Catherine Russell and Tom Waugh, both professors at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, will celebrate their most recent books on September 22 with a cinq-à-sept at Bar Blizzarts.
Russell, who heads the PhD program in film studies, published Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited in June 2011 with Continuum Books. The book focuses on the Hollywood-style studio system that dominated film production in Japan from the ’30s to the ’60s.
Respectful of the aesthetics and values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies. Her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Russell locates Japanese cinema within a global system of reception, and she highlights the importance of the industrial production context of these films.
Including studies of landmark films by Ozu, Kurosawa and other directors, Russell’s critical approach demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema.
Waugh's new book, The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film, is a collection of his essays on the politics, history, and aesthetics of documentary film, written between 1974 and 2008. Waugh holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Documentary and in Sexual Representation.
In the book, published this year by the University of Minnesota Press, Waugh analyzes an eclectic international selection of films and issues from the ’20s to the present day. The essays provide a transcultural focus, moving from documentaries of the industrialized societies of North America and Europe to those of ’80s India. Chapters address such canonical directors as Dziga Vertov, Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim, and Anand Patwardhan.
Woven through the volume is the relationship of the documentary with the history of the Left, including discussions of LGBT documentary pioneers and the firebrand collectives that changed the history of documentary, such as the Canadian National Film Board’s Challenge for Change and ACT UP New York’s Women's Collective.
When: Thursday, September 22 from 5 to 7 p.m.
Where: Bar Blizzarts (3956 St. Laurent Boulevard)
Related links:
• Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
• Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited
• The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film
