She Found it at the Movies: Women Writers on Sex, Desire and Cinema
Author: Catherine Russell
Categories
Archive/Counter Archive
Archive/Counter-Archive is a project dedicated to researching and remediating audiovisual archives created by women, Indigenous Peoples, the LGBTQ2+ community, and immigrant communities. Political, resistant, and community-based, counter-archives disrupt conventional narratives and enrich our histories, activating Canada’s moving image heritage
Categories
Review of Archiveology in Screen
Categories
Reviews
- Review of Johnny Guitar Olive Films Blueray release, Cineaste Vol. XLII No. 2 (Winter 2017)
- Review of A Life of Barbara Stanwyck and Barbara Stanwyck. Cineaste 39.4 (Fall 2014): 71-73.
- Review of Frank Capra: The Early Collection DVD Box Set (web exclusive) Cineaste (Summer 2013). http://www.cineaste.com/
articles/emfrank-capra-the- early-collectionem-web- exclusive - Review of Barbara Stanwyck, Miracle Woman by Dan Callahan, Cineaste Vol. XXXVII No.3 2012 (Summer 2012), 61-62.
- Review of Senso, Criterion Collection DVD Cineaste Vol. XXXVI no. 3 (Summer 2011), 52-54.
- Review of Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life by Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, Cultural Anthropology 26:1 (Feb. 2011), 143-149.
- Review of The Human Condition, Criterion Collection DVD Cineaste Vol. XXXV no. 3 (Summer 2010): 53-55.
- Review of An Autumn Afternoon, Criterion Collection DVD Cineaste Vol. XXXIV no. 2 (Spring 2009): 83-84.
- Review of Silent Ozu, Criterion Collection DVDs, Cineaste Fall 2008 web exclusive http://www.cineaste.com/articles/silent-ozu.htm
- Review of The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain Criterion Collection DVDs by Kon Ichikawa, Cineaste. Vol. XXXII No. 4 (Fall 2007): 63-64.
- Review of Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, Jeffrey Ruoff Ed. International History Review June 2007.
- Review of Late Spring DVD Cineaste Vol. XXXII, No2, Spring 2007: 65-67.
- Review of Ugetsu DVD Cineaste Vol. XXXI, no. 3 (Summer 2006), 64-66.
- “A Ménage à trois Gone Wrong: Review of Sontag Kael: Opposites Attract Me By Craig Seligman,” Synoptique 7 Feb. 14, 2005. http://www.synoptique.ca/core/en/articles/sontagkael/
- Review of Story of Floating Weeds and Floating Weeds DVD Cineaste Vol. XXX No. 1 (Winter 2004): 56-58.
- Review of Tokyo Story DVD Cineaste Vol. XXIX no. 3 (Summer 2004): 50-51.
- Review of Metropolis DVD Cineaste Vol. XXIX no. 1 (Winter 2003): 70-71.
- Review of Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology by Jay Ruby. American Ethnologist 28:3 (2001): 735-737.
- Review of Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto. Cineaste Vol. XXVI No.2 (Spring 2001): 53-54.
- Review of The Birds by Camille Paglia and The Wizard of Oz by Salmon Rushdie, as part of review of BFI Classics and Modern Classics Film Series, co-written with Bart Testa and Carole Zucker. Canadian Journal of Film Studies Vol. 7 no. 2 (Fall 1998): 78-87 (refereed journal).
- Review of Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction by Scott Bukatman, Canadian Journal of Film Studies 5:1 (Spring 1996) 79-82 (refereed journal).
- Review of Cinema, Censorship and the State: the Writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978 (MIT Press 1992), Cineaste XX:1: 57-58.
- Review of The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference and Film Theory, by D.N. Rodowick, Recherches Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry Vol 11 no.2-3 (1991) 253-257 (refereed journal).
- Review of Psychoanalysis and Cinema. E. Ann Kaplan Ed. Queen’s Quarterly 97:4 (Winter 1990): 660-662 (refereed journal).
- “Past Pleasures: New Histories of German and American Cinemas,” Review of: The American Film Musical by Rick Altman, American Film Melodrama by Robert Lang, Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany by Patrice Petro, and New German Film: A History by Thomas Elsaesser, Queen’s Quarterly (Spring 1990) 88-101 (refereed journal).
- “Will the Reel Avant-Garde Please Stand Up?” Review of the International Experimental Film Congress, Toronto, May-June 1989, Fuse XIII:1-2 (Fall 1989) 37-43.
- “On Experimental Film,” Cinema Canada April 1989.
- Review of Chris Gallagher’s Undivided Attention in Recent Work from the Canadian Avant-Garde, Catherine Jonasson and Jim Shedden eds., (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1988) 23-24.
- Review of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema, by David Desser, in Cineaste 16:4 (1988).
- “Yvonne Rainer Eats Her Cake,” Cinema Studies, Department Newsletter, New York University 2:3 (Fall 1986).
Special Issue Editor. Camera Obscura 60. Fall 2005.
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Carleton University, Imaging Modern Girls in Japanese Silent Cinema
Chika Kinoshita, University of Chicago, Actresses in the Transition to Sound in Japanese Cinema
Catherine Russell, Concordia University, Naruse Mikio’s Silent Films: Gender and The Discourse of Everyday Life in Interwar Japan
Sara Ross, University of Hartford, The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki
Yiman Wang, Haverford College, Who Is Afraid of Anna May Wong? And What Can Be Said About a Dragon Lady?
Weihong Bao, University of Chicago, From Pearl White to the White Hibiscus: The Vernacular Translation of the Serial Queen Thriller in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1920s
This course will explore the history of American cinema from the early 1930s to the early 1960s, tracing the career of Barbara Stanwyck who made 84 films from 1927 to 1964, and worked with many of the top directors, in many different genres. Because she was not tied to any single studio, her career offers a unique picture of the Hollywood studio system. In this course students will engage with the critical debates around classicism, gender and genre as they have developed in film studies since the 1970s. Stanwyck arguably challenged the norms for women actors throughout her career, finally transforming herself from film star to TV star, and working until the age of 80. This course will present students with a range of methods of analysis for studio-based films, including star studies, gender, genre, set and fashion design, industry history, reception theory and performance studies, using Stanwyck as a guide and as a means of bringing these various methodologies together. This approach to Hollywood will acquaint students with the heterogeneity of the classical cinema within the terms of American cultural studies, and as a site where gender is constantly under construction, deconstruction and reinvention.
Categories
American Cinema of the 1950s
Topics in Film History: American Cinema of the 1950s.
Hollywood in the 1950s was an industry in decline, even while it produced some of the strongest films of its history. With the rise of independent productions, the competition of TV, and major shifts in the social fabric, American cinema was dramatically changed during this decade. In this course we will examine the social and cultural climate of the HUAC trials and the Cold War, the civil rights movement, suburbanism and popular Freudianism. We will focus on three key genres of the decade: the family melodrama, the Western, and film noir in order to examine how the changing social formation was negotiated ideologically through narrative cinema. This decade of American cinema has become a central focus of nostalgic discourses on American culture. One of the questions that will be addressed in the course concerns the relationship of film style (including performance, mise en scene and film aesthetics) to the social anxieties that are so dramatically represented during this period. In thirteen weeks we cannot comprehensively cover all the important elements of film culture of the era, although students are invited through presentations and papers to extend their research beyond the parameters of the syllabus.
Conference Papers
- March 14, 2018, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Toronto “Amazon Cinema: Vegetal Storytelling” Session B
- April 14, 2018, Philadelphia: Wolf Symposium “Documentaries Now: Challenges, Opportunities, Directions”
http://cinemastudies.sas.upenn.edu/events/2018/April/ WolfSymposium2018Documentaries Now - “Walter Benjamin, Archiveology, and Critical Film Practice,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Montreal, March 2015.
- “Barbara Stanwyck as the Bad Mother,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Atlanta Georgia, 2016.
- “Awakening from Hollywood: Rose Hobart as Star of the Archive.” SCMS 2014, Seattle, Friday, March 21 2014 [Conference Program]
- “The Special Effect of the Archive,” La magie des effets spéciaux. Cinéma-Technologie-Réception / The Magic of Special Effects. Cinema-Technology-Reception, Montreal, November 2013
- “Paris 1900 and the Archival Imaginary,” Visible Evidence, Stockholm Sweden, August 2013
- “Barbara Stanwyck in the Jungle,” Film Studies Association of Canada conference, Victoria, BC, June 2013.
- “Archival Cinephilia in The Clock,” SCMS Conference, Chicago, 2013.
- “Paris 1900: Compilation, Collection and the Dialectical Image,” Film Studies Association of Canada conference, Waterloo, Ontario, June 2012.
- “The Barbara Stanwyck Show: Melodrama and the Media Archive,” SMCS Conference, Boston, March 2012.
- “The Barbara Stanwyck Show: Melodrama, Kitsch and the Media Archive,” Workshop on Melodrama, Concordia University, Sept. 15, 2011.
- “Memory as Medium: Essay, Archive and the Found Footage Film,” Society for Cinema Studies New Orleans March 2011.
- “Phantasmagoria, Cinephilia, and Archival Film Practices,” The Arthemis International Conference On the History and Epistemology of Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University, June 4-7 2010.
- “Benjamin, Prelinger and the Moving Image Archive,” L’Avenir de la Mémoire: Patriomoine, Restauration et Rémploi Cinématographiques, Montreal Fevrier 2010.
- “Classic Modernity: Melodramatic Features of Japanese Cinema,” SCMS conference Los Angeles, March 2010.
- “Classic Modernity: Melodramatic Features of Japanese Cinema,” FSAC Conference, Ottawa, June 2009.
- “Women in Cities: Comparative Modernities and Cinematic Space in the 1930s,” Transcultural Montage, International Conference at Moesgaard Estate, University of Aarhus, DK, August 24 to 26, 2009.
- “Women in Cities: Comparative Modernities and Cinematic Space in the 1930s,” Space Matters: Reframing Early Cinema and Modernity, University of Michigan April 2009.
- “The Uses and Abuses of Cinephilia,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 2008.
- “’Films about ordinary people’: The Japanese shoshimin-eiga and ethnographic film criticism.” Beyond Text Image:Voice::Sound:Object: Synaesthetic and Sensory Practices in Anthropology, Manchester England June 30th to July 2nd 2007
- “Japanese Cinema as Classical Cinema,” Transnationalism, Globalization and North Asian Cinema Workshop, Montreal, May 4-6, 2007
- “Japanese Cinema as Classical Cinema,” Kinema Club VIII, Frankfurt, Germany, April 29-22, 2007
- “Walter Benjamin, Film Criticism and Historiography,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago Ill, March 11, 2007.
- “Voyage to the Ends of Cinema,” Vues sur l’exotisme: Voyages aux premiers temps du cinéma. Projections et atelier, Cinématheque Quèbecoise, Novembre 2006.
- “Cinephilia and the Travel Film: Gambling, Gods and LSD,” Visible Evidence, Montreal, August 2005
- “FromHome Front to “Revolutionary Democracy”: Naruse During the 1940s,” Kinema Club 5, Tokyo, June 2005.
- “Cinephilia, Collecting and Vernacular Modernism as Critical Method,” Cinema and Anthropology, Sussex University, Brighton England, May 2005
- “Not a Monumental Cinema: Naruse Mikio’s War-Time Cinema,” Film Studies Association of Canada Conference, London Ontario, May 2005
- “The Epistemology of the Travel Film: Gambling, Gods and LSD,” Avant 2004, Karsltad, Sweden August 2004.
- “Naruse Mikio’s Silent Films: Gender and The Discourse of Everyday Life in Interwar Japan,” Women and the Silent Screen Conference, Montreal June 2004.
- “Naruse at P.C.L. (1935-1937): Japanese Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” Kinema Club III, New York University, February 2004.
- “Naruse Mikio in the 30s and the Discourse of Everyday Life,” Kinema Club Conference, Hawaii, June 2003;
- “Meiji Cinema: Motion Pictures and Japanese Modernity,” Domitor Conference on Early Cinema, Montreal, June 2002
- “Ozu, Naruse, and the Gendered Space of Japanese Cinema,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, May 2001.
- “Architecture, Genre, Gender: Negotiating Modernity in the Postwar Japanese Home-Drama,” Global Cities conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, April 2001.
- “Naruse Mikio and Hayashi Fumiko: Cinema, Literature and the Female Subject,” Conference on Japanese Women Filmmakers, Boulder Colorado, October 2000.
- “Tokyo: The Movie” Presented at:
- “Cinema and Urban Remains: An inaugural gathering on cinema and the city,” Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, May 2000.
- Japanese Studies Association of Canada conference, October 1999, McGill University, Montreal.
- Film Studies Association of Canada conference, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, June 1999.
- “Acting In and Acting Out: Japanese Actresses in the 50s,” Society for Cinema Studies, Chicago, March 2000.
- “Parallax Historiography: The Flâneuse as Cyberfeminist,” Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, May 1999.
- “Mikio Naruse and the Japanese ‘Women’s Film’,” Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, August 1997.
- “Archival Apocalypse: Found Footage as Ethnography,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Ottawa, Ontario, May 1997.
- “The Body as the Main Attraction: Winter Sports in Quebec, 1903,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Dallas TX, March 1996.
- “The Ethno-Avant-garde and the Pornographic Gaze: Unsere Afrikareise Revisited,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, New York City, March 1995.
- “Playing Primitive: In the Land of the Headhunters and/or War Canoes,” Film Studies Association of Canada/Learned Societies, University of Calgary, June 1994.
- “Subjectivity Lost and Found: Bill Viola’s I do not Know what it is I am Like,” Visible Evidence Conference: Strategies and Practices in Documentary Film and Video, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, September 1993.
- “Mourning the Woman’s Film: The Dislocated Spectator of The Company of Strangers,” Film Studies Association of Canada Conference, Carleton University, June 1993.
- “The Representation of History in Japanese Film Melodrama,” British Film Institute Conference on Melodrama, London England, July 1992.
- “The Eternal Virgin and The Pathos of Historiography in Japanese Film Melodrama”, Asian Cinema Studies Conference, New York, June 1992.
- “Postmodern Ethnography and the Discourse of Tourism in Visual Anthropology,” Society for Cinema Studies, Los Angeles CA, May 1991.
- “Violence, Decadence and the Decay of History: Greenaway, Lynch and Godard,” Florida State University Annual Conference on Literature and Film, Tallahassee, Florida, January 1991.
- “Insides and Outsides: Cross-Cultural Criticism and Japanese Film Melodrama,” Film Studies Association of Canada Conference, Ottawa, May 1990; Asian Cinema Studies Society (Australia) Conference, Melbourne, July 1990.
- “Historiography as Mortification: Walter Benjamin and the Cinema,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Washington DC, May 1990.
- “Filmmaking, Tourism and Ethnography,” International Experimental Film Congress, Innis College, Toronto, June 1989; Queen’s Critical Theory Seminar Series, January 1990.
- “David Rimmer’s Found Footage: Reproduction and Repetition of History,” Learned Societies of Canada, June 5, 1988, Windsor, Ontario. Panel sponsored by the Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory and the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.
- “Accident and Allegory in Le Mépris: Benjamin and Godard,” Film Studies Association of Canada, Queen’s University, June 1988.
- “Testimonial and Tragedy: Wim Wenders’ Anxiety of Authorship,” Florida State University 13th Annual Conference on Literature and Film, Tallahassee, January 1988.
- “The Body and the Flag: Nagisa Oshima’s Narrative Project,” SCS/FSAC/AQEC conference, Concordia University, Montreal, May 1987.
- “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet: the Reception of the Jazz Singer,” Film Studies Association of Canada, Innis College, University of Toronto, June 1985.
Conference Organization and Panels
- Panel Discussion on Global Feminist Histories: 1950s Cinema and its Afterlife. “The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni: Melodrama, Critical Cinephilia, and Egyptian Modernity” at SCMS Conference, Chicago, 2017. http://www.cmstudies.org/default.asp?page=conference
- Panel discussion on Documentary and archives at Rencontres Internationale du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM). Saturday Nov 16, 2013 @ 14h00 (J.A. DE SÈVE cinema 1400, boul. de Maissonneuve O.)
- HAUtaldea Symposium: CHARACTER AND DESTINY: REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM AND THE DOCUMENTARY. AlhóndigaBilbao, Bilbao, 9-13 October 2013
- Panel Chair, “Perspectives on The Clock,” SCMS Conference, Chicago, 2013.
- Panel Chair, “Barbara Stanwyck,” SCMS Conference, Boston, 2012
- Panel Chair, “Classical Japanese Cinema,” SCMS Conference Los Angeles, 2010.
- Member of the organizing committee, Workshop on “Northeast Asian Cinema in the Era of Transnationalism and Globalization,” May 2007 SHHRC Workshop Funding: $19,000. Principle Investigator, Lu Tonglin, Université de Montréal.
- Panel Chair, “Prewar Japanese Cinema,” Film Studies Association of Canada, London Ontario, May 2005.
- Co-director, Women and the Silent Screen Congress, Montreal June 2-6, 2004.
- Panel Chair, “Teaching Film Theory,” Film Studies Association of Canada Conference, Ottawa, 1998.
- Panel Chair, “Documentary Before Documentary” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, 1996, Dallas Texas.
- Panel Chair, “Reworking Modernity and Tradition in Asian Cinemas,” Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference, New York, 1992.
- Panel Chair, “Ethnography and Avant-garde Film,” Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Los Angeles, CA 1991.
Public Lectures and Invited Talks
- “Introduction to Archiveology,” Anarchiva collective, Mexico City, August 2017 http://anarchivia.org/
- “Rags, Refuse, and Collecting Culture: Walter Benjamin’s Collector,” Cinema in the Eye of the Collector. Montreal June 4-8, 2017
- “Film As Research Method” at the 22nd International Bremen Film Conference, May 03-07, 2017
http://www.film.uni-bremen.de/en/film-conference/current-conference.html - “Structural Documentary,” Documentary Theory-Practice Symposium Temple University, Philadelphia, October 14, 2016.
http://tfma.temple.edu/documentary-theorypractice- symposium - “Barbara Stanwyck as the Bad Mother,” Women, Film Culture, and Globalization Concordia University, Montreal, September 2-4 2016
- “Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices,” Workshop on The Camera as Cultural Critique, Aarhus, Denmark, May 2016.
- “Tokyo Women: Naruse and the City.” International Symposium on Naruse Mikio: Films of Women and Misery, Leiden University and EYE Film Museum Amsterdam, Sept. 24-25, 2015.
- “Film Studies’ Gamble with Walter Benjamin: A Survey of Cinema Journal and Screen,” Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea, September 2014.
- “Archiveology, Compilation, and Collecting: From Found Footage to Essay Film,” DMZ Documentary Film Festival, South Korea, September 2014.
- “Collecting, Compilation, Archiveology, and the Clock” at Max and Iris Stern International Symposium 8, Remontage/Remixing/Sharing: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics. Friday, April 4, 2014 @ 14h00 in the Beverley Webster Rolph Hall of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. [Symposium Flyer] [Symposium Program]
- HAUtaldea Symposium: CHARACTER AND DESTINY: REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM AND THE DOCUMENTARY. AlhóndigaBilbao, Bilbao, 9-13 October 2013
- “Paris 1900 and the Archival Imaginary,” Visible Evidence, Stockholm Sweden, August 2013
- “Barbara Stanwyck in the Jungle,” Film Studies Association of Canada conference, Victoria, BC, June 2013.
- “The Barbara Stanwyck Show: Melodrama, Kitsch and the Media Archive,” University of Southern California, School of Critical Studies lecture series February 2013
- Seminar in Documentary and the Ethnographic avant-garde, Artist’s Moving Image Research Network, London England, January 2012.
- “Cinephilia as Cultural Anthropology,” Martin Walsh lecture, Keynote address, Film Studies Association of Canada conference, Vancouver, June 2008
- “Naruse Mikio,” National Film Theatre, London England, July 4, 2007.
- “Experimental Ethnography: Art Film,” The Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal (FFEM) Jan 28, 2007, Concordia University.
- “Voyage to the Ends of Cinema,” Vues sur l’exotisme. Voyages aux premiers temps du cinéma, Projections et atelier, Cinémathèque québécoise, 24 novembre 2006.
- “On experimental film,” T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G P.O.L.I.T.I.C.S, Goethe Institute, October 2006.
- “Mikio Naruse and Strategies of Film Analysis,” 30 Years of Cinematic Excellence: Anniversary Conference,” Innis College, University of Toronto, March 25, 2006.
- “Naruse Mikio: The Auteur as Salaryman,” lecture at Cinematheque Ontario, Nov. 5, 2005.
- “Men with Swords and Men with Suits: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa,” Japan Foundation Toronto, Sept. 19, 2003.
- “Lisa Steele and the Autobiographical Trace,” Depot, Vienna, Dec. 10, 2001
- Brown University, Providence Rhode Island, held a conference on March 15-16, 2000 on electronically mediated documentary. Conference: From Today. Check Conference website: http://www.stg.brown.edu/conferences/fromtoday/
- “Ecstatic Ethnography: Maya Deren and the Filming of Possession Rituals,” Concordia University PhD in Humanities Speakers Series, March 1998
- “Ecstatic Ethnography: Maya Deren and the Filming of Possession Rituals,” Queen’s University, November 1997
- Panellist at public symposium “Voice and Documentary: Who Speaks, and for Whom?” National Film Board Theatre, Montreal, March 26, 1995. Sponsored by the Canadian Independent Film caucus.
- “The Video/Film Dialogue: Theory and Practice,” Whitney Symposium on Contemporary Art, New York, April 28, 1986.
Interviews
- NewBooksnetwork podcast interview on Archiveology
https://newbooksnetwork.com/catherine-russell-archiveology-walter-benjamin-and-archival-film-practices-duke-up-2018/ - Interview about Archiveology in Film Quarterly:
https://filmquarterly.org/2018/03/01/archiveology/ - Catherine Russell Discusses Walter Benjamin:
http://arthemis-cinema.ca/en/content/catherine-russells- lecture
Blog Posts
Categories
Barbara Stanwyck
I have a book contract with Illinois University Press for a book called The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck: The Lady is an Actor. The book will be structured as an abecedary, in the form of 26 short essays on Stanwyck and her world, incorporating archival research, biographical anecdotes, textual analyses, and scholarship on performance, affect, labour, and American film history. The goal is to produce a critical history of American studio-era cinema with a woman at the centre.
Barbara Stanwyck’s career interests me as a trajectory through the dreamworld of Hollywood. She will be at the centre of a history of American cinema that is not governed by great men, institutions, or technologies, but by a talented, intelligent woman who was a central figure in the negotiation of gender through the middle decades of the 20th century. Stanwyck was a formidable actress whose top billing throughout her career assured her pairing with either lesser actors or strong male actors playing characters she could often outsmart. Her independence onscreen was matched by her business acumen and a reputation as a good, reliable worker among industry crews. They affectionately nicknamed her Stany, Missy, and Queeny. Over the course of her career, she played journalists, nurses, gamblers, escorts, burlesque dancers, musicians, fashion designers, executives, thieves and murderers, mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, and mistresses; and in the latter part of her career, she played quite a number of matriarchal cattle ranchers. Her versatility across genres was due to her work ethic, and also to her ability to perform a range of emotions with passion and intensity. She began in Hollywood during the licentious “pre-code” early thirties and continued through the Depression, war-time and cold-war America, the counter-culture, and five decades of television. Stanwyck’s performances clearly signal a style and a signature, and her movies carry the brand of a tough, hardworking woman.
Categories
Epistemologies of the Archive
Filmmakers have been raiding the archive for decades, making new work out of old. The aesthetics of this practice are extremely varied, and have undergone several phases of revision with new technologies and new artistic practices, not to mention different archival sources. In this class we will survey the history of this practice as it has evolved since the 1950s, and into the digital era. Through the work of moving image artists and media theorists we will explore the changing role of the archive in audio-visual culture, as it intersects with a wide range of media technologies, cultural and social priorities, and modes of access. What kind of knowledge is produced by different kinds of archives, and how does that knowledge shift with changes in media and technologies of storage and access? What are the politics of the archive, and how have archives served (or not served) different constituencies in Canada and globally? How are archives funded and supported and how does that support influence the kinds of knowledge, research, and historiography thereby produced?
[Epistemology Archive 801 2020 syllabus]
