This past week I was tasked with reading and responding to those papers belonging to the abstracts that we at Visions4 thought should be further considered to represent this years conference blocks.
In no particular order, these are my observations.
The paper on multi-screen projection seemed more of an articulation of one person's view. On the surface, I realize that statement seems unwarranted - scholarly work must articulate some point of view apparently unique to the auteur. However, this paper makes no claim with significant investment. There's no mention of counter argument, instead the paper preoccupies itself with the explanation of it's view's possibility - as opposed to stating the view before supporting it with data.
Of all of the papers, Boys Will be Girls was one of two papers that most caught my attention. I was quickly invested in the story of Guy-Blanche, and I found myself motivated to learn her history. Unfortunately, the paper read, for the most part, as just that, a history. In the first half of the paper, was one source cited with motif-like recurrence.
Another favourite of mine is Cinema du corp and Avant-Garde Cinematography. My only concern with this paper is that its presentation may proceed as a session in defining "avant-garde" and the further justification of 3 cases there of - to me, this would make for a very dry presentation, but I look forward to seeing what rhetorical implications the author can tease, not contrive, from his assertions.
Bill Murray... no doubt a great actor whose life and work would be worthy of scholarly scrutiny. Unfortunately, I find it hard to label this author's work as a scholarly paper. Though interesting in its diction and structure, this work seems more fit to be an article for mass consumption rather than a paper that warrants academic rigor.
A Radical Expedition of Cinema's Birthplace is a wonderfully-written and well-articulated romp through the Webster's Dictionary: Thesaurus. My, I've never seen an author who's specific choice in words could be at one moment so inwardly perspicacious and at once so... unwarranted or otherwise wrong. This paper does assert that current films made for commercial success can and do borrow from modes of filmmaking dating back several years, but I believe any writer would be hard pressed to find a commercial film that in some way borrows nothing from early films, especially those first films categorized by the term "cinema of attraction."
Japanese Ghosts, is written by someone who clearly has, quite literally, a firm grasp on two films. This author makes a very good case for his own understanding of how one majour tenet of Shinto culture affects the narratives of Japanese cinema. Most apparent, at least to me, is a lack of cited sources. The paper reads like one scrawling correlation's between two objects whose relationships have already been discussed to exhaustion. This would make a very good paper, however, in high school.
Gaspar Noe. Intriguing, to say nothing of the author's proficient wordsmithery. To analyze a man's sortie into the topic of rape, then to conclude that rhetorically the films imply that a man cannot sympathize with its content, and then to support that correlation... reinforcing a correlation to create a theory sturdy enough to withstand the weight of implications drawn, upward, therefrom... Honestly, I must reluctantly admit that this paper is not as honed as I'd like for the conference this year, perhaps because there are other papers this year that would better serve the conference in its content as well as its image.
Murders Unavenged, not badly written, rhetorically sound, interesting in its content and involved in its structure. This is what a ludomaniac would call a safe bet. This paper sits well with me. I believe the subject may still remain unexamined... though that notion may be romantic, this paper topic pulls a specific audience.
Female empowerment... A novel subject! One that would most definitely gel well with Kiva Reardon's keynote presentation at this year's Visions Film Festival and Conference! HUZZAH!.. wait... Oh, the title actually does most of the heavy-lifting in this paper. Unfortunately, the author's skill lies apparently in the realm of summarization, and the contrivance of meaning from personal bias rather than scholarly research... Sad, fortunately I've already outlined one paper that I believe would be most beneficial to the overall "feel" of Visions4.
