Event
Slought Foundation is pleased to announce an evening with Raymond Bellour and Christa Blümlinger. Bellour will speak for 30 minutes on "Forty years of stopped images", followed by Blümlinger on "Archival Gestures," with a moderated conversation to follow. This program has been organized by Nora Alter, Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University.
A major contributor to contemporary French critical thought, French critic and author Raymond Bellour has advanced the theoretical application of semiotics, psychoanalysis and post-structuralism to the understanding of literary and cinematic texts. His influential textual analysis ranges from readings of 19th-century literature to analysis of classic American cinema, most notably the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Bellour has also written extensively on contemporary video art and curated several major exhibitions, including Passages de l'image at the Centre Georges Pompidou, together with Christine Van Assche and Catherine David in 1990. The first volume of his collected essays on film and video, l'Entre-Image, Photo Cinema, Video, was published in 1990; the second volume, l'Entre-Images 2, Mots, Images, was published in 1999. Professor at the Centre Universitaire Américan de Cinéma in Paris from 1973 to the present, he has also been a visiting professor at New York University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently director of research at CNRS. Bellour is also the co-editor of the cinema journal Trafic.
Christa Blümlinger is Professor of Cinema and Video at Universite de Vincennes Saint-Denis (Paris VIII). She has also taught on the Theory and Aesthetics of Film at Universite de la Sourbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3) as well as in Vienna and at the Free University in Berlin. She has curated various film and video programs, and festivals such as Diagonale (Salzburg) and Duisburger Filmwoche (Duisburg). As a critic she has published in magazines such as Trafic, Cinematheque, Parachute, Intermedialites, montage/av,, and Camera Austria. Recent publications include Kino aus Zweiter Hand (2009), and other writings on video, film theory, and film history. She is currently working on an edition of writings by Serge Daney. Her essay, "The Imaginary in the Documentary Image: Chris Marker’s Level Five," is available online from Image & Narrative, Vol 11, No 1 (2010).
This program is made possible in part through the generous support of the Department of Film and Media Arts at Temple University; the Program in Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College; French Studies in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania; and the Society of Friends of the Slought Foundation.