Urban and domestic spaces are at the core of the American film noir developed in the 1940s and 50s. The connection between such spaces and noir cannot be considered only as motivational (an association between city and crime) or protective (a separation between home and violence). The context of this genre must be considered more largely as the…[Read more]

The concept of class has been progressively erased in contemporary discussions around art — and other topics. The explanatory power of this economic and social category, as articulated by Karl Marx, has been annulled precisely at a time when the contradictions of late capitalism are growing, composing an ideological background that creates c…[Read more]

Interview with Catherine Grant about her move to Birkbeck, teaching and research, the project [in]Transition, changes in scholarship, and technology and the humanities.

Leaning into the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Vertov, and Cunhal, I present a critical analysis of the dialectic of work and art.

This talk reads Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer, not as a mere collection of thoughts, but as spiritual reflections. These brief meditations record aspects of his film practice in condensed form and reveal the connection between contemplation and action. The contemplative tone of the book becomes perceptible through the careful o…[Read more]

Nöel Carroll has been one of the most eloquent proponents of an anti-essentialist view of art, in particular, of cinema. He seems to think that Stanley Cavell holds an essentialist view of film, put forward in his foundational work, The World Viewed, and developed in later essays and books. While Carroll admires Cavell’s philosophical readings of…[Read more]

Paper on performance and personal identity in the television series “Battlestar Galactica”.

Representations of dreams – no matter if factual or fictional – are influenced not only by cultural patterns but also by the specific opportunities offered and the specific challenges posed by the genre or medium which was chosen for them. The essays in this volume consider, in detailed case studies, variants of factual dream reports and fic…[Read more]

El diseño de ofertas de información centradas en el usuario favorece la satisfacción de los mismos. Se identificó que en los canales de televisión locales se realiza un incorrecto tratamiento de la documentación audiovisual, fundamentalmente por la carencia de personal especializado. Se plantean como objetivos del estudio: 1) diagnosticar las n…[Read more]

The roles in the treatment of audiovisual documentation have a great variety of denominations. Among the most common are Production Researcher, TV Researcher, Film Researcher, Program Researcher and Video Librarian. Although the names vary, the functions are limited to the processing, storage, custody and dissemination of audiovisual collections.…[Read more]

English abstract: A paper on Facebook and ubicuous online social networking as a radical intervention on the elitist social networks which were at the origin of Zuckerberg’s stroke of genius in computer-mediated communication and in social self-presentation. This is done by way of a critique of David Fincher’s film ‘The Social Network’ based on…[Read more]

Literary journalism offers an important way for explaining the complexity of the scientific world to a lay audience. An analysis of two of Richard Preston’s pieces published by The New Yorker, “The Mountains of Pi” and “Capturing the Unicorn” and how they give emphasize science-in-the-making.

Literary journalism offers an important way for explaining the complexity of the scientific world to a lay audience. An analysis of two of Richard Preston’s pieces published by The New Yorker, “The Mountains of Pi” and “Capturing the Unicorn” and how they give emphasize science-in-the-making.

This essay takes a look at the works of four early literary journalists— Portuguese reporters Hermano Neves and Mário Neves, and Brazilian writers Visconde de Taunay and Euclides da Cunha—to trace the foundations of lusophone literary journalism, that is, reportage written primarily in the Portuguese language. Among the findings are that war repo…[Read more]

This work focuses on the use of the audiovisual opera recording as a document to analyze contemporary stagings labeled by the German critics as director’s theater [Regietheater]. In director’s theater, Wagner’s total artwork project [Gesamtkunstwerk] achieves a turn in meaning, for the three artistic dimensions of opera – word, music and staging…[Read more]

This paper discusses ‘Street Life’, ‘Days in the Branch’ and ‘A Place of Pasts’, excerpts fragments from The New Yorker reporter Joseph Mitchell’s unfinished memoir book he started writing during his famous period of silence from 1964 to 1994. Within the scope of Mitchell’s writings, this group of texts may be considered as part of his fourth peri…[Read more]

In literary journalism, just like in fiction, reality is organized in ways that reflect the author’s worldviews. Their choices in style and structure often result in unique ways for the reader to virtually experience the events told in reportages. Based on a close reading of excerpts from three books – one by the Polish writer Hanna Krall and t…[Read more]

This paper focuses on American superhero comics – i.e. superadventures and their likeness to mythology. Our goal is to understand how subtle changes in the characterization of a superhero may make them more congruent with the present day morality and ideals of the society, even if a given character is willing to directly challenge that morality. T…[Read more]