Annual Bibliography of Film Studies--2009 (Bibliography‪)‬

One of the opportunities that the creation of the Annual Bibliography affords me is a chance to observe distinctive trends and new developments in recent film criticism. Both last year and this, I have had the pleasure of exploring a significant number of new film publications, and that trend continues here. This edition of the Annual Bibliography of Film Studies includes for the first time a number of new periodicals, including Filmint, Journal of African Cinemas, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Soundtrack, Studies in Australasian Cinema, and Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. The majority of these are relatively recent entries in the new film and media initiative undertaken by Intellect Press, offering specialized venues for studies covering a wide variety of international film and media-related subjects. Generally well-edited and handsomely--if uniformly--produced, these journals, if these early issues are any measure, are introducing significant new voices to the field of film theory and criticism, while providing, at least in the case of a journal like Soundtrack, a sorely needed venue for specialized publication. Moreover, they are providing us simply with far more criticism, as a result of which this issue of the Annual Bibliography is our biggest ever. As one gauge of those distinctive trends, I like to take note of the various sorts of special issues that have appeared during the year. Among a great many such efforts in 2009, we might especially note: Animation's issue on comics and animation; Cineaste's forum on the state of film editing; Film History's two-part examination of early color practices; Filmint's very timely numbers on the state of the Hong Kong Film Industry and on contemporary portrayals of the Arab; the Journal of Chinese Cinemas' number devoted to a neglected period of film history, that of early Chinese film exhibition; the Journal of Film and Video's issues on collaborative media production and television animation; Screen's special fiftieth-anniversary issue on film and media theory; Velvet Light Trap's number focusing on international censorship; and our own special issues on the mockumentary and on Japanese Popular Culture. While these special numbers suggest no obvious pattern, they do demonstrate the very wide variety of critical efforts today.