Writing Images

Cinematic Humanities

The cinematic humanities employs the practices and modes of cinema, even as cinema itself continues to expand into what has been dubbed “the post-cinematic.” Understood in this context, the cinematic humanities includes examples of critical visual work that integrate space, time and the methods of design not simply to conjure interesting experiences, but instead to produce new ways of knowing. The works created in this arena constitute a form of critical making that reframes the fundamental acts of the humanities through cinematic tools and allows us to reconsider our ability to re-search, re-frame, re-edit, re-contextualize and re-write.

Looking to the future, the cinematic humanities invites us to imagine critical practices that are immersive, embodied, gestural and virtual, and to engage in acts that integrate thinking, writing, coding and designing, and to step into the making of moving images which continue to function as the dominant feature of the global condition. The move toward video-based scholarly work is but one step in a larger context of critical making; the models suggested by filmmakers and video artists engendered by the cinematic humanities, however, offer an instructive toolbox for others interested in this practice.

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