A Cambridge first in film

In a Cambridge first, a film historian will give the annual Slade Lecture series. The free art lecture series begins today, Tuesday 24 January, and is open to the public.

Ian Christie FBA, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, will survey ideas about film as ‘the art of the future’ from the 19th century to the present under the general title ‘The Cinema has not yet been invented’.

Christie does not start from the assumption that cinema was or is ‘art’. Few of its pioneers thought of it in these terms, and many argued that something mechanical could never be considered artistic. Later, cinema’s popularity seemed threatening to both traditionalists and modernists, even as distinctive schools of film art emerged around the world.

Today, as we look back at the era of cinema from a digital present, many of the same arguments are being replayed around the new technology. Christie therefore feels it is timely to reconsider what the pioneers of moving pictures thought they were creating. He asks during the lecture series: “Did it live up to expectations – or was its eventual triumph as cinema an embarrassment? Did film become the enemy of art in the 20th century – or a new means of engaging with modernity? And does digitality define a new era – one that may see the original promise of cinema finally achieved?”

The eight week lecture series will be held every Tuesday at 5.00 pm in Mill Lane Lecture Rooms beginning today, 24 January.

Apart from the novelty of moving-image illustration, Christie’s series will be accompanied by a programme of related screenings at the Arts Picturehouse cinema in Cambridge Wednesdays at 1.00 following the Tuesday lecture.