What's New at Queen's Film and Media

Images Festival prize: Prof. Gary Kibbins was the recipient of the grand prize at the Images Festival in Toronto on 21 April, for his video installation Girl Sitting on Blue Chair. The installation, including his new video Puzzled, By Certain Things continues at the Trinity Square Video gallery until 19 May.

Film Proposal Competition: Queen's Film and Media, and Grace Media Inc. invite all Queen's Film students to enter a competition for funding to produce a short film on the problem of cigarette butts. Deadline 18 May. See Butting Out the Cigarette Butt: A Competition.

Next Generation Film Festival: Projects from all the production courses were screened on 12 April in Ellis Auditorium. Department Head Susan Lord and Evan Boyce of the Student Film Society also recognized contributions to the Department and outstanding student written work during the year.

FILM 250: Some of the final five-minute films from the second-year production class are now online.

Ninnies 2012: The Department's end-of-the-year party The Ninnies (see photos) was held on 5 April, and featured the premiere of Pitch Day: There is Such a Thing as a Bad Idea, a video based on true events in a film production class.

Cronenberg visit: Canadian director David Cronenberg spoke to students in IDIS 210: Arts in Society, during a visit to Queen's in March. The interdisciplinary course is co-taught by Gary Kibbins (Film and Media) and Donato Santeramo (Languages, Literatures and Cultures) and attracts students from various departments.

Matrix at MiniU: Prof. Sidneyeve Matrix will be one of the featured speakers at Queen's MiniU 2012 on 25-27 May, open to both the Queen's community and the public. Sidneyeve will be speaking Sunday, 27 May on "Social and Mobile Media Marketing." Registration packages include a single session, day pass, or the weekend.

A Century of Filmmaking at Queen's: Prof. Derek Redmond spoke about the history of filmmaking at the University, as part of the Exposure Arts Festival at the Screening Room in early March. See some of the Short History.

Experimental film screening: Short (and not-so-short) films produced by the FILM 375 Experimental Theory and Practice class this year were screened on 22 March in Chernoff 117.

E-branding projects: Infographic projects by the FILM 436 e-Branding class now added to Recent Student Work.

Summer 2012: Prof. Sidneyeve Matrix teaches a new online course FILM 260 "Digital Media Theory and Trends" in Summer Term 2012. Registration opens in March.

Ghost story: Research reveals the Isabel Bader Performing Arts Centre site may be haunted by Cornelius Driscoll, murdered in 1867. See Film Department Inherits Ghost.

Dunning Trust Lecture: Film and Media and Cultural Studies hosted Dr. Ariella Azoulay of Tel Aviv University, who gave this year's Dunning Trust Lecture titled "Toward a Visual Declararion of Human Rights: Re-visiting The Family of Man." Dr. Azoulay also spoke on "Civil Awakening" in conversation with Prof. Dorit Naaman at the Central Public Library.

Jerusalem video installation: An ongoing multimedia project co-directed by Prof. Dorit Naaman hopes to bring to life the diverse histories of homes in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Qatamon. A team comprising professors and students from Queen's and Simon Fraser University will work closely with families displaced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The project Qatamon in Colour will encourage families to recall their experiences for an interactive website and short videos which will then be projected onto the houses. See also a recent article in the Queen's Journal.

Department's new home: See live video of the construction site for the future Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. Opening is still scheduled for the fall of 2013.

Vernacular online: The website for Clarke Mackey's book Random Acts of Culture: Reclaiming Art and Community in the 21st Century is now live. It makes available over thirty audio clips, half a dozen slide shows, numerous links, reviews, articles and other things directly related to the book. Included are original audio interviews with cultural studies founder Raymond Williams, art educator Dorothy Medhurst, activist folksinger Pete Seeger, Dufferin Grove Park's Jutta Mason, radical thinker Ivan Illich, composer R. Murray Schafer, Welfare State founders John Fox and Sue Gill, anthropologist Stanley Diamond, musicologist Christopher Small and many others. There's also a blog where ongoing discussion about the book and new stories from the world of vernacular culture can be shared. 

Peter Morris Memorial Scholarship: Established in memory of Peter Morris, Professor of Film Studies, this is one of several new Film and Media Funds to which we are inviting alumni and friends to donate.

Burke on Italian Cinema: Prof. Frank Burke reports, "I gave a lecture on Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto on August 6 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto. The lecture and screening were sold out and generated four interviews including the National Post. Most exciting, I saw lots of former students! In June I signed a contract with Wiley-Blackwell to edit the Blackwell Companion to Italian Cinema. This will be a 600-page compilation of approximately 33 essays covering all major aspects of the subject. I also published a monograph-length essay on Fellini's commercials in the British journal The Italianist. A slightly different version was published in January in Italian in Cabiria: Studi di Cinema."