Senior Research Seminar: Dr Lotte Hoek (University of Edinburgh)

Set within cinephile circles in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this paper explores the image work that accompanies modes of film appreciation. Driven by a desire to think cinephilia anthropologically, I focus on the work that is involved in watching and appreciating ‘difficult’ films and the types of results this is thought to have. Through an ethnographic engagement with the film society movement in Bangladesh, I focus on how film appreciation is learnt and understood as a key practice for so-called film activists. Emphasising their category of cinematic praxis, I show that the training of perception that is at the heart of film appreciation generates modes of viewing that are balanced on making the medium both appear and disappear simultaneously.