Tom Gunning
University of Chicago, Cinema and Media Studies, Faculty Member
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Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation,... more
Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practitioners (and I will deal with the visual image more than sound). However, I do want to give a sense of the range of approaches that exist using found footage to mention a few of its masters
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Research Interests: Art and Early Cinema
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Research Interests: Art and Ideal Ethics
As the writer, director, producer, and cinematographer of almost all her 30 films, videos, and shorts, Abigail Child has been recognized as a major and influential practitioner of experimental cinema since the early 1970s. Hallmarks of... more
As the writer, director, producer, and cinematographer of almost all her 30 films, videos, and shorts, Abigail Child has been recognized as a major and influential practitioner of experimental cinema since the early 1970s. Hallmarks of her style are the appropriation and reassembly of found footage and fragments from disparate visual sources, ranging from industrial films and documentaries to home movies, vacation photography, and snippets of old B movies. The resulting collages and montages are cinematic narratives that have been consistently praised for their beauty and sense of wonder and delight in the purely visual. At the same time, Child's films are noted for their incisive political commentary on issues such as gender and sexuality, class, voyeurism, poverty, and the subversive nature of propaganda. In the essays of This Is Called Moving, Child draws on her long career as a practicing poet as well as a filmmaker to explore how these two language systems inform and cross-fertilize her work. For Child, poetry and film are both potent means of representation, and by examining the parallels between them - words and frames, lines and shots, stanzas and scenes - she discovers how the two art forms re-construct and re-present social meaning, both private and collective.
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Research Interests: Art and movie theater
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What is poetic cinema? The term denotes a relation to the literary genre of poetry, but that definition has changed through the centuries. The Greek term poesis could be applied to any work of fiction, including drama and the epic.... more
What is poetic cinema? The term denotes a relation to the literary genre of poetry, but that definition has changed through the centuries. The Greek term poesis could be applied to any work of fiction, including drama and the epic. However, the modern understanding of the term derives primarily from the romantic valorization of lyric poetry. Twentieth-century critics identify poetry with a use of language different from the everyday and stresses qualities of sound or the use of metaphor. Theories of poetic cinema have tended to refer to films which privilege cinematic devices such as editing and composition. Two schools of poetic cinema are discussed: Surrealism and the postwar American avant-garde films.
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tom gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Cinema and Media. He is author of two books, D. W. Griffith... more
tom gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago in the Department of Art History and the Committee on Cinema and Media. He is author of two books, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of America Narrative Film (University of Illinois Press, 1991) and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (British Film Institute, 2000), as well as over a hundred articles on early cinema, the avant garde, film genres, and issues in film theory and history. His publications have appeared in a dozen languages. He is currently writing on the theory and history of motion in cinema.
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Re-Newing Old Technologies: Astonishment, Second Nature, and the Uncanny in TechnologyJrom the Previous Turn-oj-the-Century Tom Gunning Old and New: The General Line from Amazement to Habit What can we learn from a cultural ...
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Research Interests: Art and movie theater
L’auteur tient à remercier Arild Fetviet pour avoir fourni l’impulsion initiale de ce texte et à signaler l’inspiration puisée dans les longues conversations avec son collègue Joel Snyder. Une psychanalyse d’une des principales idéologies... more
L’auteur tient à remercier Arild Fetviet pour avoir fourni l’impulsion initiale de ce texte et à signaler l’inspiration puisée dans les longues conversations avec son collègue Joel Snyder. Une psychanalyse d’une des principales idéologies de l’Occident – le progrès historique – pourrait considérer l’opération psychique primaire du déplacement comme le ressort fondamental de notre inclination à la perfection. Selon moi, ce que l’on tient pour un progrès (notamment un progrès théorique) ne fait..
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I N WLvr WENDERS's DOCUMENTARY tribute to Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo-Ga (1985), the filmmaker searches through modern Tokyo in an attempt to discover some remnant of the film world Ozu had created. At one point on the top of the Tokyo Tower... more
I N WLvr WENDERS's DOCUMENTARY tribute to Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo-Ga (1985), the filmmaker searches through modern Tokyo in an attempt to discover some remnant of the film world Ozu had created. At one point on the top of the Tokyo Tower (the world's tallest self-supporting steel tower at 333 meters, 13 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower) he encounters another German tourist filmmaker in search of fresh images, Werner Herzog. Wenders's film recurringly excoriates the modern world of debased images in contrast to the ordered images found in Ozu's films. Television especially, Wenders claims, has inundated the world with false images. High above Tokyo Herzog too mourns the Joss of vital images. He is searching, he indicates, for "pure, clear, transparent images," which he feels have vanished from an overdeveloped earth (that crowded Tokyo clown into which they peer). He daims he would consider any risk or effort to attain these images: climb huge mountains or tr...
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We normally think of early film as being black and white, but the first color cinematography appeared as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. In this visually stunning book, the editors present a treasure trove of early... more
We normally think of early film as being black and white, but the first color cinematography appeared as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. In this visually stunning book, the editors present a treasure trove of early color film images from the archives of EYE Film Institute Netherlands, bringing to life their rich hues and forgotten splendor.
Carefully selecting and reproducing frames from movies made before World War I, Fossati, Gunning, Rosen, and Yumibe share the images here in a full range of tones and colors. Accompanying essays discuss the history of early film and the technical processes that filmmakers employed to capture these fascinating images, while other contributions explore preservation techniques and describe the visual delights that early film has offered audiences, then and now. Featuring more than 300 color illustrations for readers to examine and enjoy, Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema will engage scholars and other readers of all ages and backgrounds.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789089646576/fantasia-of-color-in-early-cinema
https://vimeo.com/128946207
Carefully selecting and reproducing frames from movies made before World War I, Fossati, Gunning, Rosen, and Yumibe share the images here in a full range of tones and colors. Accompanying essays discuss the history of early film and the technical processes that filmmakers employed to capture these fascinating images, while other contributions explore preservation techniques and describe the visual delights that early film has offered audiences, then and now. Featuring more than 300 color illustrations for readers to examine and enjoy, Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema will engage scholars and other readers of all ages and backgrounds.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789089646576/fantasia-of-color-in-early-cinema
https://vimeo.com/128946207
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Bringing together film screenings, live performances, talks, panel discussions, and an exhibition, Fashion in Film Festival’s 10th anniversary season explores the fascinating connections between fashion, cinema and time. Probing into... more
Bringing together film screenings, live performances, talks, panel discussions, and an exhibition, Fashion in Film Festival’s 10th anniversary season explores the fascinating connections between fashion, cinema and time.
Probing into four different (though often overlapping) conceptions of time – past, present, future, and dream – the festival programme asks what concrete manifestations of time fashion and clothing enable. What kind of chronologies and histories? What memories, echoes and ghostly shadows? What projections, visions or premonitions? Fashion’s own relation to time may be vital and intimate, but it is far from transparent. Film, the art of time passing, helps illuminate some of its complexities.
Probing into four different (though often overlapping) conceptions of time – past, present, future, and dream – the festival programme asks what concrete manifestations of time fashion and clothing enable. What kind of chronologies and histories? What memories, echoes and ghostly shadows? What projections, visions or premonitions? Fashion’s own relation to time may be vital and intimate, but it is far from transparent. Film, the art of time passing, helps illuminate some of its complexities.
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This volume brings together a wide range of research on the ways in which technological innovations have established new and changing conditions for the experience, study and theorization of film. Drawn from the IMPACT film conference... more
This volume brings together a wide range of research on the ways in which technological innovations have established new and changing conditions for the experience, study and theorization of film. Drawn from the IMPACT film conference (The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Historiography and Theory of Cinema) held in Montreal in 2011, the book includes contributions from such leading figures in the field as Tom Gunning, Charles Musser, Jan Olsson and Vinzenz Hediger.
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Comment expliquer les affinités électives entre le cinéma et le monde de l’au-delà ? Pourquoi insister sur le caractère spectral des images filmiques ? En vertu de quels critères le cinéma devient-il un vecteur de fantasmes liés à la... more
Comment expliquer les affinités électives entre le cinéma et le monde de l’au-delà ? Pourquoi insister sur le caractère spectral des images filmiques ? En vertu de quels critères le cinéma devient-il un vecteur de fantasmes liés à la communication avec les esprits ?
Le médium (au) cinéma entend répondre à ces questions en prenant comme point de départ, non pas tant la figure du fantôme que celle du médium spirite vu comme un média. L’étymologie du terme « médium » permet en effet d’envisager cette figure à la fois comme un intermédiaire ultrasensible entre le monde des vivants et des morts, et comme un appareil d’inscription et de transmission de données. Au cinéma, cette idée est transposée dans des films où le médium spirite opère tel un dispositif audiovisuel, une « machine-cinéma » capable d’intercepter des ondes invisibles, d’effacer les distances, de superposer les temporalités, de contourner la déchéance des corps et des choses. À l’occasion, le médium spirite devient le point d’origine d’un spectacle « multimédia » autour duquel gravitent quelques personnages récurrents (croyants et sceptiques, fantômes justiciers ou vengeurs, esprits maléfiques, parapsychologues exégètes). C’est pourquoi du médium (spirite) au média (technologique), il n’y a qu’un pas que les films contemporains franchissent volontiers, quitte à faire disparaître le médium au profit du média. Car bien que les technologies de (télé)communication aient toujours été investies de propriétés spectrales, le développement des cultures numériques contribue sans aucun doute à amplifier l’imaginaire du fantôme dans la machine, comme en attestent La Mort en ligne (2004), Pulse (2006) ou la franchise « The Ring ».
À partir d’une réflexion sur la polysémie du terme « médium », ainsi que d’une histoire croisée du cinéma et du spiritisme, cet ouvrage propose d’analyser la manière dont l’imaginaire spirite fait l’objet de représentations filmiques nourries par des discours (implicites ou explicites) sur les technologies d’enregistrement et de reproduction, et en particulier sur le cinéma qui devient, sous cet angle, une machine à fantômes particulièrement efficace.
Les études de cas sont tirées de films populaires qui se situent le plus souvent à l’intersection du merveilleux, de l’horreur et du mélodrame, et s’inscrivent sur un axe historique qui conduit du cinéma premier à l’époque contemporaine : Supernatural (1933), The Devil Commands (1941), Rendez-vous avec la peur (1957), 13 Fantômes (1960), Furie (1978), Ghost (1990), Sixième Sens (1999), Hypnose (1999), Intuitions (2000), Les Autres (2001), La Voix des morts (2005), L’Orphelinat (2006), Paranormal Activity (2007) ou Insidious (2010).
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Préface de Tom Gunning
Introduction. Média/médium (au) au cinéma
• Le spiritisme moderne, entre science et superstition
• Le médium, un média (cinématographique)
• Fantômes et médiums au cinéma
• Corpus et structure de l’ouvrage
Chapitre 1. État de la question
• Le fantôme dans les études cinématographiques
• Le Spectral Turn
• Du fantôme… au médium (spirite)
Chapitre 2. Du médium (spirite) au média (technologique)
• Le concept de « médium » (spirite)
• Un corps-machine (essentiellement) féminin
• Médium vs média
• Contacter les morts : The Devil Commands (1941)
Chapitre 3. Une histoire croisée du cinéma et du spiritisme
• La fantasmagorie
• Les machines magnétiques
• Les méthodes graphiques d’Étienne-Jules Marey
• La « cinématographie ectoplasmique »
• De la séance spirite à la séance de cinéma
Chapitre 4. Le spiritisme au cinéma entre 1895 et 1950
• Spectres et médiums dans le cinéma muet
• Charlatans et prophètes des années 1930
• Le surnaturel, entre superstition et scepticisme
• La science à l’épreuve de l’occulte : Rendez-vous avec la peur (1957)
• Le médium spirite parodié : L’Esprit s’amuse (1945)
• Le film de fantôme sérieux : La Falaise mystérieuse (1944)
Chapitre 5. Machines à fantômes et médiums-médias
• Le gimmick film : 13 Fantômes (1960)
• Un cinéaste-parapsychologue : L’Esprit de la mort (1972)
• Médiums-visionnaires et télépathes : Furie (1978) et Suspect Zero (2004)
• Médiums-médias de la comédie romantique : Ghost (1990)
• Médiums-enquêteurs : Hypnose (1999) et Intuitions (2000)
• Médiums-médias du film d’horreur et du mélodrame : L’Orphelinat (2007) et Le Dernier Rite (2009)
Chapitre 6. Maisons hantées, chasses aux fantômes et spiritisme appareillé
• Le médium originel : la maison hantée
• Savants contre médiums : La Maison des damnés (1973)
• Parapsychologues contre fantômes : La Maison des ombres (2011)
• Des fantômes qui s’ignorent : Sixième Sens (1999) et Les Autres (2001)
• La maison médiumnisée : Paranormal Activity (2007) et Insidious (2010)
• Sons et voix d’outre-tombe
Conclusion
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English decription
Forword by Tom Gunning
How can we explain the affinities between cinema and the world of the beyond? Why insist on the spectral dimension of filmic images? How does the cinema become a vehicle of fantasies linked to spirit communication?
Le medium (au) cinéma intends to answer these questions by taking as a starting point, not so much the figure of the ghost as that of the spiritualist medium seen as a medium. The etymology of the term "medium" allows us to consider this figure as an ultra-sensitive intermediary between the world of the living and the dead, and as a device for data inscription and transmission. This idea is transposed into films in which the spiritualist medium operates as an audiovisual device, a "machine-cinema" capable of intercepting invisible waves, erasing distances, superimposing temporality, and bypassing the decay of bodies and matter.
Therefore, there is only one step from the (spiritualist) medium to the (technological) media, which contemporary films willingly take – even if it means making the medium disappear in favor of the media. For although (tele)communication technologies have always been invested with spectral properties, the development of digital cultures undoubtedly contributes to amplifying the imaginary of the ghost in the machine.
Based on a reflection on the polysemy of the term "medium", as well as on a cross history of cinema and spiritualism, this book examines how the spiritualist imaginary becomes the object of filmic representations nourished by discourses (implicit or explicit) on recording and reproduction technologies, and on the cinema, which becomes, from this angle, a particularly effective ghost machine.
Case studies are drawn from popular films that are most often situated at the intersection of the marvelous, the horrific and the melodramatic, and are situated on a historical axis that leads from early cinema to the contemporary era: Supernatural (1933), The Devil Commands (1941), Night of the Demon (1957), 13 Ghosts (1960), Fury (1978), Ghost (1990), Sixth Sense (1999), Stir of Echoes (1999), The Gift (2000), The Others (2001), White Noise (2005), The Orphanage (2006), Paranormal Activity (2007) or Insidious (2010).
The author
Mireille Berton is a senior lecturer and researcher at the department of Film Studies of the University of Lausanne. Her research mainly focuses on the relationship between cinema and mind sciences (psychoanalysis, psychiatry, parapsychology) and on the cultural history of spectatorship. She is the author of Le corps nerveux des spectateurs. Cinéma et sciences du psychisme autour de 1900 (L’Âge d’Homme, 2015), and currently principal investigator of an SNFS project “Cinéma et (neuro)psychiatrie en Suisse: autour de la collection Waldau (1920–1990)” that highlights the major role played by the Waldau Hospital in the use of the filmic medium for research and education during the twentieth century.
Le médium (au) cinéma entend répondre à ces questions en prenant comme point de départ, non pas tant la figure du fantôme que celle du médium spirite vu comme un média. L’étymologie du terme « médium » permet en effet d’envisager cette figure à la fois comme un intermédiaire ultrasensible entre le monde des vivants et des morts, et comme un appareil d’inscription et de transmission de données. Au cinéma, cette idée est transposée dans des films où le médium spirite opère tel un dispositif audiovisuel, une « machine-cinéma » capable d’intercepter des ondes invisibles, d’effacer les distances, de superposer les temporalités, de contourner la déchéance des corps et des choses. À l’occasion, le médium spirite devient le point d’origine d’un spectacle « multimédia » autour duquel gravitent quelques personnages récurrents (croyants et sceptiques, fantômes justiciers ou vengeurs, esprits maléfiques, parapsychologues exégètes). C’est pourquoi du médium (spirite) au média (technologique), il n’y a qu’un pas que les films contemporains franchissent volontiers, quitte à faire disparaître le médium au profit du média. Car bien que les technologies de (télé)communication aient toujours été investies de propriétés spectrales, le développement des cultures numériques contribue sans aucun doute à amplifier l’imaginaire du fantôme dans la machine, comme en attestent La Mort en ligne (2004), Pulse (2006) ou la franchise « The Ring ».
À partir d’une réflexion sur la polysémie du terme « médium », ainsi que d’une histoire croisée du cinéma et du spiritisme, cet ouvrage propose d’analyser la manière dont l’imaginaire spirite fait l’objet de représentations filmiques nourries par des discours (implicites ou explicites) sur les technologies d’enregistrement et de reproduction, et en particulier sur le cinéma qui devient, sous cet angle, une machine à fantômes particulièrement efficace.
Les études de cas sont tirées de films populaires qui se situent le plus souvent à l’intersection du merveilleux, de l’horreur et du mélodrame, et s’inscrivent sur un axe historique qui conduit du cinéma premier à l’époque contemporaine : Supernatural (1933), The Devil Commands (1941), Rendez-vous avec la peur (1957), 13 Fantômes (1960), Furie (1978), Ghost (1990), Sixième Sens (1999), Hypnose (1999), Intuitions (2000), Les Autres (2001), La Voix des morts (2005), L’Orphelinat (2006), Paranormal Activity (2007) ou Insidious (2010).
******Sommaire*******
Préface de Tom Gunning
Introduction. Média/médium (au) au cinéma
• Le spiritisme moderne, entre science et superstition
• Le médium, un média (cinématographique)
• Fantômes et médiums au cinéma
• Corpus et structure de l’ouvrage
Chapitre 1. État de la question
• Le fantôme dans les études cinématographiques
• Le Spectral Turn
• Du fantôme… au médium (spirite)
Chapitre 2. Du médium (spirite) au média (technologique)
• Le concept de « médium » (spirite)
• Un corps-machine (essentiellement) féminin
• Médium vs média
• Contacter les morts : The Devil Commands (1941)
Chapitre 3. Une histoire croisée du cinéma et du spiritisme
• La fantasmagorie
• Les machines magnétiques
• Les méthodes graphiques d’Étienne-Jules Marey
• La « cinématographie ectoplasmique »
• De la séance spirite à la séance de cinéma
Chapitre 4. Le spiritisme au cinéma entre 1895 et 1950
• Spectres et médiums dans le cinéma muet
• Charlatans et prophètes des années 1930
• Le surnaturel, entre superstition et scepticisme
• La science à l’épreuve de l’occulte : Rendez-vous avec la peur (1957)
• Le médium spirite parodié : L’Esprit s’amuse (1945)
• Le film de fantôme sérieux : La Falaise mystérieuse (1944)
Chapitre 5. Machines à fantômes et médiums-médias
• Le gimmick film : 13 Fantômes (1960)
• Un cinéaste-parapsychologue : L’Esprit de la mort (1972)
• Médiums-visionnaires et télépathes : Furie (1978) et Suspect Zero (2004)
• Médiums-médias de la comédie romantique : Ghost (1990)
• Médiums-enquêteurs : Hypnose (1999) et Intuitions (2000)
• Médiums-médias du film d’horreur et du mélodrame : L’Orphelinat (2007) et Le Dernier Rite (2009)
Chapitre 6. Maisons hantées, chasses aux fantômes et spiritisme appareillé
• Le médium originel : la maison hantée
• Savants contre médiums : La Maison des damnés (1973)
• Parapsychologues contre fantômes : La Maison des ombres (2011)
• Des fantômes qui s’ignorent : Sixième Sens (1999) et Les Autres (2001)
• La maison médiumnisée : Paranormal Activity (2007) et Insidious (2010)
• Sons et voix d’outre-tombe
Conclusion
**************************************
English decription
Forword by Tom Gunning
How can we explain the affinities between cinema and the world of the beyond? Why insist on the spectral dimension of filmic images? How does the cinema become a vehicle of fantasies linked to spirit communication?
Le medium (au) cinéma intends to answer these questions by taking as a starting point, not so much the figure of the ghost as that of the spiritualist medium seen as a medium. The etymology of the term "medium" allows us to consider this figure as an ultra-sensitive intermediary between the world of the living and the dead, and as a device for data inscription and transmission. This idea is transposed into films in which the spiritualist medium operates as an audiovisual device, a "machine-cinema" capable of intercepting invisible waves, erasing distances, superimposing temporality, and bypassing the decay of bodies and matter.
Therefore, there is only one step from the (spiritualist) medium to the (technological) media, which contemporary films willingly take – even if it means making the medium disappear in favor of the media. For although (tele)communication technologies have always been invested with spectral properties, the development of digital cultures undoubtedly contributes to amplifying the imaginary of the ghost in the machine.
Based on a reflection on the polysemy of the term "medium", as well as on a cross history of cinema and spiritualism, this book examines how the spiritualist imaginary becomes the object of filmic representations nourished by discourses (implicit or explicit) on recording and reproduction technologies, and on the cinema, which becomes, from this angle, a particularly effective ghost machine.
Case studies are drawn from popular films that are most often situated at the intersection of the marvelous, the horrific and the melodramatic, and are situated on a historical axis that leads from early cinema to the contemporary era: Supernatural (1933), The Devil Commands (1941), Night of the Demon (1957), 13 Ghosts (1960), Fury (1978), Ghost (1990), Sixth Sense (1999), Stir of Echoes (1999), The Gift (2000), The Others (2001), White Noise (2005), The Orphanage (2006), Paranormal Activity (2007) or Insidious (2010).
The author
Mireille Berton is a senior lecturer and researcher at the department of Film Studies of the University of Lausanne. Her research mainly focuses on the relationship between cinema and mind sciences (psychoanalysis, psychiatry, parapsychology) and on the cultural history of spectatorship. She is the author of Le corps nerveux des spectateurs. Cinéma et sciences du psychisme autour de 1900 (L’Âge d’Homme, 2015), and currently principal investigator of an SNFS project “Cinéma et (neuro)psychiatrie en Suisse: autour de la collection Waldau (1920–1990)” that highlights the major role played by the Waldau Hospital in the use of the filmic medium for research and education during the twentieth century.