Newsletter no. 4 — April 2024

Two study days
Innovating in media and cultural accessibility

On April 15 and 16, the cinEXmedia partnership invites you to its study days, Innovating media and cultural accessibility: education, research and services, on innovation in media and cultural accessibility education and services.

Technology, especially artificial intelligence, is enabling us better than ever to offer accessibility services such as subtitling and audio description. These in turn enable millions of people with disabilities to access cultural content such as television, cinema, online videos, theater, dance and even the circus. However, the rapid and constant evolution of technology poses major challenges to those who develop these services.

Join our team for two days of learning, sharing and innovation to think about how technology can create a more accessible and inclusive media and cultural world.

To learn more, visit this page on our website and the Facebook event. You can also register by filling out this form (all links in French only).

A lecture by William Uricchio
Pursuing AI through Fantasy, Theology, and Media History

The Canada Research Chair in Film and Media Studies presents the lecture "Pursuing AI through Fantasy, Theology, and Media History", by William Uricchio, on April 11, as part of the Chair's Grand Lectures series, in collaboration with the cinEXmedia partnership.

William Uricchio is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. His research focuses on the interactions between media technologies and cultural practices in terms of representation, knowledge, and audiences.

His talk will focus on the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), which has moved beyond utopian or dystopian fantasies to address more fundamental questions about precisely what it is and who is authorized to control it. In a context where discourse is increasingly focused on technology, the long history of machine learning offers both a means of contextualizing AI and of reflecting on the contours of media history.

To learn more, visit this page on our website and the Facebook event (both links in French only).

Interuniversity student conference
Recherches actuelles en cinéma

The GRAFIM (Groupe de recherche sur l’avènement et la formation des identités médiatiques), a research structure within the Laboratoire CinéMédias, will host an inter-university student conference on April 24.

Entitled "Recherches actuelles en cinéma: les films qui digent là où il faut", the event will bring together some fifteen speakers working in research and research-creation. The works presented will echo the vision of cinema proposed ten years ago by Luc Chessel in the magazine Vertigo. The film critic described a groundwork that, far from seeking a totalizing vision, attempted to open up a few lines of meaning within a vast field of exploration. Cinema is seen as digging, then, not to escape the consequences of a world definitively in crisis, but rather to pursue through observation, experimentation and analysis the exploration of the medium in its relationship with the living, industry or memory, not forgetting, of course, technology.

To learn more, visit this page on our website and the Facebook event (both links in French only).

Grand Diplômé Award 2024 from Université Laval

André Gaudreault, founder of Laboratoire CinéMédias and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Film and Media Studies at Université de Montréal, has been awarded the Grand diplômé 2024 prize by Université Laval. This distinction is awarded annually to Université Laval graduates with exceptional careers.

A brief article about the event is available on the UdeMNews website.

To learn more about André Gaudreault's nomination and his contribution to the field of film studies, you can now visit his web page on the Remarquables 2024 website. In addition, an episode of the podcast Les Remarquables of Université Laval is dedicated to him on Spotify, available here (all links in French only).

Television fiction in Quebec

The latest issue of Spirale magazine was published in February. It is co-edited by Thomas Carrier-Lafleur, assistant director and research coordinator at Laboratoire CinéMédias, and Stéfany Boisvert, researcher and professor at UQAM.

In light of the widespread renewal of the television ecosystem, this issue of Spirale looks at the vitality of series produced in Quebec today, and examines their role in the construction (or deconstruction) of the contemporary media and cultural imaginary.

To learn more, visit the launch's Facebook event.

Plus de cinéma!

The volume Plus de cinéma! Images animées et effets spéciaux, edited by the researcher and cinema professor Viva Paci at the Université du Québec à Montréal, has just been published by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

This essay provides an archaeology of a number of experiments carried out part way between the world of live-action filming and that of animation in the “manufacture of marvels” and the creation of special effects. The book makes science fiction and experimental cinema rub shoulders with each other in order to go beyond conventional wisdom in the field, in particular the idea that there was a rupture with the “digital turn.”

The book was launched on 20 February at the Port de tête bookstore in Montreal. For more information, consult the Facebook event.

La fin du cinéma?

A new revised and augmented edition of the book La fin du cinéma? by the researchers Philippe Marion and André Gaudreault, originally published in 2013, has been released by the publisher Armand Colin. Its new subtitle, La résilience d’un média à l’ère du numérique, signals a reframing of the essay, which documents major changes over the past decade, since Un média en crise à l’ère du numérique, in 2013.

Among other things, this volume examines the future of cinema in the present-day context of “platforming” and the decompartmentalising of film production and post-production professions. It also addresses the consequences for the film industry of the development of artificial intelligence.

To learn more, read this article by our research assistant William Pedneault-Pouliot following his interview with the two authors.

The laboratory recently acquired a state-of-the-art 16mm, 9.5mm and 8mm film digitizer, thanks to a grant from the John R. Evans Leaders Opportunity Fund of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to the Canada Research Chair in Film and Media Studies.

This new tool will digitize the Université de Montréal's vast collection of 16 mm films, making them accessible to a number of scientific and artistic projects. The digitized films will also be shared on the online platform Cadavre exquis, a project directed by Professor André Habib, which aims to enable the creation of re-used works from images taken from long-neglected heritage corpuses.

To learn more, consult this interview by our research assistant Olivier Du Ruisseau with the researcher Louis Pelletier.

Tanzia Mobarak, (see photo), a doctoral student in film studies at Université de Montréal whose project is supported by cinEXmedia, met with our research assistant Hugo Samson. In this interview, she describes the reasons she was led to examine the impact of artificial intelligence on cinematic rhythm from a neuroscience perspective.

Filmmaker and cultural worker Nour Ouayda recently presented two of her films at the Université de Montréal, as part of the series Au-delà des frontières, co-presented by the Groupe de recherche sur l'avènement et la formation des identités médiatiques (GRAFIM) and the cinEXmedia partnership. She was interviewed, on the occasion of the event, by Olivier Du Ruisseau to discuss her career and her exploration of the Situationist concept of “dérive” in cinema.

A new episode of the podcast Balado des identités médiatiques (BIM!, in French only), a project which receives support from cinEXmedia, has just been put online. The guest, Pacôme Thiellement, a French writer and video maker, discusses his web series Infernet (2021), which invites us on a disturbing exploration of “digital folklore” in which are found “mysterious disappearances, nightmarish romances and deviant practices.”

Observatoire du cinéma au Québec (OCQ)

The winter season of OCQ Tuesdays (in French only) is almost over. Two events remain in April: a lecture by editor Véronique Barbe (April 2) and a screening of the film Ru (April 9), with director Charles-Olivier Michaud and Kim Thùy, the author of the novel that inspired the film.

Au-delà des frontières

The final event of the Au-delà des frontières (both links in French only) series is also scheduled for April 2 at the Université de Montréal. The film A media voz (Heidi Hassan and Patricia Perez, 2019) will be presented, followed by an interview between researcher Zaira Zarza and Heidi Hassa.

De la musique pour le cerveau

On February 8, cinEXmedia co-director Isabelle Raynauld presented her film De la musique pour le cerveau (2019) as part of the event Place à la recherche-création (in French only), an initiative of the Vice-Rector for Research, Discovery, Creation and Innovation at the Université de Montréal. The researcher was joined on a panel following the screening by music therapist Tanya Lavoie, professor and composer Pierre Michaud, and geriatrician Olivier Beauchet.

Plateformes et usages

The conference “Platforms and Uses,” which was held last November and brought together fifty researchers, made it possible for these participants to share their research on our use of digital platforms. Hugo Samson has covered the event for our website.

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