[spectre] ZKM/filmprogram/lecture

[Andrea Buddensieg]

ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
2003-02-14





Thursday – Saturday, 20 – 22 February 2003

N o e l  B u r c h  Retrospective

Film program within the framework of the exhibition FUTURE CINEMA
Curator:  Constanze Ruhm

ZKM-Vortragssaal, 6:30 pm, free entrance

Noel Burch (*1932, San Francisco) has been living in France since 1951. 
In the 1950s he worked as assistant director for Preston Sturges and
Michel Fano.  He has been an author since the 1960s.  From 1967 to 1971
he was co-founder and director of the Institut de Formation
Cinématographique (together with J.-A Fieschi and D. Mancier).
>From 1972 to 1981 Burch taught at the Royal College of Art and at the
Slade School in London; at the Institut des Arts de Diffusions in
Brussels; at the NY University Department of Cinema Studies, and at Ohio
State University in the Department of Photography and Cinema.
Between 1982 and 2000 he taught as a guest professor at the University
of Paris III and Paris VIII, and at the University of California in
Santa Barbara; from 1993 to 2000 he was professor at Lille III.  Among
his numerous publications belong, for example, the work Theory of Film
Practice (New York: Praeger, 1973), a monograph about Marcel L’Herbier
(Paris: Seghers, 1973), and To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in
Japanese Cinema (Berkeley: 1979).  His latest publication is the book La
drôle de guerre des sexes du cinema francais:  1930 – 1956, (in
cooperation with Geneviève Sellier; Paris:  Nathan, 1996), which deals
with the portrayal of gender relationships in French film from between
the wars up to the 1950s, keeping a special eye on those films which
came about during the Occupation.
As director, Noel Burch brought forth an entire series of reports and
documentary films, including:  Sentimental Journey (USA 1993 – 94),
which tells of Burch’s return to America and of meeting up with former
leftist companions.  In the film Correction, Please or How We Got into
Pictures (GB 1979) variations of a scene from a story by Dorothy Sayers
form reflections upon the history of the development of film language.
This film traces the origins of the classic language of film to a time
between 1906 – 1930, raising a series of theoretical questions in
relationship to the "dominant” forms of representation. This occurs in
four versions of a fantasy borrowed from an old British thriller, to
which key scenes from the "primitive” era of English, French, and North
American films have been inserted.  The six-part series What do those
Old Films Mean? (1984/85) deals with the social history of early cinema
in six different countries (England, Germany, USA, Denmark, France, the
USSR).  In each individual part selected film examples are analyzed from
various socio-political perspectives.  The Year of the Bodyguard
(GB/Germany) goes into the story of those suffragettes who in 1912
completed their training under the first female English Jiu-Jitsu expert
in order to be able to fight against the police and to protect their
leaders.  The Impersonator or A Propos the Disappearance of Reginald
Pepper (in cooperation with Christopher Mason, GB/Germany 1983) tells
the story of a painter who only attains success when she pretends to be
a male "primitive”.

Noel Burch will be present in person for the entire retrospective and
will, after concluding his introduction on What Do Those Old Films Mean?
give a lecture about his work.

Program:

Friday 20 February 2003
Le Noviciat (1965), 16 mm, b&w
The Impersonation or A Propos the Disappearance of Reginald Pepper (in
cooperation with Christopher Mason. GB/Germany 1983, 56 min)
Sentimental Journey (USA 1993/94, 54 min)

Saturday 21 February 2003
Correction, Please or How We Got into Pictures (GB 1979, 52 min)
The Year of the Bodyguard (GB/Germany 1981, 54 min)

Sunday 22 February 2003
What Do Those Old Films Mean? (1984/85)
Lecture by Noel Burch about his Work
Along the Great Divide – Great Britain 1900 – 1912
Under Two Flags—Germany 1926 – 1932
Born Yesterday – USSR 1925 – 1928


-- 
Dr. Andrea Buddensieg

Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, Leitung
Head of Public Relations

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