In Mapping the Moving Image, Pasi Valiaho offers a compelling study of how the medium of film came to shape our experience and thinking of the world and ourselves. By locating the moving image in new ways of seeing and saying as manifest in the arts, science and philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, the book redefines the cinema as one of the most important anthropological processes of modernity. Moving beyond the typical understanding of cinema based on optical and linguistic models, Mapping the Moving Image takes the notion of rhythm as its cue in conceptualizing the medium's morphogenetic potentialities to generate affectivity, behaviour, and logics of sense. It provides a clear picture of how the forms of early film, while mobilizing bodily gestures and demanding intimate, affective engagement from the viewer, emerged in relation to bio-political investments in the body. The book also charts from a fresh perspective how the new gestural dynamics and visuality of the moving image fed into our thinking of time, memory and the unconscious.

Essays exploring the methodologies used by film scholars to develop a spatial history of the moving image. Leading scholars in the interdisciplinary field of geo-spatial visual studies examine the social experience of cinema and the different ways in which film production developed as a commercial enterprise, as a leisure activity, and as modes of expression and communication. Their research charts new pathways in mapping the relationship between film production and local film practices, theatrical exhibition circuits and cinema going, creating new forms of spatial anthropology. Topics include cinematic practices in rural and urban communities, development of cinema by amateur filmmakers, and use of GIS in mapping the spatial development of film production and cinema going as social practices. “Introduces some of the concrete ways practical mapping and GIS technologies help elaborate historical film projects. . . . The scope of many of these projects is breathtaking in scale. . . . Others embrace ethnographic methods that tell poignant individual stories. Still others deftly merge qualitative and quantitative approaches. . . . As a whole, the volume brings together disparate fields of study in interesting ways.” —James Craine, California State University, Northridge “This collection breaks new ground for cinema history. Hallam and Roberts have gathered some of the foremost scholars who are mapping spatial histories of the moving image and the geographies of film production, distribution and consumption. Introducing new interdisciplinary methods and asking new questions, Locating the Moving Image takes film studies into new territory, beyond the boundaries of the text and its interpretation, towards an understanding of the relationship between culture, spatiality and place.” —Richard Maltby, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Screen Studies, Flinders University

This edited collection explores the relationship between urban space, architecture and the moving image. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to film and moving image practices, the book explores the recent developments in research on film and urban landscapes, pointing towards new theoretical and methodological frameworks for discussion.

"Commissioned for and sponsored by the National Film Preservation Board."

What’s new in animation? Find out! * Works from artists, animators, film-makers, scholars, archivists * Ideal for serious students of film making and animation In this detailed look at animation today, a series of intriguing case studies are explored from production to final outcome. Each one is considered in terms of meaning, purpose, and effect, then put into context as part of today’s animation culture. Hundreds of illustrations make it easy to follow experimental work from script to screen, exploring the intersections between animation, film, graphic design, and art. With insights from leading U.K. authors on animation, as well as Oscar-winning animators, artists, film makers, scholars, and archivists, Re-Imagining Animation offers the definitive look at animation today.

With reference to recent neurological research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) using new imaging technologies and models of implicit and explicit memory systems developed from this research, The Performance of Trauma in Moving Image Art examines the capacity of an artist’s cinema of experimental and avant-garde film to perform and communicate traumatic experience. De Bruyn analyses key films from the 1940s to the present that perform aspects of overwhelming experience through their approach, structure, content and perceptual impact, mapping a trajectory from analogue to contemporary digital moving image practice. He argues for the inclusion of Peter Gidal’s 1970s conception of ‘materialist film’ into the genre of ‘trauma cinema’ through its capacity to articulate un-locatability and perceptually perform dis-orientation and a flashback effect, all further identified here as key characteristics of digital moving image practice. The discussion explores the following questions. Can ‘materialist film’ model traumatic memory and perform the traumatic flashback? Does the capacity to articulate trauma’s un-speakability and invisibility give this practice a renewed relevance in digital media’s preoccupation with surface and the impact of information overload? De Bruyn’s phenomenological ‘traumatic’ reading of materialist film steps beyond Gidal’s original anti-illusionist rationale to incorporate critiques effectively mounted against it by the founders of a ‘70s feminist psychoanalytic counter-cinema. This contemporary re-reading further re-evaluates the Minimalist turn in painting and sculpture after the Second World War, arguing that this development is not essentialist or visionary but makes visible the implicit mechanisms of denial and erasure at the core of traumatic remembering. For de Bruyn, the initial traumatic impact of industrialization on the body’s perceptual apparatus, traceable through the advent of cinema and train travel, is communicated by such moving image art. The development of digital technology marks a new cycle of such perceptual re-balancing for which materialist film is uniquely positioned and which it critically addresses.

Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavour to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures, emphasises that "sight" and "site" but also "motion" and "emotion" are irrevocably connected. In so doing, Giuliana Bruno touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Annette Message, the film making of Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni, the origins of the movie palace and its precursors, and her own journeys to her native Naples. Visually luscious and daring in conception, Bruno opens new vistas and understandings at every turn.