Film and Video Intermediality: The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images

Product Description

In Film and Video Intermediality, Janna Houwen innovatively rewrites the concept of medium specificity in order to answer the questions “what is meant by video?” and “what is meant by film?” How are these two media (to be) understood? How can film and video be defined as distinct, specific media? In this era of mixed moving media, it is vital to ask these questions precisely and especially on the media of video and film. Mapping the specificity of film and video is indispensable in analyzing and understanding the many contemporary intermedial objects in which film and video are mixed or combined.

Review

An inventive reimagining of and incisive look into the materialism of video, what makes it tick but remain elusive both in and out of the filmic register. This volume expands the boundaries of a medium to include the haptic, the sensual and the state of being post-media; the very real question of how reality is structured and envisioned and what might constitute flow, power and surveillance in the 21st century.

What does video do when rewound? How does it imprint the boundaries of surveillance on everyday activities? How is video embedded in films' legacy and how are screens integrated into the everyday environment(s)? Can video be embodied or embody itself and if so what are its aftereffects and its future tense? These are some of the tendrils followed deftly in Film and Video Intermediality.

This volume is a rich theoretical engagement with both the legacy of video's embedded-ness in everyday life as well as a searching interrogation of medium specificity as Modernist touchstone. Is video a thing born of re-use, morphing and a questioning of the reality effect? Or is it born of an upending of the indexical relationship between image and viewer, a relationship often taken for truth. This volume is a brisk investigation of a medium and a media inculcated into the fabric of the everyday in surprising, insidious and illuminating ways.
Erika Suderburg, Professor, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside, USA

This excellent book brilliantly examines complex arguments about media and their impact. As we transit from conventional forms of expression to multi-modal media, Janna Houwen expertly studies the shift in our understanding of meaning and messages and their role in contemporary society.
Ron Burnett Order of Canada, Order of BC, Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres, RCA, President and Vice-Chancellor, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Canada

About the Author

Janna Houwen is an Assistant Professor at the department of Film and Literary studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.