French Studies Program, Film and Electronic Arts Program, Division of Languages and Literature, and Center for Moving Image Arts Present

'The Glitter of Putrescence': Cinema between Poetry and Horror

How germane and applicable is poetry as both idiom and practice to such an ostensibly unrelated, if not diametrically opposed filmic genre as horror (or the fantastic)? Through the dual mediation of E.A. Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” and Shakespeare’s Ophelia, the purpose of this talk is to bring out and elucidate secret affinities or conceptual commonalities between the two realms concerned within a type of cinema that deliberately subverts narrativity. Specific examples across periods and countries will be examined (C. Laughton, J. Tourneur, H. Harvey, G. Franju, M. Bava, D. Argento, R. Vadim).
 
Philippe C. Met is Professor of French and Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal French Forum. He is the author of Formules de la poésie (1999) and La lettre tue. Spectre(s) de l'écrit fantastique (2008), and co-editor of Screening the Paris Suburbs (2017). He is currently editing a collected volume devoted to French filmmaker Louis Malle, to be published next year.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center

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