Category Archives: News

News

Exhibition, book and symposium on eco noir

On December 9, 2020, the University of the Arts Helsinki will host an online book launch and symposium that together mark the closure of the exhibition ‘Cooking for the Apocalypse’. The book accompanying the exhibition, entitled Eco Noir: A Companion for Precarious Times, provides an textual and visual collaborative exploration of interspecies relations in time of crisis, featuring the original artworks and writings of 34 prominent artists and researchers. The symposium, entitled ‘Eco Noir: A Dark Day for a Brighter Future’, focuses on how we can create a deeper connection based on equality with other species, having a wider understanding of our potential role in the betterment of the environment we live in, and thus gaining a better understanding and connection with each other. One of the keynote speakers is our Film Faculty member, Amir Vudka.

More info | Register here

NEW PODCAST ABOUT HUMANITARIAN COMMUNICATION

“Colonial relationships and attitudes can clearly be recognised in the communications of international aid organisations. Hungry black children and noble white saviours are still very much present in contemporary campaigning. But many of the new, ‘positive’ or ‘innovative’ aid campaign genres are also very problematic, observe media scholars Emiel Martens (UvA/EUR) and Wouter Oomen (UU) in a recent article on OneWorld.nl that caused quite a lot of debate. New campaign genres often feature famous ambassadors that visit a project abroad, simulations of non-West misery (e.g. by being locked-up in a cage or painting faces of celebrities as if they have ebola), or adventure journeys such as hiking in Nepal or biking in Tanzania. What is going wrong? And how can campaigning in development aid be done in a more ethical way? Martens and Oomen discuss these and other questions in ‘Poverty Porn 2.0’, the latest podcast of Disrupt Development.”

Listen the podcast here

Pisters featured in new video wiki

Our Faculty member, Patricia Pisters, has been included in the recently published video wiki “Scholars And Critics Expanding Our Understanding Of Culture“. Founded in 2011, Ezvid Wiki was the world’s first video wiki, and is now among the top 3,000 websites in the United States. Their YouTube channel has over 600,000 subscribers, with over 350 million views since founding.
The “Scholars And Critics Expanding Our Understanding Of Culture” video wiki features scholars in the fields of art and communications media who investigate topics like the influence of film on personal identity, or how capitalism shapes narratives about creativity.

More info

Why These Aid Campaigns Have to End

Hungry children and white saviours are still very much present in campaigns by Dutch aid organizations. But also, many of the new aid campaign genres are problematic, observe media scholars Emiel Martens and Wouter Oomen. Every year they present the Fly in the Eye Award for the worst campaign on behalf of IDleaks, a Dutch non-profit organization committed to better humanitarian communication. What is going wrong, and how can it be done better?

Full article (in English at ZAM Magazine)

Full article (in Dutch at One World)

Be Pretty and Shut Up!

French actress Delphine Seyrig played the impressive lead role in Jeanne Dielman, the film with which Chantal Akerman gained prominence. The director, who passed away in 2015, would have turned 70 today. In honor of Akerman, Patricia Pisters, Professor of Film Studies at the UvA, highlights the life and work of Seyrig, who as an activist came to the fore in the 1970s with feminist videos.

More info (including the full lecture on video)

Call for Submissions Intelligence Special Issue NECSUS

Guest editors Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam) and Ruggero Eugeni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano) call for submissions for a special issue on Artificial Intelligence to be published in NECSUS in Spring 2020. They are looking forward to receiving abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic references, and a short biography of 100 words by 1 July 2019 to g.decuir@aup.nl. On the basis of selected abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts (5,000-6,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) by 1 February 2020, which will subsequently be peer reviewed.

More info

AMIA: A History of British Animation

The Association of Moving Image Archivists’ University of Amsterdam student chapter presents ‘A History of British Animation’ on Thursday June 6 at 7.30pm at film theatre Kriterion in Amsterdam. A diverse collection of shorts from across the 20th century have been remastered by the BFI National Archive to give a portrait of one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic contributions to world cinema. This feature-length programme of shorts from 1907 to the 1990s, curated by the BFI’s Jez Stewart, traces the history of the art and the industry, offering an animated portrait of a nation, from turn-of-the-century trick films and anti-Nazi cartoon propaganda, to 1960s psychedelia and post-Thatcherite class satire. The  95-minute screening will be introduced by Animation Curator Jez Stewart of the BFI National Archive and followed by a Q&A.

More info & tickets

ASCA Lecture ‘Radical Formalism and the Problem of Horror’

On Friday May 10th, from 3-6pm, Professor Eugenia Brinkema (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will give a talk entitled “The Violence of Fascination: Martyrs, Torture and Form.” In her talk, which will take place at the Potgieterzaal in the University Library (UvA) in Amsterdam, Brinkema will focus on Pascal Laugier’s 2008 new-extremist horror film Martyrs, arguing that the film generates a formal violence that is coextensive with the very aesthetic fascinations that structure it, rendering an account of violence that is monstrative and creative, cinematically demonstrating not the violation of body but the impersonal, non-embodied violence of a fascination with formal possibility, one shared by horror and metaphysical philosophy. The workshop will explore issues of radical formalism, ethics, violence, and negative affect in film and critical theory. All are welcome. To receive workshop readings, please email Abe Geil at a.m.geil@uva.nl.

More info

Media as ‘Pharmakon’: Mental Health in the Digital Age

Are digital media like narcotic drugs? Such comparisons have become increasingly common in the rampant discussion on smartphone and technology addiction. In his book ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ (1968) philosopher Jacques Derrida discusses the ambiguity of the “pharmakon”, designating both poison and medicine, depending on context and individual differences. Can our contemporary media be seen as pharmaka for our mental health? For the 5th session of the “SAY AAHH!” series on Thursday April 18, 2019 in SPUI25, Amir Vudka, Patricia Pisters and Marlies Brouwer will discuss their ongoing work on this topic.

More information

This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice

From March 6th to May 8th, Eye and the University of Amsterdam present This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice , a series of six public lectures at Eye devoted to remarkable projects in the field of film restoration and film heritage. Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at Eye and Professor of Film Heritage at the UvA) addresses recent restoration projects and presentation forms of film heritage, varying from silent cinema compilation programmes to Hollywood classics. Each session features an extended Q&A session with an invited (international) guest speaker, who will also introduce a film screening.  This is Film! offers insight into what happens behind the scenes in film archives, museums and cinemas, and is aimed at everyone who loves film. The lectures are in English and can be attended as a series or on a one-off basis.

Click here for more information.

War and the Screen Machine: Film Lecture by Patricia Pisters

On May 9 at 7.15pm Faculty member Patricia Pisters will present an audiovisual ‘tour of duty’ through contemporary war films in Eye. She shows that war and cinema have a long and intertwined history. Soldiers carry cameras and other media devices with them, and the battlefield has exploded on multiple screens, causing our viewpoints to become fragmented. Pisters’ lecture will be illustrated with fragments from war films such as Redacted by Brian De Palma.

Click here for more information.

Shell Shock: Opening Night

In the Shell Shock program, filmmakers, philosophers, writers and speakers bring you as close as possible to the experiences of people after a period of war and violence. On the opening night on March 22, director Morgan Knibbe, film professor Patricia Pisters and philosopher Hans Schnitzler will tell about the processing of war violence in film. There will also be a screening of Morgan Knibbes’ The Atomic Soldiers.

Click here for more information.

Imperfections: Mistakes, Cracks, Noise Today

On March 12 from 6-11pm The Sublime Imperfections research collective devotes a round table and performance event to aesthetics & discourses of imperfection, mistakes, glitches and noise, repair and distortions. The event is part of a conference that address cravings for imperfection in design, music, art, writing, psychology, and genetics. The round table featuring, besides Mieke Bal, Graham Dunning, Linor Goralik, Ellen Rutten, Yuriko Saito, and DJ Trish Trash, our Faculty member Patricia Pisters.

Click here for more information.

SISTERS! Proposal Extension & Keynote Announcement

The deadline for the call for proposals of the Eye International Conference ‘Sisters! Women and the Silent Screen’ has been extended to 7 December 10am (CET). The committee looks forward to receiving your proposals at conference@eyefilm.nl. In addition, the conference has announced the names of the keynote speakers: Jaqueline Stewart, Professor at the Department of Cinema and Media Studies of the University of Chicago, and Annette Förster,  media historian and film curator who specializes in women in film history. 

More information on the CfP

Call for Papers Symposium ‘Sensory Moving Image Archives’

From 25-26 February, 2019, the international symposium ‘Sensory Moving Image Archives: Visualization, Exploration and Reuse of Moving Image Data’ will be held at the University of Amsterdam. The two-day symposium comes out of the research project The Sensory Moving Image Archive: Boosting Creative Reuse for Artistic Practice and Research (SEMIA, 2017-2019). The program will consist of invited presentations and papers accepted through an open call. Scholars, professionals and practitioners from all groups are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Please submit an abstract of 300 words and a short bio of 50 words, in pdf format, by emailing c.g.olesen@uva.nl before 23 November, 2018.

Here you can find the call for papers (PDF).
Here can you find the project website.

Film Studies Alumni win Film Prize at NFF 2018

The filmmaking duo, Malou Wagenmaker and Bo van der Meer, both alumni of the master Film Studies, have won the Film Prize of the City of Utrecht for their debut film Cheek to Cheek at the Nederlands Film Festival. The prize consists of an award and a money sum of €5.000.

Read more here (in Dutch).

The 10th Women and the Silent Screen Conference

Once a year, Eye Filmmuseum is the venue for an international conference attended by film scholars, archivists, curators and restorers. The conferences are organized in collaboration with national and international partners from both the academic world and the field of film heritage. In 2019, the 5th Eye International Conference will host the 10th Women and the Silent Screen Conference. The Eye International Conference 2019 will take place at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from Saturday 25 May to Tuesday 28 May 2019.

Click here for more information
Click here for the Call for Papers

NECS 2018: Media Tactics and Engagement

From 27-29 June 2018 the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam is co-hosting the NECS 2018 Conference ‘Media Tactics and Engagement’. Various members of the Film Team are part of the local organising team: Maurie Aude Baronian, Patricia Pisters and Maryn Wilkinson. The programme of the NECS 2018 Conference can be found here in PDF format.

Click here for the conference website.