Event overview
07375200417
Dr Dominic Lash engages with the film criticism of V. F. Perkins and questions of cinematic description and redescription and their limits
This talk is based on a chapter from Dominic Lash's forthcoming book Haunting the World: Essays on Film after Perkins and Cavell, which will be published in July as part of the SUNY Press Horizons of Cinema. After briefly introducing the book and its commitment to what Lash calls "naive film criticism", he will concentrates on some implications and resources in the practice of the critic and scholar V.F. Perkins (1936-2016). The paper will explore the relationship between three kinds of description: the descriptive activities of the film critic; the role of description in moral philosophy (drawing on the thought of, amongst others, Raymond Williams and Cora Diamond); and the procedures of "description" that films themselves can meaningfully be said to engage in. Bringing these three forms of description together, it will argue that Perkins had a particular interest in what we might call failures of redescription. This will be demonstrated by looking briefly at Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophūls, 1948) and The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939) as well as, in more detail, at America, America (Elia Kazan, 1963).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 14 May 2025 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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