So far, the study of cinema has been overwhelmingly visual. In this book Robert Robertson presents cinema as an audiovisual medium, based on Eisenstein’s ideas on the montage of music, image and sound. Robertson applies an audiovisual focus to key works by film directors such as Spike Lee, Maya Deren, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Fritz Lang, as well as exploring the audiovisual in avant-garde animation, in landscape in cinema, and in films beyond the European tradition. Recent developments in technology have for the first time enabled practitioners to work extensively with music and sound on an equal level with the visual track, so Robertson also explores the audiovisual creative process in opera, a music/film collaboration, and in his music/films Oserake and The River That Walks.
This illuminating book has relevance for practitioners in any work that involves the audiovisual, especially cinema and its future multiple forms.
Robert Robertson is a composer and filmmaker. He is also the author of Eisenstein on the Audiovisual (I.B. Tauris), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation’s And/Or Award.
Research Presentation, Canterbury Christ Church University, 9/10/13
Very warmly received by Dr Andy Birtwistle, Reader in the Department of Media, Art and Design, and author of Cinesonica - Sounding Film and Video (Manchester University Press, 2010), for a research seminar about the audiovisual imagination in cinema.
It was held in the Powell Building, named after Michael Powell, the famous film director who was born in Canterbury. Consequently there's a lot of interest here about landscape in cinema, so the discussions during the seminar continued in a very interesting and fruitful exchange of ideas afterwards.
The audiovisual system responded very well to the demands of Oserake and the River That Walks, making it one of the best screenings of this work so far.
On the way to the university I enjoyed again (from when I taught at the School of Arts at the University of Kent last year) the main street of Canterbury, heaving as usual with throngs of shoppers, tourists and school parties from all over Europe, clutching their maps of Canterbury and worksheets. I also popped in to the newly renovated Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, the oddly-named local library and museum.
Many thanks to Andy and everyone who made my visit so pleasant and thought-provoking.