FSAC Day 1: Transitions & Translations

Welcome to Transitions & Translations, the annual FSAC Conference which is, this year, hosted at our own Concordia University. Remember to check out the conference schedule, directions, and some fun tips on how to spend your weekend in Montreal by visiting the FSAC page here on Grad/Aperture.

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Day 1 of the conference kicked off with a great introduction to the MA and PhD Film and Moving Image Studies graduate programs at our Open House event. The coffee was brewing from 10am and an array of delicious vegan baked goods, courtesy of our wonderful volunteers Nathan and Teresa, provided fuel for a day of conferencing. The Open House was a great chance for prospective students to check out and ask questions about our graduate programs, which they did with enthusiasm! In addition to two student presentations by PhD candidate Zach Melzer (on public moving screens) and MA student Malory Beazley (on Harry Potter fan fiction), faculty members Kay Dickinson, Marc Steinberg, and Martin Lefebvre presented some of their own research and discussed what classes might be offered in the upcoming year. Program directors Masha Salazkina and Luca Caminati were also on hand to answer questions about our unique and diverse graduate programs.

Open House Graduate Presentations

After a delicious catered lunch, professor Haidee Wasson officially kicked off the conference with her opening remarks: “Fifteen years ago no one could get a PhD in Film Studies in Canada.” But now is a positive and exciting time for Film and Media studies; a time for “shaping emergent paradigms of research.” Shortly after, visiting scholars Malcolm Morton and Thomas Patrick Pringle presented some very interesting findings in our very first panel, “Mapping Digital Geographies.”

Later in the evening, York University professor Michael Zyrd presented a keynote address entitled Projector Performance, Conceptual Art, and Media Literacy in our own screening room, the J.A. de Seve Cinema. The keynote was followed by a special screening, Moving Forward, Looking Back: Remixing the Experimental Film Canon, which was curated by our own PhD candidates Sophie Cook and Beatriz Bartolome Herrera. If you missed the action last night you can catch several of the films, including Marcel Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema (1926), on YouTube:

The first day of the conference came to a close with a great pub night at our local watering hole, Brutopia. Several presenters, volunteers, and students came out for a few pints and to relax after a busy day. Great times! And an exciting first day of the conference.

Follow all the action on Twitter with our #FSACgrad hashtag!

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