Persistent images : encountering film history in contemporary cinema

Through a series of detailed case studies, this book explores the continuing resonance of the history of cinema – what this book terms its persistent images – as revealed in the technological and aesthetic expressions of a range of contemporary experimental practices across a changing cinematic apparatus. The emphasis is on the close analysis of recent films from around the globe and the evolving technology used in their creation and where and how we experience these moving images, as this book draws on ideas of media archaeology to reflect on film history and historiography alike. In these textual encounters with a series of contemporary films (Dawson City: Frozen Time, Francofonia, Shirin, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Goodbye to Language, Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, among others) that themselves reflexively foreground and creatively reimagine the past, the book demonstrates how the medium of film can be used in inventive ways to look simultaneously backwards and forwards, encountering and reframing the past in the present, and offering new ways of thinking about film history and contemporary cinema alike. Ultimately, the book argues for a progressive historiography in how we engage film history and conceptions of historical renewal, moving beyond the sense of anxiety and loss that has otherwise accompanied periods of profound technological change. Considers the nature and status of contemporary cinema by way of a series of technological reflections on its past Argues for a progressive historiography that looks forward, moving beyond the sense of anxiety and loss that has dominated accounts of cinema's postulated demise Draws on the latest thinking on evolving screen technologies and media archaeology and the development of cognate areas such as memory studies Charts the historical memory of cinema, with a view to considering how our engagement with, and understanding of, this history might be reconfigured in the present. Channelling a focus on the history of cinema into the present and beyond, Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema explores the continuing resonance of the memory of cinema as revealed in the technological and aesthetic expressions of a range of experimental practices. With case studies of films that reflexively foreground and creatively reimagine the past, including Shirin (2008), Goodbye to Language (2014) and Francofonia (2015), the book demonstrates how the medium of film can look simultaneously backwards and forwards, encountering and reframing the past in the present, and offering new ways of thinking about both film history and contemporary cinema alike. Channelling a focus on the BG of cinema into the present and beyond, Persistent Images: Encountering Film BG in Contemporary Cinema explores the continuing resonance of the memory of cinema as revealed in the technological and aesthetic expressions of a range of experimental practices