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ARTHEMIS team examines film and moving image studies 

Though there were several attempts to formalize the study of film, and odd programs sprouted here and there, the field didn’t fully emerge on campuses until the 1960s, says Martin Lefebvre, Director of the Concordia based Advanced Research Team on the History and Epistemology of Moving Image Studies (ARTHEMIS) and Concordia University Research Chair in Film Studies.

Studying the conceptual, technological and institutional conditions that make film study possible is a central component of the research undertaken by an international group of nearly a dozen ARTHEMIS scholars, who examine the evolution of film and moving image studies as a discipline.

“For film to be considered ‘worthy’ of academic pursuits, our conception of what it is and how it affects us has had to change since the early days of cinema,” Lefebvre says.

In 1895, film wasn’t seen as an art form. Over time, however, both filmmaking and our understanding of what film represented transformed. People realized that moving images could carry meaning that went beyond the contents of what was recorded.

Lefebvre refers to these changes as belonging to the conceptual conditions of film study: “how film has been conceived within given cultural and social environments.”

In the same way, studying a film requires access to it through technology (a regular or analytical projector, a VCR, a DVD player, etc.).

Interestingly, changing how we access film also affects what we say about it. New digital platforms are impacting the field in ways that ARTHEMIS researchers are trying to measure and understand.

“Early critics relied on their ability to take notes in the dark while the film was playing. Today you can compare scenes with the mere click of a button,” Lefebvre said.

Funded by FQRSC, ARTHEMIS hosts a regular lecture series with an impressive list of international speakers. On Feb. 12, distinguished French scholar Geneviève Sellier from the Université de Caen spoke about representations of gender in a lecture entitled, “Modernity and archaism in the New Wave.”

In European art films such as À bout de souffle and Les 400 Coups by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut respectively, Sellier showed how female characters exist to express the male hero’s fears and desires.

“The figure of the modern woman created by the New Wave cinema, embodies an image of the feminine that associates sexual freedom with death, to borrow Ginette Vincendeau’s remark in French Stars and Stardom, and it is part of a very ancient cultural tradition,” Sellier said.

She also discussed the absence of gender studies in French film studies.

The research team will be drawing more well-known academics for the ARTHEMIS International Conference at the tail end of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in June.

“It’s great for students to engage with these speakers. It also benefits faculty members,” Lefebvre says. ”ARTHEMIS has helped create a collaborative research environment beneficial to Concordia’s new PhD program in film and moving image studies.”

The ARTHEMIS conference runs June 4 to 7 and is free and open to the public.