Newsletter no 9 — November 2025 | News from the cinEXmedia partnership Launch of two new digital books, organisation of our second international student conference and the arrival of new co-researchers: here is an overview of our updates and our upcoming events. | Photo: courtesy of Catheryne Houde | Catheryne Houde | Accessibility in cinema Columnist, lecturer, and inclusivity consultant Catheryne Houde has been collaborating with cinEXmedia for over a year. At the invitation of Santiago Hidalgo, director of the partnership, she recently agreed to take part in his most ambitious project to date with cinEXmedia. This new multi-year program focuses on the connections between cinema and dreams. It will particularly explore the unique ways in which blind and visually impaired individuals dream and engage with cinema. Read her profile by Sophie Leclair-Tremblay here. | Photo: Vivien Gaumand | Erin Gee | Biofeedback and ASMR Recently joining cinEXmedia and now Assistant Professor at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Music, artist-researcher Erin Gee brings together her expertise in emotional biofeedback and ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) to awaken the senses and reactions of audiences during musical performances. Read Sophie Leclair-Tremblay’s profile here, on how her research could be adapted to audiovisual content. | New intersectorial journal | Écrans croisés A new intersectoral digital journal directed by Santiago Hidalgo and Marie-Josée Hébert joins cinEXmedia. Supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Écrans croisés aims to transform research and publishing practices in the digital age by examining our various uses of screens. It will offer an innovative, inclusive, and accessible editorial model based on dialogue between disciplines. Relying on multidisciplinary governance and dissemination across multiple digital channels, Écrans croisés will adopt a hybrid editorial model, combining the continuous publication of individual articles with the release of thematic issues. The first issue is scheduled for 2026, to be available on Érudit, with other forms of digital publication also planned. More details will follow on cinEXmedia’s website and social media. | “Écrans partagés” Collection Two new digital books have recently been published in the Écrans partagés collection, directed by Marie-Odile Demay—scientific coordinator of the Laboratoire CinéMédias—and coordinated by Marni Mariscalchi, publications manager. This collection is part of the publishings of the Laboratoire CinéMédias, a structure designed as an alternative to traditional publishing houses, which allows members of the partnership to publish their work in open-access formats. Edited by Santiago Hidalgo, Samsara de Lois Patiño : une expérience cinématographique au rythme méditatif (Samsara by Lois Patiño: A Meditative Cinematic Experience – in French only) explores slow cinema from a scientific perspective, through the study of the sound and visual aesthetics of the film Samsara (Lois Patiño, 2023) and the unique spectator experience it generates. Developed following a panel with the director at the Festival du nouveau cinéma, in collaboration with the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (2024), this book offers a fresh perspective on the intersections of cinema, sensory perception, and hard sciences. Mémoires de programmateurs d’arts de la scène à la télévision (Stage Arts Programmers’ Memoirs on Television – in French only) is a collection of eight interviews conducted in 2019 with television programming directors from different countries. Edited by Marie-Odile Demay, the book’s main goal is to explore the democratization of the arts through television. It examines the meeting, since the 1950s, between so-called high culture and low culture, to highlight the audiovisual articulations created by their points of contact. | Teaching cinema and science | Photo: courtesy of Caroline Martel | Image taken from the movie Le fantôme de l'opératrice (Caroline Martel, 2006). The director was invited to participate to one the courses seance. | New courses at the Université de Montréal cinEXmedia aims to expand its educational activities at the intersection of cinema and applied sciences in the coming years. A new course offered last summer at the Université de Montréal became the first to align with this vision. Designed as a seminar encouraging discussion, it welcomed each week guest speakers from academic and cultural fields, who addressed a topic of their choice. The themes proposed in this course, created by Santiago Hidalgo, were inspired by cinEXmedia's research areas. They therefore varied according to the speakers—several of whom were co-researchers of the partnership—covering a wide range of subjects such as scientific experiments around editing, audiovisual archives and orphan films, scientific cinema, neurocinema, film therapy, and more. For further details, read this article by Olivier Du Ruisseau. | International student conference | "Studying cinematographic experience" The second edition of its international student colloquium, to be held on November 25, 2025, at the Université de Montréal. Entitled “Étudier l’expérience cinématographique : processus, méthodes et défis’’ (“Studying the Cinematic Experience: Processes, Methods, and Challenges” – in French only), the event aims to analyze cinematic experience from ecological and scientific perspectives. Graduate students are invited to explore the use of archives, audiovisual creations, methodological innovations, theoretical approaches, as well as digital tools. Participation was open internationaly, but limited to graduate and postgraduate students. More details will soon become available on the partnership's website. | Voix et Médias Voix et Médias (link in French only) is a research-creation and knowledge transfer initiative stemming from Geneviève Lamoureux’s doctoral work on the stigmatization and representation of stuttering. It will take multiple forms, the first being a three-day festival co-presented by the partnership, which will be held in Montreal from November 6–8, 2025. More details about this initiative will be shared soon on our website. Vinzenz Hediger nammed director of the Swiss Cinematheque Former critic and cinEXmedia co-researcher Vinzenz Hediger was appointed director of the Swiss Cinematheque last October. He succeeds Frédéric Maire, who retired at the end of September. Born in Switzerland, Vinzenz Hediger has taught at several European and American universities. He has also led major interdisciplinary research projects devoted to cinema and archives. "Latinx and Latinx Canadian Imaginaries on Screen" The international symposium “A Diasporic Gaze: Latinx and Latinx Canadian Imaginaries on Screen”, co-organized by Analays Álvarez Hernández, James Cisneros, Zaira Zarza, and André Gaudreault, co-director of cinEXmedia, will take place at the Université de Montréal from October 1 to 3, 2025. The event will also mark the launch of the screening series “Résonances : le cinéma latinx-canadien à travers ses archives” (“Resonances: Latinx-Canadian Cinema Through Its Archives” – in French only) For more information, consult the conference program (in French only) and the series schedule online. "Research' auditive practices" Rémy Besson, researcher at the Laboratoire CinéMédias, has taken part, from September 24 to 26, 2025, in the conference “Pratiques sonores de la recherche : enregistrement et réalisation, quels renouvellements épistémologiques ?” (“Research Sound Practices: Recording and Production, What Epistemological Renewals?” – in French only), organized at the Université catholique de l’Ouest in Angers, France. He is also a member of the event’s scientific committee, alongside researchers from France, Canada, and Belgium. Nouvelles Vues Journal Nouvelles Vues, the journal co-edited by Thomas Carrier-Lafleur, the partnership’s scientific coordinator, recently released its 25th issue: État des lieux : recherche et enseignement du cinéma québécois aujourd’hui (State of the Field: Research and Teaching of Québec Cinema Today – in French only). In it, he co-authored the introduction with Michèle Garneau, Louis Pelletier, and Julie Ravary-Pilon. The full issue is available on the journal’s website. André Gaudreault at the AFECCAV congress As part of the 13th International Congress of the French Association of Teachers and Researchers in Cinema and Audiovisual (AFFECAV), André Gaudreault delivered a lecture on the relationship between writing and image. He drew parallels between the “early days” of generative AI and cinema. By revisiting his initial theories, he explored the resistance of AI into writing. UdeM News Marie-Odile Demay was recently interviewed by UdeM Nouvelles on the place of Canadian Francophone culture in the North American media ecosystem. Alongside Professor Marta Boni and doctoral students Frédérique Khazoom and Meganne Rodriguez-Caouette, she also co-authored an article in The Conversation (in French only) The authors warn of the risks posed by free, ad-supported online television platforms, which undermine local culture and user data protection. Read Martin Lasalle’s article here (also in French). | Observatoire du cinéma au Québec | Fall program 2025 The 2025 fall program of the Observatoire du cinéma au Québec (OCQ – hyperlink in French only) was launched on Tuesday, September 23, with the screening of Au lendemain de l'odyssée (After the Odyssey, Helen Doyle, 2024 – in French), followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. Throughout the fall, filmmakers and industry professionals will meet with the public at the Université de Montréal. Among them: Sarah Seené, Sophie Goyette, Félix Dufour-Laperrière, and François Létourneau. For more information, consult the full program on the OCQ website (also only in French). Moreover, the OCQ is collaborating with the Laboratoire CinéMédias and the restaurant Robin des Bois, located in Parc La Fontaine in Montreal, to host an on-site screening of C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2005), moderated by Thomas Carrier-Lafleur, on November 12, 2025. Visit the lab’s website for more details. | Photo: courtesy of Cadavre Exquis | A still taken from the movie Phobie d’impulsion (Eric Duvivier, 1963) | Study days On April 25–26, 2025, the Université de Montréal hosted the study days “L’art du cinéma scientifique : Archives, dispositif et spectacle” (“The Art of Scientific Cinema: Archives, Devices, and Spectacle” – in French only). Co-organized by the Laboratoire CinéMédias, Hors champ, cinEXmedia, CRILCQ, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and the University’s Division of Archives and Information Management (DAGI), the event brought together researchers from Quebec and abroad to discuss the potential of scientific cinema for research and creation. Read Sophie Leclair-Tremblay’s report here. | “The Dream Factory” On May 9, 2025, as part of the conference “S’endormir en images” (“Falling Asleep in Images” – in French only), organized by cinEXmedia at the 92nd Acfas Congress, cinEXmedia scientific coordinator Thomas Carrier-Lafleur hosted the panel “L’usine à rêves : conceptualisation et création artistique” (“The Dream Factory: Conceptualization and Artistic Creation”). He welcomed musician Philippe Lambert and animation filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière to discuss the role of dreams in their respective practices. Read Olivier Du Ruisseau’s report here. Research creation media-club cinEXmedia's Student Activities Committee recently launched a new edition of its Media Club (link in french only), this time dedicated to research-creation works by graduate students. Each session features a presentation of a work followed by a discussion with its creator(s). The series was launched on September 17 with presentations by Chedly Boughedir and Merlin Campbell. Future sessions will be announced on our website. | Questions? This newsletter was written by Olivier Du Ruisseau and Léa Tétrault at cinEXmedia. If you would like to include any information in this newsletter, or if you have any questions about the partnership, please write to us at cinexmedia@labocinemedias.ca. | | | | |
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