André Gaudreault: The Resilience of “Cinema”

Something strange occurred with respect to the English language around 1912 in the marvelous world of what we call in French the “seventh art”: the importation of the word “cinéma”. What seems strange is that this came about despite the fact that back then, English-language speakers appeared to have no actual need of another word, being able to count on words like movie, film, flick, moving picture, motion picture, motography, photoplay, etc. In this conference, I will try to show how this introduction of the word cinema into the language of Shakespeare and Faulkner is consistent with, not only the resilience of the word “cinema” despite the new context which followed the digital turn, but also with the persistence of the media itself.

Space is limited. Please register and contact cinema.studies@utoronto.ca if you can no longer attend.