“Information Explosion from Educational Films to Blockbusters”


Brno Lectures, November 5-7, 2012


Charles Acland

Concordia University


This series of lectures will address the role of ideas about media technology as they appear in,
and are advanced by, moving image culture and industries. We will specifically examine how our
current digital society has its roots in film and media pedagogy from the mid-20^th century. And
though many scholars now accept that film is a cross-media entity - whether in terms of technology,
industry, or use - we will examine how this intermediality has been a longstanding feature
important to the development of what we think of as “the information society.”  We will also treat
the historiographical and methodological implications of re-valorizing previously neglected pockets
of film and media history, and the challenges we now face in the analysis of global film culture.


Lecture 1 (Nov. 5; 12.30-14.05):  “Always Already Big Data”


This talk introduces the turn to “digital humanities,” traces the origins of some of its
foundational claims, and elaborates the implications for film and media studies.


Readings:

Lisa Gitelman (2010) “Welcome to the Bubble Chamber: Online in the Humanities Today,” The
Communication Review, vol 13 no. 1

Alan Lui (2012) “Where is the Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?,” in Debates in the
Digital Humanities


Lecture 2 (Nov. 5; 14.10-15.45):  “Edgar Dale and the Information Explosion”


This talk treats one of the leading American voices in the audiovisual instruction movement,
showing how his ideas grew from the advancement of film appreciation to a concern with global media
saturation.


Readings:

Charles Acland (2009) “Curtains, Carts, and the Mobile Screen,” Screen

Charles Acland (2011) “Hollywood’s Educators: Mark May and Teaching Film Custodians,” in Useful
Cinema


Lecture 3 (Nov. 6; 12.30-14.05):  “Delivering Blockbusters”


This talk challenges existing narratives about how the term “blockbuster” came to be associated
with movies, unearthing its use as a popular description of a WWII military ordinance of the Allied
forces.


Readings:

Miriam Hansen (1997:1993) “Early Cinema, Late Cinema: Transformations of the Public Sphere,” in
Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams, New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers University
Press, 134-152.

Sheldon Hall, “Tall Revenue Features:  The Genealogy of the Modern Blockbuster,” in Genre and
Contemporary Hollywood, ed. Steve Neale, London:  BFI Publishing, 2002, 11-26.


Lecture 4 (Nov. 6; 14.10-15.45):  “Cosmopolitan Artlessness”


This talk looks at how American blockbusters of the 1950s established connections with
technological innovation, prestige, and internationalism, and in the process set up taste
hierarchies that continue to influence contemporary big-budget movies.


Charles Acland (2003) “Cinemagoing as ‘Felt Internationalism,” in Screen Traffic

Vanessa Schwartz (2007) “The Cosmopolitan Film: From Around the World in Eighty Days to Making
Movies Around the World,” in It’s So French


Lecture 5 (Nov. 7; 10.50-12.25):  “The End of the Quiet Years of James Cameron”


This lecture proposes the concept of the “technological tentpole,” in which blockbusters are not
only cross-media entities but also vehicles to advance new technological systems. This is discussed
with a focus on the recent wave of 3D technologies and on the surprising success of Avatar.


Charles Acland (2010) “Avatar as Technological Tentpole,” FlowTV, 11.05, www.flowtv.org

Charles Acland (2011) “You Haven’t Seen Avatar Yet,” FlowTV, 13.08, www.flowtv.org

Sean Cubitt (2004) “Neobaroque Film,” in The Cinema Effect


Graduate Seminar (Nov. 7; 12.30-14.05):


This seminar will involve a guided discussion of international contemporary film practices, with a
special focus on research methods and modes of cross-cultural comparison.


Charles Acland (2012) “Analysis of the 2010 UIS Survey of Feature Films:  From International
Blockbusters to National Hits,” UNESCO Institute of Statistics,
http://www.uis.unesco.org/Culture/Pages/movie-statistics.aspx