Michael Chanan

documentary film-maker, writer and teacher

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Essays & Papers

¶ A Quartet for our times (New Left Review, 1993) A group obituary for Messiaen, Cage, Piazzola and Gillespie

¶ The Changing Geography of Third Cinema  (Screen Special Latin American Issue Volume 38 number 4 Winter 1997) The history of the concept of Third Cinema, from the introduction of the term by Solanas and Getino in 1968 to the 1990s.

¶ The Chronic Crisis of British Cinema (Inaugural Lecture, UWE, 2003)

¶ Cinema in Latin America (1930-1960)
New Cinemas in Latin America (1960-1995)
Two chapters on Latin American cinema from The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, OUP, 1996

¶ Documentary in Latin America (2005) (Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film)

¶ The Economic Conditions of Cinema in Latin America
 (Third World Affairs 1985)

¶ Iran: Fajr Film Festival Diary 2006

¶ Latin American Cinema in the 90s. Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema (EIAL, Vol. 9, No. 1, devoted to"Visual Culture in Latin America") 

¶ Mahler in Venice?  (Music & Musicians, 1971) Thomas Mann, Gustav Mahler, and Visconti's 'Death in Venice'

¶ The Maltese Double Cross by Alan Francovitch
(Vertigo Issue 4, Winter 95/95) A review of his film about the Lockerbie disaster.

¶ On documentary: The Zapruder Quotient
(Filmwaves No.4) (Versión en español) Taking the 8mm footage of the Kennedy assassination as a starting point, this article investigates the level of truth and the ethical questions raised by documentaries

¶ On William Raban's Thames Film

¶ Play it again, or Old-time Cuban Music on the Screen
(New Left Review, 1999) A review of two music films about 'rediscovered' Cuban music: Buena Vista Social Club and Lagrimas Negras.

¶ Politics of Aesthetic Education
Looks at the legacy of 18 years of Tory government in the field of the moving image within higher education, following the huge expansion and popularity of media education combined with the depletion of funds and the new managerialism which now rules our universities. 

¶ Remembering Titon  An obituary for Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. 

¶ The Reuters Factor   (Radical Science 16, 1985)On the beginnings of the modern information economy. 

¶ The Soundcarrier (Entry in Encyclopaedia of Popular Music of the World, ed. John Shepherd et.al., Macmillan, 2003

¶ Titon y lo intertextual (TEMAS no. 27: 63-5, octubre-diciembre de 2001) (Sorry, this lik not working at the moment)

¶ Tomás Gutiérrez Alea Entrevisto por Michael Chanan (Encuentro 1, Primavera de 1996)

¶ Two articles on the BBC from Vertigo, 1993

The BBC Question

The Plight of the BBC