On behalf of the research group “Moving Images: Preservation, Curation, Exhibition” (Eye Filmmuseum, UvA and ASCA), we warmly welcome you to attend the launch of the book:
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films, written by Asli Özgen, and published by Amsterdam University Press in the series “Film Culture in Transition”.
Asli Özgen will introduce her book and show fragments of films discussed, and in conversation with Floris Paalman she will speak about her research, film historiography, and its implication for archival practice. After the launch there will be drinks at Eye Bar, Eye Filmmuseum, IJpromenade 1, and the possibility to obtain the book with discount.
Friday 24th February, 2023 15:30-17:30 Eye Collection Centre, Asterweg 26, Amsterdam
Register for this free event via email: eyeacademic@eyefilm.nl
Attendees can take advantage of a 40% discount on the book, details will be circulated during the event.
Asli Özgen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, teaching in the BA Media and Culture and in the MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image. Besides the subject of cinematic pedestrianism, her research interests include film historiography, focused on contested pasts and feminist and decolonial interventions, and archival practices in regard to film heritage of ethnicized, racialized, and migrant communities.
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics that filmmakers devised to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Drawing from literature in urban studies, film theory, and aesthetic philosophy, it is the first monograph to approach the history of cinema from the perspective of walking. A series of case studies providing nuanced analyses of widely referenced figures, such as the flaneur/flâneuse, vagabond, and nomad, reveal how filmmakers articulated their objection to repressive structures through depictions of walking: a common, everyday act yet transgressive, bold, and indomitable. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, Michel de Certeau’s concept of pedestrian acts, and Jacques Rancière’s treatment of the politics of aesthetics, Walking in Films traces how cinema evolved in conversation with the mobile body and the new images, styles, and techniques that emerged with it.
