(Un)veiling Bodies: A Trajectory of Chilean Post-Dictatorship Documentary
Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 20•23 September 2019

  • ‘Estas reflexiones finales apuntan a que nos en-contramos ante una obra que no solo está llama-da a convertirse en lugar de paso obligado para investigaciones posteriores sobre el documental chileno contemporáneo inserto en el devenir de las políticas del pasado y la memoria, sino que ofrece intersticios para lecturas productivas en otros ámbitos y periodos.’ — María Luisa Ortega, Secuencias 51, 2020, 178-80
  • ‘Impeccably documented and researched... the book works with over 100 films (an impressive corpus) and includes a filmography that will undoubtedly serve as an important resource for students and scholars... The book also rescues for/from the archive a vast group of nearly forgotten directors and films that open the reader’s mind to appreciate the breadth of what Chilean documentary film both has been and is. This is an especially important gesture for international readers... Pushes the conversation on documentary far beyond the stale, though classic debates about objectivity and subjectivity; it shows that documentary film is not only a medium capable of capturing memories but also of actively creating and triggering them through sensory experience.’ — Michael Lazzara, A Contracorriente 18.2, 2021, 271-78
  • ‘Más allá de esto, no cabe duda que (Un)veiling Bodies. A Trajectory of Chilean Post-dictatorship documentary, se trata de un libro importante para futuros estudios sobre cine documental chileno, estableciendo un verdadero “piso” investigativo, que habrá que considerar al momento de acercarse a él.’ — Iván Pinto Veas, Imagofagia 24, 2021, 689-96
  • ‘En la intersección de diversos ámbitos teóricos, la obra de Ramírez-Soto forma parte, al fin, de una tendencia fecunda que busca establecer puentes entre la historia, la ética y los estudios de la imagen. Desmarcándose prudentemente de los trauma studies y prefiriendo situar su reflexión bajo el signo del “giro afectivo”, (Un)veiling Bodies logra dar cuenta exitosamente de un periodo sensible de la producción documental en Chile, otorgando una nueva visibilidad a un corpus a menudo ignorado por los investigadores.’ — Ignacio Albornoz Fariña, Cinémas d'Amérique Latine 28, 2020, 170-71 (full text online)

Blanchot and the Moving Image: Fascination and Spectatorship
Calum Watt
Moving Image 8•29 September 2017

  • ‘Watt’s study is exemplary in the impressive range of texts and references that it draws on, and in the intensive seriousness of its discussions. It will be an inevitable reference for anyone venturing into this uncanny territory.’ — Jeff Fort, H-France 18.143, 2018
  • ‘One of the striking things to emerge from Calum Watt’s impressive study is the extent to which contemporary discussion of the art of film draws on Maurice Blanchot’s thought... [This book] does justice independently to each of its subjects.’ — Michael Holland, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 632-33 (full text online)
  • ‘Exhaustive scholarship abetted by meticulous referencing, and a keen eye for the specificities of a certain mode of exposure (one which is remarked upon in the author’s Introduction) to the cinematographic as work (and unworking), are all commendable traits of the latest addition to a significant series.’ — Garin Dowd, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 572-573 (full text online)
  • ‘Blanchot and the Moving Image seems like an opening salvo in a larger intellectual project, one that will track the ways in which—as one of the study's most exciting claims has it—"cinema's contribution to thought is fascination".’ — Mikko Tuhkanen, Postmodern Culture 29.2, January 2019
  • ‘Watt makes a convincing case for Blanchot's appositeness to the moving image and, in the process, discovers that Blanchot's phantasmatic presence is already insinuated within film theory's margins... Overall, Blanchot and the Moving Image is an impressive piece of research that betrays a wealth of cognizance, not only of Blanchot's own writings, but also of his subtle yet persistent influence within twentieth and twenty first century continental philosophy and, subsequently, Anglophone film theory.’ — Corey P. Cribb, Film-Philosophy 24.1, February 2020, 71-74 (full text online)

Comedy and Trauma in Germany and Austria after 1945: The Inner Side of Mourning
Stephanie Bird
Germanic Literatures 10•19 December 2016

  • ‘This study offers an original and distinctive approach which illuminates key aspects of the chosen works while also enhancing the highly complex nature of mourning.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.4, October 2018, 506 (full text online)
  • ‘A fresh perspective on comedy and the complex roles comedic devices have played in postwar German-language literature and lm and in discussions of trauma.’ — Corey L. Twitchell, German Studies Review 42.1, February 2019, 176-178 (full text online)

Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 18•1 May 2021

  • ‘A detailed account of the myriad aspects of film festivals and their cultural import both within and beyond the field of film studies. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of film, film festivals, film cultures, with specific relevance to those working in the fields of Basque, Spanish, Argentine, and British film and these related contexts.’ — Fiona Noble, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 7.1, 141-42 (full text online)
  • ‘The key strength of Diestro-Dópido’s book lies in her ability to critically address the intricacies that shape film festivals by focusing on ‘the point of view of the communities that constitute the festival cosmos: organizers, funders, filmmakers, producers, critics, directors, programmers, guests, educational bodies, and more’. This book will be, therefore, an essential text for students and scholars of film festivals, as well as for those involved in running film festivals. It makes a unique contribution to the fields of Spanish screen studies and film festival studies alike due Diestro-Dópido’s original methodological and theoretical approach, close access to the main practitioners in the field and its focus on overlooked film festivals.’ — Jara Fernández Meneses, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 19, June 2022, 264-66 (full text online)

France, Algeria and the Moving Image: Screening Histories of Violence 1963–2010
Maria Flood
Research Monographs in French Studies 49•26 February 2018

  • ‘Combining scholarly precision with formal concision, Flood’s volume ranges widely and innovatively across the highlighted representations of Franco-Algerian violence from the colonial period to the present, providing valuable insights into the broader landscape of relations between the two countries, and specifically the violence, both punctual and systemic, that has historically underpinned them. In the process, it justifies her foundational argument, namely the capacity of the imagined spaces of cinema not only to reflect critically on the colonial past and the postcolonial present, but also actively to imagine alternative futures, in France, Algeria, and beyond.’ — Philip Dine, French Studies 73.3, July 2019, 494-95 (full text online)

Reprojecting the City: Urban Space and Dissident Sexualities in Recent Latin American Cinema
Benedict Hoff
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 13•13 February 2017

  • ‘One of the latest additions to an expanding catalogue of queer approaches to Latin American cinema, Reprojecting the City identifies a ‘conceptual “sweet-spot”’ at the intersection between Urban, Queer, and Cinema Studies.’ — Rebecca Jarman, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 892-93 (full text online)
  • ‘The four film-analysis chapters are very well pitched, deftly teasing out the representations of sexual identities manifested through the relationships mediated by the differing geopolitical urban scenarios... Hoff’s monograph is a valuable contribution to the study of sexuality in contemporary Latin-American cinemas as well as to the aesthetics and geopolitics of cinematic space. It will be valuable to researchers in the field and, because of its accessibility, to undergraduate students of South American cinema.’ — Sheldon Penn, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 2.2, 2018, 339-40