“Cinema / Ideology / Criticism” 1969-2019:
Politics of Form,
Forms of Politics

An International Symposium organised by the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft,
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

November 28–30, 2019

Venue:
Aula der Städelschule
Dürerstraße 10
60596 Frankfurt am Main

Presenters:
Jean-Louis Comolli (by video)
Thomas Elsaesser
Philip Rosen
Jane Gaines
Francesco Casetti
Dudley Andrew
and many more

Conference Schedule

Thursday, November 28

2:00pm-2:15pm Conference Welcome

Daniel Fairfax (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) and Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

2:15pm-4:00pm Session 1: Cinema and Spectacle

Video presentation: Jean-Louis Comolli, “‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’: Yesterday and Today”

Keynote address: Thomas Elsaesser (Columbia University), “Spectacle: Making the Visible Invisible”

4:30pm-6:00pm Screening

À voir absolument (si possible): Dix années aux Cahiers du cinéma 1963-1973 (dir. Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, 2011, 80min)

Friday, November 29

9:30am-12:30pm Session 2: History and Ideology

Moderator: Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Panellists: Marco Grosoli (Habib University), “The Unaccomplished Divorce. Comolli's writings in the first half of the 1960s” Sam Di Iorio (Hunter College, CUNY), “Detour #2: Jazz Direct & Indirect” Elif Sendur (SUNY Binghamton), “Neither Singular nor Collective: Cahiers du Cinéma’s Experimentation with Young Mr. Lincoln”

1:30pm-4:30pm Session 3: Theory and Textuality

Moderator: Sonia Campanini (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Panellists: Daniel Fairfax (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), “The Insights and the Oversights: ‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’ viewed from 2019” Philip Rosen (Brown University), “Textual Disruption and Film Theory, Then and Now” Jane Gaines (Columbia University), “If Reality is Nothing More Than the Prevailing Ideology”

5:00pm-7:00pm Session 4: Language and Ontology

Moderator: Rembert Hüser (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Panellists: Pierre Eugène (Université de Paris-Nanterre), “Serge Daney from 1968 to 1972: In and Out of Cahiers du cinéma” Dudley Andrew (Yale University), “The Persistence of Rohmer at Cahiers du cinema, 1968-1972” 

7:00pm-8:00pm Screening

Une partie de campagne: Les Cahiers du cinéma face au film (dir. Bernard Eisenschitz, 1969, 52min).

Saturday, November 30

9:30am-12:30pm Session 5: Critique and Practice

Moderator: Daniel Fairfax (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Panellists: Volker Pantenburg (Freie Universität Berlin), “Repercussions of a Debate: Cahiers vs. Cinéthique in Filmkritik” Christa Blümlinger (Université Paris-VIII), “Critical Activity as Utopia” Sulgi Lie (Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn), "Political Modernism or Late Modernism? Film Criticism, Jameson and Aesthetic Historicity".

1:30pm-3:30pm Session 6: Cinephilia and the Apparatus

Moderator: Philipp Dominik Keidl (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Panellists: Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), “The Repentant Cinephile: On Film Criticism as Self-Criticism” Francesco Casetti (Yale University), “Lost in the Apparatus: The Last Revival of the Fear of Cinema”

4:00pm-5:00pm Closing Discussion