Velvet Light Trap articles from March 2006

Velvet Light Trap archives from March 2006

Introduction.(Editorial)
March 22, 2006... Almost since the earliest constructions of the moving image, notions of authorship have been developed and alternately contested. While such aspects as authors' roles, creative circumstances, and perceived autonomy change across cultures and...

The cinema of affections: the transformation of authorship in British cinema before 1907.
March 22, 2006... Before referring to authority, the term "author" means "someone who increases" (from augere, "to increase") and more specifically, who increases confidence, credit, in other words, the salesman. --Francois Jost, "The Authorized Narrative"...

Studio authorship, Warner Bros., and The Fountainhead.
March 22, 2006... In his 1896 essay "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" the architect Louis Sullivan famously proclaimed, "It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human...

"Some kind of a man": Orson Welles as Touch of Evil's masculine auteur.
March 22, 2006... Interest in authorship has surrounded Touch of Evil since Orson Welles was hired, almost by chance, as its writer and director. Despite the critical success of Citizen Kane, Welles's directorial status had steadily diminished in Hollywood...

A point of little hope: hippie horror films and the politics of ambivalence.
March 22, 2006... On 4 April 1968 director George Romero and producer Russ Streiner, members of an independent Pittsburgh filmmaking collaborative called Image Ten, packed their newly finished horror movie into the trunk of a car and headed for New York in...

Marketing David Mamet: institutionally assigned film authorship in contemporary American cinema.
March 22, 2006... This essay addresses questions of authorship in David Mamet's cinema as these arise in the textual organization of promotional material that accompanies the release of a feature film in contemporary American cinema. The main focal point here is...

Exorcizing/exercising treachery: robust subjectivity in Lourdes Portillo's The Devil Never Sleeps.
March 22, 2006... There is no doubt that in the last part of the twentieth century the "author" has sustained significant theoretical blows. Roland Barthes declares the author dead. In his or her place Barthes suggests the "scriptor": "In complete contrast, the...

Technology in search of an artist: questions of auteurism/ authorship and the contemporary cinematic experience.
March 22, 2006... Being a director is a lonely job. You are in the midst of a crowd, but you are on your own. Everybody else looks to you.--David Lean The work of art is valuable only in so far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of the future.--Andre Breton...

The Coen Brothers' "Fargo".(Book review)
March 22, 2006... edited by William Luhr Luhr, William, ed. The Coen Brothers' "Fargo." Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 176 pages, $55.00 cloth, $21.99 paper. The Coen brothers and their films have fascinated audiences and critics alike as much for their...

Film and Authorship.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... edited by Virginia Wright Wexman Wexman,Virginia Wright, ed. Film and Authorship. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UR 2003. 270 pages, $22.00 paper. In film studies the concept of the author has experienced various degrees of acceptance,...

Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... by George O. Liber Liber, George O. Alexander Dovzhenko:A Life in Soviet Film. London: BFI, 2002. 309 pages, $58.00. In his newest publication George O. Liber sets for himself the not-inconsiderable task of bringing to light the...

An Eye for Hitchcock.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... by Murray Pomerance Pomerance, Murray. An Eye for Hitchcock. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. 306 pages, $22.95. In the introduction to his collection of essays from the Hitchcock Annual Sidney Gottlieb points out that as the...