Lecture and Conversation
Assembling the Moving Image in a Post-Cinematic World
A lecture presentation by film scholar Ranjani Mazumdar followed by a conversation between artist Pallavi Paul and film scholar Vinzenz Hediger
Pallavi Paul, How Love Moves: Prelude, Gropius Bau (2023) photo: Luca Girardini
How has the moving image been positioned and transformed over the years, both inside and outside the cinema?
In this event, film scholar Ranjani Mazumdar addresses a new language of non-fiction filmmaking practices in the post-cinema context, which circulate at film festivals and as part of exhibition spaces. This non-fiction genre builds on a history of documentary practices on the one hand and experimental techniques on the other to blend into “electronic art objects” commonly referred to as essay films. While reflecting on moving images through this broader conceptual lens, Ranjani Mazumdar will zoom into a selection of the artist and film scholar Pallavi Paul’s earlier and recent video works.
The presentation will be followed by a conversation between film scholar Vinzenz Hediger and artist Pallavi Paul.
Ranjani Mazumdar is Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (2007), guest editor of a special issue of Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies on cinema and techno materiality (2013), and co-editor of A Companion to Indian Cinema (2022). Her current research in-terests include globalisation and film culture, intermedial encounters and the intersection of technology, travel, design and colour in 1960s Bombay Cinema.
Vinzenz Hediger is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Goethe University, Frankfurt and the Director of the Graduiertenkolleg “Configurations of Film.” He is a co-founder of NECS – European Network for Cinema and Media Studies and the founding editor of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (Journal for Media Studies). He is a principal investigator at the research center „Normative Orders“ in Frankfurt. His current research focuses, among other things, on documentary as a form of democratic deliberations and the question of trust in situations of conflict.
Pallavi Paul is a New Delhi and Berlin-based visual artist and film scholar who is the Artist in Residence at the Gropius Bau in 2023. She was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2021/2022. Paul received her PhD in Film Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited at Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin (2022); Colomboscope Festival, Colombo (2021); IFFR, Rotterdam (2020); HKW, Berlin (2020); The Rubin Museum, New York (2019); AV Festival, Newcastle (2018, 2016); SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2019, 2022); Beirut Art Centre, Beirut (2018); Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017); Tate Modern, London (2013).