Liverpool Screen School - Events

THE LIVERPOOL FILM SEMINAR  2010-11

The Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool and the Department of Film Studies at Liverpool John Moores University are delighted to announce the inaugural session of the Liverpool Film Seminar with 

“Understanding David Lynch's Inland Empire”

Dr Warren Buckland, Oxford Brookes University

In his review of David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006), Michael Atkinson wrote that “the surest way to find disappointment in Lynch’s Byzantine, exhaustive howl is to hunt for codes and readings” (Sight and Sound, April 2007, p. 69), which points to the limitations of film analysis in fixing the meaning of the unpredictable films of David Lynch.

In his presentation, Warren will not try to explain what the film means, for this activity is reductionist and takes something away from the film. Like Raymond Bellour in his later textual analyses (such as his essay called “The Film We Accompany”), he will “accompany the film as it unfolds,” reading “from the film” rather than reading “into it.”

Warren Buckland is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University. He has seven books to his name: Film Theory & Contemporary Hollywood Movies (2009); Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema (2009); Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (2006); Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (2002) (with Thomas Elsaesser); The Cognitive Semiotics of Film (2000); the best-selling Teach Yourself Film Studies (1998; third edition, 2008); and The Film Spectator (1995). He also edits the journal the New Review of Film and Television Studies for Routledge while, currently, he is working on the monograph Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions (Routledge, 2012) and co-authoring (with Edward Branigan) the Encyclopedia of Film Theory (Routledge, forthcoming).


 
The seminar will start at 5:30pm in Rendall Building, Lecture Theatre 9, The University of Liverpool