The Past that has Not Yet Occurred: Historiography and Science Fiction (Journal Seminar)

MA Seminar, Thursday, 10-14, Spring Semester, 2018-19

Seminar Instructor: Prof. Anat Zanger

Production Coordinator and Assistant Editor: Yael Mazor

Topic of Seminar

The most significant paradox of the cinematic medium, as noted by Christian Metz (1975), is that of its simultaneous presence and absence. In this sense, the conscious and unconscious inscription of time -through historiography and science fiction- have become part and parcel of the medium. Film and television continue to maintain the ontological suspense between fiction and reality and between different layers of temporality (the time of production, time of occurrence and time of viewing). As such, the photographic, cinematic and televisual image have a unique dialectical relationship between ‘here’ and ‘now’ and ‘then’ and ‘there’. This seminar will explore the ways in which film and television signify time in its various and conflicting registers, while also refusing to contain it within the boundaries of classical Hollywood narrative. We shall examine a number of films and series from ontological, medial, narrative and performative perspectives, including: Arrival (Denis Villeneuve), La Jetée (Chris Marker), 2001: Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick), Joan of Arc (Luc Besson), Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais), Liquid Sky (Slava Tsukerman), Frantz (Francois Ozon), Down There (Chantal Akerman), The Singing Detective (Dennis Potter), Phoenix (Christian Petzold).

The course of the seminar:

The first part will focus on establishing a common language: concepts, theories, and significant test cases. Main concepts discussed will include, among others: fact and historical discourse (White, Barthes, Kaes, Ginzburg), the archive and alternative history (Didi-Huberman, Elsaesser), generic probability (Todorov, Neale), the event (Mary Ann Doane), ontological suspense (McHale), excess (Marion), cinema and science fiction (Annette Kuhn, Scott Buckatman). A selection of articles and films (documentary, fiction, television series, video art) will be discussed through the various perspectives. This part of the seminar will serve as a basis for writing and development of the seminar papers/ essays. In the second part of the seminar, we will be working on the theoretical development and written papers in preparation for the oral presentations. The third part of the seminar will consist of frontal presentations and discussions to prepare the chosen subjects from the seminar for the graduate student journal ‘Gahliliot’ (‘Fireflies’).

The final papers will undergo a peer review before being published in the 3^rd volume of the journal.