September 30 2008

MONTHLY READING + DISCUSSION GROUP EXPLORING CINEMA + CINEMATIC PRACTICE THROUGH WRITTEN WORDS

A monthly reading + discussion group, Thought on Film aims to promote critical thought around film product and practice through community-based discussion. Open to the public, Thought on Film fosters the close reading of texts confronting issues in contemporary, cutting-edge cinematic practice and philosophy.

September’s meeting is a special co-presentation by Cineworks and Urban Republic in celebration of the Gastown Drive-In film series whose theme is “Vancouver stars as itself.” Vancouver has become the third-largest film production centre in North America, albeit usually as Hollywood’s stand-in for another city. For three nights in September selected shorts and feature films, shot in part or wholly within the Metro Vancouver area, will showcase the talents of Canadian artists. When filmmakers chose to set their film in Vancouver, what aspects of the cultural, social, and built landscapes do they employ? What makes a generic location, place specific?

Reading Chris Lukinbeal’s Cinematic Landscapes, landscape will be explored as central in the formation of cinematic space. Where place and landscape ground action and the construction of meaning, space provides the stage for the story to unfold. Landscape and film are both social constructions that rely primarily on vision and perception for their very definition. There is a link between landscape and cinema, on tat is deeply engrained in the North American mind and in the land. Cinematic Landscapes combines the metaphors of theatre and text to explore how landscape functions in cinema.

Interested parties are encouraged to join in Thought on Film at any point and to draw strange connections to their practice, be it film or not.

If you have any questions about Thought on Film, please do not hesitate to contact Programs Manager cheyanne turions.

Thought on Film IX
reading Chris Lukinbeal’s Cinematic Landscapes
Cineworks Studio [1131 Howe, back lane entrance]
30 September 2008, 6pm
Free