---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: FW: Obituary: Pau Willemen
From: "Diane Negra" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, June 8, 2012 6:26 am
To: "Dina Iordanova" <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: "Chris Berry" <[log in to unmask]>
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Dear Dina and Chris
Myself, Martin McLoone and Chris Holmlund put something together the other
week and you can see it here on the SCMS site:
http://www.cmstudies.org/news/93243/In-Memory-of-Paul-Willemen.htm
All best from Tokyo (amazing here!)
Diane
----- Original Message -----
From: Dina Iordanova <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, June 8, 2012 5:42 am
Subject: FW: Obituary: Pau Willemen
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Chris Berry <[log in to unmask]>
> Hi Diane, perhaps you could ensure that the obituary for Paul
> Willemen is
> posted through to SCMS?
>
> Chris, how about posting it to MeCCSA? We can say it is re-
> posted from the
> BAFTSS listserver?
>
> Dina
>
> Prof. Dina Iordanova
> Provost, St. Leonard's College
> University of St. Andrews
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> On 08/06/2012 05:35, "Chris Berry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >Dear colleagues
> >
> >Many of you will have already heard the sad news of Paul
> Willemen's death
> >on 13 May this year. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith has kindly
> contributed this
> >obituary and tribute:
> >
> >Paul Willemen
> >1944 - 2012
> >
> >
> >Paul Willemen, who died last month after a long struggle with
> cancer, was
> >a pioneering figure in the revolution in thinking about the
> cinema that
> >began in the 1970s. Born and brought up in the Dutch-speaking
> part of
> >Belgium, he came to London in 1968. There he became part of the
> group of
> >people centred around the BFI Education Department and the
> Society for
> >Education in Film and Television who were exploring new
> approaches to the
> >cinema and teaching about film. Teaching film didn't interest
> Paul that
> >much but the cinema did, and so did theorising about it. A passionate
> >cinephile (unlike some of his fellow theorists), his canon of
> tastes was
> >broad, stretching from the exploitation eurotrash of Jesús
> Franco to
> >Hammer Horror to the comedy of Frank Tashlin to the melodramas
> of Douglas
> >Sirk to Max Ophuls and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The respectable
> side of
> >Hollywood did not appeal to him, nor on the whole did European
> art cinema.
> >He was a fierce champion of oppositional forms of cinema,
> starting with
> >the radical British independent film groups in the 1970s and
> 1980s. But he
> >never saw things in a narrowly British or even European frame.
> He was
> >quick to adopt the term "Third Cinema", coined by the
> Argentinians Octavio
> >Getino and Fernando Solanas to designate an area of practice
> opposed both
> >to Hollywood and European art cinema, and extended it from its
> original>Third World application to cover oppositional film-
> making in the
> >capitalist metropoles, notably that of the African
> diaspora. The complex
> >phenomenon of Indian cinema (never, in his mind, reducible to
> "Bollywood")>also fascinated. him. His collaboration with Jim
> Pines on Questions of
> >Third Cinema (1989) was followed by one with Ashish
> Rajadhyaksha which
> >lead to their joint Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1994).
> >
> >In matters of film theory, he shared with his colleagues on the
> journal>Screen in the 1970 an early interest in the Russian
> formalists of the
> >1920s, notably Roman Jakobson and Boris Eikhenbaum. This was
> followed by a
> >tortuous relationship with the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan most
> >evident in his 1974 study of Raoul Walsh's 1947 Western
> Pursued. The
> >relationship became less tortuous in later years but it left
> him with an
> >abiding sense that theories are most valuable when practised in
> a broadly
> >Lacanian way to open up important problems to which there is no easy
> >solution. By the time"theory" became institutionalised in Anglo-
> American>academia in the 1980s his interest in film theory had
> become whittled down
> >to a handful of issues.that seemed to him politically
> important. What
> >seemed to him important, and why, at different points in his
> career can be
> >gleaned from his collected essays, published under the title
> Looks and
> >Frictions in 1994.
> >
> >In the 1980s Paul separated himself from Screen to devote
> himself to
> >Framework, a magazine which was more theoretically open minded
> and where
> >he could develop his internationalist political agenda. From
> 1976 onwards
> >he held various posts at the BFI, where he earned a proper
> salary and was
> >able to continue with writing and editing. But he never felt
> comfortable>in an institutional seting and compared
> himself to Scheherazade in the
> >Arabian Nights, spinning yarn after yarn to delay his
> execution. When the
> >axe fell in 1995, he succumbed to the lure of academia,
> occupying posts
> >first at Napier University in Edinburgh and then at the
> University of
> >Ulster in Coleraine, returning to London in 2008. He was still the
> >familiar figure in black leather jacket with a black beard and black
> >tobacco (Gauloises or Gitanes) always to hand. But he had mellowed
> >slightly, his beard was going grey and eventually he gave up
> cigarettes,>causing him to put on weight. He remained a
> committed contrarian. The last
> >time I saw him was shortly after his return to London, when he
> publicly>laid into me for some insipid judgements in my book on
> the cinemas of the
> >1960s. I would not have had it otherwise.
> >
> >Paul will be sorely missed, first and foremost by his wife Roma and
> >daughter Nikki and his close friends and colleagues, but also
> by all those
> >who value strongly dissident voices in a conformist world.
> >
> >Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
> >6 June 2012
> >
> >**
> >
> >Chris Berry (Interim Secretary, BAFTSS)
> >Professor of Film & TV Studies
> >Dept of Media & Communications
> >Goldsmiths, University of London
> >New Cross, London
> >SE14 6NW
> >0207-919-7565
> >0207-919-7616 (Fax)
> >
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>
Professor Diane Negra
Head of Film Studies
School of English, Drama and Film
University College Dublin
Belfield Dublin 4 Ireland
Office: 353-01-7168493
Mobile: 353-0-872866183
http://www.ucd.ie/scholarcast/scholarcast15.html
Chris Berry
Professor of Film & TV Studies
Dept of Media & Communications
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London
SE14 6NW
0207-919-7565
0207-919-7616 (Fax)
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