2025 World Picture Conference
Dates:7-8 November, 2025
Locations:University of Amsterdam
Friday 7 November, 2025
9:30-11:00 - Loss
Chirurgische
Eugenie Brinkema (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Uncover, dogs, and lap
Brian Price (University of Toronto)
Lost (in Black and White): On Balthus’ Mitsou
Thomas Quist (University of Toronto)
The Echo of the Cine-Subject
11:10–12:30 Place
Chirurgische
Domietta Torlasco (Northwestern University)
Queer Pleasure in the Time of (Italian) Cinema (video)
Sergio Rigoletto (University of Groningen)
Crossings: Screen Art Viewership and the Encounter with the Queer Refugee
Scott Krzych (Colorado College)
Politics of Place in the Unaffordable City: On Recent New York Indie Cinema
Keston Sutherland (University of Sussex)
Directing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
11:10–12:30 Perspective
Ruyszaal
Rhys Jones (University of Amsterdam)
Beautiful Symmetries: On Distance and Proximity in Homo Sapiens (2016)
Valerie Werder (Harvard University)
Be as if my body for me: police bodycam footage and directional viscerality
Ry Montgomery (University of Cambridge)
Against Direction: (In)visibility and Refusal in bruce’s vos papiers (2013)
14:00–15:20 Excessive
Chirurgische
Luka Arsenjuk (University of Maryland)
On Not Expecting (Too Much)
Kalling Heck (Louisiana State University)
Polemics Forever
Jeff Scheible (King’s College London)
Back to the Forward Slash
14:00–15:20 History
Ruyszaal
Scott Durham (Northwestern University)
The Direction of History and The Uses of Ontology: Temporality and Aesthetic Politics in Marker and Godard
Dillan Newman (University of Toronto)
Blind Directions: Infinite Responsibility at the “End of History”
Oliver Dixon (University of Cambridge)
Directions in Meaning-Production: The theory of ‘integrated practice’, 1970s British independent cinema and political modernism.
15:30–16:50 - Directionless
Chirurgische
Damon Ross Young (University of California, Berkeley)
Directionless: Queer Cinema and the Nothing
Jakob Henselmans (University of Amsterdam)
Sex: A Middle Theory
Mynt Marsellus (University of Toronto)
Philosophy for Sinthomosexuals: Aversion, Repair, and Education after Edelman and Cavell
15:30–16:50 Time
Ruyszaal
Caitlin Doyle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Time’s Directions: Temporal Intelligibility in Reservation Dogs
Paul Flaig (University of St Andrews)
Repeat Performances: Towards a Genealogy of the Time-Loop
Ali Suriel Melchor (University of Cambridge)
Digging up the past: fascism, landscape and Iberian cinema in the 1970s
17:00–18:20 Technique
Chirurgische
Veronica Fitzpatrick (Brown University)
I’ve Seen Enough: Twisters’ Absent Kiss
Avneet Sharma (University of Toronto)
Shot/Reverse Shot and Pasolini’s Desirous Direction
McNeil Taylor (University of Cambridge)
Directions in the Desert: The Errant Pan in Moses und Aron (1974)
18:30–19:45 Keynote
Chirurgische
Daniel Loick (University of Amsterdam)
20:00 Conference Dinner
Saturday 8 November
10:00–11:20 Reification
Chirurgische
Seb Franklin (King’s College London)
Automation as 3-directional metaphor: labor–machinery–slavery
John David Rhodes (University of Cambridge)
A Theory of the Extra
Mathieu Li-Goyette (University of Amsterdam)
Fast Rights and Curveballs in Early American Comic Strip
10:00–11:20 Light
Ruyszaal
Jixin Jia (University of Toronto)
Unblinking Eyes: Late Tsai Ming-Liang’s Absorptive Shift
Georgina Evans (University of Cambridge)
Directing the gaze through organized light, via Anthony McCall
Jennifer Pranolo (Pace University)
Directing Desire: Helen Marten’s Irreal Dream-Play
11:30-12:50 Provision
Chirurgische
Jean-Thomas Tremblay (York University)
The Meat Problem
Oskar Ban Brejc (University of Amsterdam)
Chewing the Filmstrip: Unusual Directions
Kyle Stevens (Appalachian State University)
Clutching Pearls
Jillian Vasko (University of Toronto) and Sarah Sachar (Northwestern University)
Infinite Meat/Chopper (video)
11:30-12:50 Indirection
Ruyszaal
Conall Cash (St Francis Xavier University)
Aesthetics of the Moment in French Cinema: Orientalism and Non-Directionality in and After the ‘Politique des auteurs’
Jenny Gunn (Georgia State University)
As Art, As Perception: Free-Indirect Assemblage and Olivier Assayas’s Irma Veps
Lawrence Neal Garcia (University of Toronto)
Conceptual Nomadism: On Deleuze’s Wandering Significance
14:20-15:40 Water
Chirurgische
Elizabeth Wijaya (University of Toronto)
Fugitive IndirectionFugitive IndirectioDisoriented Direction: Herzog, Antarctica, and Other-than-Human AgencyFugitive Indirection
Martin Blumenthal-Barby (Rice University)
Disoriented Direction: Herzog, Antarctica, and Other-than-Human Agency
Diego Cagüeñas (University of Amsterdam)
Interspecies Directions: Mollusks, Tides, Ancestors, and the Future of Life in Colombia’s Pacific Coast
14:20-15:40 Misdirection
Ruyszaal
Amy Rust (University of South Florida)
Props, gaslighting, and other forms of (mis)direction
Mauro Resmini (University of Maryland)
Resentment as Misdirection
Nicolas Helm-Grovas (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin)
Direction, Misdirection, Suspension
14:20–15:40 We
Chirurgische
Kay Dickinson (University of Glasgow)
Non-Professional Performance as Revolutionary Mobilization
Markos Hadjioannou (Duke University)
How we got “interactivity” so wrong
Stephen Woo (Marist College)
All of Us Want to Circulate Less
Alessandra Raengo (Georgia State University) and Lauren McLeod Cramer (University of Toronto)
Best Practices/Better Praxis
17:30–18:45 Keynote
Eliza Steinbock (Maastricht University)
19:00 Drinks Reception