University of Chicago Professor Tom Gunning will deliver a lecture on digital cinema when he appears as the guest speaker for the 2015 Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture at York University.
Tom Gunning (Image: University of Chicago)
Taking place Thursday, Oct. 8, at 4pm in the Nat Taylor Cinema, Gunning will present a talk titled “Is Digital Cinema Out of Touch?: Elusive Touch, Evasive Grasp, Open Gesture.” It is free to attend and open to the public.
Gunning has published roughly 100 works and concentrates on early cinema in his research, including the culture from which cinema originated.
During his research, he has examined the concept of the “cinema of attractions” and has worked to relate the origins and development of cinema to inspiration other than storytelling – for instance, how cinema comes from experiences and culture.
His published works include an investigation on avant-garde film, from beginnings to modern day, as well as the relationship between cinema and technology.
Film culture is a common thread in his research, as are historical factors of exhibition and criticism and the audience’s experience throughout history.
Gunning has to his credit approximately 100 published works including books and articles in catalogues and journals, including The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: British Film Institute, 2000) (winner CINEMA & Cie award, 2003); The World in its Own Image: The Myth of Total Cinema (Opening Bazin, 2011); Systematizing the Electric Message (American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions. Practices, 2004); Moving away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality (differences18, 1 Spring 2007); and Primitive Cinema, a Frame-up? or The Trick’s on Us (Cinema Journal, 1989).
The Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture 2015 features Tom Gunning as the guest speaker
Gunning is the 15th guest speaker to be featured at the annual Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture, which began in 2000. The lecture series brings prominent international thinkers to York University each year to present their views on culture, democracy and society in changing global contexts.
The event commemorates the life and work of Ioan Davies, who explored art and popular culture in terms of the kinds of opportunities they offer for common political action. Davies was the founder of the journal border/lines and author of several works of fiction and non-fiction, including Cultural Studies and Beyond: Fragments of Empire (Routledge, 1995), Writers in Prison (Blackwell, 1990) and Social Mobility and Political Change (Pall Mall, 1970). He taught graduate courses on aesthetics and contemporary critical theory in the Department of Social & Political Thought and was influential in establishing the African Studies program and the graduate program in Communication & Culture. Davies died suddenly on Feb. 15, 2000.
Each year, the Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture invites Davies’ many distinguished colleagues, students and friends to say a few words on the legacy of his work and life.
The Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture, the Department of Communications Studies, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Julie Jenkinson Design.