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But we are proud to say that Michael contributed 286 entries already.
The riots which started in North London, and astonished everyone by spreading so quickly through the city and round the country, have produced massive cognitive dissonance throughout the media—mainstream and social—for which they provide a new and highly polysemic symbol for accumulating fears of social disintegration. The flood of photos and videos join a gallery […]
The recent BBC documentary ‘The Camera That Changed the World’, directed by Mandy Chang, about the birth of direct cinema at the start of the 1960s, was a solidly crafted and conventionally narrated television documentary containing a good deal of fascinating material, especially in the form of the testimony of surviving participants. Unfortunately, however, these […]
by Patrick Ward Socialist Worker Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how much has gone on over the past eight months. This documentary is a celebration of the anti-cuts movement in Britain. It charts the movement from the student protests of late last year through to the huge 26 March TUC demonstration. Director Michael Chanan […]
There’s an interesting new piece of research about the perceptual process of watching films which I can’t get out of my head without writing a blog about it. This research is not just of theoretical interest, but touches on pedagogic concerns. Part of learning to watch films critically is to understand how editing works, and […]
Three Forgotten Early Soviet Sound Films on the Electrification of the USSR (This is a revised version of the talk I gave at the BFI Southbank on 1st June 2011 as part of the Soviet season, to introduce Macheret’s Men and Jobs and an extract from Shub’s K.Sh.E. Here I also discuss Dovzhenko’s Ivan.)
Brilliant cartoon by Raúl de la Nuez, La memoria del comandante 2 The Comandante’s Memory (No.2) ‘Don’t rememer who sang ‘Los zapaticos de rosa’..??? The Beatles or the Rolling Stones’ (Los zapaticos de rosa is a song to a poem by José Martí) http://cartoonuez.com/ via http://bostoonsmag.com
East End Film Festival London, UK May 2011 Frances Morgan Emma-Louise Williams’ Under the Cranes, which premiered to a capacity audience at Dalston’s Rio Cinema, featured the work of [a] long-time resident, Michael Rosen, whose documentary play Hackney Voices steered this engaging, gentle, slightly dreamlike documentary… Rosen also appears in Michael Chanan’s Chronicle of Protest, extolling the revolutionary potential […]
Following the KCL Postgrad Film Studies Conference that I wrote about last week, I’ve been up to Glasgow for a similar event. In fact, two. The first was a workshop on documentary as research, with a focus on human rights and video activism. The panel I joined included folk from the Manchester collective Castles Built […]
Will postgrad film studies continue to thrive under the new dispensation being engineered for universities by the Tories (with Lib-Dem connivance)? What will have been destroyed if it doesn’t is in evidence at this time of year in postgrad events up and down the country. An impressive three-day conference was mounted last week at King’s […]
Today at 1545 local time, Chronicle of Protest, a film directed by Michael Chanan premiered at The Rio Cinema, Dalston, as part of the East End Film Festival. On seeing its inclusion, I was heartened fearing a lack of films commentating on the events which have engulfed the capital over the past year. And so, looking forward to […]