friedrich to Snow, feature films as well as short films) , theorising
new encounters with digital technologies, and promoting writing that increases
one's understanding and appreciation of cinema.
We recognise that an object as ephemeral and ethereal as cinema continues to fascinate,
to provoke, to inspire, to turn on, to evolve. And it is in relation to
this object that we seek to facilitate and encourage expression and appreciation.
Want to contribute to this journal?
about us
If you have a suggestion for the links page, contact Albert.
Senses of Cinema
(ISSN 1443-4059) is published approximately bi-monthly by Senses of Cinema
Inc.
Copyright 1999-2002 Senses of Cinema Inc and the contributors.
As under the Copyright Act 1968 (Australia), no part of this journal may be reproduced by any process without the written permission of the editors except for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review. These works may be read online, downloaded and copied for the above purposes but must not be copied for any other individuals or organisations. The work itself must not be published in either print or electronic form, be edited or otherwise altered or used as a teaching resource without the express permission of the author.
All views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and not the editors (unless indicated).
Senses of Cinema Inc Senses of Cinema is indexed in the MLA (Modern Language
Association of America) International Bibliography and is listed in the
MLA Directory of Periodicals.
All Australian content in Senses of Cinema is indexed in APAIS
(Australian Public Affairs Information Service) of the National Library
of Australia.
All reviews of individual films published in Senses of Cinema are indexed in the Movie Review Query Engine.
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