Our department organized its annual international scientific conference: CINEMA OF SENSATIONS, May 25-27, 2012
03/06/2012 08:22 PM

The conference started in 1998, with the participation of students interested in the study of film at the Hungarian Language and Literature Department, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Its last eight editions were organized under the auspices of the Cinematography, Photography, Media Department at Sapientia University, with more and more international visibility as years went by.

The theme of the cinema of sensations suggested an alternative to opinions which vote for media convergence as a result of digitization, and it highlighted spaces of encounters and types of experiences emerging thanks to media being transformed. The call for papers referred to such concepts and buzzwords as the cinema of the body and haptic images (Laura U. Marks), the logic of perception (Gilles Deleuze), the division of the perceptible (Jacques Ranciere) and perceptual science (Paul Stoller), and these turned out to be truly fascinating.

Laura U. Marks, who established connections between perception and cultural background in her books (such as The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, 2000; Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, 2002; Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, 2010) was an invited speaker of the conference, with a highly acclaimed speech.

Laura Marks (Dorel Găină fotója)

The opening presentation of the conference belonged to Yvonne Spielmann, who is an internationally renowned researcher of intermedial phenomena, video aesthetics and new media art. Dr. Spielmann is head of the department of new media at the University of West of Scotland, and her best known works are: Intermedialität: Das System Peter Greenaway, 1998; Video: The Reflexive Medium, 2010; Hybridkultur, 2010.

Yvonne Spielmann (Pethő Ágnes fotója)

Also thanks to our prestigious invited speakers the usually two-day conference lasted for three days, with around 110 participant presenters in total, who came from diverse corners of the world (Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland, Brazil, Turkey, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, New Zealand, the United States of America).

Themes of the conference presentations touched upon the perception of visual media (intermediality, intersensuality and interactivity), "the cinema of attractions" (from haptic images to 3D-cinema), perception of culture, ethnicity and gender in cinema, as well as film history through the senses (paradigms of films building upon perception and sentiments).

The event was a successful one, which mirrors the media theoretical background of the Cinematography, Photography, Media Department at Sapientia University, but also signals that our conference grew into an international research forum.

Photographs made during the conference may be accessed here. (The photographs were made by Csaba Balázs, Ferenc Boné, Dorel Gaina, Loránd Lőrincz, Lajos Major, Ferenc Molnár, Ágnes Pethő, Barna Szász, Előd Székely, Orsolya Tóth, Tibor Veiszenbacher.)

Presentations of the conference will be included in the international scientific journal of our department, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Journal of Film and Media Studies, and hopefully a volume will be also published.

The conference program also included a somewhat irregular photo exhibition: our students presented their photographs on the second day of the conference in the form of postcards that could be taken with you, entitled "Real images form an imagined movie".

The relevance of the conference is signaled by the reports published:

Margitházi Beja: The perceiving body on display (in Hungarian),

Zsuzsa Tóháti: Conference report (in Hungarian).

An English-language report is following in Scope.