upcoming activities for 2007 and 2008

[11.nov]
I’ll be giving a lecture called “Mizoguchi: Secrets of the Exquisite Image” in connection with the Chazen Museum exhibition, “Competition and Collaboration: Japanese Prints of the Utagawa School.” This beautiful show runs from 2 November to 6 January 2008. My talk, which is also synchronized with the Mizoguchi series at our Cinémathèque, will be held in room L140 of the Museum at 3:00 pm. A reception follows.

[17–19.dec]
Kristin and I will attend a conference in Rome, Switchover 3: La narrazione esplosa, about cinematic storytelling in the digital era. We also plan to visit Pompeii without recreating scenes from Viaggio in Italia.

[3–5.mar]
I’ll be attending a conference on theatre and film at Waseda University in Tokyo.

[17.mar – 6.apr]
I’ll be blogging again from the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Unfortunately this forces me to miss our own superlative Wisconsin Film Festival (3-6 April).

[23–27.apr]
Kristin and I will be attending Ebertfest, formerly known as Roger Ebert’s Festival of Overlooked and Forgotten Films, in lovely Urbana-Champaign.

[11–14.jun]
The UW–Madison plays host to the biennial conference of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, which for some reason elected me president. My colleagues Ben Singer and Jeff Smith will be my co-hosts. I hope to sneak in a blog during what will be a busy few days.

[28.jun – 5.jul]
Kristin and I head off to the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna for their annual assemblage of rare films. We will be blogging, as well as goggling.

[6–15.jul]
I’ll be in Brussels doing research and visiting the long-established festival Cinédecouvertes/ L’Age d’or held by the Royal Film Archive. Also a bit of le blogging.

As I learn more about these events, our web tsarina Meg will help me update the links.

news

From blog to book: The entry, “New Media and Old Storytelling,” appears in Italian translation in Matteo Bittanti's new anthology on the relation between film and videogrames, published by Meltimi of Rome.

The eighth edition of Film Art: An Introduction has been translated into long-form Chinese and published by McGraw-Hill’s Taiwan division. The cover quotation beside the Oscar is from Ang Lee: “David Bordwell is someone I am very familiar with. The books he writes—go read them, absolutely!”

Film History: An Introduction has just been translated into Czech, in a beautiful hardbound edition with a string bookmark. As you can see, Chaplin would have approved of the cover, since he liked to watch the ladies.

And here is the second edition of the Spanish-language version of Film Art (Barcelona: Paidós, 2006) which we also just received.

A new essay, “The Hook: Scene Transitions in Classical Cinema,” is now online.

Figures Traced in Light has been acquired for Portuguese translation by Papirus Editora of São Paolo.

Figures Traced in Light was reviewed, with great generosity, by Jacques Aumont in Film Quarterly 60, 4 (Summer 2007), pp. 76-77. Not available online at filmquarterly.org, but articles can be found in ProQuest and other electronic publication databases.

Last summer, I wrote an online essay, “Hearing Voices,” on M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water and Michael Bamberger’s book on its making, The Man Who Heard Voices. Mr. Bamberger asked to use my piece as a foreword to the paperback edition of the book; I provided a mostly new essay for the purpose. The paperback has now appeared, though in a gesture of unsportsmanlike behavior the publisher has changed the subtitle. The original read “How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale”; to this the publisher added “and Lost.” I thought the film, which definitely had its problems, significantly better than most American critics did, so I take a little satisfaction in the fact that Lady in the Water appeared on Cahiers du cinéma’s list of the ten best films of 2006.

A Hungarian translation of Film History: An Introduction has just been published. Thanks especially to András Kovacs for his support in making this happen!

A simplified-character Chinese translation of The Way Hollywood Tells It has just been begun; it’s slated to be published by Nanjing University Press.

Poetics of Cinema
Routledge
October 2007
[about the book]

links

fredcamper.com
Passionate cinephile Camper collects his essays and reviews; a must for those interested in classic and experimental cinema.

Scanners
Jim Emerson’s energetic and witty commentary on the current movie scene.

davekehr.com
Thoughtful weekly comments from one of our best critics.

rogerebert.com
Ebert’s page, packed with information, opinion, and archival resources.
See also: Awake In The Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, a terrific collection of essays and other pieces; I’m proud to have contributed a foreword to this book.

andyhorbal.blogspot.com
Andy Horbal offers a fine mix of recent links, comments on current releases, and subtle reflection on larger issues of film culture.

zoom-in.com
A wide-ranging discussion of professional media technology and creative activity. Reid Rosefelt’s blog on independent cinema is always worth reading.

daily.greencine.com
A great clearinghouse for breaking film news, along with perceptive commentary.

filmmakermagazine.com
The premiere source for independent American cinema, and more.

girishshambu.com
Intriguing and unpredictable links to many other movie sites.

kaijushakedown.com
Variety’s Asian film blog

Butterflies and Wheels
Humorous and pointed critiques of current humbug, both inside and outside Academe, with a great deal of commentary on psychoanalysis, Intelligent Design, and similar topics.

Cinemetrics
A valuable website mounted by Yuri Tsivian. Thanks to a program created by Yuri’s son Gunars Civjans, you can develop a detailed profile of cutting rates and other variables in a film.

Hungry Ghost
David Chute’s acute commentary on unusual films and filmmakers, from India and elsewhere.

The Way Bordwell Tells It
The Norwegian Journal of Media Studies presents an English-language interview with me (in Word format)

School’s Out? Never!: David Bordwell Keeps Working the Room
An interview with me in the Canadian journal Cinema Scope.

Risk and Renewal in Danish Cinema (2007)
and
A Strong Sense of Narrative Desire: A Decade of Danish Film (2004)
Essays on trends in contemporary Danish cinema.

My essay for a Festschrift for Thomas Elsaesser, focused on staging in Hal Hartley’s Simple Men. In German originally, the English translation appears on the Danish film studies website 16:9.

Bordwell on Bordwell
A four-part interview with me in the Danish online journal 16:9.

Part I – Hitchcock, Hartley and the Poetics of Cinema

Part II – Functions of Film Style

Part III – Writing on Film Style

Part IV – Levels of Engagement