May 2019, arsenal cinema

Cinepoetics Lecture #10: Gertrud Koch

ADIEU AU LANGAGE, 2014

Paradoxically, with the emergence of silent cinema, early film theorists had to tackle the problem of language in a new way: Is film alingual, prelingual or another language which has blossomed with “the blue flower in the land of technology” (Walter Benjamin)? And where does Godard locate the animal, the dog, which becomes the “spokesman” for his “Goodbye to Language”? The anthropological markings of difference between speaking and non-speaking beings are profoundly important to Edgar Morin’s film theory, as Gertrud Koch (FU Berlin) will demonstrate in her lecture “Language and languages – on the Babylonian confusions in the concept of language in film theory”, as well as to the positions of many others regarding ontological difference, from film to other media. After the lecture, the films ADIEU AU LANGAGE (Jean-Luc Godard, CH/F 2014) and CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch, F 1961) will be screened. The Cinepoetics Lectures are curated by the Free University’s Cinepoetics Center. (er) (20.5.)