Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Performing Arts History & Criticism

Process Cinema

Handmade Film in the Digital Age

edited by Scott MacKenzie & Janine Marchessault

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Jul 2019
Category
History & Criticism
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773556867
    Publish Date
    Jul 2019
    List Price
    $150.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773556874
    Publish Date
    Jul 2019
    List Price
    $45.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773558106
    Publish Date
    Jul 2019
    List Price
    $39.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Handmade films stretch back to cinema's beginnings, yet until now their rich history has been neglected. Process Cinema is the first book to trace the development of handmade and hand-processed film in its historical and contemporary contexts, and from a global perspective. Mapping the genealogy of handmade film, and uncovering confluences, influences, and interstices between various international movements, sites, and practices, Process Cinema positions the resurgence of handmade and process cinema as a counter-practice to the rise of digital filmmaking. This volume brings together a range of renowned academics and artists to examine contemporary artisanal films, DIY labs, and filmmakers typically left out of the avant-garde canon, addressing the convergence between the analog and the digital in contemporary process cinema. Contributors investigate the history of process cinema – unscripted, improvisatory manipulation of the physicality of film – with chapters on pioneering filmmakers such as Len Lye and Marie Menken, while others discuss an international array of collectives devoted to processing films in artist-run labs from South Korea to Finland, Australia to Austria, and Greenland to Morocco, along with historical and contemporary practices in Canada and the United States. Addressing the turn to a new, sustainable creative ecology that is central to handmade films in the twenty-first century, and that defines today's reinvigorated film cultures, Process Cinema features some of the most beautiful handcrafted films and the most forward-thinking filmmakers within a global context.

About the authors

Scott MacKenzie is associate professor of film and media at Queen's University.

Scott MacKenzie's profile page

Janine Marchessault is a professor in Cinema and Media Arts at York University and holds a York Research Chair in Media Art and Social Engagement. Her research engages with the history of large-screen media (from multiscreen to IMAX to media as architecture and VR); diverse models of public art, festivals, and site-specific curation; 21st century moving-image archives; and notions of collective memory/history.

Janine Marchessault's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Process Cinema is rich with provocative essays on critically overlooked artists.” LA Review of Books

"The combination of different forms of writing makes this collection unique and dynamic, providing readers with a diverse range of perspectives on handmade film. Spanning historical, theoretical, and creative registers, Process Cinema contributes substantially to conversations on experimental film and to cinema studies generally." Josh Guilford, Amherst College

Other titles by

Other titles by