CMS 597 B: Special Topics In Cinema And Media Studies

Film and the Photographic Imaginary
This cross-disciplinary seminar introduces students to the theories, histories and creative practices that link film and photography. To what extent has the photographic imaginary influenced portraiture, reenactments, or the tableau in the cinema? In what instances have the overlaps between film and photography informed visual ethnography? Is the opposition between stillness and movement obsolete inthe digital era? What other ontologies of the moving and still image can be found in non-Western contexts? Readings will be drawn from three areas: historical studies of the two media, film and photography theory, and the ethics and the politics of representation.
Among others, we will read Marta Braun, Serge Gruzinsky, Seigfried Kracauer, Catherine Russell, and WJT Mitchell. We will watch films by Atom Egoyan, Agnes Varda, Michelangelo Antonioni, Errol Morris, among others, as well as artists working across film and photography.