Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Approaches to Cinema

André Bazin once coined the term ‘impure cinema’ to signify cinema’s mixed nature, which incorporates aesthetic devices and narrative strategies of all other arts. Drawing on this inclusive concept, the ‘Mixed Cinema Network’ will look at the cinema as a fundamentally interdisciplinary area of study, further enriched by an intercultural aspect deriving from its origin as an industrial and transnational medium. Japanese cinema is a case in point, as it emerged from the kabuki theatre and evolved on the basis of unrestricted borrowing from dance, literature and visual arts. More recently, Japanese cinema has turned to international co-productions with other Asian countries, which resulted in an enhanced intercultural dialogue. By addressing Japanese cinema through its interdisciplinary and intercultural elements, our network will contribute a novel approach which, rather than reinforcing traditional East-West, centre-periphery, Hollywood-World Cinema and other binary oppositions, will tackle the complexities of intermingled identities, aesthetics and social concerns cinema can reflect in a multipolar world.

The Mixed Cinema Network will develop two parallel research lines. The first of them, supported by the White Rose Consortium, refers to interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to Japanese Cinema. The three awarded studentships will be looking at different aspects of this subject. On a second research level, the Network will be looking at interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to World Cinema.

In order to access expertise on Japanese arts beyond the audiovisual media and reinforce our interdisciplinary profile, the Network will hold seminar series, three workshops and one large international conference at the partner universities, with specialists from the UK, Japan and other countries. These events are aimed at forming further research partnerships, putting in further funding applications and producing high-standard outcomes. The first workshop of a series of three will be held on 10-11 May 2010 at Leeds.

Programme

Venue: Leeds Humanities Research Institute, 29-31 Clarendon Place, University of Leeds

Part 1 – The Japanese Case

10/05/2010

The White Rose Mixed Cinema Network PhD Students and White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC) film PhD student will present their research outlines:

09:00 - 10:00 – Coffee and registration

10:00 - 10:30 – Anya Benson (MCN York-Leeds) 'The Transformative Power of Place in Contemporary Japanese Children's Cinema'

10:30 - 11:00 – Julian Ross (MCN Leeds-Sheffield) 'Dialogues between ATG films and Angura theatre in 60s/70s Tokyo'

11:00 - 11:15 – Coffee break

11:15 - 11:45 – Jasper Sharp (MCN Sheffield-York)

11:45 - 12:15 – Michael Smith (WREAC Leeds-Sheffield) 'The Representation of Women in Postwar Japanese Cinema: Family, Rebellion, Desire'

(Aimee Richmond, WREAC Sheffield-Leeds, will not be available)

12:15 - 13:30 – Lunch

13:30 - 14:15 – Prof David Desser (University of Illinois), ‘Shojo Culture and the Mega-Text: Honey and Clover’   

14:15 - 15:00 – Professor Ayako Saito (Meiji Gakuin University), ‘Mizoguchi's  Taki no shiraito (Water Magician, 1933), a comparative study in literature, theatre and film’

15:00 - 15:45 – Professor Lúcia Nagib (Leeds) –'The Realm of the Senses, shunga and the eroticised apparatus' 

15:45 - 16:00 – Tea break

16:00 - 18:00 – Dr Mika Ko (Sheffield) 'Neo-Documentarism inMatsumoto Toshio's Funeral Parade of Roses'

                        Dr Irena Hayter (Leeds) Title to be confirmed

                        Dr Jonathan Rayner (Sheffield)

Part 2 – Perspectives on European and World Cinema

11/05/2010

09:30 – 10:15 – Prof Stephanie Donald (RMIT, Melbourne), ‘Missing histories in film and art: the lost opportunities of wound film-making in the 1980s’

10:15 – 11:00 – Prof Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton), ‘Vernacular Modernism and the Mediatized City’

11:00 – 11:15 – Coffee break

11:15 – 12:00 – Prof Anne Jerslev (University of Copenhagen), ‘Antichrist and the Danish/European debate’

12:00 - 12:45 – Dr Richard Smith (University of Sydney) 'Between Heaven and Earth: Simultaneity and National Cinema’

12:45 - 14:00 – Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 – Network Members to discuss further activities, grant proposals and outputs of the Mixed Cinema Network

The workshop is supported by the University of Leeds School of Modern Languages and Cultures and the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, the Great Britain Sasawaka Foundation and the White Rose East Asia Centre.

Further downloadable information is available below

If you are interested in attending the workshop, please contact Jenni Rauch (j.s.rauch@leeds.ac.uk)