The therapeutic and transformative power of film
Giant screens in the Quartier des spectacles help brand Montreal as a creative city. | Photo courtesy of N. Shouterndern
Concordia’s graduate research strengths were on full display last week, at the 2015 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference from March 25 to 29.
Thirty students from six departments across two faculties presented seminars on a variety of topics ranging from digital gaming to gender and sexuality in film and new media, demonstrating the university's continuing contributions to knowledge in these fields.
Here are two examples of workshops led by Concordia PhDs.
Moving-image media in our urban landscapes
The role of large screens in our public spaces is more complicated than simply advertising commercial products in random areas. Zach Melzer — a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies — researches the integration of moving image media into urban landscapes and the social, economic and cultural factors that inform how they are regulated.
Specifically, Melzer is interested in the role that screens play in important public spaces such as Montreal’s Quartier des spectacles and New York’s Times Square. “In areas such as these, screens are used to generate new ideas and investment and are an important aspect of rebranding neighbourhoods and cities,” he explains. "As such, we need to be aware of the kinds of ideas and investments being promoted in order to reveal the strategic ways screens are being employed within urban landscapes."
When it comes to the Quartier des spectacles, screens are an integral part of promoting arts and culture and branding Montreal as a creative city. With the creation of the Quartier des spectacles partnership in 2003, the area acquired its own visual identity and a shared vision, which meant the regulation of the onscreen content as well as an orchestrated dispersal of screens within the expansive area designated as the district.
“The Quartier's partnership sees screens as facilitators between the more traditional theatrical arts and the more contemporary new media arts,” says Melzer. “In an attempt to be symbiotic with the theatrical venues in the district and to promote both local and international artists, the partnership utilizes the screens as pulsating nodes strategically positioned in various sites throughout the district.”
As for New York’s famed Times Square — its remarkable transformation over the last 25 years from seedy hotbed — infested with crime and porn houses — to family friendly gathering place has been a balancing act between keeping certain links to the past and redefining the neighbourhood.
“New York City wanted to remove things like strip clubs but maintain the glitzier elements of Broadway — hence the continued onslaught of commercial signage,” says Melzer. “The comparatively cluttered positioning of screens in this area is the result of legal attempts to maintain the area’s traditional character with a new white collar sensibility.”
Film was used during World War II as a way of promoting and furthering the psychiatric discipline among military doctors and higher ranking officials. | Image courtesy of Kaia Scott
The confluence of film and psychiatry during WWII
Throughout the Second World War, the US military used film technologies at all levels of their operations – from intelligence and communications to mapping strategies and training purposes.
The ubiquitous use of this medium during the war led Kaia Scott – a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies – to investigate how film was being used to further military psychiatry.
“What’s fascinating is that both film and psychiatry went through huge booms after the war due to the investment made in these fields by the military during the war,” Scott explains. “My research is interested in how and why the two fields came together.”
By poring over military communiqués and old medical journals Scott found that film was used during this time as a means of promoting the psychiatric discipline to military doctors and higher-ranking officials, and as a tool for therapeutic practice on soldiers.
To Scott, her research into this area also speaks to what it means to watch film. “With soldiers' trauma, the military was faced with something messy and tried to systemize the cure through a form of media.”
Read more about the 2015 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference.