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Joint Book Discussion: Early Cinema Beyond the Archives

When:
Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

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Early Cinema Beyond the Archives

Grazia Ingravalle and Jiri Anger

We have come a long way from understanding early films as primitive predecessors of classical narrative cinema. Exploring the materiality and historicity of the oldest cinematic artefacts and the surprising continuities between early films and emerging media practices formed the basis of modern film and media historiography. But where is the place of early cinema in current audiovisual regimes? How do artefacts from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries circulate in the rapidly shifting and increasingly digitised landscape? What challenges does early cinema pose for film preservation and curatorship as well as for artistic, fannish, and scholarly practices? And does early cinema still have the capacity to transform the ways we do media history and theory?

Dr Grazia Ingravalle and Dr Jiri Anger from Queen Mary University of London will discuss these questions in the light of their newly published monographs. The debate will include a screening of selected early films and clips that showcase current strategies of their appropriation.

Archival Film Curatorship: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463725675/archival-film-curatorship

Towards a Film Theory from Below:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/towards-a-film-theory-from-below-9798765107263/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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