Prof. Grant Wiedenfeld joined the Cinema Studies Institute this year. In 2025/26, he is teaching CIN201Y1 - Film Cultures I, CIN460H1F - Beauty of the Cut, and CIN320H1S - Sports Films. We asked him to tell us a bit about himself.
What is your background in cinema? What are your areas of specialization, and what drew you to those areas?
I was a typical moviegoer until I discovered experimental film as a student in Boulder, Colorado, which was a hotbed for hand-made 16mm film in particular. I continued to make films—the best one screened in the experimental section of the London Film Festival—but by the time I completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Milwaukee, I was ready to trade celluloid, optical printer, and darkroom for pen, book, and library.
My interest in early silent film stems from that background as well as from another interest: nineteenth-century French literature. Two of my published essays study D.W. Griffith, first in the context of the Progressive Era's strange political orientations, and then to decipher what contribution his films did make to the development of storytelling technique, against the pompous myth that he invented everything.
Meanwhile, my love/hate relationship with sports led me to write a book on Hollywood Sports Movies that does some cultural history of the late twentieth century while wrestling with the question of the political effects that popular culture has on civic life. I was never a star athlete but always a fan, so part of my motivation was confronting my upbringing in the heartland, as it is called.
What are the last three films you saw that were remarkable? Why?
Diane Kitchen's Wot the Ancient Sod is an exquisite little silent film composed entirely of close-ups of leaves, with a few pine needles sprinkled in. I screened it for my seminar, Beauty of the Cut, in part because it exemplifies the minimal elements of cinema: picture, motion, and editing. More than that, it is a feast for the eyes, especially seeing it on 16mm in Innis Town Hall, and some kind of ether that my esprit inhales.
I'm also still thinking about this early Alice Guy film, Les Résultats du féminisme, that I showed in CIN201Y1 - Film Cultures I: Art & Industry. The joke is that turn-of-the-twentieth-century gender roles are reversed, with men pushing the strollers and sewing hats while women smoke cigars at the club. But the joke goes on for so long that the humor wore off and everything seemed normal as can be, to me. Who knows what Guy meant by it, but such deep play with gender was doing something significant.
Gariné Torossian's Girl from Moush was a film I read about in Stephen Broomer and Michael Zryd's book on experimental film in Canada, and that I was delighted to see on video at Media Commons. She does a hand-made technique of gluing 8mm frames onto 16mm, on top of found footage and a complex soundscape that weaves Armenian music with the far-off voice of an ex-pat talking about the persistence of heritage. I'm eager to see it again in seminar.
What films are you looking forward to seeing in the future?
A few new faculty that I have met from other departments told me about a couple films they saw at TIFF. Motor City apparently has very minimal dialogue, which interests me as a silent-film lover. What would it mean to tell a story visually and sonically in movies today? I'm also curious because I deeply admire the films about Detroit that Brent Coughenour, Bill Brown, and others have made. Maybe Motor City is an action flick that has nothing in common with the poetic and documentarian sensibilities of those independent artists, but I want to see for myself.
I also heard that Eleanor the Great was a strong directorial debut from Scarlett Johansson. When I saw Marriage Story I did get the impression that she had a strong creative input, so that would point to her move behind the camera. To be honest, I have not seen anything off campus lately because I spend all my time with a toddler, so please tell me about what you're seeing at TIFF and elsewhere for when I plan an elusive movie night.