Fall 2014
"The Phantom of the Operator" a film by Caroline Martel (2004)
The film sheds light on the corporate, scientific, and popular imaginations of the past century to provide a wry, yet etheral, portrait of human society in the technocratic age. The film will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.
Tuesday, October 21, 15:30 pm, MIRL Screening Room, Leacock 46B/strong>
Winter 2014
"The Living Poster: Animated Environments of Advertising"
Michael Cowan will be presenting on "The Living Poster: Animated Environments of Advertising" in the annual departmental symposium of Art History and Communications on Wednesday 16 April, 1pm, Thompson House (3650 McTavish Street)
"Prof Talk"
Ara Osterweil will be conducting a "Prof Talk" with the Arts Undergraduate Society
Friday 28 March 2014, 5:30pm, Arts 160
Fall 2013
“A brief history on Iranian Cinema”
Screening (following lecture): Once Upon a Time, Cinema (Persian: Nasseroddin Shah Actor-e Cinema)
by Mohsen MakhmalBaf, 90min, Iran, 1992
Thursday, November 14th, Morrice Hall, Room 328, 17h00
College of William & Mary Global Film Festival: Student Short Film Competition
The William & Mary Global Film Festival is looking for entries for its Student Short Film Competition, to be screened at the festival, held February 13th-16th 2014 at the Kimball Theatre in at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. The theme of this year's festival is "Journeys & Passages," so submitted films should be in some way related to the theme and run 20 minutes or less. We are interested in receiving documentaries and narrative films, as well as student shorts produced in a variety of contexts (such as 24 or 48-hour film competitions, class projects, or independent work). The films will be judged by a combination of special guests and Festival staff, prizes will be awarded for "Best Overall" and "Most Creative Interpretation of the Festival Theme", and an audience award will also be given. The early bird deadline is December 20th, and the last possible date to submit a film is January 24th.
More details may be found on our website: http://filmfestival.wm.edu/competition/undergraduate/
RIDM Festival
The McGill Anthropology Speaker Series in collaboration with the RIDM Festival and the the Montreal International Documentary Film Center presents a retrospective dedicated to Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), including screening, roundtables and performances. The SEL is known for its avantgarde sensory approach to ethnographic documentary cinema, resulting in such films as Leviathan, Sweetgrass and Foreign Parts. For more info about the SEL, you can read the last article published by P.O.V. Magazine". For more information, click here.
Ongoing throughout Fall 2013
"Anarchival Cinemas: Practices of Cinematic Mobilities"
Join us for experimentations in mobile cinemas and outdoor screenings, including a bicycle generated cinema. Details on the MIRL website or contact alanna.thain [at] mcgill.ca (Alanna Thain) or Thomas.Pringle [at] mail.mcgill.ca (Thomas Pringle).
September 18-21: Workshop
"Time Forms: The Temporalities of Aesthetic Experience"
A four-day research creation workshop that explores the 'when' of art today, held at McGill University and the Phi Centre in Montreal, curated by Eric Lewis (Philosophy), Stephen MacAdams (Music Research) and Alanna Thain (English and World Cinemas). The workshop features several film-related presentations and events including:
- Friday, Sept 20, 14:15-14:45: Screening of Alexandre Larose, Aller/Retour (2008/2012) and Brouillard (2011). MultiMedia Room, New Music Building, 527 Sherbrooke St. O. Alexandre Larose is a French-Canadian artist based in Montreal. His moving-image practice investigates phenomena of appearance and representation as translated by the media of optics and celluloid. His approach relies on a methodical stripping out of layers embedded in both the live subjects and the technique that translates them into visual artifacts. Larose is currently pursuing graduate studies in visual arts at Concordia University in Montreal. His research focuses on the spatialization and exhibition of cinematic material.
- Saturday, Sept 21, 14:30-15:45: presentations by Nick Rombes (film scholar, University of Detroit, Mercy), "The fourth meaning: Time inside the frame," and Nadine Boljkovac (film scholar, Brown University), "Untimely affects: Sensing time and the moving image." Centre Phi, 407 Rue Saint Pierre. Nicholas Rombes, a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, is author of Cinema in the Digital Age (Columbia UP) and 10/40/70: Constraint as Liberation in the Era of Digital Film Theory (forthcoming from Zero Books). Nadine Boljkovac (PhD, Cambridge 2010) is author of Untimely Affects: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema (EUP 2013), co-editor with Charlie Blake of the volume Deleuze and Affect, and author of works in Deleuze Studies,Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory (‘Remembering Barbara Godard’), Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture, Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text.
- Saturday, Sept. 21, 15:45-16:25: presentation by Toni Pape (Comparative Literature, Université de Montréal and postdoctoral fellow, Immediations),"The temporal aesthetic of science-fiction." Centre Phi, 407 Rue Saint Pierre. Toni Pape is a Ph.D. Candidate and lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature at Université de Montréal. His doctoral research is dedicated to the aesthetic experience of time in recent TV series and its relation to contemporary politics. Further research interests include the intersection of television, new media and installation art, philosophies of process and perception, participatory art and activism. Toni is a core member of the SenseLab, where he has co-organized numerous research-creation workshops and events.
- Saturday, Sept. 21, 17:15-18:00: presentation by Will Straw (Art History and Communications and Director of McGill Institute for the Study of Canada), "Territories of the cinematic night." Centre Phi, 407 Rue Saint Pierre. Will Straw is Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and Professor within the Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America, and the co-editor of Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture (2010), Aprehendiendo al delincuente: Crimen y medios en América del norte (2011), and the Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (2001).
October 15: Master Class
Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek, Visions of Reality
In collaboration with the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, McGill World Cinemas will host a master class by Austrian filmmakers and artists Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek, who will discuss their work on the feature film SHIRLEY – Visions of Reality, based on 13 paintings by Edward Hopper. The discussion will focus on the themes and subjects embedded in the project, such as dioramas, panoramas, trompe-l'œil and tableaux vivants as forerunners of cinematography; original and copy, in an era of unlimited medial availability of original works of art via the internet and of their possible mechanical reproduction; anamorphic spatial objects, metaphoric, archetypical furniture in American film, advertising and painting; symbolic objects, artifacts steeped in history, in perfomance, happening and film. Moderated by Michael Cowan (LLC and World Cinemas).
October 15-19: Installation
Gustav Deutsch and Hanna Schimek, Episode 3 of SHIRLEY - Visions of Reality and its Making-Of
A five channel installation taking viewers behind the scenes of one episode from SHIRLEY - Visions of Reality. The installation will be open daily from 12 to 5pm in the Moving Image Research Laboratory, Leacock 46B.
October 18: Book Launch
Professor Yuriko Furuhata (East Asian Studies and World Cinemas) will present her new book Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics (Duke University Press, 2013). During the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese avant-garde filmmakers intensely explored the shifting role of the image in political activism and media events. Known as the "season of politics," the era was filled with widely covered dramatic events from hijackings and hostage crises to student protests. This season of politics was, Yuriko Furuhata argues, the season of image politics. Well-known directors, including Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, Wakamatsu Kōji, and Adachi Masao, appropriated the sensationalized media coverage of current events, turning news stories into material for timely critique and intermedial experimentation. Cinema of Actuality analyzes Japanese avant-garde filmmakers' struggle to radicalize cinema in light of the intensifying politics of spectacle and a rapidly changing media environment, one that was increasingly dominated by television. Furuhata demonstrates how avant-garde filmmaking intersected with media history, and how sophisticated debates about film theory emerged out of dialogues with photography, television, and other visual arts.
Time and location TBA.
November 17-18: Roundtable Discussion with Filmmakers from the the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab
In conjunction with screenings at the Rencontres internationales du Documentaire de Montréal, the Department of Anthropology will hold a roundtable discussion with Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Harvard University), J.P. Sniadecki (Cornell University), Stephanie Spray (Harvard University), who will discuss their work in sensory ethnography through audio-visual media. Moderated by Lisa Stevenson (Anthropology and World Cinemas). Time and location TBA.
2012-2013
The McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC) is pleased to announce the William R. Eakin Lecture in Canadian Studies.
Karen Fricker (Assistant Professor of Dramatic Arts and current Eakin Fellow at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada) will speak on
The Theatre of Attractions: How Robert Lepage makes movies onstage
Tuesday, November 13, 5:00pm at the McGill Faculty Club (3450 McTavish).
The Moving Image Research Laboratory (MIRL) presents:
