Videos by Philippe D Mather
Brief listing of Dr. Mather's research interests, as of 2016.
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Monograph by Philippe D Mather
This is a beautifully written and exhaustively researched look at Kubrick's career as a photo... more This is a beautifully written and exhaustively researched look at Kubrick's career as a photojournalist at "Look" magazine. It explores how working as a photojournalist at Look shaped his subsequent career as a filmmaker. It features never-before-published photographs from the Look archives and complete scans of Kubrick's photo essays. From 1945 to 1950, during the formative years of his career, celebrated American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for "Look" magazine. Offering a comprehensive examination of the work he produced during this period, "Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine" sheds new light on the aesthetic and ideological factors that shaped his artistic voice. Tracing the links between his photojournalism and films, Mather shows how working at Look fostered Kubrick's emerging talent for combining images and words to tell a story. Mather then demonstrates how exploring these links enhances our understanding of Ku...
Edited Collection by Philippe D Mather
French science-fiction (SF) is as old as the French language. Cyrano de Bergerac wrote about a tr... more French science-fiction (SF) is as old as the French language. Cyrano de Bergerac wrote about a trip to the moon that was published back in 1657, as did Jules Verne in 1865, this time using hard, scientific facts. The first movie showing a trip to the moon was made by Georges Méliès in 1902. In the comics’ format, Hergé had Tintin walk on the moon in 1954, 15 years before Neil Armstrong. These are just a few of the many unique French contributions to SF that rightly deserve to be better known. One of the purposes of this collection is to introduce French SF to an English-speaking audience.
Rediscovering French Science Fiction... first revisits proto science-fiction from authors like Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne, before delving into contemporary science-fiction works from authors such as René Barjavel and Jacques Spitz. A contribution from preeminent SF author Élisabeth Vonarburg, from Québec, helps to understand the constraints and advantages of writing SF in French. A third section is devoted to French SF in movies and graphic novels, media where French creators have been recognized worldwide.
This collection explores many aspects of French SF, including the genre’s deep roots in popular culture, the influence of key authors on its historical development, and the form and function of science and fantasy, as well as the impact of films and graphic novels on the public perception of the genre’s nature.
Papers by Philippe D Mather
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2019
Choice Reviews Online, 1998
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Pres... more University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1998 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes/edited ...
... (1959) 138 Why I Am Afraid of the Dark (1960) 142 A Redback Dialogue: Alfred Hitchcock and Dr... more ... (1959) 138 Why I Am Afraid of the Dark (1960) 142 A Redback Dialogue: Alfred Hitchcock and Dr. Fredric Wertham (1963) 146 Film Production Introduction 157 Films We Could Make (1927) 165 "Stodgy" British Pictures (1934) 168 If I Were Head of a Production Company (1935 ...
The Journal of American History, 1999
Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noi-Google Books Result Film noir may be the great... more Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noi-Google Books Result Film noir may be the great achievement of film studies. As the claims of apparatus theory the synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian critique of Amazon.com: More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts Access Restricted Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism-Google Books Result Jun 10, 2009. Introduction to the Chinese Edition of More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. by Jonathan Rosenbaum. I. "The Chinese don't accord much More Than Night: Film Noir In Its Contexts The House Next Door. Film noir evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and '50s-melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, cri. Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema-Google Books Result Access Restricted. The book you seek in the UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004-More than night: film noir in its contexts, Naremore, James-is available More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts review-Project MUSE More than Night has 137 ratings and 12 reviews. Jay said: More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts by James Naremore is easily one of the most comprehe Introduction to the Chinese Edition of MORE THAN NIGHT. More than night: film noir in its contexts /. In More Than Night, James Naremore discusses these pictures, but he also shows that the central term is more More than night: film noir in its contexts-La Trobe University Film noir evokes memories of stylish, cynical, black-and-white movies from the 1940s and 1950s-melodramas about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal. Interview with James Naremore • Senses of Cinema More than night: film noir in its contexts. by James Naremore American Council of Learned Societies. Computer file.
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture EAJPC 6.2. (1 August 2020), pp. 177 - 193 (preprint), 2020
Edward Said's dogmas of Orientalism are a succinct summary of western perceptions of the East, wh... more Edward Said's dogmas of Orientalism are a succinct summary of western perceptions of the East, which reveal an essentially racist discourse that also speaks to the westerner's self-perception. While there is a tendency in fiction film to polarize attitudes as either friendly or hostile, for reasons of narrative economy and to enhance dramatic conflict, this article argues that it is possible to measure the behaviour of fictional characters on a continuum describing intercultural sensitivity to assess how these characters appear to respond to the idea of cultural differences, broadly ranging from the most ethnocentric views to more ethnorelative ones. Since the intercultural development continuum (IDC) is structured as five developmental stages, it provides a finer psychological template than Orientalist binaries, offering a more nuanced view of character motivations and attitudes. The IDC scale is ideally suited to narrative analysis as it usefully describes successive stages that characters may exhibit throughout the course of a story depicting intercultural exchanges. The IDC allows the analyst to gauge the degree of conformance of any given film to Said’s aforementioned dogmas, particularly those films that either express an ambivalent attitude or appear superficially more enlightened or accommodating of difference. This model will be illustrated with a number of case studies selected from a filmography focusing on western representations of Singapore in film and television, from 1940 to 2015, including titles such as the Bette Davis plantation melodrama The Letter, the science fiction thriller Hitman: Agent 47 and the Australian period TV series Serangoon Road.
Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2020
L'auteur propose un examen approfondi d'Orientalism (L'Orientalisme) d'Edward Saïd (1978), afin d... more L'auteur propose un examen approfondi d'Orientalism (L'Orientalisme) d'Edward Saïd (1978), afin de réfuter la critique classique selon laquelle l'analyse de Saïd serait entachée de ce même défaut de binarité essentialiste qu'il relève dans le discours orientaliste. L'oeuvre de Saïd serait, en effet, plus nuancée que ce que l'on tient souvent pour acquis, tout en demeurant un paradigme assez clair qui permet l'étude multidimensionnelle des textes filmiques : 1) repérage de schémas dans les représentations orientales ; 2) évaluation du degré de conformité aux stéréotypes orientalistes ; et 3) tracé de l'évolution du discours orientaliste dans les films, compte tenu à la fois les thèmes persistants et des nouvelles variantes telles que le techno-orientalisme. Les films de fiction narratifs qui se déroulent à Singapour servent d'étude de cas, notamment le film de Bette Davis The Letter (La Lettre) (1940).
The International Journal of the Image, 2019
This article begins by countering the standard critique that Edward Said’s “Orientalism” suffers ... more This article begins by countering the standard critique that Edward Said’s “Orientalism” suffers from the same essentialist binarism that he identified in Orientalist discourse. It is argued instead that Said’s work is more nuanced than is often implied, while remaining a fairly clear paradigm that allows for a multi-dimensional study of filmic texts, including: 1) locating patterns within representations of the East; 2) evaluating degrees of conformance to orientalist stereotypes; 3) charting the evolution of orientalist discourse in film, noting both enduring themes as well as new variations such as techno-orientalism. The article then focuses on Euro-American representations of the island-city-state of Singapore as a case study, including textual analyses of a sample of narrative fiction films produced between World War II and the present. The method employed is statistical analyses of film style, inspired by the work of Barry Salt and Jeremy Butler. By identifying stylistic and image content parameters such as shot length, shot size, point-of-view editing, the presence/absence of Asian versus Caucasian characters and languages spoken, and correlating this data to Said’s dogmas of orientalism, it becomes possible to uncover information that had previously gone unnoticed, and can lead to new insights regarding orientalist discourse in the cinema.
Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, Aug 5, 2006
... April 12, 1945, Stanley Kubrick was a 16-year-old high school student from the Bronx, seldom ... more ... April 12, 1945, Stanley Kubrick was a 16-year-old high school student from the Bronx, seldom seen ... the fight, a portrait of the boxer as he waits anxiously for the call to the ring, and a ... 25 Jean-Marie Schaeffer, L'image précaire: du dispositif photographique (Paris, Seuil, 1987), pp ...
Kinema, 2014
Science-fiction (SF) is a paradoxical genre insofar as it combines realism (scientific verisimili... more Science-fiction (SF) is a paradoxical genre insofar as it combines realism (scientific verisimilitude) and fantasy (free speculations about estranged worlds). It represents a kind of impossible marriage between reason (science) and emotion (fiction). This tension is evoked by an image of the android Roy Batty from Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982), which appears on the front cover of a collection of essays edited in 1999 by Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith, titled Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Thus SF has a cognitive dimension, which can be linked primarily to its scientific ideology, as well as an affective dimension, that expresses itself through feelings of estrangement and wonder. How can one account for the semiotic mechanisms that produce meaning and emotion in SF film, in a way that explains the interaction between these two apparently antithetical components? This essay will compare a selection of film theories from structural and pragmatic semiology, with the cognitive psychology model employed by scholars such as David Bordwell and Torben Grodal, as a means of gauging the scientific value of these two basic approaches in determining SF film’s generic identity.
Kinema, 2009
Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock) belongs to a group of films including Lady in the Lake (1947, Rober... more Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock) belongs to a group of films including Lady in the Lake (1947, Robert Mont-gomery) which, in the history of classical Hollywood cinema, have experimented with the conventions of the continuity editing system, hoping perhaps to achieve a heightened spectatorial identification with the narrative, through a consistent use of the point-of-view shot for instance, or a seemingly uninterrupted long take with camera movement. These experiments are informative in that they tend rather to confirm the established system's apparent neutrality, its ability at "invisible" narration. I will argue that Rope's attempts at creating "hidden" cuts, chiefly through camera movement and close-ups of a jacket, result in defamiliarizing classical découpage: the "hidden" cuts become much more noticeable than those involving eyeline matches, in particular.
Science Fiction Studies, 2002
This essay offers a descriptive system intended to address film-specific phenomena in terms conso... more This essay offers a descriptive system intended to address film-specific phenomena in terms consonant with Darko Suvin's analysis of the forms of estrangement found in sf literature. I propose a semiotic analysis of sf film, focusing on a typology of figures of estrangement, conceived as a centripetal relation between processes of alienation and naturalization. My typology of figures is based on Louis Hjelmslev's chart illustrating the structure of the linguistic sign as adapted by the Belgian Mu Group. Since the sf genre's distinctive traits are not tied to medium-specific criteria, I argue that a structural approach can usefully characterize sf film's formal strategies without severing its rhetorical and ideological ties to other forms of sf, including literature.
Extrapolation, 1997
This article applies French literary theorist Jean-Marie Schaeffer's theory of genre, inspired by... more This article applies French literary theorist Jean-Marie Schaeffer's theory of genre, inspired by information theory, to propose a heuristic definition of the science-fiction (SF) film genre that focuses on differences that are internal to SF itself. It is also argued that SF film and literature basically share the genre's distinctive traits, which are not tied to medium-specific properties, but rather to semantic and pragmatic considerations. Borrowing from SF theorist Darko Suvin's own definition, it is suggested that SF film is a genre characterized by a thematic focus on science and technology and on their potential effects on contemporary society, whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment, and one that adopts a scientific ideology associated with the arrival of the industrial age.
Tous droits réservés © Association des cinémas parallèles du Québec, 2001 Ce document est protégé... more Tous droits réservés © Association des cinémas parallèles du Québec, 2001 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.
Cine Bulles Le Cinema D Auteur Avant Tout, 1998
Cine Bulles Le Cinema D Auteur Avant Tout, 1999
Cine Bulles Le Cinema D Auteur Avant Tout, 1999
Ciné-Bulles, 1997
Analysis of the seldom discussed practice of dubbing in film and television, particularly from En... more Analysis of the seldom discussed practice of dubbing in film and television, particularly from English to French.
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Videos by Philippe D Mather
Monograph by Philippe D Mather
Edited Collection by Philippe D Mather
Rediscovering French Science Fiction... first revisits proto science-fiction from authors like Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne, before delving into contemporary science-fiction works from authors such as René Barjavel and Jacques Spitz. A contribution from preeminent SF author Élisabeth Vonarburg, from Québec, helps to understand the constraints and advantages of writing SF in French. A third section is devoted to French SF in movies and graphic novels, media where French creators have been recognized worldwide.
This collection explores many aspects of French SF, including the genre’s deep roots in popular culture, the influence of key authors on its historical development, and the form and function of science and fantasy, as well as the impact of films and graphic novels on the public perception of the genre’s nature.
Papers by Philippe D Mather
Rediscovering French Science Fiction... first revisits proto science-fiction from authors like Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne, before delving into contemporary science-fiction works from authors such as René Barjavel and Jacques Spitz. A contribution from preeminent SF author Élisabeth Vonarburg, from Québec, helps to understand the constraints and advantages of writing SF in French. A third section is devoted to French SF in movies and graphic novels, media where French creators have been recognized worldwide.
This collection explores many aspects of French SF, including the genre’s deep roots in popular culture, the influence of key authors on its historical development, and the form and function of science and fantasy, as well as the impact of films and graphic novels on the public perception of the genre’s nature.
les Québécoises et le cinéma, an alternative feminist history of film in Québec.