Borrowing the suggestive title ‘Secrets of the Orient’ from the 1928 German-French studio spectacular, the symposium will focus on the use of fashion, costume and mise en scène in the construction of an Orientalist imaginary in Western as well as Eastern cinema. The symposium will bring together critics, historians, theoreticians and practitioners to discuss the crucial role that costume, sets and props have played in defining and illustrating Western visions of the East while at the same time pointing to films that unsettle, critique or reposition these fantastical visions. The symposium will consider how various aspects of “dressing” film (through movement, duration, texture etc.) or un/dressing in film construct cultural identity and “otherness” as well as a kind of “cosmopolitan body” that suggests a global vernacular erasing cultural difference.

Speakers include Fashion in Film’s very own director Marketa Uhlirova… Yale film studies superstar Ron Gregg… Soho ex-pat Alistair O’Neill… underground thesps Mario Montez and Agosto Machado… academic diva Eugenia Paulicelli and many, many more!

For all the the ornamental detail of the events, click here.

The festival runs from 7-9 October and the films will feature productions from Bruce Weber, Mike Figgis, Lernert & Sander, Inez van Lamsweerde + Vinoodh Matadin and designers and brands including YSL, Balmain, Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten and Gareth Pugh.

ASVOFF is also screening one of FFF’s favourites The Eyes of Laura Mars (dir. Irvin Kershner, 1978) starring Faye Dunaway and some archival shorts from Richard Avedon. Diane Pernet says, “I hope that the public and the jury will be as delighted, haunted, enchanted, challenged and thoroughly entertained by what they see as I have.” Special guests at discussions and introductions include the exquisite Daphne Guinness and the legendary Rossy de Palma.

The full line up has been published online here—definitely worth a peep if you are in Paris!

FFF is enjoying the view and there are more details of our move uptown on the CSM website here.

P.S. Check out our weird postcode: N1c 4AA!

Fashion in Film at Arnhem Mode Biennale from Fashion in Film on Vimeo.

The fourth edition of the Arnhem Mode Biennale launches on 1st June and Fashion in Film is participating with a major installation on colour and fashion in film.

Hosted at an industrial plant near Arnhem, AMB 2011 collaborators include Prada, Maison Martin Margiela, Rodarte, A.F. Vandevorst, Damir Doma and, of course, yours truly.

We will be posting full details and photographs on the blog and on our website post-haste, but in the mean time you can find at more via the Arnhem Mode Biennale website.

T o t   z i e n s !

Following the close of the New York edition of the festival, Fashion in Film voyages to Copenhagen and Arnhem in May to participate in the Fokus Video Festival and Arnhem Mode Biennale respectively.

More details about the Video Festival (5 May – 22 May, 2011) will be available on the Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre website.

Details about the amazing programme at Arnhem Mode Biennale (1 June – 3 July, 2011) can be found here.

Part of the Fashion in Film Festival New York edition, the City University of New York is hosting a seminar on Tuesday, April 19th from 2.30 – 5.30 P.M. at the Elebash Recital Hall (365 Fifth Ave at 34th St, Midtown East).

The seminar will look at clothing and adornment in film as a device of pleasure and sartorial knowledge; one that has had a long history in shaping cinema’s aesthetic languages. It will articulate some of the connections between early, experimental and underground cinema, as well as the contemporary “fashion film” and more, asking questions about stillness and motion, the material specificities of clothing on the screen, and the contexts (technological and other) of their production and dissemination that allowed for dress to be a prominent player in new experiments in image-making.

Moderator: Eugenia Paulicelli/ Respondent: Robert Singer

Speakers: Marketa Uhlirova: Costume as a Special Effect: Early Cinema and Beyond; Antonia Lant: The Painted Lady (1912) by D. W. Griffith; Ronald Gregg: Orientalism and Fashion in 1960s Underground Film; Penny Martin: Fashion Film and Before

More details here…

We are even MORE excited to announce that the first issue is available free to download from their site. With articles ranging from representations of Cleopatra to Pirates of the Caribbean you really have no excuse.

Click here to download it now!

Title Sequence from Fashion in Film on Vimeo.

The Museum of the Moving Image and the Graduate Center at CUNY play host to the Fashion in Film Festival: Birds of Paradise from April 15th to May 2nd.

Find out more here…

“The festival combines an incredible assortment of the avant-garde and pure ‘entertainment’ extravaganzas.”

Normal Love “I am extremely excited to see several Smith films in the programme, he was a master of color, dance, joy and light—what we need in these times.”

Male & Female “For Swanson’s peacock headdress alone—this film was one I referenced in my book Pretty Things, as a classic example of the opulence of showgirl/ Ziegfeld Follies costuming influencing Hollywood’s designers.”

Fashions of 1934 “Featuring musical numbers by Busby Berkeley—any chance to see his kaleidoscopic revues is like a trip to a candy store!”

“Also any chance to see Méliès’s films on the big screen is not to be missed!”

“The Yale Symposium Secrets of the Orient would be a highlight for me as well. What a great line-up of events…truly a film buff, fashion lover, dreamer and artist’s fantasy festival…”

“I love the mixture of classic Hollywood spectacles alongside ‘fringe’ directors such as Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith who subverted reigning ideals of glamour and beauty in their own style.” —Liz Goldwyn