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CENTRE FOR FILM STUDIES EVENT
DR SCOTT CURTIS
Tuesday, 22nd September 2015
5.15-7.00 pm at the Byre Theatre Studio
Title: Expert Filmmaking and Media Historiography
Abstract: Expert filmmakers—including scientists, physicians, psychologists, educators, and others who use motion picture technology for their own purposes—have populated the history of film since the beginning; only recently, under the rubric of “useful cinema” or nontheatrical media, have film historians paid them much attention. But this domain brings special demands—including much greater interdisciplinarity—that challenge our usual historiographic methods, especially concerning the function of individual films in our understanding of cinema history. So this presentation will explore the role of the expert in film history while offering a new model of media historiography, especially for the nontheatrical realm.
Biography:
Scott Curtis is Associate Professor of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University, Director of the Communication Program at Northwestern University in Qatar, and President of Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema. He has written extensively on scientific and medical uses of motion pictures, and his book on film and expert vision, The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in October 2015.
For more information please visit our website: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/cfs/
Professor Robert Burgoyne
Chair in Film
Department of Film Studies
University of St Andrews
101A North Street
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9AD