Thursday 20 December 2007

Here's a GREAT Christmas Gift!!! Many World Cinema Lovers Thrilled As Famous Irish Film Scholar Martin McLoone Launches New Book


Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland
Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes
by Martin McLoone



This collection of essays from Martin McLoone takes a new look at
contemporary culture in Ireland through the filter of three main
developments – the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy in the South, the peace
process in the North and the general rise in Ireland of ‘diasporan
awareness’.



The book considers the impact of these three factors on
the film, television, and music produced in Ireland, mostly since the
1990s, and speculates on how this popular culture reflects both what
has been gained in the new Ireland but also what has been lost.



Specific concerns of the book are the secularisation of Ireland and
popular culture’s assault on the Church generally (and the priest in
particular); the changing cityscapes and landscapes of the new Ireland;

the ‘death’ of politics; sexual freedom and personal liberation; the problem of representing unionist culture in the North; Van Morrison’s Belfast and the rise of ‘possessive individualism’ in Ireland.



The book celebrates the new Ireland but also raises issues about the loss of aspects of Irish identity that were valuable and suggests the need for a new ‘collective imaginary’ that might reinvigorate Irish identity in the new millennium.

Contents:

Introduction: An Irish Monument in a Foreign Field: The Changing Configurations of Irish Studies 1900-2005

􀂙 Strumpet City in Post-modern Times: The Return of the Oppressed?

􀂙 Cinema, City and Imaginative Space: 'Hip Hedonism' and recent Irish Cinema

􀂙 Topographies of Terror and Taste: The Reimagining of Belfast in Recent Cinema

􀂙 Celtic Cities, Celtic Landscapes

􀂙 Haunted Landscapes and the Irish West

􀂙 December Bride: A Landscape Peopled Differently

􀂙 Settling Old Scores? Religion,
Secularisation and recent Irish Cinema

􀂙 The Political Power of the Feisty Colleen: Contradiction in the Screen Persona of
Maureen O'Hara

􀂙 Irish Soundscapes: Hybridity and National Musics (with Noel McLaughlin)

􀂙 Rootedness and Transcendence: Van Morrison's Belfast

􀂙 Irish Soundscapes: Punk Music and the Political Power of 'What-Might-Have-Been'

􀂙 Representing the Unionists



Martin McLoone is Professor of Media Studies (Film, Television and Photography) in the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.

He has written extensively on all aspects of the media in Ireland and Britain (including radio and popular music).

He is the author of Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema, published in 2000.

November 2007 224 pages illus
978 0 7165 2935 4 cloth €60.00 / £45.00
978 0 7165 2936 1 paper €24.95 / £19.95




AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

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Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

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© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Glamorgan Conjures Spring Film Conference, "Witches and Queens, Whores and Libertines: Early Modern History on Screen" 3-4 April 2008


Historical films and TV series set in the early modern period abound, yet historians have only recently begun to trouble themselves with these popular representations of the past.

Even in film and TV studies, discussion is more about form, technique and aesthetic context than content and message.

What is lacking is a critical dialogue appraising these films and what their choice of subject matter and the way in which it is presented says about contemporary society and its relationship with the past.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together scholars from the fields of early modern history and literature, media and cultural studies and modern cultural history to discuss the representation of a particular period of history (c.1500-c.1800) on screen (whether in the cinema or on television).

Participants are invited to offer papers on the heritage-film debate, historical film and collective memory, the role of historical productions in making history and its debates accessible, adaptations of early modern texts, the use of historical documentaries, or any other aspect of early modern history on screen.

Please send abstracts of not more than 300 words and a brief CV to the address below.

Papers will be of 20 mins. duration and aimed at promoting discussion.

Deadline for abstracts: 11 January 2008.

Dr Jonathan Durrant
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
CF37 1DL
United Kingdom

jdurrant[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Saturday 8 December 2007

Cardiff Chapter Arts Centre's Film Expert Tony Whitehead Publishes Important New Book on British TV & Film's Mike Leigh



Tony Whitehead is Cinema Programmer at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. He also works as a part-time lecturer in film at the University of Glamorgan. His book on Mike Leigh has just been published by Manchester University Press.

Read the British Film Magazine Online Review of Tony Whitehead's newest book on Mike Leigh here.

Tony Whitehead in among the film students' favourite lecturers at the University of Glamorgan, Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries ATRiuM (CCI) Film & Media department, currently teaching 'Screen Language' and other courses.

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media





[Pictured above: Director Mike Leigh 1943-]

Read Tony Whitehead's article in Screen Online about Mike Leigh.

Read Tony Whitehead's article in Screen Online about Mike Leigh!





Amazon Review:

Tony Whitehead's new book on Mike Leigh is actually enjoyable, not to mention that Leigh himself endorsed it.

It's a wonderful trip down memory lane, revisiting every character and hilariously tragic line of dialogue from Bleak Moments to Vera Drake. Vanessa Gildea, Film Ireland --Vanessa Gildea, Film Ireland

Tony Whitehead writes for the the Irish Film Institute about MIKE LEIGH’S TV FILMS



Amazon Synopsis:

Mike Leigh may well be Britain's greatest living film director; his worldview has permeated our national consciousness.





This book gives detailed readings of the nine feature films he has made for the cinema, as well as an overview of his work for television.



Written with the co-operation of Leigh himself, this is the first study of his work to challenge the critical privileging of realism in histories of the British cinema, and place the emphasis instead on the importance of comedy and humour:

of jokes and their functions, of laughter as a survival mechanism, and of characterisations and situations that disrupt our preconceptions of 'realism'.



Striving for the all-important quality of truth in everything he does, Leigh has consistently shown how ordinary lives are too complex to fit snugly into the conventions of narrative art.

Developing characters and narratives through meticulous processes of improvisation in preparation and rehearsal, Leigh has led his collaborators in creating a body of work that is utterly distinctive.



From the bittersweet observation of "Life is Sweet" or "Secrets and Lies", to the blistering satire of "Naked" and the manifest compassion of "Vera Drake", he has demonstrated a matchless ability to perceive life's funny side as well as its tragedies, establishing a unique niche in the British cinema as both humorist and humanist.

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Manchester University Press (1 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0719072379

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Friday 7 December 2007

Celebrated in the U.S. Abergavenny Poet Wendy Mulford Returns to Welsh Valleys Mon. Dec. 10 for Glamorgan Afternoon Readings


P O E T R Y R E A D I N G

UNIVERSITY OF GLAMORGAN

(Treforest Campus)

In association with academi literature promotion

Wendy Mulford

Reading her poetry, and in conversation with Alice Entwistle

Monday December 10th 2007

2pm – 3:15pm

Room G311

All welcome!

Wendy Mulford is the author of eight collections of poetry and several works of prose.



Probably best known for her poetry, which started to appear in the mid-seventies, in the context of the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement, Wendy Mulford was raised near Abergavenny; she spent most of her childhood there and in the Usk valley in Wales.

She now lives in Suffolk having spent many years living and teaching in London and Cambridge.



She has worked inter alia as a croupier, publisher, printer, lecturer, researcher and counsellor, founding, among other things, the influential experimental publishers Street Editions Press in 1972.

Over the years she has given many readings and taken part in numerous literary Festivals in Britain and abroad. She is currently in training to be a Jungian analyst.



Recent/forthcoming publications:

Selected Poems: and suddenly, supposing (Etruscan Books, 2002)

The Land Between: Poems 2000-7 (Reality Street Editions, 2008)

Listening through the nightwood, with Anne Beresford, Herbert Lomas and Pauline Stainer (Orphean Press, 2008)

Wendy’s poetry has been included in Out of Everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK ed. Maggie O’Sullivan (Reality Street, 1996) and will appear in The Shearsman Anthology of Innovative Women Poets ed. Carrie Etter (forthcoming).

It has been discussed in a variety of critical texts, including A History of British Women’s Poetry by Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle (Cambridge, 2005); her work will also be featured in Alice Entwistle’s forthcoming critical study In These Stones: Women poets writing in and out of Wales (Seren). New poems will appear in issues of Poetry Wales and Artworld.



Poetry by Wendy Mulford:

Poetry :
Bravo to Girls and Heroes – Street Editions, Cambridge , 1977
No Fee: A Line or Two for Free (with Denise Riley) – Street Editions, Cambridge , 1978
The Light Sleepers – Mammon Press, Bath , 1980
Reactions to Sunsets – Ferry Press, London , 1980
River Whose Eyes – ADVOCADOTOAVOCADO, London , 1982
Some Poems (with Denise Riley) – Cambridge , 1982
The ABC of Writing and other poems –Torque, Southampton , 1985
Late Spring Next Year: Poems 1979 – 84 – Loxwood Stoneleigh, Bristol , 1987
Lusus Naturae – Circle Press, London , 1990
Nevrazumitelny – Poetical Histories, Cambridge , 1991
The Bay of Naples – Reality Studios, London , 1992
etruscan reader VII: Alice Notley, Wendy Mulford, Brian Coffey – etruscan books, Buckfastleigh, 1997
The East Anglia Sequence – Spectacular Diseases, Peterborough , 1998
and suddenly, supposing: Selected Poems – etruscan books, Buckfastleigh, 2002

Prose:
This Narrow Place : Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland: Life, Letters and Politics – Pandora Press, London , 1988
The Virago Book of Love Poetry (Ed.) – Virago, London , 1990, 1998
Virtuous Magic: Women saints and their meanings – with Sara Maitland, Mowbray/Cassell, London 1998

Translation :
The Brontës Hats by Sarah Kirsch (with Anthony Vivis) – Street Editions, Cambridge , 1992
T by Sarah Kirsch (with Anthony Vivis) – Reality Street Editions, London , Suffolk , 1995


AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Dr. Mark Leslie Woods

Thursday 6 December 2007

Friday Night Hungarian Poet George Szirtes Glamorgan Free Twilight Lecture Series Starts 7 December 2007

Professor Tony Curtis at the University of Glamorgan English & Creative Writing courses has announced the guests lecturers for the coming term:

Here are the guest writers for this year: all are at 6.30 in Glamorgan Business Centre, located on the main University of Glamorgan campus in Treforest, Pontypridd on Fridays and are FREE -

Dec 7th, 2007 George Szirtes - poet and translator


[Pictured above: George Szirtes - Hungarian poet and translator]

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds.



His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year.



After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.



Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005.

Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere.



His own work has been translated into numerous languages.

Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001.

George Szirtes - Hungarian poet and translator

Feb 29th, 2008 Grahame Davies - poet, novelist and BBC executive


[Pictured above: Dr Grahame Davies - poet, novelist and BBC executive; photograph courtesy Mauro Philip Conti Photography London-Miami-NYC.]

"One of the clearest public poetic voices of his generation," Emyr Lewis

"An unequalled satirist,” John Gruffydd Jones.

“He sees through the deception and falseness of urban media life better than anyone, and he’s scathing in his vision of the emptiness of city existence...this poet has sufficient mastery of language to disturb and reach the roots of the soul.” Alan Llwyd.

"Poems which brilliantly describe Welsh life in the capital." Peter Finch.

“There’s a new world-view on our everyday lives here, overloaded with memorable images and phrases,” Menna Elfyn.

“He has an incredible gift of expression. There’s scarcely a poem in the volume that doesn’t contain truly original and clever phrases.” Meirion MacIntyre Huws.



Poet, editor and literary critic, born in 1964 and brought up in the former coal mining village of Coedpoeth near Wrexham in north east Wales.

After gaining a degree in English Literature at CCAT (now Anglia Ruskin University) Cambridge, he qualified as a journalist with the Thomson Organisation at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and worked on newspapers in south Wales from 1985 until 1991, since when he has worked for BBC Wales.



His career as a journalist and producer has brought him a number of Welsh and UK industry awards. He is currently Editor Broadcast development for BBC Wales.

In 1997, he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Wales for his study, written in Welsh, of the work of R.S.Thomas, Saunders Lewis, T.S. Eliot and Simone Weil, whom he identified as part of an anti-modern trend in Western culture in the 20th Century.



In 1997, his first volume of poetry, Adennill Tir, (Barddas,) a book arising from the 10 years he spent in Merthyr Tydfil in the south Wales Valleys, won the Harri Webb Memorial Prize.

In 1998, he was second to Emyr Lewis in the competition for the National Eisteddfod Crown.



In 1999, his study of Wales and the anti-modern movement, Sefyll yn y Bwlch, (University of Wales Press, 1999), the product of his doctoral research, was published. It went "straight to the front rank of criticism of our day," according to the critic Dr Dafydd Glyn Jones (Barn), and was described as “a signal book” by the critic Dr Angharad Price (New Welsh Review).



In 2000, he co-edited Oxygen, (Seren) a bilingual anthology of Welsh poets aged under 45.

In 2001, his second volume of poetry, Cadwyni Rhyddid, (Barddas) appeared . It went to a second edition within a few months of publication, won the Wales Arts Council's 2002 Book of the Year award at the Hay on Wye Festival of Literature, together with a prize of £3,000.



In 2002, Seren press published his literary anthology, The Chosen People, which details the relationship of the Welsh and the Jewish people as reflected in literature.

Also in 2002, he edited a 160-page edition of the Bulgarian literary magazine Plamak (“Flame”) dedicated to Welsh literature, the first such anthology of Welsh writing in the Balkans.



In 2002 Ffiniau/Borders appeared from Gomer press, a bilingual volume of poetry jointly with Elin ap Hywel.

In 2003, he chaired the panel of judges for the Welsh Book of the Year Awards. The first prize of £5,000 went to Jerry Hunter's Llwch Cenhedloedd.



In 2004 his first novel Rhaid i Bopeth Newid, was published by Gomer. It was longlisted for the £10,000 Book of the Year prize, 2005, and was described by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas in Taliesin as 'the first post-national novel.'

Also in 2004, his selection of Welsh poetry in Asturian translation appeared in Spain from Kêr ar Mor press under the title Nel país del borrina (The Country of the Clouds).



In 2005, his selection of Welsh poetry in Galician translation appeared under the title of No país de la brétema from VTP Editorial.

In 2005, Seren published The Big Book of Cardiff, an anthology of contemporary writing about Cardiff, co-edited by Peter Finch and Grahame Davies.

Also in 2005, his third volume of original Welsh-language poetry appeared from Barddas, under the title Achos (Cause).

In 2006, his anthology of work by and about refugees and asylum seekers in Wales, Gwyl y Blaidd / Festival of the Wolf, appeared from Parthian/Hafan, edited jointly with Tom Cheesman and Sylvie Hoffman.

In 2007, Seren published Everything Must Change, an English-language novel based on the successful Rhaid i Bopeth Newid.



Also in 2007, Seren will be publishing Real Wrexham, a work of psychogeography in the Real series edited by Peter Finch.

He is a full member of the Welsh Academi and was the Welsh-language editor of Poetry Wales magazine for several years until 2002. He won the vers libre prize in the National Eisteddfod in 1994, the sonnet prize in 2004 and the Welsh Academi’s Stomp competition in 2001.

His work has been translated into several languages, including English, German, Latvian, Maltese, Bulgarian, Polish, Asturian and Galician, and is widely anthologised, appearing in publications as diverse as The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry London, the Literary Review in America, Orbis (#136 Spring 2006) and the Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English.

He is a frequent contributor of articles and reviews to journals such as Poetry Wales, Barn, Taliesin, Planet and New Welsh Review, and his poetry is on the syllabus for school pupils in Wales.

Dr Grahame Davies - poet, novelist and BBC executive



May 9th, 2008 Niall Griffiths - novelist.


[Pictured above: Niall Griffiths - novelist]



The BBC Wales Profile on Niall Griffiths writes that:

"Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has since moved to Aberystwyth. Both towns have a strong hold on his imagination. His first two novels were set on the west coast of Wales, his third re-visited his native city."



"His novel Stump traces a trajectory of violent retribution between Liverpool and Aberystwyth, following two shell-suited gangsters on their journey from Merseyside to the seaside town to settle a score."



"There has always been a strong Welsh influence in Griffiths' life. He was born to a Toxteth family with Welsh roots, in 1966."



Niall Griffiths Official Website

Academi -- Welsh Academy of Writers




Many prestigious published and award-winning authors and poets
teach on our the University of Glamorgan English & Creative Writing , so students and colleagues can be confident they’re getting the best teaching and support.



We also use our experience to help students forge working relationships with industry professionals.



The university has an outstanding reputation for creative writing. The subject was one of 12 areas rated “Excellent” by the Government’s Teaching Quality Assessment body.



In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), English was awarded a grade 4 rating, equivalent to national excellence in all areas.



For additional info please contact Dr. Mark Leslie Woods at mwoods[at]glam.ac.uk

AIM: ATRiuM Intelligent Media

AIM -- ATRiuM Intelligent Media, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. on Face Book

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

mwoods[at]glam[dot]ac[dot]uk

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Visit the UK Film Studies and World Cinema and Music Import Showcase

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

Smart & Sexy? Your Queer Advantage is waiting!

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Queer Advantage, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods