Jan Olsson (film scholar)

Last updated

Jan Olsson (born 1952 in Helsingborg) [1] is a Swedish film scholar, professor of cinema studies and former head of department at Stockholm University. [2] He has been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, [3] UCLA, Northwestern University, Utrecht University and the City University of Hong Kong. [4] Olsson is the founding editor of John Libbey's book series Stockholm Studies in Cinema, and the founding editor of the scholarly journal Aura Film Studies Journal. Along his trajectory of archival research, he has found copies of two previously lost early films, Buster Keaton's The Cook and Fatty Arbuckle's A Reckless Romeo . [5] [6] [7] He currently leads the research project “From Business Commodities to Revered Cultural Heritage: Global Media, Vernacular Strategies, and Cultural Negotiations,” funded by a grant from Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research Council). [8] He is also responsible editor of Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis' cinema studies series—distributed by Stockholm University library.

Contents

Professor Olsson has published widely on various aspects of film and media studies, including the changes brought by the DVD. [9] He has argued for the formation of a new media archive in Sweden. [10] His primary research interests are historical reception and emerging media in cross-cultural perspectives, including early American and Swedish cinema and media. [2] In addition to numerous articles, many for the journal Film History, his books include Svensk spelfilm under andra världskriget (1979), Från filmljud till ljudfilm (1986), Sensationer från en bakgård (1988), Nordic Explorations (co-edited with John Fullerton, 1999), Allegories of Communication (co-edited with John Fullerton, 2004), Television after TV (co-edited with Lynn Spigel, 2004), Media, Popular Culture, and the American Century (co-edited with Kingsley Bolton, 2010), Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905 to 1915 (2008) and Hitchcock à la Carte (2015). He is the co-editor of Corporeality in Early Film: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form (2018). [11]

In a recent talk at the Unit of Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois, he presented this project in which he argued that like the culinary practices and standards set in his personal kitchen, Hitchcock's cinema required the same kind of preparation and the perfect blend of ingredients. Through this combination of food art and cinema, Hitchcock created his iconic, international persona using a bizarre and untraditional connection with his sense of taste and love of the kitchen. Hitchcock's underrepresented television career-of particular interest to Olsson-played a crucial part in developing Hitchcock's public persona. It was television, he argued, that truly shaped Hitchcock into a global figure. [12]

Together with Richard Abel, they have extensively promoted the use of newspapers in the research of early cinema, raising awareness about the benefits of digitizing the material for researchers to access worldwide. He argued that Audiovisual Archives has to open up to the Academic Research, educational purposes and public access. [13] He proposed another framework for understanding film cultural change, according to which this process is driven by the rational negotiating of film culture's overall cultural position. This framework is inspired by cultural studies in general and Raymond Williams in particular, suggesting that early film culture can be culturally mapped—internally and in relation to the overall culture—by using Williams's categories of the “emergent,” the “residual,” and the “dominant.” [14]

Jan Olsson took an active part by giving the keynote speech in the FIAT/IFTA local seminar in Santiago de Chile, Chile in 1998, lecturing about the importance of preservation of movies and the academic studies of the movies. He stressed how access to audiovisual archives is necessary to enable students to study the old films. [15] In his continuous strive to create awareness of the importance of archival material as cultural heritage, professor Olsson was responsible for the 2001 series of film historical documentaries I tuppens tecken [In the name of the Rooster] - based on a world unique collection of very early Pathé fiction films hold in the SVT archives. [16]

[..]Of course we haven´t ever been unaware of the quality of our historical collections. It has been of great importance for the programme production in general, since we acquired the footage in the late sixties. But a few years ago, Professor Jan Olsson of the Stockholm University Department of Cinema Studies contacted me on a special matter. He was anxious to get the permission to show a number of our very early Pathé fiction films - as celluloid films - at a seminar for his colleagues from all over the world at the Swedish National Archive. It was Professor Olsson and his colleagues that made us aware of that a great number of our Pathé films were absolutely world unique, either as the only remaining copies or as copies more complete and in better condition than anywhere else known in the film literature. Here started the development of a close cooperation between the SVT and the University in fund raising for making the pre-broadcast material and catalogue more accessible to the academic public and of course in the end - the programme production. I believe in the dialectics of everyday life. Through letting the scholars into the archives, besides it resulting in a mutual exchange of information about the material, it also created new ideas for programming based on the material. [16] (Lasse Nilsson, SVT)

Awards and nominations

(2006) Allegories of Communication: Intermedia Concerns from Cinema to the Digital - nominated as book of the month by the Resource Centre of Cyberculture Studies at University of San Francisco.
(2002) Finalist and special commendation for the Kraszna- Krausz Moving Image Book Award. Awarded for Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930
(1998) Belle Van Zuylen Honorary Professor at University of Utrecht
(1998) Robin Hood Medal for outstanding research in film history. Awarded for From Film Sound to Sound film

Bibliography

Articles and chapter in edited volumes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dziga Vertov</span> Soviet director

Dziga Vertov was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary movie-making and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical film-making cooperative which was active from 1968 to 1972. He was a member of the Kinoks collective, with Elizaveta Svilova and Mikhail Kaufman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinema of Sweden</span> Filmmaking industry in Sweden

Swedish cinema is known for including many acclaimed films; during the 20th century the industry was the most prominent of Scandinavia. This is largely due to the popularity and prominence of directors Victor Sjöström and especially Ingmar Bergman; and more recently Roy Andersson, Lasse Hallström, Lukas Moodysson and Ruben Östlund.

Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass communication research, which tends to approach the topic from a social sciences perspective. Defining the field is problematic; some institutions and syllabuses do not distinguish it from media studies or classify it as a subfield of popular culture studies.

David John Francis is a British film archivist. He was the second curator of the UK's National Film and Television Archive from 1974 until 1989, when he was succeeded by Clyde Jeavons. Francis went on to become the Chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">64th Venice International Film Festival</span>

The 64th annual Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, opened on 29 August 2007, with Joe Wright's Atonement and closed 8 September 2007. Host of the event was Italian actress Ambra Angiolini. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to American director Tim Burton. Once again all the films running the contest were shown for the first time as world premieres in keeping with the festival tradition since the Second World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pordenone Silent Film Festival</span>

Le Giornate del cinema muto is an annual festival of silent film held in October in Pordenone, northern Italy. It is the first, largest and most important international festival dedicated to silent film and also is present in the list of the top 50 unmissable film festivals in the world according to Variety. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a non-profit association, whose president is Livio Jacob. The director from 1997 until 2015 was David Robinson. In 2016, Jay Weissberg became director. Other members of the festival board are Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Luciano De Giusti, Carlo Montanaro, Piera Patat.

<i>Upstream</i> (film) 1927 film

Upstream is a 1927 American comedy film directed by John Ford. A "backstage drama", the film is about a Shakespearean actor and a woman from a knife-throwing act. The film was considered to be a lost film, but in 2009 a print was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swedish labour movement</span>

The labour movement in Sweden dates back to at least the 1850s, when Swedish workers initiated the organizing of previously spontaneous food riots into strikes, hence acting as an autonomous group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Elsaesser</span> German film historian and professor (1943–2019)

Thomas Elsaesser was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was also the writer and director of The Sun Island, a documentary essay film about his grandfather, the architect Martin Elsaesser. He was married to scholar Silvia Vega-Llona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiyohiko Ushihara</span>

Kiyohiko Ushihara was a Japanese film director most famous for his gendaigeki of the silent era.

<i>Little Red Riding Hood</i> (1922 film) 1922 short animated film

Little Red Riding Hood is a 1922 short animated film by Walt Disney that is a rendition of the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood. The film is part of the Laugh-O-Grams series that was released in 1922. This is one of the first ever cartoons by Disney, and considered Disney's first attempt at animated storytelling. Rather than using animation cels, it was made mostly by photographing inked lines on paper. The film was considered to be lost for many years and it was listed in 1980 on the American Film Institute's "10 Most Wanted Films for Archival Preservation". A print of the film was discovered by British collector David Wyatt in a London film library in 1998 and was restored the same year.

<i>Captain Blood</i> (1924 film) 1924 film

Captain Blood is a 1924 American silent adventure film based on the 1922 novel Captain Blood, His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini. Produced and distributed by the Vitagraph Company of America, the film is directed by David Smith, brother of Vitagraph founder Albert E. Smith. Early silent film hero J. Warren Kerrigan stars along with resident Vitagraph leading actress Jean Paige, who was also married to Albert E. Smith.

Paris Exposition, 1900 was a series of seventeen short French silent actuality films made in 1900 by Georges Méliès. The series was a documentary record of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gösta Forssell</span>

Carl Gustaf "Gösta" Abrahamsson Forssell was a Swedish medical researcher and professor in radiology and radiotherapy. He headed the radium clinic at Serafimerlasarettet in Stockholm and then its successor Radiumhemmet. His publications defined what became known as the "Stockholm method" of cancer therapy.

<i>The Wonderful Rose-Tree</i> 1904 French film

Le Rosier miraculeux, released in the US as The Wonderful Rose-Tree and in the UK as The Magical Rose Tree, is a 1904 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès.

The Triple-Headed Lady is a 1901 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 334 in its catalogues.

Le Bourreau turc, sold in the United States as The Terrible Turkish Executioner, or It Served Him Right and in Britain as What Befell the Turkish Executioner, is a 1903 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 534–535 in its catalogues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katarzyna Tubylewicz</span>

Katarzyna Tubylewicz is a Polish writer, translator, and a journalist based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Giorgio Bertellini an Italian-American media historian who specializes in the ways national and racial diversity informed American cinema's representation of citizenship, stardom, and leadership during the era of migrations, fascism, and World War II. He is currently Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan.

Yes is an operetta in three acts with music by composer Maurice Yvain, lyrics by Albert Willemetz, and a book by René Pujol and Pierre Souvaine. It was written as a starring vehicle for the French singer and actress Arletty. The work shares the same story as the 1928 silent film The Story of a Little Parisian and the two works were released in conjunction with one another. It premiered at the Théâtre des Capucines in Paris on January 26, 1928.

References

  1. ↑ Prof.dr. J. Olsson (1952 - ) at Catalogus Professorum Academiæ Rheno-Traiectinæ.
  2. 1 2 "Stockholm University - Olsson, Jan (Cinema Studies (Department of Media Studies))". Su.avedas.com. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  3. ↑ "School of Cinematic Arts Directory Profile - USC School of Cinematic Arts". Cinema.usc.edu. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  4. ↑ "The 2011 Pikes Peak Regional History Symposium". More.ppld.org:8080. Archived from the original on 2011-06-21. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  5. ↑ Berglund, Bo (1999). "À la recherche des films perdus: A Substantial Find of Early Danish Cinema". In Fullerton, John; Olsson, Jan (eds.). Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930. Stockholm Studies in Cinema. London: Libbey. p. 64. ISBN   9781864620559.
  6. ↑ "The Cook And Other Treasures". TV Guide . Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  7. ↑ Eliot Tobias, Patricia. "The Cook". Busterkeaton.com. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  8. ↑ "Joel Frykholm". Institutionen för mediestudie, Stockholm University .
  9. ↑ Arvidsson, Henrik (2003-08-22). "Dvd-film slår ut video". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish).
  10. ↑ Sjöstrand, Johan (2008-04-22). "Filmvetare vill samla statens arkiv". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish).
  11. ↑ "Jan Olsson - Institutionen för mediestudier". Ims.su.se. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  12. ↑ "Jan Olsson: "Hitchcock á la carte". Guest Writer: Julie McCormick Weng". unitcrit.blogspot.se. March 13, 2013.
  13. ↑ Nilsson, Lasse. ""In the sign of the Rooster" – Archive Programming by Audiovisual Archives" (PDF). multidoc.rediris.es. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 April 2006.
  14. ↑ Joel Frykholm, Framing the Feature Film Multi-Reel Feature Film and American Film Culture in the 1910s, (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis, 2009), 23
  15. ↑ "FIAT/IFTA -FIAT/IFTA No 2 2001 - AV Heritage". Archived from the original on 2013-07-03. Retrieved 2013-05-26.
  16. 1 2 [ permanent dead link ]
  17. ↑ Grigar, Dene (2005-09-22). "Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital (Book review)". Post Script. (online at Highbeam, subscription required)
  18. ↑ Lever, Susan (December 2005). "Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition edited by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson". Australasian Journal of American Studies. 24 (2): 112–14. JSTOR   41053994.
  19. ↑ Rossman, Gabriel (March 2006). "Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition edited by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (review)". Contemporary Sociology. 35 (2): 150–51. doi:10.1177/009430610603500228. JSTOR   30045747. S2CID   143304545.
  20. ↑ Chopra-Gant, Mike (August 2006). "Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.) Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition". Journal of American Studies. 40 (2): 453–54. doi:10.1017/s0021875806641807. JSTOR   27557843. S2CID   145501247.
  21. ↑ Keeler, Amanda R. (2010-01-01). "Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture (review)". Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. (online at Highbeam, subscription required)
  22. ↑ Shipka, Danny (2010-04-01). "Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture 1905–1915". Journalism History. 36 (1): 58. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. (limited access; online at Highbeam, subscription required)
  23. ↑ Barbas, Samantha (June 2010). "Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture 1905 to 1915 by Jan Olsson". The Journal of American History. 97 (1): 212–13. doi:10.2307/jahist/97.1.212. JSTOR   40662906.
  24. ↑ Kahan, Paul (Summer 2011). "Los Angeles Before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture 1905 to 1915 by Jan Olsson". Southern California Quarterly. 93 (2): 251–52. doi:10.2307/41172579. JSTOR   41172579.
  25. ↑ Christopher Silvester, "HITCHCOCK À LA CARTE", The Times Literary Supplement, 7 August 2015, 21.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.