Date: Friday 15th December
Times: Symposium 9:30-17:00 / Book Launch Event 17:00-20:00
Venue: King’s College London Council Room (Symposium) & King’s
College London Chapel (Book Launch Event), King's Building, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
Keynote: Barbara Klinger - Provost Professor Emerita in The
Media School at Indiana University & author of ‘Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home’.
We warmly invite you to a day of debate and discussion that will showcase the innovative research contributions of a new
volume that traces the emergent field of Live Cinema Studies.
Live Cinema has been a term used to capture a diverse range of experiences that incorporate a 'live' element in relation to a film's exhibition. The live augmentation of cinema screenings is not a new phenomenon,
indeed this tendency is present throughout the entire history of cinema in the form of live musical accompaniments to silent screenings, showmanship practices, and cult film audience behaviours. The contemporary revival of experiential cinema explored throughout
this symposium examines instances where ‘the live’ transcends the mediated and escapes beyond the boundaries of the auditorium.
Our contributors investigate film exhibition practices that include synchronous live performance, site specific screenings, technological intervention, social media engagement, and all manner of simultaneous interactive
moments including singing, dancing, eating and drinking.
The panels will debate the impact of these novel cultures of reception and practice, new experiential aesthetics and emergent economies of engagement which together present a vivid new area of study. Our contributors
represent rich, diverse and interdisciplinary fields of enquiry, and encapsulate a broad range of innovative methodological, critical and analytical approaches.
The day will conclude with the Live Cinema book
launch - an immersive cinema screening of It's a Wondeful Life (1946) in the historic King’s College London Chapel.
Tickets for the event are £30 (Full Rate) and £20 (Student Rate) and are available to purchase here
The draft programme is presented below.
This event is co-convened by King’s College London and the University of Brighton.
Symposium Organising Committee: Sarah Atkinson, Helen W. Kennedy and Virginia Crisp.
Draft Programme:
09.30 -10.00: Registration
10.00 -10.15: Welcome
10.15 -11.15: Keynote & Q & A with Barbara Klinger
11.15 -11.30: Break
11.30-12.30: Chaired Panel ‘A Sing-a-long Zombie Opera: transgressing Boundaries of Taste, Space and Time in Cinematic Audience Pleasures’ with Helen W. Kennedy (University of Brighton), Joseph Attard
(King’s College London), Virginia Crisp (King’s College London) and Richard McCulloch (University of Huddersfield).
12.30-13.15: Chaired Panel ‘Picnics, Cemeteries and the Seaside: Community and Place-Making in Alternative Spaces of Cinema Exhibition with Lavinia Brydon (University of Kent), Olu Jenzen (University
of Brighton) and Linda Levitt (Stephen F. Austin State University).
13:15-14:00 - Lunch break
14.00-14.20: ‘Live Cinema in the EU presentation’ with Lisa Brook (Live Cinema UK)
14.20-15.00: Chaired roundtable discussion ‘Film Festivals: Cultures, aesthetics and politics’
with María Antonia Vélez-Serna (University of Stirling), Rosana
Vivar (Saint Louis University Madrid) and other speakers TBC.
15.00-15.15: Break
15.15-16.15: A chaired panel debate ‘Immersive Performance and sensorially augmented spectatorship: innovations in research and practice’ with Josephine Machon (Middlesex
University), Brendon Wocke (University of Perpignan),
Marie McCarthy (Omnibus Theatre Company), Sarah Atkinson (King’s College London) and Matthew Jones (De Montfort University).
16:15-16:45: Concluding remarks and close
17.00-17.20: Book launch welcome and introduction
17:20-19:30: Evening reception and screening