Film Philology

https://archive.org/details/ShiningPhilology

A peer-reviewed video essay, which is part of the following academic publication:
Sbravatti, Valerio (2018). "Home Video Philology: Methodological Reflections". Cinergie. Il Cinema e le altre Arti (13): 47-52. DOI:https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2280-9481/7878.
Contains 5.1 audio. Fair use of copyrighted material for research purpose.

References

“1980 TV spot for The Shining (rare, higher quality).” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esaGu1w1K1g> (last accessed 21-05-18).

“Kubrick Questions Finally Answered: An In Depth Talk with Leon Vitali.” <https://www.dvdtalk.com/leonvitaliinterview.html> (last accessed 21-05-18).

“Shining Music Charts.” <http://www.drummerman.net/shining/charts.html> (last accessed 21-05-18).

“The Shining blue end credits.” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-FEFGcsSTs> (last accessed 21-05-18).

Castle, Alison (Ed.) (2005). The Stanley Kubrick Archives. Köln: Taschen.

Instagram pictures: , <https://www.instagram.com/p/BGiMXZjCkGn>, <https://www.instagram.com/p/BGjcTSOCkGL>, <https://www.instagram.com/p/BGj5fQEikMY>, <https://www.instagram.com/p/BGm3FjxCkF6> (last accessed 21-05-18).

The Shining (1980). ABC airing, 02-06-1985. Personal collection.

The Shining (1980). DVD. USA: Warner Home Video, 1999, cat. no. 17369, ISBN 0-7907-4274-8.

The Shining (1980). DVD. USA: Warner Home Video, 2001, cat. no. 21156, ISBN 0-7907-6005-3.

The Shining (1980). Blu-ray Disc. USA: Warner Home Video, 2007, cat. no. 115710, ISBN 1-4198-5299-X.

Stainforth, Gordon (2015). The Shining Music – Introductory Note. <http://www.gordonstainforth.co.uk/shining-music-intro> (last accessed 21-05-18).

Other pictures through Google Images.

"This special issue of Comparative Literature Studies brings together talks, some extensively revised, others virtually unchanged, that were delivered at a conference entitled "What is Philology?" The gathering took place on Saturday, March 19, 1988 at Harvard University under the aegis of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies. The depth and breadth of interest in the conference was deeply gratifying. I had not experienced another occasion when so many scholars from different language and literature departments gathered at Harvard, and I hope that publishing the proceedings will benefit a larger community outside the University.

By way of introduction I will describe how the event originated. My description will explore a few of the reasons why an interdisciplinary conference of a dozen speakers and respondents attracted an audience of more than two hundred, and why a topic that 'may sound rarefied drew participants whose main fields of research and teaching interests ran the gamut from the most ancient Indo-European languages to the most recent African American literature. In short, I will offer tentative explanations for the urgency of the topic to students, professors, and independent scholars who engage in philology, linguistics, literary history, literary criticism, and literary theory."

Adaptation/film studies receive a growing interest in literature as more scholars take up articles to produce authentic research. Due to its interdisciplinary and intertextual nature, adaptation/film studies provide scholars of humanities the means to create preliminary works never published before. This article articulates the importance of adaptation/film studies in literature and calls upon philologists to become actively engaged in the field of adaptation/film studies. Initially, the study defends the view that film is a form of art, no different from works of literature. The article also examines adaptation/film studies with the intermediary function of building bridges between literature and cinema by looking into forerunners and analysing the mutual relationship between these two spheres. The study then scrutinises adaptation/film studies in western academia by exploring the most influential names and tendencies. Finally, the article draws a brief outline of adaptation/film studies in Turkish scholarship and delivers a concise overview of the most productive scholars and their works in this area of research. The research concludes by highlighting the importance of adaptation/film in philology and urging scholars of the humanities to become involved in generating film analyses particularly through the critical lens of literary theory. All in all, the article advocates the necessity and widespread application of film philology in literature.

The restoration of La battaglia dall’Astico al Piave (Italy, 1918) has been funded by MiC (the Italian Ministry of Culture) and carried out by the University of Udine in collaboration with several film archives. Starting
from a historical-philological and restoration framework, the case study offers some reflections and considerations between the fields of the digital humanities, film preservation, and cinema history.
Furthermore, it provides a concrete opportunity to achieve the two goals of raising awareness about the status of digitized film artefacts, framing them as the result of modelling practices, and documenting the film preservation process as well as the surrounding historical and cultural network in a digital historical-critical infrastructure.
Keywords: First World War; Cinema History; Film Restoration; Film Philology; Digital Infrastructure.

Fan communities endeavor to produce “fan preservations” and “restorations”, both by intervening on faulty home video editions so to make them consistent with the original version and by digitizing film prints and restoring them. The intervention are relative to both picture and sound, and entail a meticulous process of research and obtainment of various materials. The results are notable, although there is the problem of the legality of the operation and of the access; however, there are some cases of official fan restorations. This article aims at discussing on the phenomenon stressing how it contributes in stimulating both a culture of philology (the preservation of films in their originally released version) and a philosophy of film as a set of multifarious experiences that may have resonance on the big distribution, as well as in peculiar operations such as the “unrestored” 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

RÉSUMÉ Une étude comparative du film Cabiria et de ses chutes (prises de vues exclues de son montage définitif) permet de montrer comment la mise en scène de ce film italien, sorti en 1914, est fondée sur une forme de composition spatiale en profondeur. D&#39;où la tendance notable d&#39;y éviter la fragmentation de l&#39;espace via le montage, comme pour en respecter l&#39;intégrité et mettre en valeur son aspect tridimensionnel. À l&#39;image de la majorité des films européens de la première moitié des années dix, Cabiria réalise ainsi un idéal de représentation spatiale tridimensionnelle « à circularité limitée » qui, tout en permettant au spectateur de se rapprocher de la scène, ne situe jamais l&#39;instance spectatorielle au centre de l&#39;action, un idéal de représentation spatiale au sein de laquelle la mobilité de l&#39;espace scénique est obtenue autrement que par le changement de plan.

Digital home video is an extremely useful means of watching and analyzing films. However, scholars often neglect the fact that official home video or streaming releases of a film can have differences from the original version of the film itself. Such variances typically are lack of film grain (resulting from digital noise reduction), differences in color grading, and soundtrack remixing. This can depend on the fact that the technicians who work on home video releases are unprepared, or are instructed to adjust the look and the sound of the film to the current taste, or because the filmmakers changed their mind and requested some modifications. At any rate, film scholars must be aware of such possible inconsistencies, otherwise their study could be fallacious. In this article I discuss upon philological problems of home video releases mainly from a practical point of view.