Film Strip image from Wikimedia Commons

Film Strip image from Wikimedia Commons

Thursday, March 29, 2012

April 12: Cinema and Experience- Commemorating the Life and Work of Miriam Hansen

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar, in a joint event with the University of Chicago, at 7:00 pm on Thursday, April 12 to commemorate the life and work of the late Miriam Hansen. The CFS will be held at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, Cobb Hall Room 307, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. A map can be found here.


Thursday, April 12 at 7:00pm
Commemorating the Life and Work of Miriam Hansen
University of Chicago Film Studies Center, Cobb Hall Room 307, 5811 S. Ellis Ave.

The evening will feature a short screening followed by a roundtable discussion with Hansen's colleagues and former students and a reception celebrating the launch of her recently published work Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

March 8: Jim Collins on Portable Media Devices and Playlist Culture

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, March 8 to welcome Jim Collins (Notre Dame) for his talk, "Portable Media Devices and Playlist Culture." Max Dawson (Northwestern) will provide the response. The CFS will be held, as always, in the Flaxman Theater, Room 1307 of the School of the Art Institute's building at 112 S. Michigan Ave.

Thursday, March 8 at 6:30pm
Jim Collins, Notre Dame
"Portable Media Devices and Playlist Culture"
Respondent: Max Dawson, Northwestern

Collins describes his talk as follows:

My paper will reflect on some of the issues raised by Professor Eivind Røssaak raised in the insightful paper he presented to the Chicago Film seminar this past November("The Performative Archive: The Archival Turn in Film, Art and New Media Practices”) but I will be talking about how portable media devices-- iPods, smart tablets, and ereaders --function as personal digital archives. What kind of “performativity” do we as amateur curators engage in on a regular basis? Pursuing the ramifications of archivability -- rather than just accessibility-- involves a complicated mix of technology, consumerism, and individual identity formation. Now that these devices allow us to surf the net as well as watch films, consume television, read novels, and listen to music, all on the same screens, with various file libraries “behind” those screens, how has playlisting become not just a matter of assembling song lists but a mindset that has come to define how we make digital culture our own?