Penn Cinema Studies Colloquium | Lucy Fischer
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - 12:00pm
University of Pennsylvania
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
Lucy Fischer
"Modernity, Machine, Movies, Mind: Abel Gance’s La Roue (1923)"
A discussion of French director Abel Gance‘s film La Roue (The Wheel / 1923), viewed as a pinnacle work of the silent cinema. Jean Cocteau agreed, stating: “There is the cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso.” The film is a watershed modernist text because it makes innovative use of all the elements of cinematic discourse at this time—tinting, matting, the close-up, intertitles, but especially montage. Beyond the film’s innovative formal attributes, I will focus specifically on two issues. First is the film’s valorization of the machine (here, the railroad system) --an icon of modernity and a new subject of art (e.g. in Futurist painting and in photography). Secondly, I explore how La Roue, fashions various modes for presenting human consciousness—another concern of modernity in this era, as sparked by the writings of Freud and others.
Lucy Fischer is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies as well as director of the Film Studies Program. She is the author of ten books: Jacques Tati (G.K. Hall, 1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema (Princeton, 1989), Imitation of Life (Rutgers, 1991), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton University Press, 1996), Sunrise (British Film Institute, 1998), Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (Columbia University Press, 2003), Stars: The Film Reader (co-edited with Marcia Landy, Rutgers University Press, 2004), Teaching Film (coedited with Patrice Petro, forthcoming MLA, 2012) and Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press, 2013).
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Two talks at Temple
I will be giving one of two talks this week at Temple's Humanities Center (home institution for the Cinema and Media Seminar):
Patricia Aufderheide
Film and Media Arts, American University
"Free Speech and Fair Use in the Academic Environment: Libraries, Scholarship, and Teaching"
Tuesday, April 10
4:00 pm
Chris Cagle
Patricia Aufderheide
Film and Media Arts, American University
"Free Speech and Fair Use in the Academic Environment: Libraries, Scholarship, and Teaching"
Tuesday, April 10
4:00 pm
Chris Cagle
Film and Media Arts, Temple University
"When Hollywood Met Durkheim: Popularized Social Science and the Social Problem Film"
Thursday, April 12
12:30–1:50 pm,
Both talks to take place at the Center for Humanities at Temple Lounge, 12th floor Gladfelter Hall, main campus
"When Hollywood Met Durkheim: Popularized Social Science and the Social Problem Film"
Thursday, April 12
12:30–1:50 pm,
Both talks to take place at the Center for Humanities at Temple Lounge, 12th floor Gladfelter Hall, main campus
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Cathy Lee Crane on Poetic Biography
Sorry for the late notice, but I wanted to highlight a filmmaker discussion event this evening at International House.
The Films of Cathy Lee Crane: Poetic Biography: An Investigation of Words from Two Radical Polemicists
Co-presented by Temple Film Media Arts Department, School of Communication and Theater and The Bryn Mawr College Program in Film Studies.
Over the last decade, Cathy Lee Crane has committed herself to an ongoing experiment with the biographical film, cultivating a fictional form of biography that seeks to penetrate what late filmmaker Raul Ruiz described as the “subtle tissue of life”. Combining staged and archival material, Crane materially renders the spectral life of thought itself as a kind of poetry. These two films contend with the end of the lives of two radical polemicists from the 20th century whose social critiques were provoked into being by the political extremities of their times. Acknowledging that the past has an intimate relationship to the present, the films utililze the re-enactment as a function that seeks to make history a living presence. Through theatrical, or ritualized gesture, the present maintains its distance from the past while also evoking it.
Unoccupied Zone: The Impossible Life of Simone Weil
dir. Cathy Lee Crane, US, 2006, video, 45 mins, b/w
This portrait of French writer Simone Weil is not simply an account of her life, but rather the embodiment of her ideas. The “unoccupied zone” is therefore only marginally meant to refer to the southern part of France under Vichy. It is more importantly an existential labyrinth imaged by the film itself; a psychic space through which Weil passed while in exile in her own country from 1940-1941. Winner Best Narrative Film – University Film & Video Association Juried Screening (2006).
followed by
Pasolini’s Last Words
dir. Cathy Lee Crane, US, 2012, HD video, 60 mins, b/w and color
Known as one of Italy’s most important filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini was first and foremost, one of its poets. This elegiac essay looks at Pasolini’s brutal murder in 1975 alongside the texts he published or left unfinished during the last year of his life.
The Films of Cathy Lee Crane: Poetic Biography: An Investigation of Words from Two Radical Polemicists
Co-presented by Temple Film Media Arts Department, School of Communication and Theater and The Bryn Mawr College Program in Film Studies.
Over the last decade, Cathy Lee Crane has committed herself to an ongoing experiment with the biographical film, cultivating a fictional form of biography that seeks to penetrate what late filmmaker Raul Ruiz described as the “subtle tissue of life”. Combining staged and archival material, Crane materially renders the spectral life of thought itself as a kind of poetry. These two films contend with the end of the lives of two radical polemicists from the 20th century whose social critiques were provoked into being by the political extremities of their times. Acknowledging that the past has an intimate relationship to the present, the films utililze the re-enactment as a function that seeks to make history a living presence. Through theatrical, or ritualized gesture, the present maintains its distance from the past while also evoking it.
Unoccupied Zone: The Impossible Life of Simone Weil
dir. Cathy Lee Crane, US, 2006, video, 45 mins, b/w
This portrait of French writer Simone Weil is not simply an account of her life, but rather the embodiment of her ideas. The “unoccupied zone” is therefore only marginally meant to refer to the southern part of France under Vichy. It is more importantly an existential labyrinth imaged by the film itself; a psychic space through which Weil passed while in exile in her own country from 1940-1941. Winner Best Narrative Film – University Film & Video Association Juried Screening (2006).
followed by
Pasolini’s Last Words
dir. Cathy Lee Crane, US, 2012, HD video, 60 mins, b/w and color
Known as one of Italy’s most important filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini was first and foremost, one of its poets. This elegiac essay looks at Pasolini’s brutal murder in 1975 alongside the texts he published or left unfinished during the last year of his life.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
David Laderman on the European road movie
David Laderman
"Arresting Mobility: Crossing Borders and Going Nowhere in the Films of the Dardenne Brothers"
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
5:30pm
401 Fisher-Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania
This talk will explore some of the distinctive road movie elements found in selected films by the Dardenne brothers. Beginning with their breakout film of 1996, La Promesse, we will situate their work in the broader context of contemporary European road movie trends. We will consider how and why urban mobility becomes a pressing motif throughout much of their oeuvre, where bodies forced into frenetic motion become circumscribed by various socio-economic conditions. Usually revealed through a fragile yet insistent mobile camera, the desperate instincts driving many Dardenne characters articulate the moral quagmires around human trafficking. Their tightly focused documentary style captures the fits and starts of the Belgian underclass, which in turn speaks to and for some of the darker features of transnational, neo-liberal Europe.
David Laderman is a Professor of Film Studies at the College of San Mateo. He also teaches for the Film and Media Studies program at Stanford University. He is the author of Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (University of Texas Press) and Punk Slash! Musicals: Tracking Slip-Sync on Film (University of Texas Press).
This program is made possible thanks to the support of University of Pennsylvania's Cinema Studies Program and Department of French Studies, and Temple University's Department of Film and Media Arts.
"Arresting Mobility: Crossing Borders and Going Nowhere in the Films of the Dardenne Brothers"
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
5:30pm
401 Fisher-Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania
This talk will explore some of the distinctive road movie elements found in selected films by the Dardenne brothers. Beginning with their breakout film of 1996, La Promesse, we will situate their work in the broader context of contemporary European road movie trends. We will consider how and why urban mobility becomes a pressing motif throughout much of their oeuvre, where bodies forced into frenetic motion become circumscribed by various socio-economic conditions. Usually revealed through a fragile yet insistent mobile camera, the desperate instincts driving many Dardenne characters articulate the moral quagmires around human trafficking. Their tightly focused documentary style captures the fits and starts of the Belgian underclass, which in turn speaks to and for some of the darker features of transnational, neo-liberal Europe.
David Laderman is a Professor of Film Studies at the College of San Mateo. He also teaches for the Film and Media Studies program at Stanford University. He is the author of Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (University of Texas Press) and Punk Slash! Musicals: Tracking Slip-Sync on Film (University of Texas Press).
This program is made possible thanks to the support of University of Pennsylvania's Cinema Studies Program and Department of French Studies, and Temple University's Department of Film and Media Arts.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday (3/16): Patrick Keating on Film Noir Lighting
This Friday is the next talk in the PCMS series:
Patrick Keating (Trinity University)
“Illuminated Space: Electricity, Modernity, and Film Noir”
March 16, 2012
5:00 PM
Temple University Center City (TUCC), 1515 Market Street
Room 420
Although film noir is famous for its shadows, the style offers a remarkably wide range of lighting effects. In some noirs, the flatly lit office building is just as important as the dimly lit alley, and the warm glow of the living room can be just as fateful as the darkened hallway. This talk reconsiders noir lighting in films such as Call Northside 777, The Asphalt Jungle, and The Sweet Smell of Success. In particular, Keating proposes that an important context for noir lighting is the increasing industrialization of electric light during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Just as the electricity industry was developing a narrative of progress to both explain and promote the expansion of light over these years, the film noir was using a combination of lights and shadows to describe and criticize that expansion.
Patrick Keating is an assistant professor of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, where he teaches courses in film studies and video production. He is the author of Hollywood Lighting From the Silent Era to Film Noir, published by Columbia University Press, which was selected by the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) as the Best First Book in 2011. Recently, he was awarded an Academy Film Scholars grant to support his research on the relationship between camera movement and the representation of modern spaces in Hollywood cinema.
Patrick Keating (Trinity University)
“Illuminated Space: Electricity, Modernity, and Film Noir”
March 16, 2012
5:00 PM
Temple University Center City (TUCC), 1515 Market Street
Room 420
Although film noir is famous for its shadows, the style offers a remarkably wide range of lighting effects. In some noirs, the flatly lit office building is just as important as the dimly lit alley, and the warm glow of the living room can be just as fateful as the darkened hallway. This talk reconsiders noir lighting in films such as Call Northside 777, The Asphalt Jungle, and The Sweet Smell of Success. In particular, Keating proposes that an important context for noir lighting is the increasing industrialization of electric light during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Just as the electricity industry was developing a narrative of progress to both explain and promote the expansion of light over these years, the film noir was using a combination of lights and shadows to describe and criticize that expansion.
Patrick Keating is an assistant professor of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, where he teaches courses in film studies and video production. He is the author of Hollywood Lighting From the Silent Era to Film Noir, published by Columbia University Press, which was selected by the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) as the Best First Book in 2011. Recently, he was awarded an Academy Film Scholars grant to support his research on the relationship between camera movement and the representation of modern spaces in Hollywood cinema.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Syrian Film Screenings
Cross-posted with Philadelphia Repertory Film Blog
In collaboration with the DOX BOX Documentary Film Festival in Syria,
the Temple Middle East North Africa Group
presents
2 Evenings of Syrian Cinema
Wednesday, March 15
A Flood in Baath County,
Omar Amiralay, Syria/France 2003
Silence
Rami Farah, Syria, 2006
Thursday, March 15
Six Ordinary Stories,
Meyar Al Roumi, France/Syria 2007
Before Vanishing,
Joude Gorani, France/Syria 2005
+ a special, surprise film about current events
All screenings run from 5:30-7:30 in Tuttleman 101 on Temple University's main campus and are free and open to the public.
the Temple Middle East North Africa Group
presents
2 Evenings of Syrian Cinema
Wednesday, March 15
A Flood in Baath County,
Omar Amiralay, Syria/France 2003
Silence
Rami Farah, Syria, 2006
Thursday, March 15
Six Ordinary Stories,
Meyar Al Roumi, France/Syria 2007
Before Vanishing,
Joude Gorani, France/Syria 2005
+ a special, surprise film about current events
All screenings run from 5:30-7:30 in Tuttleman 101 on Temple University's main campus and are free and open to the public.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Lisa Gitelman (2/24)
Lisa Gitelman (New York University)
"Network Returns"
Network Returns is a preliminary work-in-progress aimed at network archeologies. It offers two different episodes in the history of self-addressing.
Friday, February 24
4:00 p.m.
room 420, Temple University Center City (TUCC)
With the support of the Center for Humanities at Temple, the University of Pennsylvania Cinema Studies, and Bryn Mawr's Film Studies Program.
Lisa Gitelman is associate professor of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. She works on media history and textual media. She is the author of Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (MIT Press 2006) and Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford University Press, 2000), as well as editor, with Geoffrey B. Pingree, of New Media 1740-1915 (MIT 2004). Current projects include a monograph, "Making Knowledge with Paper," and an edited collection,"'Raw Data' Is an Oxymoron." She holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University and is a former editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University.
"Network Returns"
Network Returns is a preliminary work-in-progress aimed at network archeologies. It offers two different episodes in the history of self-addressing.
Friday, February 24
4:00 p.m.
room 420, Temple University Center City (TUCC)
With the support of the Center for Humanities at Temple, the University of Pennsylvania Cinema Studies, and Bryn Mawr's Film Studies Program.
Lisa Gitelman is associate professor of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. She works on media history and textual media. She is the author of Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (MIT Press 2006) and Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford University Press, 2000), as well as editor, with Geoffrey B. Pingree, of New Media 1740-1915 (MIT 2004). Current projects include a monograph, "Making Knowledge with Paper," and an edited collection,"'Raw Data' Is an Oxymoron." She holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University and is a former editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University.
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