Category Archives: Humanities and Social Sciences

Chris Marker Study Day

This post was contributed by Ricardo Domizio, an MPhil candidate, in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies

The Chris Marker Study Day held in Birkbeck Cinema on 23 February was the inaugural event of the newly formed Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI).

The event was organised and hosted by Dr Michael Temple, and was kicked off with a few introductory words by Professor Laura Mulvey. She indicated how apt it was to initiate BIMI’s programme of research symposia with a day dedicated to a filmmaker who worked so creatively and conceptually with the complexity of cinema – a kind of “patron saint,” as she said, for cinephiles everywhere. Structured around a cluster of short screenings, the day proved a fascinating insight into Marker’s lesser known collaborative works, interspersed with commentary and discussion from invited speakers.

Chris Darke, who is writing a new book on Marker’s most famous work, La Jetée, took over to introduce two short, relatively unknown film essays, with commentaries written by Chris Marker. The first, Three Cheers for the Whale (Mario Ruspoli, 1972, 17m), is mostly composed of a series of still pictures depicting man’s age-old relationship with the whale. The word ‘still’, though, should not be confused with ‘static’, as the means by which Marker and his collaborators put the stillness into motion (physically via rostrum work, and metaphorically through the poetics of commentary) was one of the issues picked up in the following discussion. The next screening, A Valparaiso (Joris Ivens, 1963), is a quirky documentary about the eponymous Chilean port town, exhibiting a similar ecological edge as the Whale film, but one gradually displaced by a more anthropological eye. The initial idiosyncrasy of the images (women walking pet penguins down the street!) is gradually overtaken by a more serious and political slant, as the film begins to focus on the plight of the poor and the desperate. One of the more interesting lines of discussion afterwards explored Marker’s political sensibilities in the post-war period generally, and the ways in which his films might speak a non-doctrinaire politics of the left during the heady decade of the 1960s.

The morning sessions were now and then seasoned with tantalising snippets of information about Marker’s famously eccentric, if not mythologized, personal history. The fact that this master essayist of French cinema was elusive about his place of birth, and refused to be photographed or interviewed, increased his enigmatic aura. On the other hand, the fact that he fought in the French resistance and the US Army during the war, and that he was inseparable from his pet cat, Guillaume, made him seem truly human. The traces of this unique persona were vividly in evidence in the next screening of the afternoon, a UK premiere of Agnès Varda’s visit to Chris Marker’s studio (2011). A long standing friend, Varda was granted special access to film the sacrosanct space of the artist’s studio (which doubled as his home). The result was rather like a home video that voyeuristically but affectionately rifled through the jumble of assorted hardware, software, books and trinkets. Naturally, Marker himself did not want to be filmed, but his disembodied voice did embellish the production, cutting a rather understated and avuncular figure. We learn, not surprisingly given his predilection for travel, that Marker exists as an avatar on an archipelago in Second Life.

Next on the agenda was a screening of Remembrance of things to come (2011), a documentary made by Marker and Yannick Bellon on the life and work of the photographer Denise Bellon. A pioneer of photojournalism, Bellon’s photographs evocatively capture an extraordinary period in French culture and social history from the 1930s to the 1950s. An aspect of Marker’s work that has perhaps not had the attention it deserves, but which is made explicit in this film, is its empathy with surrealism. Bellon not only documented the first surrealist exhibition in 1938, she was also a friend and associate of the leading lights of the surrealist movement. Marker’s pithy and redolent commentary (read by actress Alexandra Stewart), brings forth a kind of ominous surrealism that marks the whole of the pre-war situation in France. After the screening Professor Janet Harbord gave a talk on the film that picked up the theme of surrealism and its paradoxical use in Marker’s work, which is often classified as ‘documentary’. She also spoke about other important features that run through the film and the wider oeuvre: a fascination with the sensuality and movement that lies within the supposedly ‘cold’ and ‘still’ photograph; and the possibility of achieving the complex personal and political truths that reside between narrative, memory and history.

The event was brought to a close with another UK premiere, To Chris Marker: An Unsent Letter (2012). As the title suggests, the film is an homage to Marker made by an erstwhile production colleague, Emiko Omori. It consists of a collection of interviews with Marker’s friends and collaborators animated with musings and vistas relating to his life and work. A tender and heartfelt farewell to an admired friend, the film exhibits a similar tone of remembrance and mourning that permeated much of Marker’s own work, but with a sentimental edge that Marker largely eschewed.

Overall, the day was mostly effective in widening the field of study from the rather narrow set of films that constitute the more conspicuous Marker canon, and in providing a tiny (and necessarily partial) insight into the personal life and working methods of this most private and ‘unclassifiable’ of French post-war auteurs.

Manga Studies come to Birkbeck

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This post was contributed by Novella Gremigni, a PhD student in Japanese Cultural Studies in Birkbeck’s Department of Media and Cultural Studies.

Lately two events about manga culture have shown fresh views on the growing influence of Japanese popular culture. Organized by Dr Shinji Oyama (Birkbeck), and co-hosted by the London Asia Pacific Cultural Studies Forum (LAPCSF) and the Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice, both events were quite successful in terms of audience and participation.

The first of the two manga-related events was designed to welcome visiting scholar Mariko Murata into the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College.

Dr Murata described her fascinating research in front of more than fifty attendees. She graciously introduced us to the world of Japanese comics and their museums. As she illustrated her impressive work, for which she spent a considerable amount of time going around museums and conducting surveys, I learnt that a growing number of institutions are dealing with the world of Japanese comics in Japan, and attract both tourists and local visitors every year. Themes, approaches and exhibition layouts vary across museums and galleries. Some exhibitions focus on the historic or artistic value of manga and, in some cases, one can come across the pre-printed version of a comic, or take a look at the original draft drawn by the manga artist. Moreover, quite a few manga museums incorporate libraries and archives, documenting manga related materials and also offering visitors the chance to enjoy comics on site. Dr Murata explained that while it is not an easy task for museums to ‘exhibit’ manga, it gives the media a new way of appreciating them. Being culturally and demographically diverse, visitors of the manga museum can also actively interact with the works on display and ‘consume’ the exhibition material, perhaps with a different type of pleasure from reading their favourite comic book.

The discussion was moderated by Dr Lorraine Lim, lecturer in Arts Management at Birkbeck, who prompted a very interesting and active Q&A. She raised ideas and issues about the arrangement of space for a manga exhibition, about the propriety of mundane objects such as mangas for a museum environment, but also about the learning experiences these exhibitions may provide.

The second manga event once more confirmed the never-failing interest in all things manga. Organized by Dr Murata, it was set out to give an overview of contemporary manga studies. Four speakers were invited to give short presentations on a variety of issues concerning Japanese comics. Dr Ryuichi Tanigawa, Dr Chie Yamanaka, Mr Yu Ito and Dr Sonoko Azuma were all very pleased to welcome some ninety manga enthusiasts. Simon Turner, a PhD student in Japanese Cultural Studies at Birkbeck was the discussant for this session.

The diverse nature of the presentations created a vibrant picture of the world of Japanese comics. Spanning across different areas of manga studies, the four speakers illustrated the role of architecture in the comic Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, the reception of Naruto in South Korea, the educational function of the pacifist manga Barefoot Gen, and the modalities of consumption of the female otaku (manga fanatics) who read yaoi (a manga genre depicting homosexual relationships). The audience was receptive and quite involved; questions and comments flowed from side to side. Many attendees eagerly contributed to the discussion, and stayed on for refreshments and for a chat with the speakers.

If it looks like a dome, and you think it’s a dome, then it probably is a dome!

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This post was contributed by Ruth Harriss, a student on Birkbeck’s MA History of Art.

“When it comes to domes, don’t define too carefully!” advised Professor Peter Draper, whose paper opened up the symposium Domes: Past, Present and Future. This proved to be excellent advice as what followed was a far-reaching, stimulating and wonderfully bizarre tour of the dome from its beginnings as a practical temporary shelter and grave marker, to its identification with futuristic engineering and the utopian metropolis.

The topic inspired a diverse response and during the course of the afternoon the four speakers addressed the audience on aspects of religion, cosmology, urban renaissance, fictional structures, Victorian soap bubbles, biospheres, the V2 rocket, inflatable planetariums, a Neolithic camera obscura and dome sickness amongst many others!

My own studies and interest in architecture so far hasn’t led me to encounter the dome in all its complexities therefore Peter Draper’s introductory paper was, for me, a perfect start. By charting the initial development of the dome in the West, Draper brought to the fore complex questions of typology and symbolism, pertinent to the practice of dome building throughout all periods and cultures. Caspar Pearson continued with a critique of the dome as a potent cultural symbol of the Renaissance. Epitomized by Fillipo Brunelleschi’s dome for of Santa Maria de Fiore (1461), the dome can be understood as a statement of progress and faith in human ability to remake and rebuild the world. This powerful rhetoric is still used today and is manifest in the fictional architectural schemes impregnated in vivid ink on the Euro bank notes. Yet Pearson questioned the possibility for architecture to embody cultural historical ideals in light of a new knowledge economy and suggested the collapse of the progress myth is evident in the catastrophic failure of the Millennium dome.

Moving forward a few centuries we picked up again with the Cold War and the dome in the context of global war. Primitive self-sufficiency and cutting edge science and technology converged in Barry Curtis’ unique exploration of the dome that had been inspired by Buckminster Fuller and his ‘Spaceship Earth’. In what seemed to be one breath, Curtis raced from the turn of the century and the interfacial science of the humble soap bubble to the visionary design of the geodesic dome, and from the novels of Thomas Pynchon to the first glimpse of the earth seen as a dome-like body from outer space. Curtis highlighted how utopian domes not only offered physical protection from a hostile future world but also a psychological escapism: the possibility to immerse one’s self in an artificial environment. It was the latter that formed the basis of the final paper, delivered by Nick Lambert, who considered the dome and the development of fully interactive 3D environments. In particular how early planetariums and the desire to experience virtual objects moving around us, has more recently resulted in the ‘full dome’ experience being considered an artistic medium in its own right.

My only thought for improvement upon the afternoon would have been an extended time for discussion at the end on the symposium as even in the brief time there were many interesting questions raised by the attendees.

Needless to say I will look forward to the next event from the Architecture, Space and Society Network!

Watching J’Accuse (1919)

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This post was contributed by Dr Ludivine Broch, an Early Career Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

‘With the creation of J’Accuse (1919), a new epoch in the life of Abel Gance and in the history of the French cinema begins.’
– Welsh & Kramer (1975)

The French History Network is showing its first film of the 1914-45 in Cinema film series at the Birkbeck next Friday evening. It will start at 18:00, in the Cinema at 43 Gordon Square. Feel free to bring wine & nibbles to share before the film starts.

The chosen film is J’Accuse, which was directed by Abel Gance in 1919. Gance is the director who also directed Napoleon (1927), a film I have not seen yet – although I plan to do soon.

J’Accuse is a wonderful way to launch the 1914-45 film series. Technically, it was a pioneering work in the dawn of the age of cinema. Politically, it was an anti-war stand. Culturally, it captured the great malaise of post-WW1 France. The last scene is infamous: the ghosts of the ‘unknown soldiers’ who died for France come back to haunt a population who has not understood their sacrifice, who has not honoured their deaths, who has not realised the extent of the death, the loss, and the horror of what happened. Had these men died in vain?

Gance’s final scene highlighted many of the tensions between ‘anciens combattants’ and civilians which existed in WW1. This is a theme which Henry Barbusse had already picked up on in Under Fire (1917). When one of his characters returns to the front following a few weeks of leave, he is boiling with anger at the French population who complains about the war, about rations, about daily struggles. Their woes, which lie in such sharp contrast to the horrors of the trenches and of the front line are ridiculed, belittled, tossed aside as meaningless and idiotic. More than that, the men on the front begin to feel isolated from the rest of France. Experiences in the trenches create an ever-growing gap between soldiers of modern warfare and civilians. Even railway workers, who were involved in the military effort but exempt from military service, were criticised for not being ‘real’ front line soldiers. Many felt railwaymen had gotten off lightly. To defend themselves, railwaymen constantly argued that, although they were not front line soldiers, they were ‘soldiers of industry’, risking their lives during peacetime as well as wartime.

But J’Accuse also marked the beginning of a widespread phenomenon: the commemoration of the dead. Far from being forgotten, the ‘anciens combattants’ haunted France’s landscape throughout the interwar period. Street names, memorials, ceremonies, associations… physical reminders of their death were everywhere. This of course was not a purely French phenomenon: Britain and Germany also experienced a vivid and tangible commemoration process.

To fully grasp the trauma of post-WW1 France, come along to watch J’Accuse on 1 March 2013. For, in my view, if anything can explain the start of WW2, and the development of post-war Europe, it is first and foremost the remains of a fragmented society in 1918.

To further contextualise J’Accuse, I would recommend the following articles:

Joëlle Beurier, ‘La Grande Guerre au Cinéma’, Vingtième Siècle, n.108 (Oct-Dec 2010)
James M. Welsh & Steven Philip Kramer, ‘Abel Gance’s Accusation against War’, Cinema Journal, vol. 14, n°3 (Spring, 1975)
David Williams, Media, Memory and the First World War (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009)
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995)