The Dynamic Screen
Cinema 1900 | 2012: Books and Films

An evening which revolves around two historical constellations, both of which highlight the porous and shifting boundaries of film. First: how cinema between 1890 and 1914 developed as an art of the Industrial Age, with its forbidden paradises, its new modes of perception for a mass audience and its transgressions against bourgeois culture. Second: how cinema today, in the digital age, unfolds in various new directions, in the dense interplay between film, the internet, and the classical arts, as well as in the face of a new "user psychology” and "unlimited" cinephilia.

 

Whether – and if so, how – these two cinematic upheavals relate to one another is one of the themes of this evening. The Dynamic Screen brings together two new books, eight short films, and four prominent film theorists who will discuss possible links and distinctions between the two periods.

 

The two publications are "Dream and Excess," Klaus Kreimeier's magnificent cultural history of early cinema (published jointly in a series by the Film Museum and Zsolnay Verlag), and the new volume from FilmmuseumSynema Publications: "Screen Dynamics – Mapping the Borders of Cinema," edited by Gertrud Koch, Volker Pantenburg and Simon Rothöhler. The films and videos being screened range from Georges Méliès (a 1902 volcanic eruption), to over-the-top comedies from 1912 (Aus eines Mannes Mädchenzeit) and 2010 (David O’Reilly's The External World) and finally to digital works by artists such as Victor Burgin (2009) and Chris Marker (2011).

 

Gertrud Koch, Klaus Kreimeier and Simon Rothöhler will present their respective books at the Film Museum. Elisabeth Büttner, professor of film theory at the University of Vienna, will offer a "synopsis" of the two works and moderate a panel discussion with the guests.