Film in the post-medium condition
Francesco Casetti
FILM 807 01 / HSAR 715 01 (F11)
W 9.25-11.15 -- RKZ 301
Francesco Casetti: Office WHC, 53 Wall Street, #213; office hours Tu 1.30-3.00; Ph.: 203-432-0671;
[Link]@[Link]
Is there still room for film in the new media landscape sketched out by the digital revolution? What kind of
place should film occupy, if room exists? This seminar will retrace the path through which cinema has been
assigned a specificity among arts and media, while the boundaries it and its neighbours have been blurred.
From this starting point, the seminar will take into account the effects of media convergence on the current
ideas of cinema. Well analyse the migration of cinema to new devices, such as home theatre, iPhone,
computer but also to new environments, whether urban or domestic spaces. In the same vein, well
retrace the new formats of film and the new forms of the spectatorship moulded by this relocation of
cinema. What emerges is a different concept of specificity, which pertains not solely to the apparatus, but
rather to the spectator's experience and whose definition is based on social habits, forms of textuality,
collective narratives (among them, theories) and technological environments.
Aug. 31: Post-Cinema?
Anne Friedberg, The End of Cinema: Multimedia and technological Change, in Christine Gledhill and Linda
Williams eds, Reinventing Film Studies, London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 438-52
Sept. 7: Transitions
Lev Manovich, What is Cinema? in The language of New Media, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000
Malte Hagener, Where is cinema (Today)? The Cinema in the Age of Media Immanence, Cinema&Cie, 11,
Fall 2008, pp. 15-22
Sept. 14: Digital
Lev Manovich, Digital cinema and the History of Moving Image in The language of New Media, Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2000, pp. 293-333
Stephen Prince, True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory. Film Quarterly, Vol. 49,
No. 3. (Spring, 1996), pp. 27-37.
Sept. 21: Globalisation
Charles R. Acland, Traveling Cultures, Mutating Commodities, in Screen Trafic, Duhram: Duke University
Press, 2003, pp. 23-44
Sept. 28: Relocation
Francesco Casetti, Filmic experience, in Screen, 1, (50), Spring 2009, pp. 56-66.
Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: the Film Theatre in the Postmedia Age, Screen, n.1 (52), 2011,
pp. 1-12
Example: sequence from Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Giuseppe Tornatore
Oct. 5: Cinema at home
Barbara Klinger, The New Media Aristocrats, in Beyond the Multiplex. Cinema, the New Technologies,
and the Home. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 17-53
Lynn Spiegel, Designing the Smart House: Posthuman Domesticity and Conspicuous Production, in Chris
Berry, Soyoung Kim, Lynn Spigel, eds., Electronic Elsewheres (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press,
2010) pp. 55-92
Example: Home theatres
Oct. 12: Cinema in public spaces
Erkki Huhtamo, Messages on the Wall. An Archaeology of Public Media Displays, in Urban Screens
Reader, pp. 15-28
Scott McQuire, The Politics of Public Space in the Media City, in First Monday. An Electronic Journal,
special issue #4, Urban Screens, February 2006
Example: Time Square
Oct, 19: Immersion/Control
Gilles Deleuze, Postscript to Societies of Control, October, 1992, 59: 3-7.
Thomas Y. Levin, Rhetoric of the Temporal Index: Surveillant Narration and the Cinema of Real Time
in CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Cambridge, Ma: The MIT
Press, 2002)
Example: Cach, Michael Haneke (2005)
Oct. 26: Locations and Networks
Saskia Sassen, Digital Networks and Power, in Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, eds., Spaces of
Culture: City, Nation, World (London, Thousand Oaks, Calf.: Sage, 1999), pp. 49-63
Saskia Sassen, Reading the City in a Global Digital Age, in Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, Sabine
Niederer eds, Urban Screen Reader, (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009), pp. 29-41
Nov. 9: Fim, installations, and spaces for exibition
Lecture by Prof. Catherine Fowler, University of Otago. Readings will be shared two weeks in advance
Nov. 16: Virtual Spaces, or Everywhere
Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), 22-27
Shaun Moores, The Doubling of Place: Electronic Media, Time-Space Arrangements and Social
Relationships in Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy, Eds. Media Space: Place, Scale and Culture in a
Media Age (London: Rutledge, 2004), 21-37
Example: Minority Report, Steven Spielberg, 2002
Nov. 30: Mobility
John Urry, Mobility and Proximity, Sociology, vol. 36, no. 2 , May 2002, pp. 255-274
Philippe-Alain Michaud, Mouvement des images. The movement of images [publi l'occasion de
l'exposition prsente au Centre Pompidou, 9 avril 2006-29 janvier 2007]. Paris : Centre Pompidou, 2006
Dec. 7: What is a screen, today?
Malte Hagener, The Aesthetics of Displays: from the Window on the World to the Logic of the Screen, in
Leonardo Quaresima, Laura Esther Sangalli, Federico Zocca, eds., Cinema e Fumetto/Cinema and Comics,
Udine: Forum, 2009, pp. 145-155
Lev Manovich, Screen and Users and Screen and Body in The language of New Media, Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 2000, pp. 94-115
Example: Timecode, Mike Figgins (2000);
Course requirements:
Regular attendance and active participation in discussions are required (40% on final grade)
A paper (15-25 pages length) is due 10 days before seminar ends. Topic have to be chosen with Professor
Casettihighly appreciated research papers, on topics such as: spatial analysis of screens in public spaces;
domestic dynamics and processes in families watching a film on a film theatre; advertisings on new form of
film consumptionDVD, Netflix, etc.; films on film outside film theatre; etc. (60% on final grade)
