Austin Fisher » Announcements

“Out West, Down South” in The Italianist.

Austin Fisher — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:49:56 +0000

My latest article, on the cinematographic nuances of Damiano Damiani’s political Italian Western Quien sabe? (1966), appears in this summer’s edition of The Italianist. This publication has become established as one of the leading international journals of Italian Studies. The annual Film Issue provides an outlet for research into an aspect of the discipline that has increasingly occupied scholars in recent years, but which has until now been without a dedicated forum. You can purchase my article by clicking here…

Here’s the full list of contents in this latest issue:

Editorial

Editorial
pp. 163-163(1)
Authors: Marcus, Millicent; O’Leary, Alan

Articles

Gendering mobility and migration in contemporary Italian cinema
pp. 165-182(18)
Authors: Luciano, Bernadette; Scarparo, Susanna

Out West, down South: Gazing at America in reverse shot through Damiano Damiani’s Quien sabe?
pp. 183-201(19)
Author: Fisher, Austin

Sexual dissidence and the mainstream: The queer triangle in Ferzan Ozpetek’s Le fate ignoranti
pp. 202-218(17)
Author: Rigoletto, Sergio

Percorsi di identità narrativa nella memoria difficile: La musica in I cento passi e Buongiorno, notte
pp. 219-244(26)
Author: D’Onofrio, Emanuele

Short Communication

Il Divo: A discussion
pp. 245-271(27)

Framing crisis and rebirth in Italian cinema: A roundtable

Framing crisis and rebirth in Italian cinema: A roundtable
pp. 272-289(18)

Editing Suite

Il cinema italiano intorno a Gomorra tra visibilità, semivisibilità, invisibilità
pp. 290-308(19)
Author: Uva, Christian

Cinegiornale

Conference report
Popular Italian Cinema: An International Conference
pp. 309-314(6)
Authors: Bayman, Louis; Rigoletto, Sergio

Conference report
Da ‘Sodoma’ a ‘Gomorra’: Framing Crisis and Rebirth in Italian Cinema
pp. 315-320(6)
Authors: Holdaway, Dom; Grisà, Mariarita Martino

Cinemonitor – Osservatorio Cinema (www.Cinemonitor.it)
pp. 321-323(3)
Authors: Grisà, Mariarita Martino

Planet Spaghetti Western!

Austin Fisher — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:29:43 +0000

If, like me, you struggle to keep up with the plethora of Spaghetti Western-related material floating around this here interweb, then the chaps over at the invaluable Spaghetti Western Database have a treat in store. Planet Spaghetti Western is a new syndicator, which pulls content from throughout the Spaghetti blogosphere into one place.

Moreover, I am honoured to have this blog included in the project, and I heartily recommend that you take a look.

Call For Papers – Spaghetti Western Reviews

Austin Fisher — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:51:16 +0000

I am currently editing the “Spaghetti Westerns” chapter of Intellect Books’ forthcoming Directory of World Cinema: Italy. I am therefore on the lookout for scholarly submissions for consideration in this exciting new project, which will be published both as a printed volume and an open-access database of articles and film reviews.

Submission Guidelines:

If you are interested in submitting reviews, please email me at the following address, including a short biography and details of past academic writing / film reviewing:

Each review must adhere to the following format in terms of structure and the manner in which the information is provided:

Title
Studio/Distributor
Director
Producer
Screenwriter
Cinematographer
Art Director
Editor
Duration
Genre
Cast
Year

Synopsis (100-200 words)
Critique (300-600 words)

Most of the technical and cast and crew information for the majority of films is widely available online, with the popular websites IMDB and Wikipedia being the most reliable and the easiest to use. If there is a credit that you cannot find, or are unsure about, please just enter “?” and I will try to source the information myself. With regards to the Cast section, please just enter the name of the main actors, or stars, of the film. In many cases, listing four or five cast members will be sufficient.

The synopsis should be an outline of the story, which should not include any critical judgements. As the word count for this synopsis is 100-200 words, this does not have to be an exhaustive summary of the plot, as found in Sight & Sound magazine, and you should avoid ‘spoilers’ that give away any major twists or turns in the story, and avoid revealing the ending, as many readers will not have seen certain films that are featured in the directory.

The critique is the reviewer’s value judgement of the film, and should be written in a style that is intelligent yet lively. Reviews should demonstrate a particular knowledge of that film and films of the period, or the film in relation to the body of work of its director or other titles within the genre, but ultimately each film should be evaluated on its own merit and cultural significance. We are not assigning films with “star ratings” or other evaluative short-hands that are used in magazines and some commercial film guides, so try to be as clear as possible in your evaluative summary of each film that you are reviewing. The word count can range from a minimum of 300 words to an absolute maximum of 600 words. Try to go into as much detail as possible within that word count, and edit your work judiciously.

For more information about the project, please visit this link.

“A Marxist’s Gotta Do What a Marxist’s Gotta Do”

Austin Fisher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:15:43 +0000

Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation, edited by Iain Robert Smith, is now online. This exciting new eBook of original scholarship on processes of adaptation in film, television and new media is a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal Scope: an Online Journal of Film and TV Studies. It includes my own article “A Marxist’s Gotta Do What a Marxist’s Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier”, and can be accessed free-to-all through the following links:

Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation, edited by Iain Robert Smith
“A Marxist’s Gotta Do What a Marxist’s Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier”, by Austin Fisher

To promote this volume, the editor has created his own rather amusing work of “cultural borrowing” by adapting a popular internet meme:

Click here to view the embedded video.

New website

Austin Fisher — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:57:37 +0000

Hello. Welcome to my new website.

My name is Austin Fisher, and I am a freelance writer, editor and academic. I have recently completed a PhD in Italian cinema at Royal Holloway, University of London, and am disseminating my research to the wider academic community using various media – including this one. Hopefully, you will find something of interest in these pages. My writing primarily deals with the Italian, or “Spaghetti” Western genre of the 1960s and 1970s.

Tomas Milian as Cuchillo in "Corri, uomo, corri" (1968)

I’ll get going on blog entries about film and the media in the near future. In the meantime, you can find out more about my academic research interests by clicking the links to the right, and you can follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/austinjfisher

Thanks for visiting.