Where everyone’s seen a Godard film

Yesterday I attended a one day forum “New Directions in Film Research“, run by Cinema Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne. I thought it time to re-engage with ‘all things cinema’ and start to flesh out ideas for my Honours project for 2009. New Directions sounded ideal!

Although I felt rather intimidated by the presence of a battalion of erudite cinema academics, of which I am patently not, I’m pleased I attended. There were three speakers, but my main reason to attend was to hear Deb Verhoeven speaking about how research technologies, new to Screen Studies, can contribute to and expand the type of discovery and articulation within the discipline. Her particular focus, in this instance, was on the use of databases and maps in key screen research projects. And I thought I was the only one interested in mapping cinema…go figure!

Deb spoke about her project ‘Greek and Italian Cinemas in Melbourne’ and the cultural mapping it involved. Her project examined audience experiences and business practices of the independent Greek and Italian cinema chains that operated in Melbourne, Australia from the late 1950s until the late 1970s. This project raises questions about National cinemas in relation to diasporic communities, itinerant cinema and indeed, cinema’s place within the wider social milieu.

What was fascinating was the way Deb has been working with geo-spacial scientists to create maps and databases to track Greek and Italian cinema in Melbourne. This included population location (and movement over time), cinemas opened and closed and exactly where Italian and Greek films were distributed throughout Australia. These visualisations provided a lot of information in a short period of time. Now I just need to focus on narrowing my field of exploration.

Am still here

I’ve just spent a couple of hours getting up-to-speed on what everyone’s doing and thinking in ‘Labsome-land’. What a busy bunch! Reading most of the blogs kind’ve assuages my guilt about not actually writing anything in my own blog. Maybe next week…

Honours – what’s it all about

I’m still working on the ‘what I hope to achieve’ concept in Honours.  I’ve always thought of it as ‘the icing on the Undergraduate degree cake’.   Surely I can come up with  three little reasons?

1. To refine and enhance my research skills.  Although I really like making films, I’m slightly addicted to learning and discovery, so want to do it proper-like!
2. I want to consolidate all I learnt in my Undergrad degree and produce a project or thesis that has a place in the ‘real world’.  In a nutshell, I’m keen to align myself with an existing project or do something that’s useful to industry (possibly with The National Film and Sound Archive?)
3. I want closure.  Ooh yes…and become more tech savvy.

Research

What do I think it is? It’s discovering and learning about new things; or a tool that enables me to work out how to do things I already know…better, or faster, or more thoroughly. It’s something that I enjoy, but my methodology can do with some refining, as I find it frustrating when I get ‘bogged down’ in research that leads nowhere.

Week One

First week of Uni out of the way and things seem to be ticking over nicely.  The biggest impression of Honours (so far) is the people undertaking it.  It feels a definite step-up from undergraduate years and I like the idea of tapping into knowledge from this elevated, intellectual playing field.