[Reader-list] Talk by Daniel Morgan at School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU

[Ishita Tiwary]

School of Arts and Aesthetics

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Presents


A Talk By


Daniel Morgan

Associate Professor

Department of Cinema and Media Studies

University of Chicago


Author of *Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema *2012

Godard, Pontecorvo, Daney: Morals of Style


*Abstract*

The familiar account of the history of politically committed film and film
criticism centres on montage, emphasizing topics such as dialectical
juxtaposition, the production of new meanings out of disparate fragments,
and the creation of critical viewpoints. This talk explores a different
tradition, one that emerges explicitly in debates in post-war French film
culture around the use of camera movements in contemporary films—from Orson
Welles to Kenji Mizoguchi to Gillo Pontecorvo to Alain Resnais. I argue
that rather than a politics of form, these filmmakers and critics were
articulating a relation between style and ethics. One part of the paper,
then, examines this relation, showing how camera movements were understood
to establish a complex interaction between filmmaker, film world, and film
viewer; these are matters, I argue, that pertain directly to a theory of
style. The second part of the paper works through the reasons for the
centrality of camera movements in this context, arguing that they imbricate
the film viewer in the film world in a way that runs counter to our own
intuitions—and counter to theories of montage. Drawing on models of point
of view, I argue that the moral stakes of cinematic style is a matter at
once of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. I conclude by reconsidering
the work of montage, especially in Godard’s *Histoire(s) du cinéma*, in
light of this alternate genealogy of style.




At the SAA Auditorium

Thursday, September 3, 2015

5.30 pm.

Tea will be served at 5.00

All are Welcome