Pei-Sze Chow (Film Studies) and Claudio Celis Bueno (New Media and Digital Culture) have been appointed Fellows of the UvA Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Over the next 12 months, they will work on their project ‘Automated Cinema: Technographic Explorations of Artificial Intelligence in Film Culture’. Emerging from their work in the AI and Cultural Production research group at ASCA, the project investigates how AI-powered tools are being used in the film industry and how a growing shift towards algorithmically assisted filmmaking may impact creative, economic, technical, and aesthetic aspects of film production.
Category Archives: News
News
Introduction by Patricia Pisters at Altered States Festival
On Friday, November 11 at 7.15pm, Film faculty member Patricia Pisters will introduce Maya Deren’s experimental films (with live music by Roxane Métayer) in theatre De Nieuwe Regentes in the Hague. The introduction, which is entitled ‘The Limits of Perception: Nonhuman Aesthetics and Affective Intensity’, is part of the Altered States Festival, a multidisciplinary festival exploring altered states of mind through artistic expression situated between art and ritual, technology and magic. This festival includes dance, music, extended cinema, lectures and art, all dedicated to unlocking the doors of perception.
Media Team for Conference for Psychedelic Research 2022
From September 21-24, 2022, Film Studies students will form the media team at the Interdisciplinary Conference for Psychedelic Research (ICPR) in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The conference will contain three days of inspiration and insights about the possibilities and challenges for reviving the potentiality of psychedelics for treatment from a wide interdsciplinary persepctive that shows the entangled ecologies of our world (science, nature, medicine, politcs, culture and consciousness).
‘Who Owns the Future?’ long read for Cinema Ecologica
In May 2022, Film faculty Patricia Pisters introduced Spaceship Earth and Silent Running, two visionary films on attempts to live in cooperation and co-creation with nature, in Eye Filmmuseum as part of their Cinema Ecologica program. In addition, Pisters wrote a long read entitled ‘Who Owns the Future?’ exploring the cinematic visions of our planet’s future portrayed during the preceding half century, which is now available on the Eye website.
REVOLUSI! The Indonesian revolution depicted
From 11-29 March 2022 the Rijksmuseum and Eye present Revolusi! Both institutions will, with films, talks and other events, introduce you to the Indonesian war of decolonisation. The film museum will screen a program of Indonesian ‘battle films’ of which some have never been seen in the Netherlands before. Film Faculty member Arnoud Arps will introduce two of these films: Kadet 1947 on Friday March 11 and Soegija on Sunday March 13.
Public lecture series This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice
Eye Filmmuseum presents the 8th edition of This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice, a public lecture series devoted to notable projects in the fields of film restoration and film heritage. Under the overarching theme of Global Audiovisual Archiving, also this year’s theme of the Eye International Conference, international scholars and archival practitioners showcase and discuss archival practices from all over the globe. Each of the six sessions will highlight different institutional and non-institutional efforts and archival practices worldwide. Together with guests, we explore topics like film heritage in Brazil, forgotten female film directors from Indonesia, the African Film Heritage Project, the efforts of the Asian Film Archive and the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association, non-institutional practices in Latin America, and the Cinematheque Beirut project. This year’s guests are all members of the Advisory Board of the Eye International Conference on Global Audiovisual Archiving.
Humanitarian Communication Thesis Prize 2021
On Friday, March 4, 2022, the ceremony event of the Humanitarian Communication Thesis Prize 2021 will take place in cultural student centre CREA in Amsterdam. After an absence of one year, it is the third time that the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication (HuCom), which is co-directed by Film Faculty member Emiel Martens, awards this prize for the best master’s thesis on humanitarian communication and the representation of international development. The hybrid event, which can be followed both on location and online, will be held from 15:15-17:15hrs in CREA’s theatre and includes the screening of the short film Without Shoes, You Won’t Survive (2021) and presentations by the nine nominees.
LIVE CINEMA SHOW WITH FILMMAKER VINCENT MOON
On March 11, 2022, Faculty member Amir Vudka will be hosting a live cinema show featuring a special site-specific performance by filmmaker and artist Vincent Moon in De Nieuwe Regentes in The Hague. Moving between the realms of documentary creation, ethnographic research, and filmic experimentation, Moon’s show will explore the poetry at the heart of personal and collective rituals, with films taken on every continent, in collaboration with hundreds of communities around the world.
Archival Screening Night Roadshow
On Wednesday, November 17, at 7.30pm, the Dutch branch of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), associated with our Film Faculty, hosts the Archival Screening Night Roadshow, an (free!) evening of 20 films and videos from archives and archivists around the world. The Archival Screening Night Roadshow is a veritable treasure from the world’s archives and archivists featuring more than twenty astonishing films and videos in 100 minutes. This cinematic ‘Cabinet of Wonders’ features films from Mexico, Thailand, and New Zealand, an appearance by Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five, a dancing bobcat, Baltimore breakdancing including the Chocolate Boogie, Jack Lemmon’s first screening appearance as a helpless soldier, and many more. It is not possible to make reservations. Tickets can be claimed at the bar half an hour before the film starts. You will need to show your QR code.
CFP EYE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2022
From May 29-31, 2022, Eye Filmmuseum, the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), and the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) will present the 7th Eye International Conference on ‘Global Audiovisual Archiving: Exchange of Knowledge and Practices’. The call for proposals is now open and the deadline to apply is 16 January 2022. The conference organizers encourage proposals from participants, archives, and regions that are underrepresented in conferences related to audiovisual heritage, discussing topics that highlight concrete, urgent, practical concerns, and threats to collections.
Call for submissions for the Humanitarian Communication Thesis Prize 2021
The Expertise Centre for Humanitarian Communication, with Film Faculty member Emiel Martens as Co-Director, is currently inviting submissions for their Humanitarian Communication Thesis Prize 2021. Have you recently (i.e. between January 1, 2020 and September 1, 2021) completed your master’s thesis on humanitarian communication or the representation of international development? Then consider submitting it by November 1, 2021.
Sounds of Silence Festival at the end of the month
The Sounds of Silence Festival exposes the timeless beauty of silent cinema and explores its interaction with contemporary music and art. This year the festival is held from October 28-30 in Theater De Nieuwe Regentes in The Hague. Film faculty member Amir Vudka is the Artistic Director of the festival and Asli Özgen-Havekotte, another Film Faculty member, will give a lecture about women filmmakers of silent cinema.
Roundtable Discussion on Contemporary Horror
Together with Amanda Howell (Griffith University), James Rendell (University of South Wales), Emma Train (University of Texas at Austin), Johnny Walker (Northumbria University), Harry Warwick (University of Warwick) and Brandon West (University of Kentucky), Film Faculty member Patricia Pisters participated in a roundtable discussion on contemporary horror. The discussion has been published in the New Review of Film & Television Studies, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of media studies.
New Book on the Emotional Ethics of The Hunger Games Published
Film Faculty member Tarja Laine has published an new book on the emotional ethics of The Hunger Games, with that expanding ‘the “ethical turn” in Film Studies by analysing emotions as a source of ethical knowledge’ in these. The book, which is entitled Emotional Ethics of The Hunger Games, has been published by Palgrave MacMillan in their Film Studies and Philosophy series.
New Article on Film and History
Film Faculty member Floris Paalman has published an article on the relations between film and history, and how ‘history and film history could complement and enhance each other’. The article, which is entitled “Film and History: Towards a General Ontology”, has been published in the journal Research in Film and History and is freely accessible online.
DEUS EX MACHINA International Online Conference
Film Faculty member, Amir Vodka, will be talking about AI from the perspective of Jewish mysticism and the myth of the Golem in sci-fi films at the Deus Ex-Machina conference, which is held online from February 25-26, 2021.
Publication of edited volume Pandemic Media
Film Faculty member, Marie-Aude Baronian, has contributed with an essay to the new volume Pandemic Media. There are about 40 short essays from many media scholars who reflect upon media, screens, film, cinema, material objects (and more) in the time of the (post)pandemic. Baronian’s essay is entitled “Textile-Object and Alterity: Notes on the Pandemic Mask.” Like all other essays, it is freely accessible online.
More info | Download the book here | Download the article here
Psychedelica and Media
In 1969, philosopher Marshall McLuhan argued that the interest in psychedelics at the time had to do with developing “empathy with the invading electronic environment.” Today’s “psychedelic renaissance” is led by experimentation in the therapeutic effects of mind-altering drugs. On February 22, 2021, film Faculty member, Patricia Pisters, explained during an online session of SPUI25 how this renaissance” also tells us something about a new understanding of our complex digital living environment that is increasingly permeated by artificial intelligence and media machinations.
Eco Noir: A Companion for Precarious Times Out Now (Free download!)
Eco Noir is a textual and visual exploration of interspecies relations in times of crisis through the works of 34 artists, researchers and writers from around the world, including a chapter by Film Faculty member, Amir Vudka. This expanded collaborative reader acts as cartography for the new cultural, cinematic and artistic strategies we can offer for emancipating our perception from viewing other species merely as subjects for politics of consumption or as objects of fascination. Eco Noir shows how relations with other species correspond with ancient tales and rumours, while offering daring and unconventional ways for humans and animals to join for creating a contemporary common story.
New Blood in Contemporary Cinema: Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror
Film Faculty member Patricia Pisters’ latest book, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema, is available now from Edinburgh University Press. In this book, Pisters investigates contemporary women directors such as Ngozi Onwurah, Claire Denis, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Ana Lily Amirpour, who put ‘a poetics of horror’ to new use in their work, expanding the range of gendered and racialized perspectives in the horror genre. politics, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema takes on avenging women, bloody vampires, lustful witches, scary mothers, terrifying offspring and female Frankensteins. By following a red trail of blood, the book illuminates a new generation of women directors who have enlarged the general scope and stretched the emotional spectrum of the genre. To accompany the book release, Pisters also wrote a blog.