1 SYNOPTIQUE An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies Vol. 7, no. 1 Vol. 6, no. 1 Institutionalizing Moving ImageHigh, ArchivalLow and Everything Training: in Between Analyses, Histories, Theories(eds. Isabelle Lefebvre & Philippe Bédard) eds. Philipp Dominik Keidl and ChristianLes aventuriers Gosvig de l’artOlesen moderne (eds. Karine Abadie & Rémy Besson) `` SYNOPTIQUE An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies Guest Editors Philippe Bedard & Isabelle Lefebvre Karine Abadie & Rémy Besson Editors-in-Chief Giuseppe Fidotta Patrick Brian Smith Editorial Collective Patrick Brodie Rebecca Holt Ylenia Olibet Weixian Pan Lola Remy Egor Shmonin Managing Board Philipp Dominik Keidl Sima Kokotovic Dasha Vzorov David Leblanc Timothy Parr Joaquin Serpe Graphic Designer David Leblanc Social Media Manager Dasha Vzorov Treasurer Timothy Parr ISSN: 1715-7641 Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University 1250 Guy St., Montreal Quebec, Canada ©2018 `` Contents SPECIAL ISSUE High, Low and Everything in Between: The Birth and Death of Labels in Film Studies Introduction..............................................................................................................................6 Isabelle Lefebvre & Philippe Bedard Forging an Artifact through Artifice: Manufacturing History in the Digital Age............................10 Chelsey Crawford Humanitarian VR Documentary and Its Cinematic Myths...........................................................19 Sasha Crawford-Holland There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Using Stunts to Sell a Genocide Film............................32 Kristi Kouchakji Devenir Tom Cruise, de l’argentique au numérique.....................................................................45 Sylvain Lavallée Reviews Section Mattias Frey, Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture........................57 Jordan Adler Reassembling the Ruined Archive: A Ludology of Her Story as Archival Practice...........................61 David Leblanc SPECIAL ISSUE Les aventuriers de l’art moderne Introduction............................................................................................................................68 Karine Abadie & Rémy Besson Les aventuriers de l’art moderne, un récit entre histoire de l’art, documentaire et création...........71 Sandrine Hyacinthe L’usage des archives dans Les aventuriers de l’art moderne : la nostalgie du décor.........................86 Nina Barada 4 SYNOPTIQUE | Vol. 7, no. 1 | Double Special Issue Construire une figure de témoin : le personnage de Max Jacob.................................................95 Karine Abadie Les aventuriers de l’art moderne : un pari d’immersion visuelle dans l’histoire de l’art.................104 Fanny Lautissier Donner à voir les usages des archives audiovisuelles : le cas du montage des Aventuriers de l’art moderne................................................................................................................................114 Rémy Besson Jeux d’archives: Images et imaginaire dans Les aventuriers de l’art moderne................................127 Anne Klein Reviews Section Sylvie Lindeperg et Ania Szczepanska (dir.). À qui appartiennent les images ?.............................139 Matthieu Péchenet Tim Ingold, Faire. Anthropologie, archéologie, art et architecture.................................................142 Chloé Hofmann 20 000 Days on Earth (Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard, UK, 2014).......................................................145 Annaëlle Winand Afterword........................................................................................................................................150 Editorial Collective Notes on Contributors....................................................................................................................152 5 HIGH, LOW, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN 6 SYNOPTIQUE | Vol. 7, no. 1 | Double Special Issue Introduction Isabelle Lefebvre & Philippe Bédard Le cinéma est mort. Vive le cinéma! reault and Marion offer an incisive survey of cin- ema’s numerous deaths (they count no less than For as long as film scholars have lamented eight), while emphasizing the many continuities the “death of cinema” at the hands of digital tech- and discontinuities one may find between the cin- nologies (e.g. Cherchi Usai 2001), there have been ema that has been and the cinema that will be. those who contest there was ever a digital revolu- Most notable in their approach to this debate is tion at all. John Belton, in his aptly titled “Digit- their understanding of cinema as a multifaceted al Cinema: A False Revolution,” suggests despite phenomenon, which allows for death and survival being marketed as a revolution akin to those that to occur in harmony. Comparing this digital death shook the foundations of cinema over the last of cinema to one of its most important deaths century (e.g. sound, colour, widescreen projec- (though not its first, and certainly not its only) at tions, etc.): the advent of sound in the 1920s, the authors pro- pose: “Even though it is always a case of hyper- Digital projection as it exists today does not, bole, this obsession with the death of the medium in any way, transform the nature of the mo- is an interesting idea. Cinema will clearly not die, tion-picture experience. Audiences viewing but something about it will die, something within digital projection will not experience the cinema it will die. And because nature abhors a vacuum, differently, as those who heard sound, saw color, the ‘death’ foretold turns out also to be a birth” or experienced widescreen and stereo sound for (Ibid., 32). the first time. (2002, 104) What aspect of what we call “cinema” is Qit exactly that the so-called digital revolution has Focusing here on the experience of moviegoing as killed? Is it the privileged link with reality André it has been affected by digital projection, Belton Bazin (1958a, 15) attributes to cinema on the basis rightfully argues against considering the new tech- of its technical roots as a photographic medium? nology as having instilled the sort of radical or Is it the hallowed experience of cinema-going, fundamental transformations that would warrant characterized by the dark room, the communal the term revolution. As André Gaudreault and experience, the prescribed duration, the combina- Philippe Marion instead argue “one of the ambi- tion of which Raymond Bellour had declared to be guities of the passage to digital media lies precise- the only thing worth being called “cinema” (2012, ly in the fact that this passage affects the stuff 19)? Or is it perhaps the once unique conflation of the film medium itself while at the same time of moving images, sounds, narrative, screen and leaving the look of the cinematic image unchanged” duration, the arrangement of which had been put (2015, 33). Building most of their book upon the into question by experiments in expanded cinema opposing discourses of these two factions, Gaud- long before digital “killed” cinema? One thing Introduction 7 that remains clear in the face of the undeniable nary oppositions in discourses surrounding film transformations cinema has faced over the past and media studies, the organizers of the con- decades: cinema itself is not dead, as such, even ference elaborated the theme “High, Low and if its identity as a technical process, a social event, Everything in Between”. In the schism between an architectural structure, a cultural phenomenon, such oppositions as cinema/media, spectator/ and a conduit of particular aesthetic expressions cinephile/fan, amateur/professional, and local/ has undergone change. global among others, the field of cinema studies If diverse technological developments has been pushed to resituate its interests. With have influenced different aspects of what we our object of study proving more fluid than pre- understand to be cinema, they have also exposed viously thought, we are redefining the boundaries just how multifaceted the term “cinema” can be. of our object. These oppositions, which have ap- Gaudreault and Marion come to the same con- peared, among other reasons, to make sense of a clusion when illustrating that two seemingly con- media landscape in the midst of transformation, tradictory declarations about the state of cinema merit further investigation so that their value and (Peter Greenaway’s “Cinema is dead” and Philippe epistemological reach may be reevaluated. In the Dubois’s “Cinema . is more alive than ever”) articles published in this issue, which stem from are in fact simply referring to different aspects of the reflections undertaken during the three days cinema’s identity (quoted in Gaudreault and Mar- of the FSAC Graduate Student Colloquium, the ion 2015, 1). Such different aspects warrant new objective has been to focus our attention on the ways of discussing cinema, as the authors show study of practices, modes of production, aesthet- when suggesting we think beyond technological ic objects, or modes of thought that are character- or aesthetic mutations and towards epistemologic- ized by their hybridity or intersectionality. The goal al issues: “recent technological transformations, was not only to exceed the above dichotomies and bringing upheaval not only to production practis- showcase the complexity of contemporary media, es but also to the way we watch and think about but also to understand the role of cinema within the medium, are prompting a major rethinking of the “audiovisual