Cinema After Film: On the future of obsolescence of the moving image

The lecture concerns itself with the dynamics and consequences of rapid media transfer, especially as they apply to the cinema as cultural memory and artistic practice in the digital era. Shifting configurations among filmmakers, audiences and institutions offer a rich field of investigation also for historical analysis, as well as posing methodological challenges. My case studies will draw on the emerging field of artist’s cinema.

Thomas Elsaesser is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Media and Culture of the University of Amsterdam and from 2006 to 2012 was a Visiting Professor at Yale University. Currently, he is teaching at Columbia University. He has authored, edited and co-edited some twenty volumes, several of which have also been translated into German, French, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Hebrew, Korean and Chinese. 

Among his recent books as author are: German Cinema-Terror und Trauma: Cultural Memory since 1945The Persistence of Hollywood and Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses with Malte Hagener.

Ravi Vasudevan is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Friday, 10 January 2014, 7 pm
CSDS Seminar Hall