- Film History, Film Theory, Film Studies, Television, Television Studies, Cinema (Celluloid and Digital), and 69 moreAnimation Theory, Animation, Television History, Domitor, American Quality Television, Film Insitutes, Film Genre, Film Aesthetics, Technology (Film Studies), Television genres, Comic books, Comics Studies, Comics and Graphic Novels, French Cinema, Film Editing, Early Cinema, U.S. Television Studies, Pre-Cinema, Tom Gunning, Dudley Andrew, Film historiography, SCMS, D. N. Rodowick, Media Archaeology, Media Studies, New Cinema History, Historiography, Histoire du Cinéma, Comic Book History, Theories of Film Editing, Comic Strips, Motion Picture Exhibition, Crosscutting, Hale’s Tours, Thrill Rides, History, Art History, Cultural History, Aesthetics, Cinema, Cultural Sociology, Philosophy of History, Revue internationale de filmologie, Cultural Studies, New Media, Digital Media, Popular Culture, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Analysis, Media History, Digital Cinema, Silent Film, Social Media, Digital Humanities, Narrative Theory, Film & Digital Video, Histoire, Film and Media Studies, Comics/Sequential Art, Theory of Comics, History of Film Theory and Criticism, Film Narrative, Film Style, Philosophy, Japanese Anime, Canadian/Quebecois Cinema, Television Revolution, Cultural Interface, and Hand-Drawn Animationedit
- Philippe Gauthier has recently completed a two-year SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He obtained ... morePhilippe Gauthier has recently completed a two-year SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He obtained a double Ph.D. at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and the University of Montreal (Canada).
In his research, Philippe explores complex narratives in popular media franchises; revisits transmedia storytelling and social media through concepts such as interface, playfulness and immersion; and thinks a lot about animation, seriality and popular culture.
FQRSC and SSHRC fellowships as well as awards from Domitor, Film Studies Association of Canada, Centre for Research into Intermediality, Francophone Association for Knowledge, University of Montreal, University of Ottawa and Bishop’s University have supported his research. His work on editing, television, animation and comic books have been published in French, English, German, Japanese and Portuguese.
Philippe has taught courses on the history and theory of film, animation, documentary, media and new media at University of Montreal, University of Ottawa and Bishop’s University.
Philippe has been very active in leading national and international scholarly associations: for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, he acted as co-chair of the Animated Media Scholarly Interest Group (2011-2014) and co-chair of the Television Studies Scholarly Interest Group (2014-2017); he served as board member and treasurer for the Film Studies Association of Canada (2011-2015) and secretary for Domitor, an International Association Dedicated to the Study of Early Cinema (2012-2014). He is also an editorial board member of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal (http://anm.sagepub.com).
Philippe has been invited at different Comiccons to talk on topics such as narrative complexity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or time travel and temporal paradoxes in science fiction movies.edit
Co-edited with Scott Curtis, Tom Gunning and Joshua Yumibe
Research Interests:
"De façon générale, les historiens du cinéma s’entendent pour considérer le montage alterné comme la pierre angulaire de l’esthétique cinématographique classique, esthétique qui finira par s’imposer sur l’ensemble du monde des images en... more
"De façon générale, les historiens du cinéma s’entendent pour considérer le montage alterné comme la pierre angulaire de l’esthétique cinématographique classique, esthétique qui finira par s’imposer sur l’ensemble du monde des images en mouvement à la fin des années 1920. Nul ne sera surpris de constater, par conséquent, que ce procédé d’assemblage ─ permettant principalement de signifier la simultanéité de plusieurs événements ─ occupe une place privilégiée au sein du discours historique traditionnel. Pourtant, on explique encore difficilement le développement de cette figure, dont D. W. Griffith fera un usage particulièrement achevé dès 1908. Comment peut-on expliquer l’apparition du montage alterné ? Dans quelles circonstances narratives précises était-il utilisé ? D’où vient, au juste, sa domination sur les autres modalités de montage, alternant ou non ?
L’objectif de cet ouvrage est d’établir, selon de nouvelles perspectives, l’état du « contexte langagier » à partir duquel D. W. Griffith et ses collègues ont commencé leur carrière de metteur en scène. Étudiant la production de la firme française Pathé ─ véritable « laboratoire » cinémato-graphique où seront développées plusieurs figures de montage dont, notamment, le montage alterné ─ cette analyse désire jeter un peu plus de lumière sur les modalités d’émergence du montage alterné et mieux comprendre, ultimement, en quoi cette figure est devenue l’un des enjeux majeurs du processus d’institutionnalisation du cinéma."
L’objectif de cet ouvrage est d’établir, selon de nouvelles perspectives, l’état du « contexte langagier » à partir duquel D. W. Griffith et ses collègues ont commencé leur carrière de metteur en scène. Étudiant la production de la firme française Pathé ─ véritable « laboratoire » cinémato-graphique où seront développées plusieurs figures de montage dont, notamment, le montage alterné ─ cette analyse désire jeter un peu plus de lumière sur les modalités d’émergence du montage alterné et mieux comprendre, ultimement, en quoi cette figure est devenue l’un des enjeux majeurs du processus d’institutionnalisation du cinéma."
Research Interests:
Guest editor for a special issue of New Review of Film and Television Studies entitled “What will film studies be? Film caught between the television revolution and the digital revolution”. Published in 'New Review of Film and Television... more
Guest editor for a special issue of New Review of Film and Television Studies entitled “What will film studies be? Film caught between the television revolution and the digital revolution”. Published in 'New Review of Film and Television Studies', Vol. 12, No 3 (2014): 229-233.
Research Interests: Media Studies, New Media, Film Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, and 13 moreDigital Media, Digital Cinema, Film History, Television History, Television, New Media Studies, Film and Media Studies, Virtual Reality, Andre Bazin, Interactivity, Cinema and Television, Digital Revolution, and Television Revolution
Research Interests:
General agreement exists today that David Wark Griffith, while not the “inventor” of crosscutting, is nevertheless a key figure in its development. But what does that mean exactly? Or, more precisely: how does one establish a list of... more
General agreement exists today that David Wark Griffith, while not the “inventor” of crosscutting, is nevertheless a key figure in its development. But what does that mean exactly? Or, more precisely: how does one establish a list of Griffith’s concrete contributions to the development of the technique? The goal of this article is to present a new theoretical framework for evaluating the evolution of various parameters of crosscutting during cinema’s transitional era. This framework results from the combination of our hypothesis concerning actorial and narratorial cuts with a new theory on the articulations of spatial language. This new theoretical tool allows us to detect variations in the presence of an underlying narrator as the agent responsible for filmic enunciations and to establish, in the end, a typology of cuts connecting the shots in a crosscutting sequence.
Research Interests:
This article is the final part of a text whose goal is to understand the role of Christian Metz’s work in the history of theories of editing, and more precisely with respect to alternation devices. In the first part, published in the... more
This article is the final part of a text whose goal is to understand the role of Christian Metz’s work in the history of theories of editing, and more precisely with respect to alternation devices. In the first part, published in the previous issue of Cinémas, the authors highlighted the way in which Metz (in particular through his Grande Syntagmatique table) cleared away much of the ambiguity around definitions of these editing devices. In the second part, the authors examine three problems around “alternate type” devices encountered by Metz in his syntagmatic analysis of the image track of the film Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962). These three problems are assuredly topics which must be addressed if we are to be able some day to cast new light on the manner in which crosscutting emerged.
Research Interests:
"By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and... more
"By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and publicity discourses found in trade papers — reveals that these films were seen like any other trick films, not as a distinct type. How, then, can we explain the popularity of the first animated cartoons in the mid-1910s when trick films had almost disappeared? How can we account for the popularity of a variety of ‘trick films’ —animated drawings — precisely when these same trick films had almost ceased to exist? This article addresses these issues by looking at the process by which a major shift occurred in the way we look at the earliest animated drawings. More precisely, the author tries to outline the context of the transition from the perception that animated drawings were trick films to their eventual consecration as a genre within the institution. "
Research Interests:
In his earliest semiological studies, Christian Metz took up the question of the various mechanisms of film editing, as seen in his famous “general syntagmatic” table. In this article the authors try to understand the role that this work... more
In his earliest semiological studies, Christian Metz took up the question of the various mechanisms of film editing, as seen in his famous “general syntagmatic” table. In this article the authors try to understand the role that this work has played in the history of editing theory, more precisely with respect to alternation devices (basically crosscutting and parallel editing). First, they sketch a portrait of the definitions of alternating devices in the writings of French film theorists and historians in the 1950s and early 1960s (including Etienne and Anne Souriau, Henri Agel, André Bazin and Jean Mitry), and then highlight the ways in which Metz’s propositions cleared up to a large degree the prevailing ambiguity around the definition of these editing devices, opening the door to a new history of crosscutting.
Research Interests:
This paper is a comparative study of the impact on French film studies of the emergence of television and digital technologies. The goal of the comparison between what the author calls the ‘television revolution’ – a period in which film... more
This paper is a comparative study of the impact on French film studies of the emergence of television and digital technologies. The goal of the comparison between what the author calls the ‘television revolution’ – a period in which film theorists became aware of the impact of television on the study of cinema – and the now well-known ‘digital revolution’ is to observe the recurrence of specific phenomena in the history of film studies in France. The author argues that during both the television and digital revolutions there appears to be a desire to compare cinema with other media while at the same time asserting its specificity. The impact of the television and digital revolutions on film studies in France is thus two-fold: (1) the broadening of the discipline’s boundaries to include other media and other research methods; and (2) the redefinition of cinema based on a singular definition of the medium.
Research Interests:
Through the examination of a specific film production and exhibition system, Hale's Tours, this essay examines the importance granted by film historians to traditional projection space as an institutional site. It demonstrates that, for... more
Through the examination of a specific film production and exhibition system, Hale's Tours, this essay examines the importance granted by film historians to traditional projection space as an institutional site. It demonstrates that, for these historians, any film projected outside this space was not "cinema" and thus had little or no connection to film history. The essay suggests reasons for the relative absence of Hale's Tours from synoptic film histories and enquires into the special relationship between viewer, image and space in this kind of entertainment.
Research Interests:
"By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and... more
"By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and publicity discourses found in trade papers — reveals that these films were seen like any other trick films, not as a distinct type. How, then, can we explain the popularity of the first animated cartoons in the mid-1910s when trick films had almost disappeared? How can we account for the popularity of a variety of ‘trick films’ —animated drawings — precisely when these same trick films had almost ceased to exist? This article addresses these issues by looking at the process by which a major shift occurred in the way we look at the earliest animated drawings. More precisely, the author tries to outline the context of the transition from the perception that animated drawings were trick films to their eventual consecration as a genre within the institution.
"
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Research Interests:
This article explores the relationship between television and the Association pour la Recherche Filmologique during the 1950s through an analysis of the work of the Association appearing in its journal, the Revue internationale de... more
This article explores the relationship between television and the Association pour la Recherche Filmologique during the 1950s through an analysis of the work of the Association appearing in its journal, the Revue internationale de filmologie between 1947 and 1961. The aim is to show how French television radically changed the way that members of the Association conceived of cinema, of its fundamental properties and of its future potential. The article claims that television led to new ways of thinking and new methodologies that undermined received ideas in film studies. Moreover, television not only contributed to a redefinition of cinema anchored in its singularity, but also expanded the field of film studies by situating the theory of cinema outside of the conventional film theatre. In the end, television’s impact on French film theorists’ knowledge during the 1950s is important enough that we can speak of a ‘televisual revolution’ in French film studies.
Research Interests:
In the first decade of the twentieth century Pathé presented itself as a kind of film "laboratory" where several forms of editing were developed, in particular crosscutting, wherein segments of actions taking place concurrently and... more
In the first decade of the twentieth century Pathé presented itself as a kind of film "laboratory" where several forms of editing were developed, in particular crosscutting, wherein segments of actions taking place concurrently and simultaneously within the same narrative were woven together. In order to fully understand the emergence of this major film technique, the authors of this article analyse editing in films in which a character looks through a keyhole or viewing device. While the systematic alternation of viewpoints (between those seeing and those seen) in an A-B-A-B manner is one of the forms of this discursive configuration, one
of alternation, this does not make it an example of crosscutting Alternation between those seeing and those seen is basically motivated by the acting: the film shows us an object in order to follow through on an actor's view of that object.A s the authors demonstrate, crosscutting exists only when the cuts are independent of the contingencies of the action depicted - when
the connection between the two actions is entirely and exclusively carried out and motivated by the "narrator" alone (by which is meant the mega-narrator).
of alternation, this does not make it an example of crosscutting Alternation between those seeing and those seen is basically motivated by the acting: the film shows us an object in order to follow through on an actor's view of that object.A s the authors demonstrate, crosscutting exists only when the cuts are independent of the contingencies of the action depicted - when
the connection between the two actions is entirely and exclusively carried out and motivated by the "narrator" alone (by which is meant the mega-narrator).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
By using heuristic and methodological tools derived from the study of film history, the present article proposes to shift the debate from the origins of comics to their “institutionalisation”, understood here as the process whereby the... more
By using heuristic and methodological tools derived from the study of film history, the present article proposes to shift the debate from the origins of comics to their “institutionalisation”, understood here as the process whereby the expressive resources developed by a medium give rise to their specificity and endow them with social legitimacy. I would like to propose a series of hypotheses which will enable us, not to avoid debates over the medium’s origins, but rather to bring to them a relatively new perspective. More precisely, I will demonstrate, using the nineteenth-century French press as my example, that many of the stories in images found there are much closer to caricature and comic drawings than to the more familiar institutional French bande dessinée or comic strip. Stories in images published in the press at that time, which had minority status in the midst of written humorous stories, short stories, advertising and entertainment news, among other things, were seen by publishers, authors and even the public as simply a variant of caricature. In fact to speak of the comic strip, bande dessinée or graphic novel, as these terms are understood today, with respect to the stories in images published in nineteenth-century France would be an anachronism.
Research Interests:
The goal of this chapter is to understand the role of Christian Metz’s work in the history of theories of film editing, and in particular with respect to alternation devices. The authors discuss how Metz’s propositions (with the Grand... more
The goal of this chapter is to understand the role of Christian Metz’s work
in the history of theories of film editing, and in particular with respect
to alternation devices. The authors discuss how Metz’s propositions
(with the Grand Syntagmatique in particular) cleared up a great deal
of ambiguity around definitions of these editing devices. They examine
Metz’s syntagmatic analysis of the images in the film Adieu Philippine
(Jacques Rozier, F 1962) in order to identify three problems that the
Grand Syntagmatique’s ‘alternating’ techniques posed for him. These
three problems represent areas for future research that will have to be
pursued if new light is to be cast on the forms in which crosscutting
first emerged.
in the history of theories of film editing, and in particular with respect
to alternation devices. The authors discuss how Metz’s propositions
(with the Grand Syntagmatique in particular) cleared up a great deal
of ambiguity around definitions of these editing devices. They examine
Metz’s syntagmatic analysis of the images in the film Adieu Philippine
(Jacques Rozier, F 1962) in order to identify three problems that the
Grand Syntagmatique’s ‘alternating’ techniques posed for him. These
three problems represent areas for future research that will have to be
pursued if new light is to be cast on the forms in which crosscutting
first emerged.
Research Interests:
Co-authored with André Gaudreault
Research Interests:
It has now been well established that D.W. Griffith did not “invent” crosscutting. Rather, he developed and systematised this method of film construction, which existed well before him, as historical studies of the past twenty or thirty... more
It has now been well established that D.W. Griffith did not “invent” crosscutting. Rather, he developed and systematised this method of film construction, which existed well before him, as historical studies of the past twenty or thirty years have demonstrated. In our view, however, two things render these studies problematic as a whole. In the first place, a few lacunae are apparent in the means used to explain the emergence of crosscutting. Scholars have also unfortunately avoided, for example, to analysing and discussing less well-known but critically important films. Here we would like to try to fill these gaps and examine some of the films that have been omitted or neglected, without, of course, any pretension to solving every problem in a definitive manner. While we now know that recourse to crosscutting in early cinema was not limited to rescue scenes, there is still much to be done to identify the various narrative circumstances which gave rise to the relative proliferation of the technique in the period 1908-12. We will thus try to describe, as precisely as possible, the prevailing context in which crosscutting developed when Griffith took his place behind the camera.
Research Interests:
There still exists no attempt, to our knowledge, to inventory all the known examples of crosscutting before Griffith began directing films in June 1908 and to situate them in relation to each other both historically and theoretically.... more
There still exists no attempt, to our knowledge, to inventory all the known examples of crosscutting before Griffith began directing films in June 1908 and to situate them in relation to each other both historically and theoretically. This is our ambition here, where we will investigate this editing technique and call into question the theoretical tenets and conclusions of its classical definition. We will also try to describe, as precisely as possible, the prevailing context in which crosscutting developed when Griffith took his place behind the camera. In order to do so, we will pay special attention to the various cases of crosscutting found in the films he made in the first few months of his career. Clearly, if we are to succeed, we must base our discussion on strict definitions of the editing techniques we will describe here. As the reader will discover, applying these definitions will play an essential role in identifying the various blind spots in contemporary theory. These blind spots are so numerous that the list of films given by film historians of every stripe and generation as supposed examples of crosscutting contains a fairly large number of titles that do not, as we will demonstrate, appear to be true examples of the technique in question. Moreover, there exist many examples of crosscutting in films made before 1909 that are rarely cited by historians. These are little-known films, it is true, but they are interesting examples of the technique, and bringing them to light will enable us to base our understanding on new information.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
La mise en marché des « Passions filmées » semble avoir représenté un véritable défi pour les différents éditeurs de vues, dans la mesure où chacun de ces films raconte, à peu de chose près, la même « histoire ». Comment, en effet, un... more
La mise en marché des « Passions filmées » semble avoir représenté un véritable défi pour les différents éditeurs de vues, dans la mesure où chacun de ces films raconte, à peu de chose près, la même « histoire ». Comment, en effet, un éditeur de vues peut-il convaincre un exploitant de salle d’acheter une copie de sa Passion filmée plutôt que celle du concurrent? Pis encore, comment convaincre l’exploitant de salle d’acheter la toute nouvelle Passion filmée, plutôt que de projeter, encore et encore, la version qu’il s’était procurée quelques années auparavant? Par ailleurs, comment l’éditeur de vues peut-il renouveler la mise en film d’une histoire mille fois racontée? Ce sont de telles questions qui seront abordées ici, dans un texte qui propose une réflexion sur les stratégies auxquelles ont pu donner lieu divers projets de « filmer Jésus » au tournant du dix-neuvième siècle. Y sont notamment abordées différentes procédures de mise en film ayant été adoptées par la maison Pathé (dont une pratique de recyclage tout à fait inédite et probablement unique) en vue de l’élargissement de son public, et où il sera démontré que Pathé s’est efforcé de faire du neuf avec du vieux…
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
With all the changes brought about by digital technology, affecting both film production and reception, several scholars have mused about the future of film studies. For more than a decade, various scholars – including Anne Friedberg... more
With all the changes brought about by digital technology, affecting both film production and reception, several scholars have mused about the future of film studies. For more than a decade, various scholars – including Anne Friedberg (2000), D.N. Rodowick (2008) and, more recently, Dudley Andrew (2009) – have been studying digital technology’s impact on film studies. What will become of film studies when every stage in the production and dissemination of a film has been gradually ‘dematerialised’ (i.e., ‘digitalised’)? What will become of film studies when ‘film’ disappears? This paper would like to offer a partial reply to this important question with reference to a precise period in the history of film theory, the ‘television revolution’ (Gauthier 2012), which could be defined as one of the first (if not the first) periods in which film theorists became aware of the impact of television on cinema (roughly between 1940 and 1960). How did television shape the discourse on cinema and how did certain theoretical ideas come to resist the extreme positions which have often been used to describe the relationship between cinema and television—that of television as a threat to cinema? In what ways did television lead film theorists to look at cinema differently and how did it affect their positions? How did television contribute to the rise of new ideas and methodologies and to shooting down some of the conventional wisdom in film studies? These questions will be at the centre of my concerns as I attempt to evaluate the true impact of television on the discourse on film studies.
I believe that by exploring this precise period of film theory we will discover experiences that could help us understand our own period and those yet to come. I thus follow in the path suggested by D.N. Rodowick, for whom ‘only the history of film theory gives us the basis to understand and to judge the extent and nature of the changes taking place in photographic, cinematographic, electronic, and interactive digital media’ (Rodowick 2008: 394-95). The history of film theory enables us to see ruptures within debates around moving images, but it also, and perhaps more importantly, according to Anne Friedberg, enables us to see continuities—such as the concepts screen, film and viewer (Friedberg 2000: 440). My general objective is to consider the very future of film studies by examining a part of its past.
I believe that by exploring this precise period of film theory we will discover experiences that could help us understand our own period and those yet to come. I thus follow in the path suggested by D.N. Rodowick, for whom ‘only the history of film theory gives us the basis to understand and to judge the extent and nature of the changes taking place in photographic, cinematographic, electronic, and interactive digital media’ (Rodowick 2008: 394-95). The history of film theory enables us to see ruptures within debates around moving images, but it also, and perhaps more importantly, according to Anne Friedberg, enables us to see continuities—such as the concepts screen, film and viewer (Friedberg 2000: 440). My general objective is to consider the very future of film studies by examining a part of its past.
Research Interests:
"At least a dozen Canadian universities offered introductory film history courses in the 1960s. Instructors used general film history books entirely suited to these courses, such as those by Georges Sadoul, Jean Mitry, Lewis Jacobs and... more
"At least a dozen Canadian universities offered introductory film history courses in the 1960s. Instructors used general film history books entirely suited to these courses, such as those by Georges Sadoul, Jean Mitry, Lewis Jacobs and Gerald Mast. The first programs wholly devoted to the study of cinema were founded in the mid-1960s and early 1970s (to give just a few examples, at the Université de Montréal in 1966, Queen’s University in 1969, Université Laval in 1973 and the University of Toronto in 1973). Subsequently, throughout the 1970s, film studies in Canadian universities grew rapidly. According to data compiled by the Canadian Film Institute and published in its Guide to Film Courses in Canada, at least twenty-three universities offered film courses in the year 1971, at least twenty-nine in 1975 and at least thirty-four in 1978. Out of this rapid growth arose a strong demand for specialised research and publications to teach film history. Judging from certain internal reports, by the late 1960s several Canadian university libraries were greatly expanding their collections of film books and journals to meet the demand created by the creation of new courses.
In the early 1970s, general film history courses became outnumbered by film courses focusing on specific approaches and historical periods. Moreover, an examination of course calendars and syllabi shows a radical change in reading requirements. In the 1970s, the general histories, biographies and other more popular and anecdotal materials used in the 1960s were left behind in favour of more specialised recent books and articles from film journals (Screen, Camera Obscura, etc.) and magazines (Take One, Women and Film, Cinema Canada, etc.). Nevertheless, the design of these courses appears to have been influenced, consciously or not, by the universal history tradition. Course calendars divided the field of study up into the same territories (national film histories) and time periods (by decade, “movement” or technological shift) as the tables of contents of general film history books, with courses on Canadian or French film history (national histories) or on silent film history (technological shift), for example. Of greater interest with respect to my present research were the courses which arose out of the research interests of the professor or Ph.D. student-instructor. Most often developing out of completed or nearly-completed doctoral research, these courses adopted an object of study and employed a methodology which set them apart from the “Basic Story” of film history (Bordwell 1997: 13), with its canons, great creative figures and its conception of film’s evolution in biological terms. Taught annually, these courses gave rise to a true dialogue between the teaching and research interests of a number of professors.
My principal objective will be to understand how the various connections between research into film history and its instruction in Canadian universities in the 1960s and 70s came about, through the study of still little-used archival documents (course outlines, departmental minutes, correspondence, internal university reports, etc.). My discussion and the research it is based on will thus derive from the postulate that the formation of historical knowledge of the object “cinema” in Canadian universities has been a kind of pas de deux between research and teaching since at least the 1960s. My hypothesis is that this close relationship between teaching and research stemmed indirectly from administrative decisions which lent the courses taught a particular organisation – in the form of film studies programs and even departments – which, in turn, influenced the research into film history carried out in universities. The hiring of new professors, for example, made it possible for others to specialise and thereby to tie their teaching to their research to a greater extent. At the classroom level, the ways in which students of film history were evaluated appears to have contributed to the emergence of a “piecemeal” history of cinema, to borrow the historian François Dosse’s expression (Dosse 1987). As early as the outset of the 1970s professors such as Peter Harcourt suggested to students that they problematise in their research work the changes that had affected certain aspects of cinema, without neglecting those aspects that had resisted change. Others, such as Kay Armatage, focused their students’ attention on the process of creating historical discourse and insisted on the use of footnotes, a bibliography of works consulted and the screening dates of the films discussed.
My work will thus logically be divided into a first part, focused on administrative questions, a second part focused on teaching and a final part devoted more specifically to research. This division, however, should in no way be seen as separating these things off from one another. On the contrary, my task will be to show the effects of general decisions (founding a program, hiring professors, etc.) on very precise instances of creating knowledge of film history. This is the methodological position underlying my desire to explore the context in which a still little-studied discourse, scholarly film history, was produced."
In the early 1970s, general film history courses became outnumbered by film courses focusing on specific approaches and historical periods. Moreover, an examination of course calendars and syllabi shows a radical change in reading requirements. In the 1970s, the general histories, biographies and other more popular and anecdotal materials used in the 1960s were left behind in favour of more specialised recent books and articles from film journals (Screen, Camera Obscura, etc.) and magazines (Take One, Women and Film, Cinema Canada, etc.). Nevertheless, the design of these courses appears to have been influenced, consciously or not, by the universal history tradition. Course calendars divided the field of study up into the same territories (national film histories) and time periods (by decade, “movement” or technological shift) as the tables of contents of general film history books, with courses on Canadian or French film history (national histories) or on silent film history (technological shift), for example. Of greater interest with respect to my present research were the courses which arose out of the research interests of the professor or Ph.D. student-instructor. Most often developing out of completed or nearly-completed doctoral research, these courses adopted an object of study and employed a methodology which set them apart from the “Basic Story” of film history (Bordwell 1997: 13), with its canons, great creative figures and its conception of film’s evolution in biological terms. Taught annually, these courses gave rise to a true dialogue between the teaching and research interests of a number of professors.
My principal objective will be to understand how the various connections between research into film history and its instruction in Canadian universities in the 1960s and 70s came about, through the study of still little-used archival documents (course outlines, departmental minutes, correspondence, internal university reports, etc.). My discussion and the research it is based on will thus derive from the postulate that the formation of historical knowledge of the object “cinema” in Canadian universities has been a kind of pas de deux between research and teaching since at least the 1960s. My hypothesis is that this close relationship between teaching and research stemmed indirectly from administrative decisions which lent the courses taught a particular organisation – in the form of film studies programs and even departments – which, in turn, influenced the research into film history carried out in universities. The hiring of new professors, for example, made it possible for others to specialise and thereby to tie their teaching to their research to a greater extent. At the classroom level, the ways in which students of film history were evaluated appears to have contributed to the emergence of a “piecemeal” history of cinema, to borrow the historian François Dosse’s expression (Dosse 1987). As early as the outset of the 1970s professors such as Peter Harcourt suggested to students that they problematise in their research work the changes that had affected certain aspects of cinema, without neglecting those aspects that had resisted change. Others, such as Kay Armatage, focused their students’ attention on the process of creating historical discourse and insisted on the use of footnotes, a bibliography of works consulted and the screening dates of the films discussed.
My work will thus logically be divided into a first part, focused on administrative questions, a second part focused on teaching and a final part devoted more specifically to research. This division, however, should in no way be seen as separating these things off from one another. On the contrary, my task will be to show the effects of general decisions (founding a program, hiring professors, etc.) on very precise instances of creating knowledge of film history. This is the methodological position underlying my desire to explore the context in which a still little-studied discourse, scholarly film history, was produced."
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It seems that scholars have adopted an abridged, yet undoubtedly convenient, history of film history – to such an extent that it is now a commonplace to view the 34th Congress of the International Federation of Film Archives, entitled... more
It seems that scholars have adopted an abridged, yet undoubtedly convenient, history of film history – to such an extent that it is now a commonplace to view the 34th Congress of the International Federation of Film Archives, entitled “Cinema: 1900-1906” and held in Brighton, England in 1978, as an event that fundamentally and almost overnight changed film historiography. Indeed from a random reading of texts claiming the status “new film history” it would seem that the point of rupture between their authors and so-called “traditional” film history took place around the time of the Brighton Congress. This superficial history has served as a foundation for the film historians’ discourse and been passed down from book to book. The Brighton Congress has thus rapidly become one of the founding myths of the new film history and film historiography remained frozen in a very precise temporality: first there was traditional film history, and then it was eclipsed by new film history. In this paper, I will suggest a new historiographical division that better takes into account the context in which the various historical discourses in question emerged. This division is not based on the concept “generation” (traditional film history vs new film history), which tends to yoke the scholar to a teleological approach, but rather on the concept “paradigm,” which makes it possible to free oneself from the imperatives of periodization and from certain temporal constraints. According to the hypothesis I will formulate, “amateur film history”, whose historical discourses are aimed for the most part at the general public, constituted the dominant paradigm during the period stretching from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1970s, while “academic film history”, whose historical discourses are aimed in the vast majority of cases at university-trained film historians, has been the dominant paradigm in film historiography for the past thirty years. What I will advocate here is thus a new approach to film historiography. It is in my sense reductive to think of film historiography as initially consisting of a seemingly imperfect traditional film history that was replaced by a better structured new film history and based in particular on archival research. I believe it would be better to abandon truly teleological notions such as these in order to study film historiography in the context in which it was written and based on the boundaries imposed by the context in question.
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Our objective in this paper is to examine the “film historiography” practiced during the early period of cinema. Several film historians have offered partial versions of this history, but while some agreement exists on key figures, many... more
Our objective in this paper is to examine the “film historiography” practiced during the early period of cinema. Several film historians have offered partial versions of this history, but while some agreement exists on key figures, many early examples of "film history" have been excluded. This process of exclusion is tied to a number of conditions, such as definitions of what counts as "film history", omissions of less prominent sources and the privileging of "authors". Historical discourses were in fact more widespread and diverse than previously considered. Many early historical works were not necessarily concerned with “film” or "cinema" in the more modern sense, focusing instead on one aspect of this reality, or at least on one way of conceptualizing it as a whole. Expanding the scope of inquiry to include documents published in less illustrious vehicles (trade publications, newspapers or film catalogues) further destabilizes a linear history of film history, for many of these discursive fragments do not fit with overarching patterns or common periodizations. Our goal is to provide an understanding of how these early discourses on film were situated in relation to one another, to historical discourses more generally, and to the particular contexts in which they were meaningful.
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Alice Guy entered the film business in 1896 as a secretary to Léon Gaumont. She left ten years later to begin a family with the man she was about to marry. She returned to the film world in 1910 in the United States as Alice Guy-Blaché. A... more
Alice Guy entered the film business in 1896 as a secretary to Léon Gaumont. She left ten years later to begin a family with the man she was about to marry. She returned to the film world in 1910 in the United States as Alice Guy-Blaché. A worthy representative of kine-attractography (c.1895-1910), this French kinematographer was about to become an American filmmaker and producer and meld with the new paradigm taking shape, that of institutional cinema (which took shape after 1910 approximately). Alice Guy is a unique case: very few major figures from the kine-attractography era were able to make the transition to institutional cinema and move effortlessly from one paradigm to the next. One of the best examples of those who did not succeed was Georges Méliès, whose final films remain completely tied to kine-attractography (such as The Conquest of the Pole, which he made the same year – 1911 – as Griffith’s highly narrative The Lonedale Operator). For Méliès was, above all, a magician, a conjurer, an inventor of magic sketches and someone who staged fairy plays. Méliès’ use of the kinematograph was an extension of his already well-established practice. What Méliès did, in the end, was use a new device, the kinematograph, in an already-existing “cultural series”, the stage show. As one of the two authors of this proposal has recently argued, the extent to which kinematographers were attached to their original cultural series often affected their passage from kine-attractography to institutional cinema. According to this hypothesis, which we would like to explore here, Alice Guy’s relative detachment from any pre-existing cultural series would explain, at least in part, the sporadic appearance in her work of what we might call “aesthetic proposals” of a new kind. Using a case study, that of the film The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906), we will examine these new “aesthetic proposals” for a “film genre”, the Passion Play, whose heyday was during the period of kine-attractography. Aesthetic proposals such as these helped usher in a new order or, at the very least, laid the groundwork for its development. This new order, of course, was not institutional cinema – it was still too soon – but its presence is indicative of the transition process between these two paradigms, kine-attractography and institutional cinema.
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"According to traditional film histories, crosscutting is the cornerstone of the classical aesthetic in cinema. Numerous scholarly studies have been carried out on this crucial aspect of classical narrative film language. It is maintained... more
"According to traditional film histories, crosscutting is the cornerstone of the classical aesthetic in cinema. Numerous scholarly studies have been carried out on this crucial aspect of classical narrative film language. It is maintained that the crosscutting’s “multiple lines of action” must take place in “widely separated locales”. The use of such ambiguous expressions as “widely separated locales” and “multiple lines of action” creates serious problems when applied to the development of alternating editing techniques in early cinema. Without new theoretical tools, it becomes very difficult to elaborate a theory to explain the development of these editing techniques. In addition, it is practically impossible to establish a classification schema for the various forms of alternating editing techniques, since the current typology takes into account only a small percentage of these forms, namely pseudo-alternation, parallel editing and crosscutting.
In this paper I will attempt, first of all, to clear up the confusion this definition of crosscutting has given rise to through the study of Pathé films dating from 1906 to 1908, which contain the earliest examples of this editing technique discovered to date. Building on these precisions on space and the multiple lines of action, I will sketch out a typology which will enable us to take other forms of alternating editing techniques into account. Generally speaking, my goal will be to highlight the theoretical connection, despite their differences, between the paradigms “early cinema” and “institutional cinema” by demonstrating, precisely, how the study of crosscutting in early cinema not only made it possible to reveal the ambiguity of this key element, which had for a long time been theorised in relation to classical narrative cinema, but also enables us to elaborate a typology which takes into account a broader range of the various forms of alternating editing techniques found in one or the other of these two paradigms."
In this paper I will attempt, first of all, to clear up the confusion this definition of crosscutting has given rise to through the study of Pathé films dating from 1906 to 1908, which contain the earliest examples of this editing technique discovered to date. Building on these precisions on space and the multiple lines of action, I will sketch out a typology which will enable us to take other forms of alternating editing techniques into account. Generally speaking, my goal will be to highlight the theoretical connection, despite their differences, between the paradigms “early cinema” and “institutional cinema” by demonstrating, precisely, how the study of crosscutting in early cinema not only made it possible to reveal the ambiguity of this key element, which had for a long time been theorised in relation to classical narrative cinema, but also enables us to elaborate a typology which takes into account a broader range of the various forms of alternating editing techniques found in one or the other of these two paradigms."
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Research Interests: Media Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, Interdisciplinarity, Digital Media, and 12 moreDigital Cinema, Film History, Television History, Interdisciplinary Studies, Television, Film and Media Studies, Andre Bazin, Dudley Andrew, Television Theory, Cinema and Television, Digital Revolution, and Television Revolution
Research Interests: Film Studies, Historiography, Digital Cinema, Film History, Cinema, and 11 moreHistory of Historiography, Experimental Cinema, Experimental Film, Film and Media Studies, Cinema Studies, Film History & Archiving, Film historiography, New Film History, Traditional Film History, André Gaudreault, and William Uricchio
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ABSTRACT
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These de doctorat effectuee en cotutelle au Departement d’histoire de l’art et d’etudes cinematographiques de la Faculte des arts et des sciences de l'Universite de Montreal et a la Section d’histoire et esthetique du cinema de la... more
These de doctorat effectuee en cotutelle au Departement d’histoire de l’art et d’etudes cinematographiques de la Faculte des arts et des sciences de l'Universite de Montreal et a la Section d’histoire et esthetique du cinema de la Faculte des lettres de l'Universite de Lausanne.
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In the present text, I propose to initiate a discussion which will more directly interrogate the incorporation of social media into transmedia narratives through the creation of “official” accounts for fictional characters. My goal is to... more
In the present text, I propose to initiate a discussion which will more directly interrogate the incorporation of social media into transmedia narratives through the creation of “official” accounts for fictional characters. My goal is to demonstrate through a case study of the transmedia story Marble Hornets (produced from June 2009 to June 2014) how the presence of fictional characters on social media creates new relations between their fictional world and the reality of the interactor – relations, moreover, which are accentuated by the use of mobile technologies. I will also discuss how these new relations force a reassessment of the concepts “immersion” and “the magic circle,” which were developed to better grasp the relations between fiction and reality created by more traditional media such as the novel, the graphic novel, television, cinema and video games.
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ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
RÉSUMÉ L'auteur de cet article cherche à comprendre comment se sont tissés les liens entre la télévision et l'Association pour la Recherche Filmologique durant les années 1950, à travers l'étude d'une partie des écrits de... more
RÉSUMÉ L'auteur de cet article cherche à comprendre comment se sont tissés les liens entre la télévision et l'Association pour la Recherche Filmologique durant les années 1950, à travers l'étude d'une partie des écrits de l'Association, soit la Revue internationale de filmologie parue entre 1947 et 1961. L'objectif est de démontrer la manière selon laquelle la télévision française est venue bouleverser la conception du cinéma, de ses propriétés fondamentales et de ses usages potentiels qu'ont eus les tenants de l'Association. Selon l'auteur, la télévision aurait contribué à ouvrir de nouvelles voies de réflexion et de nouvelles voies méthodologiques et à abattre certaines idées reçues au sein des études cinématographiques. De plus, la télévision aurait non seulement entraîné une redéfinition du cinéma basée sur une singularisation du médium, mais aurait également élargi les frontières des études cinématographiques en «sortant» la théorie du cinéma en dehors de la salle de projection conventionnelle. Au final, l'impact de la télévision sur la connaissance que les théoriciens français du cinéma avaient durant les années 1950 est d'une telle importance qu'il serait possible de parler d'une «révolution télévisuelle» au sein des études cinématographiques françaises.
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Writing history is above all precisely that: to write or to organise a text. Film historians, according to their interest in some aspects of the past over others, select the figures and events that will make up their discourse. As a... more
Writing history is above all precisely that: to write or to organise a text. Film historians, according to their interest in some aspects of the past over others, select the figures and events that will make up their discourse. As a result, every historical approach has a bias and a target: ...
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By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and... more
By abandoning a linear understanding of film history, the author revisits animated film history by placing its emergence within the lineage of trick films. Analysis of discourses on the first animated cartoons — such as the critical and publicity discourses found in trade papers — reveals that these films were seen like any other trick films, not as a distinct type. How, then, can we explain the popularity of the first animated cartoons in the mid-1910s when trick films had almost disappeared? How can we account for the popularity of a variety of ‘trick films’ —animated drawings — precisely when these same trick films had almost ceased to exist? This article addresses these issues by looking at the process by which a major shift occurred in the way we look at the earliest animated drawings. More precisely, the author tries to outline the context of the transition from the perception that animated drawings were trick films to their eventual consecration as a genre within the institut...
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... Thus, as Kristin Thompson (1980: 106–107) states in a book chapter published 30 years ago under the title 'Implications of the Cel Animation Technique', 'there seems to have been no real concept of the animated film as... more
... Thus, as Kristin Thompson (1980: 106–107) states in a book chapter published 30 years ago under the title 'Implications of the Cel Animation Technique', 'there seems to have been no real concept of the animated film as a ... In this sense, Paul Ward (2000: np) reminds us that: ...
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L’auteur de l’article qui suit propose l’esquisse d’un nouveau découpage historiographique qui tient compte davantage du contexte dans lequel les différents discours historiques étudiés ont émergé et des limites imposées par le contexte... more
L’auteur de l’article qui suit propose l’esquisse d’un nouveau découpage historiographique qui tient compte davantage du contexte dans lequel les différents discours historiques étudiés ont émergé et des limites imposées par le contexte en question. Ce découpage repose non pas sur le concept de « génération » (histoire traditionnelle/nouvelle histoire), qui tend à enfermer le chercheur dans le carcan d’une approche téléologique, mais plutôt sur le concept de « paradigme », qui permet plutôt de s’affranchir des impératifs de périodisation et de certaines contraintes temporelles. Selon l’hypothèse formulée par l’auteur, l’« histoire amateur du cinéma », dans laquelle les discours historiques sont destinés majoritairement au grand public, aurait été le paradigme dominant durant la période s’étalant du tournant des années 1900 jusqu’aux années 1970, alors que l’« histoire universitaire du cinéma », dans laquelle les discours historiques sont destinés en très grande majorité aux historie...
Research Interests: Humanities and Art
Dans ses premiers travaux sémiologiques, Christian Metz s’est penché sur les divers mécanismes du montage cinématographique, ce dont rend bien compte son fameux tableau de la « grande syntagmatique ». Il s’agit dans cet article d’essayer... more
Dans ses premiers travaux sémiologiques, Christian Metz s’est penché sur les divers mécanismes du montage cinématographique, ce dont rend bien compte son fameux tableau de la « grande syntagmatique ». Il s’agit dans cet article d’essayer de comprendre le rôle de ces travaux dans l’histoire de la théorie sur le montage, plus précisément en ce qui a trait aux figures de l’alternance (soit, essentiellement, le montage alterné et le montage parallèle). Les auteurs dressent d’abord un portrait de la « situation définitionnelle » des figures de l’alternance dans les écrits de théoriciens ou d’historiens français des années 1950 et du début des années 1960 (dont Étienne et Anne Souriau, Henri Agel, André Bazin et Jean Mitry), pour mettre ensuite en lumière la manière dont les propositions de Metz ont levé une part importante de l’ambiguïté qui prévalait dans la définition de ces figures de montage, ouvrant ainsi la voie à l’écriture d’une histoire renouvelée du montage alterné.
Dans ses premiers travaux sémiologiques, Christian Metz s’est penché sur les divers mécanismes du montage cinématographique, ce dont rend bien compte son fameux tableau de la « grande syntagmatique ». Il s’agit dans cet article d’essayer... more
Dans ses premiers travaux sémiologiques, Christian Metz s’est penché sur les divers mécanismes du montage cinématographique, ce dont rend bien compte son fameux tableau de la « grande syntagmatique ». Il s’agit dans cet article d’essayer de comprendre le rôle de ces travaux dans l’histoire de la théorie sur le montage, plus précisément en ce qui a trait aux figures de l’alternance (soit, essentiellement, le montage alterné et le montage parallèle). Les auteurs dressent d’abord un portrait de la « situation définitionnelle » des figures de l’alternance dans les écrits de théoriciens ou d’historiens français des années 1950 et du début des années 1960 (dont Étienne et Anne Souriau, Henri Agel, André Bazin et Jean Mitry), pour mettre ensuite en lumière la manière dont les propositions de Metz ont levé une part importante de l’ambiguïté qui prévalait dans la définition de ces figures de montage, ouvrant ainsi la voie à l’écriture d’une histoire renouvelée du montage alterné.