Cinema of Displeasure: Graduate Colloquium, May 9-10, 2011
Cinema Studies Graduate Student Union Presents
The 2011 Cinema Studies Graduate Student Colloquium
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, TorontoCinematic experience is often discussed in terms of the pleasures of spectatorship. Yet in light of the recent proliferation of exploitation films, politically challenging documentaries, and unorthodox risque comedies, it seems that discomfort and displeasure play a key role in our cinematic experiences and tastes. Is this a recent phenomenon, or does displeasure have a long and well-established place in the history of cinema and visual media practice? How do we make sense of films that provoke displeasure?
Far from just understood as the binary opposite of pleasure, displeasure seems to walk the fine line between delight and pain, discomfort and enthrallment.
This conference takes up questions of the purposes, risks, and payoffs of displeasure in visual media.
Conference Part I and II
May 9 - 10:00am-2:30pm, 3:30-6:00pmMay 10 - 11:00am-1:00pm, 2:00-4:00pm
Keynote
May 9 - 6:00-7:30pm, Professor Brian Price, Ph.D. of the University of Toronto speaking on “The Inattentive Spectator.”Screening
May 10 5:30pm, Cecil B. DeMented, Dir. John Waters. Co-Presented on 35mm by CINSSU
Contact us at graduatecinemastudies@gmail.com
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Monday, May 9th
10:00am Introduction by Principal Janet Paterson
10:30am-12:15pm Panel #1: Moderated by Professor James Cahill
Casey Reid, University of Toronto - “#Fail: YouTube, Online Identity and the Politics of Failing.”
Elysse Leonard, University of Toronto - “Thanatomimetic Cinema: An Aesthetic of Morbid Curiosity.”
David Hollands, University of Toronto - “The 'Displeasurably' Pleasureable Attractions in the Films of Frank Henenlotter.”
12:45-2:30pm Panel #2: Moderated by Professor Bart Testa
Roxanne Samer, University of Southern California - “Feminism Negotiates Pleasure and Danger: the Films of Carolee Schneemann, Marjorie Keller and Chick Strand.”
Iona Pelovska, Ryerson/York University - “Disgust, Contamination and Action in Moving Image Pornography.”
Denver Wilson, University of Toronto - “Reach out and Touch Death: Seeing Horror Cinema in Three Dimensions.”
2:30-3:30pm Lunch Break
3:30-5:15pm Panel #3: Modrated by Professor Kass Banning
Daniel Pauly, University of Toronto - “'It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times': Bad Movies and the Classroom.”
Dan Leberg, University of Toronto - “Owning That You Own It: Covert Fandom and Guilty Pleasure Films.”
Ganga Rudraih and Suresh Kumar, University of Western Ontario - “Pathos of the Tragic Tamil Hero: The Spectacle of Consuming Displeasure in Bala's Films.”
6:00pm Keynote Address: Introduced by Professor Kay Armatage
Professor Brian Price, University of Toronto, Cinema Studies and Visual Studies - “The Inattentive Spectator.”
8:00pm Reception at Paupers Pub, 539 Bloor Street West.
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Tuesday, May 10
11:00am-1:00pm Panel #1: Moderated by Professor Kay Armatage
Cassandra Silver, University of Toronto - “Choosing the Real: Confronting Ambiguous Actuality in Cinema and Theatre.”
Alex Ginnan, University of Toronto - “Activist Tactics and Vicious Cycles Beyond The Cove.”
Amy Deverell, University of Toronto - “Pranking the Spectator and The Yes Men (2004): Counter-Information as Unruly Mediation.”
Karrmen Crey, University of Toronto - “Whose Nationhood?: Confrontation and Critical Historiography in Alanis Obomsawin’s Oka Series.”
1:00-2:00pm Lunch Break
2:00-4:00pm Panel #2: Moderated by Professor Meghan Sutherland
Karly-Lynne Scott, University of Toronto - “Pleasure in Pain: Masochism and the Phenomenology of BDSM Pornography.”
Jason Kogler, University of Toronto - “Suitable For All Ages: Representations of death and trauma in children’s animated films.”
John Landerville, University of Toronto - “There is nothing funnier than genuine human suffering: Humiliation, Comedy, and Charlie Chaplin.”
Tony Fong, University of Toronto - “The Dying 'I' in Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
5:00pm Free Screening Co-Presented by CINSSU
Cecil B. DeMented
Poster
Schedule