Modern Times (1936): Movies, Machines, Modernity

Chaplin_Modern_Times

Our film series “M: Movies, Machines, Modernity” winds up on January 17, 2013 (6:00 pm in room 615, Conti-Hochhaus) with our final screening for the semester: Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. The screening is free and open to all, so spread the word to anyone who might be interested in joining us. Feel free also to bring along snacks and refreshments. And for more info about the film series, see here: M: Movies, Machines, Modernity.

M: Movies, Machines, Modernity. A Film Series

This semester the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research at the Leibniz Universität Hannover will again be organizing a series of film screenings. We have decided to show public domain versions of the films so that we can make the screenings free and open to all. (Feel free also to bring along snacks and refreshments.)

The topic this semester is “M: Movies, Machines, Modernity”:

From the beginning, movies have presented themselves as the preeminent machines of modernity. On the one hand, they have served as a medium for imagining and envisioning modern landscapes and machinic cities. On the other hand, the movies were involved directly in the making of said modernity. The image of a machine is often a movie’s reflexive image of itself, or of that which it imagines itself to be…

Screenings will take place in the rooms of the English Department / American Studies (room 615, Conti-Hochhaus — all screenings begin at 6:00 pm). The schedule, put together this time by Felix Brinker, Ilka Brasch, and Shane Denson, includes the following four films:

November 8, 2012: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

November 29, 2012: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

December 13, 2012: M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (Fritz Lang, 1931)

January 17, 2013: Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)

[UPDATE: See here for a brief video introduction to the topic of our series.]