Author Archive for: ‘John Conomos’

Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design

Yvette Biro, Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design (Translated by Paul Salamon). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21965-7 US$22.95 (pb) 269pp (Review copy supplied by Indiana University Press) Yvette Biro’s new book, Turbulence and Flow in Film, is an excellent, well-written and very timely contribution to film scholarship. Biro, who is an esteemed emeritus film professor, screenwriter …

Read More

In Memoriam: Thierry Kuntzel (1948-2007)

When my friend Anne-Marie Duguet came to Sydney about five months ago to take up her appointment as a Visiting Research Professor at the iCinema Centre at the College of the Fine Arts, Carol and I picked her up for to show her some of the sights in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. We ended up at Doyles Hotel, Watson’s …

Read More

Hollis Frampton (nostalgia)

Rachel Moore, Hollis Frampton (nostalgia). London: Afterall Books, 2006. ISBN: 978 1 84638 001 3 US$16.00 (pb) 88pp (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) Hollis Frampton’s (nostalgia), or, ‘Lower case, with parentheses’ Rachel Moore’s eloquent and insightful close-reading of Frampton’s most well-known 1971 film, (nostalgia), is timely given the current status of this seminal American artist and writer who has, during the …

Read More

Cinesonic: The World of Sound in Film

Philip Brophy (ed.), Cinesonic: The World of Sound in Film. North Ryde, Australian Film Television and Radio School, 1999. ISBN 1 876351 08 X 266pp AU$24.95 (paper) Uploaded 1 March 2000 | 1160 words Philip Brophy’s new film sound anthology Cinesonic is a highly engaging and significant publication that italicises the rapidly growing importance of film sound/music studies in local and international contexts, and …

Read More

Gamer Theory

McKenzie Wark, Gamer Theory. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 978 0 674 02519 6 US$19.95 (hb) 240pp (Review copy supplied by Harvard University Press) In Montevideo, a child explains : ‘I never want to die, because I want to play forever.’ Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces (1992). McKenzie Wark’s new book, Gamer Theory, is a highly inventive, reflexive, refreshingly …

Read More

Bill Henson and the Cinematic

The following essay is a revised version of a talk on the cinematic influences in Bill Henson’s photography presented as part of the Sydney Festival on the occasion of Henson’s survey exhibition “Bill Henson” at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 8 January – 3 April 2005, Sydney. It is published here with the kind permission of the author. …

Read More

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Australian Screen Classics Series)

Philip Brophy, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Australian Screen Classics Series). Sydney: Currency Press and the Australian Film Commission, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-86819-821-7 Au$16.94 (pb) 88pp (Review copy supplied by Currency Press) Philip Brophy’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a most welcome tour de-force addition to Currency Press’s Australian Screen Classics, which is edited by the indefatigable film scholar-activist …

Read More

Cinemas of the Mind

Nicolas Tredell (ed), Cinemas of the Mind. Cambridge, Icon Books, 2002. ISBN: 1 840 46354 6 287pp Au$35.00 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Cambridge books) Nicolas Tredell’s Cinemas of the Mind is a critical history of film theory that delineates its subject from the first two decades of the last century till the beginning of this century. The film medium itself has …

Read More

Film Art Phenomena

Nicky Hamlyn, Film Art Phenomena. London, British Film Institute, 2003. ISBN: 0851709729 224pp UK£16.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) Nicky Hamlyn’s aptly named Film Art Phenomena is a timely and welcome examination of the aesthetic, historical and technical complexities of avant-garde or experimental cinema of the last century. Indeed, Hamlyn’s informative and cogently argued book looks at that other practice, …

Read More