davidfresko

New Issue on Sabzian: ‘André Bazin, Television Critic’

Compiled and introduced by Tillo Huyghelen, this trilingual issue contains 7 articles by Bazin on the notion of television, as well as an interview with Jean Renoir and Roberto Rossellini.

→ sabzian.be/issue/andr%C3%A9-bazin-television-critic

In other words “how”

So much bad news, but this fall the Metro NY Library Cncl is launching the first iteration of its Cross-Reference Coalition, an experimental interdisciplinary school ft 17 participants from across NYC’s libraries, colleges + municipal depts, plus artists + designers. We’re exploring The Misfit.

AGAINST AI

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

Night and Fog (1955) with Here and Elsewhere (1974)

Banner image for Criterion Channel's Frantz Fanon at 100 program

The @criterionchannl.bsky.social's Frantz Fanon at 100 program is great and it's got me wondering what you could put together for programs on other revolutionary thinkers. How about a Césaire or Baldwin program? Asking yourself what thinker/films you'd put together is a fun activity.

A Trumped-Up Spectacle | Los Angeles Review of Books James Chandler considers what Roland Barthes’s famous essay about wrestling can tell us about reality and shared illusion in Donald Trump’s Washington.

This essay—on Trump, spectacle, collective hallucinations—is worth your time! lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-tr...

New Book Releases / Summer 2025 Sabzian’s seasonal roundup of recently published and forthcoming film publications.

📚 Just published: the Summer edition of our seasonal roundup of recently released and upcoming film publications.

Absolutely. In addition to debunking the myth, Lembke has a lucid explication of the Nixon-Agnew strategy to smash opposition to the war by blaming the media for creating it. Published in 1998--a real contribution to the field of Vietnam War studies (& in its way the mass psychology of fascism).

John Frankenheimer and Rock Hudson on the set of Seconds (1966) 🎬

And Happy Mother’s Day by Leacock and Chopra. Here’s Chopra editing with her daughter on her lap.

Both versions of Imitation of Life are essential.

"Shifting cinema from entertainment to a political tool necessitates a lot of archival work and remembrance. But memory is not enough..."
Navigating the Film Cultural Ecosystem in the Face of Genocide with Members of Palestine Film Institute. Full interview: www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/endurin...

Issue 113 – Senses of Cinema

"...we hope these texts jolt you in one way or another towards an unbound, liberated relationship with the cinema – and thus with the entire world."
Issue 113 is out now featuring the dossier, Enduring Frames: Cinema, Solidarity, Palestinian Resistance. www.sensesofcinema.com/issues/issue...

Excerpt from Rutgers University Senate resolution calling for a Mutual Academic Defense Compact. The excerpt reads: "BE IT RESOLVED THAT, the Rutgers University Senate urges the President of Rutgers University to formally propose and help establish a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) among all members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance; BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT, under this compact, all participating institutions shall commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund. This fund shall be used to provide immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement;"

This exciting resolution from Rutgers University Senate is exactly the kind of model I think higher ed needs: a mutual defense pact of, in this case, Big 10 schools. They call for member institutions to create a joint defense fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack.

Salo paired with the images of Noem styled like a pornstar in front of people in cages.

«Social structures tolerate difference within their order, but we present a difference to the order. … The ‘crime’ of the scapegoat is not carried out through any act, but simply by existing. Not ‘Be gay. Do crime,’ as the meme says, but ‘Be trans. Be crime.’»

The opposition makes no sense because the terms are mismatched and outmoded.

And I would add Robert J. C. Young's "Postcolonialism" as a central text that moves from its titular framework towards emphasizing Tricontinentalism as the more capacious and productive political-ideological framework for left internationalism.

"All at once these rich contributions—really part of a substantial, interlocking system of writing in the broadly Marxist environs of critical theory, left philology and the solidarity movements—were abruptly severed from the present." 3/3

"...the writings of Oliver Cromwell Cox on race and class; Basil Davidson on African state-formation; Leo Wiener on the role of Africa in the pre-Columbian New World; the acute imperial histories of James Morris, V. G. Kiernan, and Eric Wolf; C. L. R. James on Lenin and black liberation..." 2/x

Of the development of so-called post-colonial theory, Brennan writes, "Key precursors were left out of the conversation, even as their ideas were often quietly borrowed: Jean-Paul Sartre and Les Temps modernes; the Chilean media critique led by Armand Mattelart in the early 1970s..." 1/x

Timothy Brennan, Subaltern Stakes, NLR 89, September–October 2014 If the post-colonial theory that emerged as a militant intellectual project in the 80s has faltered over the past decade, against a backdrop of actual imperialist excursions, Vivek Chibber’s critical ...

This article by Timothy Brennan from NLR from 2014 sums up the global stakes of 20th century anti-colonialism: newleftreview.org/issues/ii89/...

This is a great start. And it's also fundamental to read the writings of activists who are also political theorists. Angela Davis, Huey Newton, George Jackson, Carmichael/Ture, Brown/al-Amin, Shakur, and, of course, Fanon are all essential. Obv but always worth restating.

Miami Beach Cinema Targeted by Mayor Speaks Out: “We Don’t Want To Leave” The city is threatening to close O Cinema after it refused to cancel screenings of No Other Land, the Oscar-winning film about Israel’s displacement of Palestinians.

“A small arthouse cinema on Miami Beach faces the possible cancellation of its lease + the loss of $80K in grant $ promised by the city after refusing to cancel screenings of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land (about 🇮🇱’s displacement of 🇵🇸) following rptd intimidation attempts by the mayor.”

Spent a lot time at Seward Park #NYPL and it’s seared into my brain as an affirmative space for ALL kids. So few people have actual books in their homes. It’s silly to have to say “this is a good place.” But attacking equality of access to knowledge and resources is the point.

Nightmare! The nypl is one of the great pleasures of parenting!

Mourning the loss of Linda Williams. It’s hard to think of another scholar whose work helped define such a diverse range of subfields. For me, her 1981 essay “Film Body: An Implantation of Perversions” was a beacon showing how fundamental feminist analysis could be for early cinema. RIP

I blame ranked choice voting

IMPORTANT UPDATE for QTC members participating in this year's conference.

#SCMS2025