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XV Udine Conference
Cinema and Comics. Affinities, differences and new forms of interference, March 03-06, 2008
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For the definitive seminar’s program click here
Interest in comparing cinema and comics is not new. At first glance, there are any number of apparent affinities and similarities between them. These two “media” appear to share a similar aim: to tell a story by means of a series of pictures. Both use pictures as their primary form of representation and both take advantage of the inexhaustible possibilities created by linking them through “montage” – understood here in the broad sense of the term. But, although the cinema appears to create series of continuous images while comics create series of contiguous images, in the end their elective affinity is a superficial one. This is true for more than one reason.
In fact, several systems of expression share the same concern for monstration and montage: the photo novel, photographic reportage, television, web sites, video games, etc. One might very well wonder, therefore, what the real connection between what is called in French the seventh and ninth arts is, especially since their differences appear irreconcilable. To be convinced of this, one need only consider such crucial issues as time, which is fundamental to the way film images advance and are edited together but which, in comics, is only metaphorical, because the reader alone determines the speed at which the images are read. Space in comics is also a major stumbling block to comparing the two media. What we see is, so to speak, always foreseen, to borrow Benoît Peeters’ expression (prévu), because of the tabular contiguousness of the images on the page. And what is there to be said about the drawn line in comics, which always has a sort of signature effect, whereas filmic monstration is greatly affected by the technology of recording the image.
While the mission of this conference is to re-examine these long-standing comparisons, we are especially interested in considering them in light of a more diverse media landscape than was earlier the case, one that is open to intermedial hybrids which would have been unimaginable a mere twenty or thirty years ago. This openness, reminiscent of the effervescence of the early twentieth century, requires us to use more empirical and speculative bases when constructing our models. In this context, we must re-evaluate our initial intuitions and primary categories – time, space, montage, narrative – from a simultaneously historical, aesthetic and cultural perspective. As a way of becoming more attuned to this objective, we might think of a distant and particularly imagistic language: in Chinese, “cinema” is dian ying or “electric shadows,” while “comics” is lian huan hua or “connected pictures.” These expressions invite us from the outset to cast off our intellectual habits and the comfort of overly-rigid labels in order to bring more flexibility to our interpretation of the cultural series in question and to open them up to new models. |
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Events
Sergei Eisenstein’s Unpublished “Notes for a General History of Cinema”. World Premiere
September 30 – October 2, 2010, Columbia University, New York, NY
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A Conference staging the critical reception by scholars in the field.
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Women and the Silent Screen VI
University of Bologna, Italy, June 24, 2010 – June 26, 2010
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The Sixth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference will celebrate the diversity of women’s engagement with silent cinemas across the globe through a series of scholarly panels, keynote addresses, and archival film screenings.
Continuing the dynamic spirit that characterized previous conferences in Utrecht (1999), Santa Cruz (2001), Montréal (2004), Guadalajara (2006), and Stockholm (2008) the conference will provide an open and friendly atmosphere for the exchange of research and insight into women’s involvement in the first four decades of film history.
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The Arthemis International Conference. "Moving Images Studies: History(ies), Method(s), Discipline(s)"
Concordia University, Montreal, June 4-7 2010, ,
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The ARTHEMIS conference wishes to offer an international forum for scholars to reflect on the theory and practice of film and moving image studies from historical and epistemological perspectives.
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XVII International Film Studies Conference
March 16-18, 2010, January 12, 2010
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The Film Canon
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XVI Udine International Film Studies Conference
Permanent Seminar on History of Film Theories
Udine, March 23, 2009
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Call for papers
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Geographies of Film Theory
London, June 26 (evening) – June 28, 2008, ,
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The conference has been designed to engage specifically with intellectual fields that concern both the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies and the Screen Studies Group through an examination of the development and diffusion of film theory.
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Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theories
XV Udine International Conference, March 03-04, 2009
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An international network gave life to a Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theories. The XV Udine Conference will host on March 3 and 4 the first meeting organized by the seminar.
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XV Udine Conference
Cinema and Comics. Affinities, differences and new forms of interference, March 03-06, 2008
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Interest in comparing cinema and comics is not new. At first glance, there are any number of apparent affinities and similarities between them.
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