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EA 185 - Cinema and Audiovisual Studies Research Institute

Address :
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
MAISON DE LA RECHERCHE
Bureau A113
4, rue des Irlandais
75005 PARIS
Email :
ircav@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
on Internet :
http://www.univ-paris3.fr/ircav

Organization


Founded in 1988, the IRCAV is currently home to 9 full professors, 7 emeritus professors, 16 lecturers, 2 honorary lecturers and 3 associate lecturers. As of January 1, 2020, the center also includes 2 temporary lecturers (ATER), approximately 50 recent PhD holders and about 60 associate researchers who hold positions at other institutions. A total of over 50 graduate studients [PDF - 360 Ko] are pursuing a PhD at the institute.

IRCAV is a founding member of the LabEx ICCA, a laboratory for the study of cultural industries and artistic creation. As of January 1, 2024, the laboratory is involved in one research program funded by the ANR, the French national research agency.

There are four centers of interest between which research programs are developped.
 
  • Aesthetics of cinema, audiovisual, and the image

Research on the aesthetics of the image in general and of cinema in particular, with an array of objects studied: narrative and documentary forms, experimental cinema and museum installations, documentaries, auteur and popular cinema, music videos. Questions of film analysis are paramount in the center's studies. Issues related to theories of the visual, of space and geoaesthetics, the “documentary turn in art”, film form, actors' performance, gestures, postures, and choreographies, relationships between music and cinema, image and sound.
 
  • History and cinema/Film and audiovisual history

Research on the complex relationships between cinema, audiovisual media, and history. In film history: silent cinema and other periods; genetic studies of films; non-film archives; television history. In cinema and history: the audiovisual (and digital) writing of history; cinema and politics; uses of archives and individual accounts; docufictions. The Theaters of Memory research program links the poetics of cinematic works, the construction of a collective imagination and the relationships between reproducible images and memory, technology and the archive.

  • Film and audiovisual economics, sociology, and law

Research on the economic, social, and institution dimensions of cinema and audiovisual activities. Special attention is given to actors’ strategies and the corresponding industry dynamics. Studies focus especially on the cinema-market relationship, film distribution and theater operations, as well as the project management dimension of film production and directing. Economics of the film industry; cinema and public policy; film production and financing; economic and institutional history of French cinema; audiences and markets; promotion, publicity, and marketing; cinema, television, and communications industries; cinema and audiovisual professions; participative practices; cinema, internet, and mobile phones; creative territories.

  • Cultural studies and cinema/audiovisual pragmatics

Research conducted within a variety of disciplinary approaches, converging around the analysis of cinema, television and other audiovisual productions as social phenomena that determine forms representation and uses. The pragmatics of cinema and audiovisual media are brought into dialog with a broad conception of cultural studies (cultural anthropology, cultural history, cultural mediation, cultural studies, gender studies, post-colonial studies, etc.) as well as with other approaches (theories of public space, sociology of innovation, bio-cultural approaches, media education). Situated aspect of film and audiovisual media from the point of view of reception and interpretation. Analysis of objects seen as having little cultural value (popular cinema, television, games...), new media (mobile, webdocumentaries), and audience practices (fans) and discourses.

Axe(s) of research


The research developed within the IRCAV covers the entire field of cinema and audiovisual media studies: from early silent cinema to digital productions, from fiction films to documentaries, from family films to experimental cinema, from television to video, from photography to mobiles phones, from advertising to works created for museums and art galleries. These studies fall within multiple academic disciplines, including aethetics, history, economics, sociology, law, anthropology, cultural studies, semiology, and communications. 


Research themes

Cinema and image aesthetics. Film art. Cinema and new technologies. Cinema and contemporary art. Film history. Cinema and history. Early silent cinema. Cinema from 1908 to 1919. The New Wave. Multiple versions. Economics of the film industry. Actor's strategies and industry dynamics. Professions of the film industry. Audiences and markets. Economic and institution history of cinema. Cinema, television and communications industries. History of professions, techniques, and intermediality. Mobiles phones and artistic creation. Documentaries and webdocumentaries. Television and sporting events. Television and popular culture. Mass art and popular cinema. World cinema and television (West Africa, Brazil, India, former Soviet bloc). Films genres and cultural transfer. Family films and experimental cinema. Modes of reception and production of meaning. Research on teaching and cinema mediation, media education. Film and cultural representations. Films and the construction of a collective imagination.


Research programs

  • Projects IRCAV / LABEX ICCA - Cultural Industries and Artistic Creation
  • ANR - CINE08-19 (2018-2022)
  • ANR - CLUSTER93 (2016-2019)
  • ANR - CINEPOP50 (2012-2015)

  • Cinématographic utopias (2023-)
  • The Industrialisation of the Audiovisual Sector in Turkey between 2000 and 2020 (2021-)
  • Filming the Gulag (2020-)
  • Producing the Post-National Popular. The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series (2019-)
  • "Collimateur". 50 years of aesthetic film analysis (2019-)
  • Exotismes en champ-contrechamp. Creation, Reception and Circulation of Figures of Otherness in Fiction Cinema (IRCAV and CCJ-EHESS, 2018-)
  • The Sites of the Virtual (2018-)
  • Film and Literature International Colloquium Series (2017-)
  • Film Exhibition at French Cultural Centers and Alliances françaises Around the World (2017-)
  • Image Education 2.1. Digital Uses, Cinemas, Practices of Teenagers, Mediation: Convergences to be invented (2017-)
  • History, Economics, Sociology of African and Middle-Eastern Cinemas (2016-)
  • Deceptive Arts: Machines, Magic, Media (2015-2018)
  • Cinephilias, Seriphilias 2.0 (2015-)
  • Platform 14: A Family in the Great War (2012-)
  • Mobile Phones and Creation (2012-)
  • French Movies Theaters and their Operators (1960-2015) (2011-2019)


Research seminars

  • CREAViS (Research Center on the Aesthetics of Visual and Sound Arts)
  • Genre Cinemas: Forms, Uses, Labels
  • Cinema, audiovisuel media and innovations
  • Roger Odin Chair (doctoral seminar)
  • Usage of Interpretation, Interpretation of Usage (doctoral seminar)
  • Contained Freedom(s): History and Current Events
  • Materials and Sensitive Regimes of Digital Virtuals
  • Amateur Audiovisual Practices
  • Regimes of Historicity in Cinema from 1960 to the Present: Crises of Time, Traces, (Re)construction
  • Theaters of Memory
  • CINE0819
  • IRCAV PhD Candidates' Seminar: French Cinema


The IRCAV's Academic Journal

Théorème brings together the research conducted within the IRCAV. This journal aims to publish and circulate original and ambitious academic work on film and audiovisual media. 36 issues publishes as of December 1, 2023.


The IRCAV's Production

Publications, conferences, development from January 2012 to June 2017 [PDF - 3 Mo] (2018 evaluation by the HCERES - French national research evaluation council). 


Academic activities


Conferences

1. Conferences organized by the IRCAV in 2023-2024
(see also below: 2. Conferences co-organized by the IRCAV since 2022)

  • "Cinema has not begun". Utopias of the art of cinema, 15 March 2024, Paris
  • In the company of Victor Burgin, 9 December 2023, Paris
  • Unequal representations on screen, 1-2 December 2023, Paris
  • Platforms and uses, cinema, television, video games and digital creation, 2-3 November 2023, Montreal
  • Early cinema through the prism of the avant-garde : aesthetic, theoretical and historiographic considerations, 18-19 October 2023, Paris
  • Creations in wartime exile, 28-29 April, 2023, Paris
  • History in the present - place(s) with no home? Est-ethics and politics of moving images, 6-8 April, 2023, Paris
  • All about ecoproduction: from management to stories, 26 January, 2023, Paris

2. Conferences co-organized by the IRCAV in 2023-2024

  • Photography through the prism of the photographer's craft, from the mid-19th century to the turn of the 20th century, 29 March 2024, Paris
  • Matters and Regimes of the sensible in the Digital Arts: Workshop Creation of an International Research Network, 2 March 2024, Paris
  • The challenges of transnational filming: executive production and production management, 24 November 2023, Cannes
  • Black boxes, white screens: cinema and archives of Latin American dictatorships, 17 April 2023, Montpellier - 8-9 June 2023, Paris
  • New documentary series in perspective: historical, aesthetic and economic approaches, 11 April 2023, Paris
  • Contemporary Epistemologies of Images : Films, Graphs and Topographies, 6-8 April 2023, Duke University
  • Issues in transnational filming: executive production and production management, 23 March 2023, Nice

Previous activities (before 2023)
 

Publications

 
On average, IRCAV members publish over 20 books each year. The following list includes titles that represent the variety of research conducted at the institute. 

  • Mary Harrod and Raphaëlle Moine (dir.), Is it French? Popular Postnational Screen Fiction from France, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
  • Emmanuel Siety, Le montage simultané. Vies d'une forme, Rouge profond, 2024.
  • Carole Aurouet, Béatrice de Pastre, Laurent Véray (dir.), Revoir le cinéma muet en France (1908-1919), éditions du Sonneur, 2023.
  • Laurent Jullier, Guillaume Soulez (dir.), Usages de l’interprétation, interprétations de l’usage. Cinéma, télévision, bande dessinée, Théorème, n° 36, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2023.
  • Sébastien Layerle, Valérie Vignaux (dir.), Cinéma, marxisme, matérialisme. Pour une critique du cinéma, éditions Mimésis, 2023.
  • Laurent Véray, Laurent Mannoni (dir.), Demandez le programme ! Une histoire du cinéma (1894-1930), Creaphis éditions, 2023.
  • Jacques Aumont, Solaris 1972. Voyage au bout de soi-même, 202 éditions, 2023.
  • Mélanie Boissonneau, Gaspard Delon, Quentin Mazel, Thomas Pillard (dir.), John Carpenter : au-delà de l’horreur, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2023.
  • Sébastien Roffat, Sylvie Saerens, Pascal Vimenet (dir.), Émile Reynaud. Nouveaux regards, Paris, L'Harmattan, "Cinémas d'animations", 2023.
  • Mélanie Boissonneau, Gilles Menegaldo, Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris (dir.), Le Studio Hammer : laboratoire de l'horreur moderne ?, Le Visage vert, 2023.
  • Giusy Pisano et Caroline Champetier (dir.), La Fabrique de l'image au cinéma, Éditions de l'Oeil, 2023.
  • Myriam Fouillet (dir.), HMC – Habillage, Maquillage, Coiffure, Création Collective au Cinéma, n° 6, revue en ligne, 2023
  • Gérard Leblanc, Le film en devenir, interactions, transformations, Créaphis, 2023
  • Teresa Castro, Térésa Faucon, Dario Marchiori, Emmanuel Siety (dir.), La figure et le fond au cinéma. Une esthétique des relations, Théorème, n° 35, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2023

Previous publications (before 2022)

Partnership


The IRCAV maintains partnerships with numerous institutions outside France, including the university of Campinas and Sao Paulo and the Federal Universityof Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; the universities of Iowa, Chicago, and New York University (NYU) in the United States; the University of Montreal in Canada; the University of London in the United Kingdom; Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands; the University of Bremen in Germany; the universities of Bologna, Udine, Milan, and Pisa in Italy; Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon; and the Art Institute at the University of Jakarta, Indonesia.

Two IRCAV PhD candidates currently have contracts funded through partnerships with Lobster Films and Gaumont.

Date of update March 6, 2024

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