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Canceled—Through a Glass Darkly: Cinema Looks at Itself

Special Events: Spring 2020

  • Saturday, May 9, 2020
  • 2:30 p.m.
  • East Building Auditorium
  • In-person

As a precautionary measure in light of COVID-19, the Gallery has canceled this event. We hope to welcome you to the Gallery soon and thank you for your support.

Dimitrios Latsis, speaker

How cinema has typically regarded itself is an interesting and often overlooked facet in the history of film. From the start, films about film were a common convention, as the novelty of the form, the marvels of technology, and the mysteries inside the industry all had their allure. Dimitrios Latsis screens excerpts from a variety of silent films, tracing the technological and popular history of cinema as a medium. Produced within and beyond the major Hollywood studios and ranging from the quasi-scholarly to the unabashedly promotional, films such as J. Stuart Blackton's March of the Movies (1930), Otto Nelson and Terry Ramsaye's Thirty Years of Motion Pictures (1925), and Paramount's The Evolution of the Picture Play (1919) argued for the cultural and scientific legitimacy of the medium. These short films also shed light on a variety of genres that still flourish today — the educational documentary, for example: a self-reflexive hybrid of advertisement, lecture, and behind-thescenes tour that is older than many might assume. Dimitrios Latsis teaches at the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University. (Approximately 100 minutes)