Edinburgh Film Seminar
Monday 13 March 2017
5pm, Appleton Tower Lecture Theatre 1
University of Edinburgh
Dr Glyn Davis
Chancellor’s Fellow/Reader, The University of Edinburgh (ECA)
Dead Time: James Benning, Taxidermist
https://www.facebook.com/events/787625008052989/
What is the relationship between cinema and taxidermy? And how might films that feature taxidermied animals give us an insight into this relationship? This talk will set Andre Bazin and Philip Rosen’s arguments about mummification and the moving image off against theoretical understandings of taxidermy by authors such as Donna Haraway and Rachel Poliquin. Focusing in particular on James Benning’s experimental documentary ‘natural history’ (2014), it will be suggested that some filmmakers have depicted stuffed animals to make us reconsider the tension between stillness and movement that permeates cinema.
Dr Glyn Davis is a theorist and historian of the moving image. Although he has researched and written extensively about film and television, he has a particular interest in experimental cinema and artists’ film and video. Before taking up his position as a Chancellor’s Fellow and Reader at the University of Edinburgh, Glyn was a senior lecturer in screen studies at the University of Bristol (2005-2008), and the coordinator of postgraduate studies at The Glasgow School of Art (2008-2012).
http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/film/edinburgh-film-seminar