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Dear All, Apologies for cross-posting. With best wishes, Saer Ba The Centre for Film Studies, University of St Andrews, presents: 17 February, 2009 5:15 pm. Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, The Scores Prof. Murray Pomerance, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada */A Modern Gesture: Perpetual Motion and Screen Suspense/* A discussion of modernity and cinema focuses on the construct of the “screen gesture,” in which through various formations the cinematic moment configures and symbolizes gesturally toward its audience in terms of an attitude, orientation, or philosophical consideration. Specifically, perpetual motion and its relation to the modern moment is considered in detail in a reflection upon three cinematic moments: the revolving door sequence at the beginning of F. W. Murnau’s /The Last Laugh/; the “nonsense” dance that concludes Charlie Chaplin’s /Modern Times/; and the sister’s entry into the haunted house in Alfred Hitchcock’s /Psycho/. Bio: Murray Pomerance is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University. Author of /The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory /(Rutgers 2008), /Johnny Depp Starts Here/ (Rutgers 2005), /An Eye for Hitchcock /(Rutgers 2004), /Savage Time/ (Oberon 2005), and /Magia D'Amore/ (Sun and Moon, 1999), he has edited or co-edited numerous volumes, including /A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home /(Wallflower, 2008), /City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination/ (Rutgers 2007), /Cinema and Modernity/ (Rutgers 2006), /From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings/ (Rodopi 2006), /American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations/ (Rutgers 2005), /Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth/ (Wayne State 2005), /BAD: Infamy, Darkness, Evil, and Slime on Screen/ (State University of New York Press 2004), and /Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film/ (New York University Press 2002). He is at work on a book about the colour films of Michelangelo Antonioni. He is editor of the Horizons of Cinema series at State University of New York Press and, with Lester D. Friedman and Adrienne L. McLean respectively, co-editor of both the /Screen Decades/ and /Star Decades/ series at Rutgers University Press.