13th Annual M-agination Film Festival
Wednesday, April 9
7:00 PM
Michigan Theater Main Auditorium
Email m-aginfo@umich.edu for more information or visit the M-Agination Facebook site.
The Charms of the Magic Circle:
Queer Subjects, Queer Theory, and Game Studies
Thursday, April 10
4:00 PM
North Quad Space 2435
Co-organized by SAC Ph.D. student Dimitri Pavlounis.
E-mail digitalenvironmentsworkshop@gmail.com for more information.
Rewind This!
Film Screening and Q&A
Thursday, April 10
7:00 PM
Modern Languages Building Lecture Room 2
Join SAC Assistant Professor Dan Herbert for the Michigan film screening of Rewind This! with a Q&A (via video conference) with director Josh Johnson, producer Carolee Mitchell, and cinematographer and editor Christopher Palmer.
Adventures in Videoland: The Fun and Trouble of Researching Small-Town Video Stores
Friday, April 11
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Hatcher Graduate Library, Gallery (Room 100)
SAC Assistant Professor Dan Herbert will present material from his book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, which details the impact video rental stores had on movie culture over the last several decades.
Read more here.
Critical Michigan Alliance for Screen Studies (MASS)
Saturday, April 19
9:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Michigan State University
Lansing, Michigan
Critical M.A.S.S. is a consortium of Michigan-based academic institutions with mutual interest in film and media studies research, teaching and special-event programming. The one-day symposium will bring together Michigan-based scholars to present their recent work, including SAC Professor Emeritus Richard Abel and Assistant Professor Dan Herbert.
Professor Emeritus Richard Abel will give a talk about actress Mary Pickford entitled “Daily Talks by Mary Pickford: Who Was That 'Smiley, Golden-Haired Girl'?" Until late 1915, most of the newspaper information and gossip about movie stars had come to fans through interviews, profiles, and brief stories of one sort or another. That was when a unique, long-running column first began to appear. This was “Daily Talks by Mary Pickford,” distributed to dozens of metropolitan and small town newspapers by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. Early full-page ads confided that Pickford would “write as a young girl to other girls and women,” so it was apt that her column found a place on the Women’s or Society pages in most newspapers. Although it was written by, or dictated to, her friend, scriptwriter Frances Marion, Pickford seemed greatly invested in this enterprise, which ensured that, in both image and word, “the most popular girl in the world” was a frequent and “welcome visitor” in millions of households. Abel's aim in this short paper is to tease out Pickford’s interests and attitudes, the stories and advice she chose to share, and, most important, how she constructed an appealing identity within the context of “family”—and suggest the significance of that “family” context.
Assistant Professor Dan Herbert will be presenting a talk entitled "Video Garbage: Contemporary Movies on VHS.” This presentation will look at several companies that are currently releasing movies on VHS as novelty collectors items. Herbert shows how these companies' activities conflate "trash" cinema with a "trashy" video format and, more importantly, how they valorize materiality itself by selling video objects in the era of "intangible media."
Winter Lightworks Film Festival
Friday, April 25 - Saturday, April 26
7:00 PM
Natural Sciences Auditorium
Every fall and winter term, the Film & Video Student Association (FVSA) showcases SAC student productions during this two-day event.
Visit the FVSA YouTube channel for trailers and films from previous years.
Have any upcoming SAC news or events?
Please contact SAC.newsletter@umich.edu by Monday of every week.
