Persistent Images

Abstract

Through a series of detailed case studies, this book explores the continuing resonance of the history of cinema – what this book terms its persistent images – as revealed in the technological and aesthetic expressions of a range of contemporary experimental practices across a changing cinematic apparatus. The emphasis is on the close analysis of recent films from around the globe and the evolving technology used in their creation and where and how we experience these moving images, as this book draws on ideas of media archaeology to reflect on film history and historiography alike. In these textual encounters with a series of contemporary films (Dawson City: Frozen Time, Francofonia, Shirin, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Goodbye to Language, Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, among others) that themselves reflexively foreground and creatively reimagine the past, the book demonstrates how the medium of film can be used in inventive ways to look simultaneously backwards and forwards, encountering and reframing the past in the present, and offering new ways of thinking about film history and contemporary cinema alike. Ultimately, the book argues for a progressive historiography in how we engage film history and conceptions of historical renewal, moving beyond the sense of anxiety and loss that has otherwise accompanied periods of profound technological change.