As Media Studies teachers we often find ourselves examining mainstream products shaped by the need to maximise the audience. We conceptualise the mass media as a dual market in which audiences buy products and advertisers buy access to these audiences. But when one surveys academic Film Studies journals one enters a world of tiny circulations with little or no advertising potential. Indeed some authors seem to deliberately employ arcane language which excludes all but a self-admiring coterie. There can be few teachers, lecturers or students who have the time in the late 1990s to spend reading and re-reading such deliberately obscure writing.
For many film journals, each issue is a miracle born of a devotion to film and Film Studies. The editors and writers receive tiny or non-existent honoraria and are locked in circle of mutual loathing. The contributor dreads the phone call from the editor desperate for copy to fill the pages. The contributor knows that as soon as s/he releases their definitive piece to the editor it will be hacked around and reduced to fit the available space. Many of the academically-oriented film journals are children of the 1960s and 1970s when academics and teachers had time to devote themselves to such economically suspect projects. Now that "free time" in education has been replaced by "directed time" in the constant search for increased "productivity", the continued existence of so many worthwhile journals is something to cherish and celebrate. It is in these journals that the twists and turns of modern cultural theory are played out. Yesterday's obscure debates have now become the orthodoxy of today's Media Studies courses. Today's (hopefully less obscure) debates will point to their errors, imbalances and omissions.
Archives
Some of these journals are impossible to find even in university libraries or National Libraries. Fortunately there are a number of useful collections of key articles in Film and Television Studies, many of which have been drawn from such journals. The following are recommended:
Manuel Alvarado and John O Thompson (eds) The Media Reader (BFI) 1990
Jim Collins et al (eds) Film Theory Goes to the Movies (Routledge) 1993
Barry Keith Grant (ed) Film Genre Reader 2 (University of Texas Press) 1995
Bill Nichols (ed) Movies and Methods Volume 1, (University of California Press) 1976
Bill Nichols (ed) Movies and Methods Volume 2, (University of California Press) 1985.
Where I have found a Web site for a journal I have given its URL. Usually the web pages are excellent for finding the contents of current or back issues as well as for up-to-date subscription rates. On some you can even download electronic versions of past articles. Most journals contain details of back issues but some older or popular issues are out of print. The British Library holds many Film Studies journals so that it is possible to obtain a photocopy of an article if you have a detailed reference. This can be obtained for the bargain price of 25 pence from your local library. Better still, subscribe to the journals themselves. Such dedication to cinephilia deserves our support. Some of the American journals do not accept credit cards but I have never known them to refuse payment in $US!
Cineaste
Publisher: Cineaste Publications
ISSN-0009-7004
Web Site: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/CineasteMenu.html
Frequency: 4 per year
Format: Glossy, well-illustrated, 8.5 by 11 inches, 72 pages
Contents: Articles, interviews, book reviews, festival reports, back issues listings.
Address: Cineaste, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003-1503, USA
For me, Cineaste is a model Film Studies journal. Committed both politically and to the art of film, it is refreshingly jargon-free and eclectic. Volume 22 number 4 features articles on film composers, on Michael Collins, Crash, The People v. Larry Flynt, Secrets and Lies, Dangerous Minds. Educationist Henry Giroux analyses Dangerous Minds as reinforcing "the highly racialised, though reassuring, mainstream assumption that white teachers alone are capable of bringing order, decency, and hope to those on the margins of society". There are interviews with Neil Jordan, Milos Forman, Mike Leigh and Oliver Stone. Reviews cover new African cinema on video as well as books on Tarkovsky, Pasolini and black filmmaking worldwide. Whilst it concentrates on independent, art and world cinema it features regular ideological readings of mainstream product (such as Independence Day in the previous issue). In his editorial, Gary Crowdus says that the "truly great directors and films never made things easy or formulaic. They forced us to look at our lives from a different perspective, shattering preconceptions about how to see the world, oneself and other people ... On the other hand, for all its striking desert landscapes and skilfully contrived romance, this year's critically celebrated Heritage film, The English Patient, merely offers an insidious balm for our daily existence". Cineaste is lively, essential and accessible reading for any teacher of Film Studies and should be made in all school and college libraries.
Film Criticism
Publisher: Allegheny College, Meadville, PA
ISSN-0163-5069
Frequency: 3 per year
Format: Few illustrations, 5.3 by 8.2 inches, 70-100 pages
Contents: Articles, interviews, book reviews, back issues listings.
Address: Film Criticism, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335, USA
E-mail: filmcri@allegheny.edu
Film Criticism covers the latest developments in Film Studies and the journal the specialises in the application of "cutting-edge" theory. Past issues have looked at Interpretation Inc: Issues in Contemporary Film Studies edited by David Bordwell (volume 17, numbers 2-3), the New Auteurism (volume 19, number 3) and New Film Theory (volume 20, numbers 1-2). This is a journal new to me and I have only seen two issues. Volume 20 number 3 is a special issue on the Western, a genre relatively neglected in recent critical writing. Toby Reed and R J Thompson try to rethink the metaphors by which we conceptualise genre. They develop ideas of Gilles Deleuze and try to see genre in a postmodern way as surfaces, facets and planes rather than a boundaried organism. As is often the case with the "cutting-edge" I found the article at once difficult and thought-provoking. Surely the time is ripe for a meta-theoretical study of the use of metaphor in Film and Media Studies. Volume 21 number 1 features Brian Macfarlane's study of the British B film of the 1940s-1960s which draws on his own detailed research. He uses Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field and concludes that "because everything about their position in the field seems to have worked against their opting for the daring, either in social critique or in cinematic terms, they offer frequently a low-key reflection of contemporary mores, undistorted by personal vision, and of the prevailing norms of cinematic practice. In consequence their narrative paradigms and the social values they privilege and/or disparage tend to emerge more starkly". This issue also contains substantial and informative reviews of important books such as David Bordwell and Noæl Carroll's Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. If, like me, you enjoy the challenges (and frustrations) of up-to-date film theory then Film Criticism could be a useful addition to your shelves.
Film Quarterly
Publisher: University of California Press, Berkeley
ISSN-0015-1386
Web Site: http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/fq/
Format: Glossy, well-illustrated, 8.5 x 11 inches, 64 pages
Contents: Articles, interviews, film reviews, book reviews.
Frequency: 4 per year
Address: Film Quarterly, University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
For me the strength of Film Quarterly is its (impossible) attempt to review all Film Studies books published in English. The reviews are generally excellent - so much so that they almost make reading the books irrelevant!
Articles, interviews and reviews generally concentrate on independent cinema and art cinema. Recent issues have looked at Farewell My Concubine (with an excellent outline of the production contexts of Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema), Fargo, Leaving Las Vegas, the Three Colours trilogy, Antonia's Line. Interviews have featured Jean Renoir and title-sequence maestro Saul Bass.
Jump Cut: a Review of Contemporary Cinema
Publisher: Jump Cut Associates
Jump Cut is now an exclusively online journal, available free at http://www.ejumpcut.org/
Jump Cut has long been a favourite journal of mine and alas my copies of the earliest editions are beginning to turn into dust. In number 40 the editors state that its aims are "to develop radical media criticism, to link media artists, academics and activists; to extend new areas of criticism". The strength of the journal are numerous: its lengthy ideological analyses of movies - Hidden Agenda, JFK (number 38), Schindler's List, The Crying Game (number 39), Hoop Dreams, The Lion King (number 40); its commitment to Third World and diasporic filmmakers and representations - US Latinos (numbers 38 and 39), Africa (volume 40); substantial book reviews (number 40 features an excellent review of Ella Shohat and Robert Stam's key text Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. Jump Cut also regularly features articles on pedagogy within higher education - teaching the culture of the "Other" (number 38); teaching pornography (number 40).
POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities
Publisher: Texas A & M University and Georgia Institute of Technology
ISSN-0227-9897
Web Site: http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/coas/litlang/PostScript.htm
Format: Occasional illustrations, 6.2 by 9 inches, 80 pages.
Content: Interviews, articles, back issues listings, annual bibliography.
Frequency: 3 per year
Address: POST SCRIPT, Literature and Languages Department, Texas A & M University-Commerce, Texas 75249, USA
POST SCRIPT has a unique feature which makes it essential for any serious student of film. Every year its third issue has J P Telotte's bibliography of journal articles in the previous year. 1995 produced no less than 851 entries from 54 journals, a 36% increase on the previous year! These listings are usefully divided into sections, for example: actors/actresses, criticism, directors, inter-national, pedagogy, theory. Awesome! Volume 15 number 3 features a long interview with the ubiquitous Oliver Stone as well as an excellent account of Tarantino's intertextual recycling in Pulp Fiction. Recent special issues have featured Canadian Cinema (volume 15 number 1) and David Cronenberg (volume 15 number 2) and future special topic issues will feature Hispanic Film, Literacy and Film, Shakespeare and Film.
Screen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Illustrated, 6.7 by 9.4 inches, 108 pages
Content: Articles, reports and debates, book reviews.
Web Site: http://www.oup.co.uk/jnls/list/screen/
Frequency: 4 per year
Address: Screen, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Screen is of course notorious in the Film Studies world for the difficulty of its writings which led to the largely pejorative term "Screen theory". David Bordwell called its 1970s tenets "SLAB theory" as its version of cinema at that time was based on a conception of the human subject filtered through the theories of Saussure, Lacan, Althusser and Barthes. Since 1990 - when it last reviewed its editorial policy - its editorial office has been at the University of Glasgow's John Logie Baird Centre. I find Bordwell's monolith metaphor a little misleading. For through the pages of Screen it has been possible to follow the theoretical moves from structuralism to post-structuralism to post-modernism and post-colonialism - if not to Post-Theory! Although it eschews a role as a Cultural Studies journal it has also been possible to follow the productive encounters between that discipline and Film and Television Studies. In recent years I feel the most valuable articles and reports have been those around Third World cinema.
However despite the undoubted scholarship of many of the contributions I personally feel that Screen is somewhat tired and well-removed from the concerns of most Media Studies teachers in secondary and further education (who of course are not its main target audience). A review of its format and role is long overdue. Might I suggest a return to an educational role for Screen? In Scotland - and I suspect world-wide - there is a demand amongst teachers for an historical overview of the various problematics and perspectives of Film and Television Studies. Such reviews might also chart possible directions for the discipline as we move into the deregulated, multi-media, multi-channel digital future.
Literature Film Quarterly
Publisher: Salisbury State University
ISSN-0090-4260
Web Site: http://www.salisbury.edu/LFQ/default.htm
Format: Occasional illustrations, 6 by 9 inches, 100 pages approximately
Contents: Articles, interviews, book reviews.
Frequency: 4 per year
Address: Literature/Film Quarterly, Salisbury State University, 1101 Camden Avenue, Salisbury, MD 21801-6860, USA
Literature Film Quarterly focuses on the problems of adapting and transforming fiction and drama into film. It also covers genre, film theory and features interviews with screenwriters. It focuses largely on American and European film with occasional forays into Australia and Japan (especially Kurosawa). Reviews of films often comprise close readings of the text informed by literary theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman, Mieke Bal. If you like to surf the cusp between film and literature/drama then Literature/Film Quarterly is for you. It regularly revisits Shakespeare and the "classic" novels on film but also delves into popular culture such as cult film, fanzines, teenpix, Batman and Twin Peaks (volume 21 number 4 - alas sold out).
Sight and Sound
Publisher: British Film Institute
ISSN-0037-4806
Web Site: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/
Format: Glossy, lavishly illustrated, colour, 72 pages
Content: Articles, interviews, film reviews, short reviews of books and videos.
Frequency: 12 per year
Address: Sight and Sound, Tower House, Sovereign Park, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 9EF
Sight and Sound probably needs no introduction to MEJ readers and it is the only journal reviewed here that you will find in your local John Menzies or W H Smith. Probably the best English-speaking magazine of its kind in the world, it has a circulation of 40,000 and attracts substantial advertising. Under Philip Dodd it successfully negotiated the incorporation of Monthly Film Bulletin in 1991 and it will be interesting to see what changes, if any, new editor Nick James has in store. For example, I have always felt that its coverage of the film business and of film festivals has been patchy and disappointing. As well as reviewing all films released in the UK, it features articles and interviews on current mainstream, independent and Third World films. It usually has articles on film-related television programmes or retrospectives. Eclectic, immensely readable and indispensable to cinephiles, it should be in every school and college library. The next issue of MEJ will feature a survey of Media Studies and Cultural Studies journals.
Rick Instrell is Principal Teacher of Computing Studies, Lasswade High School Centre.
This is an edited version of an article which was originally published in the MEJ in 1997.
© Rick Instrell
2002