April NUI Galway Host 2019 Irish Screen Studies Seminar

Renowned film theorist Professor Laura Mulvey to deliver keynote address

Monday, 29 April, 2019: Renowned film theorist Professor Laura Mulvey, Senior Professor of Film Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Dr Denis Condon, NUI Maynooth, will deliver the keynote addresses at the 15^th Irish Screen Studies Seminar. The Seminar will take place at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, NUI Galway from 9-10 May.

The Irish Screen Studies Seminar provides a unique platform for the presentation of new work – research, practice, and research through practice – by scholars and filmmakers from third-level institutions on the island of Ireland, as well as those working on Irish screen-related topics in other universities and colleges worldwide.

Dr Conn Holohan, Lecturer in film at the Huston School and board member of Irish Screen Studies said: “We are delighted to welcome the seminar back to NUI Galway for the first time since 2011. This year will see researchers and practitioners from across Ireland and beyond delivering papers on an exciting range of topics, from contemporary Irish cinema to video activism in Iran. We are particularly excited to welcome our two keynote speakers, Professor Laura Mulvey and Dr Denis Condon.”

Professor Mulvey’s keynote address will explore her use of digital technology to remix Hollywood films of the 1950s and will be followed by a screening of her avant-garde classic Riddles of The Sphinx, which she co-directed with Peter Wollen in 1977. Professor Mulvey is responsible for some of the most influential publications in the field of film studies over the past forty-five years, including her 1975 article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, which remains a foundational text for feminist film theory, and her 2006 book Death 24x a Second, which explored the role new media technologies play in our experience of film. 

Dr Condon’s talk will focus on the moral panic generated by the popular press around the supposedly increased working-class criminality engendered by cinema-going in Ireland in the 1910s. Dr Condon is a Lecturer in film at NUI Maynooth and has published widely on early cinema going in Ireland, including the 2008 book Early Irish Cinema, 1895-1921.

The Huston School of Film & Digital Media is the leading centre for research and teaching in film and digital media in the West of Ireland. The school offers teaching and research programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels (up to PhD), including the recently launched BA in Film & Digital Media and pioneering MA degrees in Film Studies: Theory and Practice, MA in Film Production & Direction, MA in Digital Media, MA in Public Advocacy and Activism, and MA in Sports Journalism and Communication.

The full programme for the Irish Screen Studies Seminar can be found at www.irishscreenstudies.ie. 

Further information on the Huston school is available here: http://www.filmschool.ie/

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