Date:

Pre-1989 Polish cinema, when it is remembered at all, is usually still seen in terms of a national cinema strongly engaged with historical and social themes, and is associated with the key names of Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kièslowski and the 1970s ‘Cinema of Moral Concern’. This talk will, in contrast argue that the real ‘dissidence’ was elsewhere, in the work of a range of exile Polish directors for whom aesthetics were not subordinated to anything, and whose films are not only more aesthetically radical than their ‘national’ contemporaries but also may have more to say politically, even if they do so in proximity to ‘low’ genres like pornography or horror. This talk will focus on the films of Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Zulawski. In the case of both these directors, it will be shown how their uncompromising and subversive cinematic aesthetics and their transgressions of the limits and norms of European art cinema have resulted in their work being under-appreciated if not invisible.

Michael Goddard is a lecturer in media studies at the University of Salford. His current research centres on Polish and European cinema and visual culture and he is reviews editor of Studies in Eastern European Cinema (SEEC).

Date: 05-December-2011
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Duncan Petrie

Synopsis

Over the last decade, the education and training of practitioners in film and television in the UK has been dominated by a skills agenda embodied by Skillset/UKFC training strategy ‘A Bigger Future’ which was initiated in 2003. Whatever the pros and cons of the strategy, it paid no attention to the historical role and contribution made by films schools in the UK and elsewhere, a context that arguably could have informed the policy in quite useful ways.
In this presentation Duncan Petrie will attempt to identify elements of that missing context by considering the development and role of some of the more high profile films schools in Britain, notably the National Film and Television School, the London Film School and the Royal College of Art.

Professor Duncan Petrie has authored six books including The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996), Screening Scotland (BFI, 2000) and Shot in New Zealand (Random House, 2007). He has also edited many books, most recently The Cinema of Small Nations (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), co-edited by Mette Hjort. He is co-principal editor of the Journal of the British Cinema and Television and is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Australasian Cinema.

Visual Regimes: from where come the pressures on a knowledge-relation to the world?

Date: 02-November-2011
Time: 18:00
Location: On Location, National Media Museum
Speaker: Robert Galeta

This seminar will look at visual hierarchies from the middle ages to the change with the high renaissance and the next change with high modernism, all related to the contribution of visual form to knowledge and understanding. The talk will include a discussion of Jean-Luc Godard’s auto-cinebiography JLG par JLG as an example of the centrifugal or dispersive legacy of modernist collage.

Robert Galeta is a theoretician, artist and translator who worked on the English version of Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2. He currently teaches on the MA Visual Arts course at Bradford College.

The full call for proposals is here – deadline November 2011

http://ijilth.mobilearn.es/pages/cfp.html

The first day is themed ‘Arab Spring’ with Battle of Algiers bringing much needed historical context and Arna’s Children and Restrepo, documenting aspects of struggle in Palestine and Afghanistan.  The second day features The March (1990 – BBC) – a dramatisation of mass migration caused by climate change and arguably Oliver Stone’s best film - Salvador.

There is an opportunity to see further screenings and take part in an extended debate at The University on the Thursday after the event.  More details of this will be posted shortly, but do get in touch if you’re interested in contributing to the Thursday workshop.

Tue 25^th October

Film: Arna’s Children

Weds 26^th October

Thu 2^7th October

A series of talks and discussions at The University, hosted by CCM – all free – come and get involved!

The screenings and talks are free to Bradford University students and staff, others pay the normal cinema charge (except for the Thursday which is entirely free).  This event is organised by CCM’s own David Robison, based in Bradford Media School, with collaborators from Peace Studies and The National Media Museum.

See the Media and Conflict website (www.mediaandconflict.org.uk) for details.  E-mail info@mediaandconflict.org.uk.  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=182684996689

David Berry (Swansea University)

Wednesday 13 April 2011, 6pm, On Location, National Media Museum

As software increasingly structures the contemporary world, curiously, it also withdraws, and becomes harder and harder for us to focus on as it is embedded, hidden, off-shored or merely forgotten about. The challenge is to bring software back into visibility so that we can pay attention to both what it is (ontology), where it has come from (through media archaeology and genealogy) but also what it is doing (through a form of mechanology), so we can understand this ‘dynamic of organized inorganic matter’. This talk presents some of the arguments of his new book The Philosophy of Software but also thinks through some of the implications of code/software for the changing nature of the university itself.

David Berry is interested in the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying digital media, particularly through an approach broadly conceived as cultural political economy. He also has strong research interests in the philosophical and theoretical implications of the work of Heidegger, Kittler, Arendt, Tarde, and Latour.  David’s research covers a wide theoretical area including culture, political economy, media/medium theory, software studies, actor-network theory, the philosophy of technology, and the computational turn in Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences (Digital Humanities).

Des Morts (Thierry Zeno, 1979)

Film, Philosophy and Death
A one-day Symposium

Thursday 28th April 2011, 10am-6pm
The Treehouse, Humanities Research Centre, University of York

A one-day symposium organised by the Department of Philosophy
(University of York) and The Bradford Media School (University of
Bradford)

Death is ubiquitous in cinema and contemporary media, and a
traditional concern of philosophers; FILM, PHILOSOPHY AND DEATH brings
philosophers and film studies scholars together to share their
exploration of the meaning and significance of death.

Speakers include: Michele Aaron, Chris Belshaw, Havi Carel, Berys
Gaut, Alan Marcus, Chris Townsend

ADMISSION FREE
Refreshments provided

To reserve a place contact the organisers:
Dr Steve Holland (Stephen.Holland@york.ac.uk) Tel +44 (0)1904 323253 or
Dr Mark Goodall (m.goodall@bradford.ac.uk) Tel +44 (0)1274 236071

David Malone

Writer and Filmmaker

Wednesday 8th December 2010, 6pm, On Location, National Media Museum

In this talk David Malone examines the work of the documentary filmmaker in the digital age and how global geopolitics is affecting artistic expression in the 21^st century.

David Malone was born in North Shields, England in1962. In his mid-20s he embarked on a career as a documentary maker at the BBC following in the footsteps of his father, Adrian Malone, whose work included The Ascent of Man with Jacob Bronowski, and Cosmos, with Carl Sagan. At the BBC he developed what the critics called a “disturbingly lyrical” style and established a reputation for television of the highest quality. Since becoming an independent filmmaker he has continued to produce and direct single films and series for both the BBC and Channel Four.

His series Testing God was described by The Times as “moving and startling – as close to poetry as television gets.” The sequel series, Soul Searching, was described as being “good for the soul of television itself.”

More recently David has also begun presenting his own films including High Anxieties -The Mathematics of Chaos and the feature length film Dangerous Knowledge, both for BBC4.

David Malone is the author of The Debt Generation and the Golem XIV blog http://golemxiv-credo.blogspot.com/

Ben Roberts, a member of the CCM group, has contributed an essay to a new book from Palgrave Macmillan: Culture, Capital and Representation, edited by Robert Balfour.

Culture, Capital and Representation explores how literature, cultural studies and the visual arts represent, interact with, and produce ideas about capital, whether in its early phases (the growth of stock markets) or in its late phase (global speculative capital). Authors in the volume are concerned with the representation of issues such as speculation, displacement, exploitation, capital growth, the decline of the welfare state, and the growth of surplus migrant populations. The contributions range over three centuries and attempt to trace issues arising from the dominance of capitalism, the primary means by which we understand our work, organize economies, and ascribe value to people and money, depending on their location within the capitalist system.

Tue 19^th October
The Age of Stupid – 13:25
Mugabe and the White African – 15:25
District 9 -17:30

Weds 20^th October
Threads -14:00
The March - 16:30
Budrus -18:40

Organised by CCM’s own David Robison, based in the Bradford Media School and Kazuyo Mitsuhashi, based in Peace Studies, the event is part funded by the Ecoversity project, which aims to embed principles of sustainability into the University’s activites.  The screenings and talks are free to Bradford University students and staff, others pay the normal cinema charge.

Booking is essential.  See the Media and Conflict website (www.mediaandconflict.org.uk) for details.