FAVz047 Early Cinema and Visual Culture around 1900: The Case of Tableaux Vivants

Filozofická fakulta
podzim 2014
Rozsah
2/0/0. 5 kr. Ukončení: zk.
Vyučující
Daniel Wiegand (přednášející), doc. Mgr. Petr Szczepanik, Ph.D. (zástupce)
Mgr. Michal Večeřa, Ph.D. (pomocník)
Garance
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Ústav filmu a audiovizuální kultury – Filozofická fakulta
Dodavatelské pracoviště: Ústav filmu a audiovizuální kultury – Filozofická fakulta
Rozvrh
Pá 26. 9. 15:50–19:05 C34, Po 29. 9. 10:50–14:05 C34, Út 30. 9. 12:30–15:45 C34
Omezení zápisu do předmětu
Předmět je nabízen i studentům mimo mateřské obory.
Mateřské obory/plány
Cíle předmětu
The course aims at explaining how early cinema heralded modernity and the beginnings of mass culture, while it was at the same time deeply entrenched in 19th century forms of visual expression.
Students will learn how understand and apply concepts of Early Cinema’s intermediality, esp. tableaux vivants, trick films, and ‘aesthetic films’.
Osnova
  • Even though Early Cinema in many ways heralded modernity and the beginnings of mass culture, it was at the same time deeply entrenched in 19th century forms of visual expression. It developed, to quote film historian Tom Gunning, «within an atmosphere of intermediality» (2010) which included soon-to-be-forgotten forms of exhibition and image-making like the féerie, the magic lantern, the panorama, and optical toys. In this series of lectures we want to ask how we can better conceptualize this notion of Early Cinema’s intermediality by focussing on one specific phenomenon of turn-of-the-century visual culture and its relation to film: tableaux vivants, the imitation of paintings or sculptures by living but motionless people on a stage. Now largely extinct, tableaux vivants were, like cinema, a ubiquitous and immensely popular form of visual attraction around 1900, being displayed at variety theatres, the world fairs, petty bourgeois associations, public festivities, and fairgrounds. We will consider various forms of intermedial relationships between this older cultural practice and Early Cinema, most importantly films in which tableaux vivants appear as subject matter, such as the filmed tableaux vivants by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, various trick films, and ‘aesthetic films’ such as ŽIVÉ MODELY, a film shot by Czech architect Max Urban in 1912. More specifically, we will examine how early films made use of tableaux vivants as a display of the beautiful; as a self-reflexive stop/motion game; and as a form of optical illusion.
  • Day I 1.) Theoretical and historiographic backgrounds: The Cinema of Attractions (Gunning); Intermediality and Cultural Series (Gaudreault); Turn-of-the-century Visual Culture (Charles Musser, Vanessa Schwartz); Ambimodernity (Ben Singer); 2.) Tableaux vivants in variety theatres: a place of Schaulust and ‘acceptable pleasures’
  • Day II 3.) Beauty in film: A bourgeois ideal? 4.) Case Study: The American Mutoscope and Biograph Films; MEISSNER PORZELLAN and ŽIVÉ MODELY
  • Day III 5.) Case Study: tableaux vivants in film as ‘stop/motion games’ 6.) Case study: tableaux vivants in film as optical illusions
  • Readings:
  • Gunning, Tom (1990 [1986]) «The Cinema of Attractions: Early Films, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde», in: Elsaesser, Thomas (Hg.) (1990) Space Frame Narrative. London: BFI, 56-62.
  • Gunning, Tom (2010) «Intermediality and modes of reception», in: Abel, Richard (Hg.) (2010) Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 324-325.
  • Gaudreault, André: «Intermediality and the Kinematograph», in: Gaudreault, André (2011 [2008]) Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema. Urbana / Chicago / Springfield: University of Illinois.
  • Singer, Ben (2009) «The Ambimodernity of Early Cinema: Problems and Paradoxes in the Film-and-Modernity Discourse», in: Ligensa, Annemone / Kreimeier, Klaus (Hg.) (2009) Film 1900: Technology. Perception, Culture. New Barnet: John Libbey, 37-51.
  • Musser, Charles (2005a) «A Cornucopia of Images», in: Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film 1880-1910. Hg. v. Nancy Mowll Mathews. Manchester/Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 5-37. (excerpts)
  • Daniel Wiegand, M.A. is a PhD candidate in film studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. He has written his PhD thesis on interrelationships between early cinema and tableaux vivants around 1900. He studied German, English and film and televison studies in Essen and Bochum (Germany) and in Dublin (Ireland). He is currently working on an e-learning programme on the history of early cinema and is co-editing a book on the visual aesthetics on cinema before 1920.
Literatura
  • Musser, Charles (2005a) «A Cornucopia of Images», in: Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film 1880-1910. Hg. v. Nancy Mowll Mathews. Manchester/Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 5-37.
  • Gaudreault, André: «Intermediality and the Kinematograph», in: Gaudreault, André (2011 [2008]) Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema. Urbana / Chicago / Springfield: University of Illinois.
  • GAUDREAULT, André. Film and attraction : from kinematography to cinema. Edited by Rick Altman, Translated by Timothy Barnard. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011, xv, 207. ISBN 9780252078057. info
  • Film 1900 : technology, perception, culture. Edited by Annemone Ligensa - Klaus Kreimeier. New Barnet, Herts: John Libbey, 2009, vi, 250. ISBN 9780861966967. info
  • Encyclopedia of early cinema. Edited by Richard Abel. 1st pub. London: Routledge, 2005, xxx, 791. ISBN 9780415234405. info
  • Early cinema : space, frame, narrative. Edited by Thomas Elsaesser - Adam Barker. Repr. London: BFI Publishing, 1997, 424 s. ISBN 0851702457. info
Výukové metody
lectures
Metody hodnocení
written test
Vyučovací jazyk
Angličtina
Informace učitele
The course is taught in English only. The schedule is organized into 3 special sessions:

26 Sept 15:50–19:05
29 Sept 10:50–14:05
30 Sept 12:30–15:45


In all cases, the room is C34 (movie theater).
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Studijní materiály
  • Statistika zápisu (nejnovější)
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