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Publications

FILM FESTIVALS: AFTERMATHS AND BEYOND, May 2018

Issue 13 (May 2018) of FRAMES CINEMA JOURNAL is dedicated to FILM FESTIVALS: AFTERMATHS AND BEYOND, and is guest edited by Dina Iordanova. It opens up with Letter from the Editors, doctoral candidates Cassice Last and Sophie Hopmeier.

Introduced by Dina Iordanova, in a piece entitled The Film Festival: Principal Node in Film Culture it contains new studies related to activist festivals in the spheres of politics and LGBTQ matters

FEATURE ARTICLES

Not Only Projections in a Dark Room: Theorizing Activist Film Festivals in the Lives of Campaigns and Social Movements, by Lyell Davies

Stories from the Margins: The Practicality and Ethics of Refugee Film Festivals by Sarah Breyfogle

Commercialisation as a Tool: The Commercial Transformation of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival by Heshen Xie

Incestuous Festivals: Friendships, John Greyson, and the Toronto Scene by Antoine Damiens

POINT OF VIEW REPORTS from around the world

Tracing Bodo Film Festival: The Makings of a Local Film Festival by Ankush Bhuyan

A “Farm System” in an Emerging Texas Film Festival Circuit by Ted Fisher

Framed Space and Framing Spaces: 61st BFI London Film Festival in Review by Mina Radovic

BOOK REVIEWS

Film Festivals and Anthropology by Liz Czach

Activist Film Festivals: Towards a Political Subject by Liz Czach

 

 

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Events Publications

Om Puri @ St Andrews (and In Media Res)

The workshop dedicated to great Indian actor Om Puri (1950-2017) took place in St Andrews on 18 April 2017. Speakers paying tribute to the actor included Dr. Anuja Jain, Prof Dina Iordanova, and a host of doctoral students including Shruti Narayanswamy, Souraj Doutta, Aakshi Magazine, Shorna Pal and Sanghita Sen. We screened and discussed the film HALF TRUTH/ARDH SATYA (1983, Givind Nihalani) featuring stars Om Puri and Smita Patil.

“No one can say exactly what contributes to an actor’s ability to create empathetic characters, but the sensitivity that Puri brought to his roles, are perhaps products of both the triumphs as well as the disappointments that are were a part of his career and his life,” said Aakshi Magazine. “It is this that probably reflects the sensitivity he could bring in playing not easily likeable characters like the one in East is East, or the Hindu right-wing officer responsible for riots in Dev. Puri portrayed them as contradictions without asking us to take sides.”

A number of texts on Om Puri by contributors such Aakshi Magazine, Souraj Dutta, Shruti Narayanswamy, Dina Iordanova and Shorna Pal were published In Media Res for the week of 22 May 2017.

The event was covered inIndian media, including Hindustani Times and NYOOZ TV

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Events

Andrzej Wajda @ St Andrews, March 2017

on 28 March 2017 we held an evening seminar in commemoration of the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016 ) who had passed away in October the previous year.

Throughout his illustrious career, Wajda  directed fifty six films and authored thirty six clips. Many of his films had been adaptations of key texts of Polish literature (ASHES (1965), based on Stefan Zeromski; BIRCH WOOD (1970), based on Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz; THE WEDDING (1973), based on Stanislaw Wyspianski; PROMISED LAND (1975), based on Wladyslaw Reymony; THE MAIDS OF WILKO (1979), based on Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz; PAN  TADEUSZ (1999), based on Adam Mickiewicz). He had also adapted the work of Dostoyevski, Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad. Others reflected matters of history and memory, often linked to World War II and the Holocaust (including A GENERATION (1955), KANAL (1957), ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958), LANDSCAPE AFTER BATTLE (1970), based on Tadeusz Borowski, A LOVE IN GERMANY (1983), KORCZAK (1990) and KATYN (2007)). Wajda’s name is also connected with some key films of the cinema of ‘moral anxiety’, reflecting on the communist period (MAN OF MARBLE (1977), MAN OF IRON (1981), WALESA: MAN OF HOPE (2013)) and of the period of post-socialism (MISS NOBODY (1996)). Other films where he focused on existential and moral dilemmas included EVERYTHING FOR SALE (1969), WITHOUT ANAESTHESIA (1978), THE CONDUCTOR (1980) and DANTON (1983)

Wajda, who worked not only in Poland but transnationally, was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award, in 2000, and his influence over world cinema at large — East and West — is undisputed. We discussed Wajda’s work with actors like Daniel Olbrychski, Andrzej Seweryn, Biguslaw Linda, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Krystina Janda and Maja Komorowska. Focusing on his collaborations with Zbigniew Cybulski, who stars in ASHES AND DIAMONDS and is the subject of EVERYTHING FOR SALE, we read excerpts of John Burnside’s novel ASHLAND AND VINE (2017), which talks of episodes involving Cybulski. The writer than discusse dhis long-standing admiration for the director.

We screened Wajda’s classic ASHES AND DIAMONDS/Popiół i Diament (1958). Speakers included Prof. John Burnside and Prof. Dina Iordanova, Rohan Crickmar and Tomasz Hollanek. Rohan had prepared a video essay that included excerpts from a range of Wajda’s films, such as A GENERATION (1955), KANAL (1957), ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958), INNOCENT SORCERERS (1960), PROMISED LAND (1975), MAN OF MARBLE (1977) and KATYN (2007).

Categories
Events Publications

Abbas Kiarostami @St Andrews (and In Media Res)

In February 2017 we held the very first of the workshops dedicated to recently deceased famous international film directors with an event dedicated to the memory of Iranian Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016), who had passed away prematurely the previous year. The workshop was opened in a moving tribute by Jean-Michel Frodon, who had been a close personal friend of the filmmaker. Then there were contributions by Sanghita Sen and Shorna Pal, as well as a screening of the director’s Cannes-winning feature film A TASTE OF CHERRY (1997), which we discussed.
Some of the work generated for the workshop was subsequently published online for IN MEDIA RES: A MEDIA COMMONS PROJECT on 24 April 2017. Five short essays dedicated to Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, by Dina Iordanova. Jean-Michel Frodon, Marco dalla Gassa (Ca’ Foscari, Venice), Sanghita Sen and Shorna Pal (St Andrews)