If off-screen voices foster a need to categorize and perhaps control their elusive nature, then the voice-over raises some challenging questions about its uncanny attributes and powers. Defined by a paradoxical present-absence, the voice-over adds layers to the narrative discourse of film that require further and closer analyses.

For our Spring 2012 issue, Cinephile welcomes essays aiming to critically organize and academically explain the variety of off-screen voices, study the evolution of voice-over in the history of global cinema, analyze the narrative and non-narrative applications and functions of it in different audiovisual experiences, and delve deeper into the socio-political and psychoanalytical aspects of this technique with regards to race, class, and gender implications.

Incoming editor: Babak Tabarraee

Incoming artist: Soroosh Roohbakhsh

More details here

Cinephile 7.1, ‘Reassessing Anime,’ is now available! This issue features original articles by animation scholars Paul Wells and Philip Brophy, and illustrations by Vancouver-based artist Chloe Chan. Arguably one of the most impressive pop culture exports from Japan since the post-war era, anime still merits further inquiry, debate, and scholarship into its complex history, intricate meanings, and overall impact on film and visual culture. Purchase a copy of Cinephile 7.1 and discover some of the most contemporary insight into anime.

In Vancouver, Cinephile 7.1 is currently available for purchase at Pulp Fiction Books, Mayfair News, Does Your Mother Know?, and the UBC Bookstore. If you prefer to have the issue delivered directly to your door, subscribe to the journal and receive the most recent issue and three forthcoming issues, plus a complementary back issue of your choice, for $30 CDN.  For more information, please click here.

Realism appears to have reached a critical juncture in recent years: digital technology has all but usurped the photographic medium, rendering the indexical nature of photographic images obsolete (Doane 2002; Rodowick 2007); “reality” television and on-line exhibitionism have proliferated audiovisual culture, trivializing the fidelity of documentary realism and its particular mode of truth telling; and social realism has gradually detached itself from the socio-political convictions that once defined it, instead looking inward towards private/familial issues removed from the public sphere (Hill 2000; Lay 2002).  Yet, despite the tenors of realism being either obfuscated or abated, the term is still employed relatively free from scrutiny in academic discourse, begging the question: what does realism mean today?  Is this latest impasse merely a reconfiguration of issues that have always affected the term, or have we shifted into an era of post-realism, typified by a rejection of its historical usage and associations?

These matters are at the crux of our Winter 2011/2012 issue, proposing a re-evaluation of cinematic realism for the 21st century.

Incoming editor: Shaun Inouye
Incoming artist: Hanahlie Beise

More details here

Each of our 2010 issues are available to download in a single PDF file.

http://cinephile.ca/archives/

The topic of Volume 7, No.1 will be Reassessing Anime. With an emphasis toward anime film, our Fall 2011 issue of Cinephile seeks to address and tackle some of the overlooked aspects and problems of Japanese animation. Such a reassessment hopes to encourage and foster future inquiry into the evolution and value of anime, its history, and its impact on Western film culture.

Incoming editor: Jonathan A. Cannon

Incoming artist: Chloe Chan

More details here

The fall issue of Cinephile looks to examine these issues and beyond, with an eye towards the past in order to understand where the horror genre may be headed in the near future. The issue aims to focus on two key aspects of contemporary horror’s relation to its immediate past. First, does the appropriation of international horror cinema by Hollywood and its many remakes suggest a perverse turn in the globalization of the genre? How do remakes embrace, reject or negotiate the cultural elements of the original for Western and global audiences? Secondly, what is the state of horror’s power to shock? How has the virtual domination of computer-generated effects affected the horror industry, on both aesthetic and technical perspectives? Do digital effects add to the genre’s visceral impact, or instead detract from the sense of plasticity that made the genre infamous in the 1970s and 80s?

See full details here

…in this, our 5th anniversay issue, we set out to navigate the murky and uncharted depths of ‘alternative cinema’. But carving out an epistemology of this amorphous cinema is no small endeavour-and what do we mean by ‘alternative cinema’ anyway? On the one hand, it is always evolving, always repositioning itself outside mainstream modes of representation: once the mainstream appropriates elements of alternative style, new configurations naturally spring up in response. At the same time, it has no singular mandate, no fixed ideological underpinnings, and is beholden to no specific national cinema or film movement.

Continue reading the Editor’s Note

Steffen Hantke on Hitler as Actor, Jerry White on From Ingushetia to the Finland Station, William Beard’s interview with Guy Maddin, and more, including Holocaust Exploitation, Post-Soviet Freakonomics, and Cinematic Prosthesis

The Scene (Vol. 5, No. 2: Fall 2009)

There are certain scenes which have the power to enthral, provoke, and delight—our cover captures one such titillating tableau. But what gives such a scene the ability to stand apart, to take on a life of its own? What is it about Robert De Niro’s “Are you talking to me?” scene that has such lasting cultural resonance? How does Gene Kelly dancing in the rain embody an entire ethos of escapism?

Continue reading the Editor’s Note

Elena del Río on What a Scene Can Do, Brenda Austin-Smith on Alice in the Cities, Murray Pomerance on Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and more, including The Snuff Coda, Eastern Promises, and Joy Division and the Televised Performance Scene.  Also: The New Scene Canon!

The Call For Papers is now available here

Submissions are due January 22, 2010.

Cinephile’s first annual fundraiser and launch event was an enormous success!  At this special occasion, local filmmaker, Andrew Currie, presented his 2006 Genie winning film Fido.  Coming from a background in experimental film, Currie spoke in a question and answer session about some of the benefits and challenges of working in the Canadian film industry as well as his love of film history and the inspiration for this film, in particular.  

Fido stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, and Dylan Baker and exemplifies a clever balance of the light-hearted and perverse; it is a darkly comic zombie film layered with genre parody and political commentary about US Homeland security.  

Cinephile wishes to give a special thanks to Andrew Currie, as well as all the generous sponsors that treated our guests to a fun and informative event, well supplied with hors d’oeuvres, wine and beer, door prizes, and silent auction items.  Special thanks also to our photographer, Oliver Millar, for his lovely photo coverage of the event.