Event | ‘Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image’ – Mini-Symposium

Event | ‘Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image’ – Mini-Symposium
Date: 20 January 2023
Time: 13:00 – 17:00
Location: Leiden University (Lipsius 131)
Organizer: Yasco Horsman
Credits: 1 ECTS (details below)
Registration: y.horsman@hum.leidenuniv.nl (open to all RMA students, PhD candidates and Academic Staff).
More information about the publication here.

“Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image” is a mini-symposium, organized to celebrate the English translation of a collection of Fernand Deligny’s writings on Cinema and the Image. The event consists of an opening lecture, delivered by Marlon Miguel, a brief conversation with Sarah Moses (‘On Translating Deligny’), a screening of Ce gamin là (Deligny & Victor, 1975) and responses to the film and book by Joost de Bloois (Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam), Blandine Joret (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam) & Peter Verstraten (Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University)

Fernand Deligny, ‘poet and ethologist’, is mostly known for his work with autistic children, and for his influence on the revolutions in French post-war psychiatry. Though neither director, scriptwriter, historian of cinema nor a theorist of the image, cinema is constantly called into his social, pedagogical, and clinical experimentations. Also, he elaborates on the image to reflect on autistic perception and to radicalize his critique of humanism and discursive language. Deligny emphasizes that the camera is an apparatus mediating collective relationships. Furthermore, more interested in the processes of making, he distinguishes ‘camering’ from filming. Freed from the need to produce a finished film, it is a ‘film to come’ that is emphasized. The several film projects structure Deligny’s experimentations inasmuch as they emancipate them from their supposed aim — that of normalizing psychotic or re-educating deviant subjects.

Marlon Miguel works at the project ‘Madness, Media, Milieus’ at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. He holds a double PhD in Fine Arts (Université Paris 8) and Philosophy (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). He is responsible for the organization of Deligny’s archives stored at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine.”

Our symposium discusses Deligny’s theories on cinema and the image (covered in Camering: Ferdinand Deligny on Cinema and the Image, edited and introduced by Marlon Miguel. Leiden University Press, 2022), and the role played by cameras in many of his experimental ‘attempts’ with delinquents and autistic children, as well as his highly speculative reflections on image.

Preliminary Program

13:15-13:20 Welcome and Introduction (Yasco Horsman)

13.20-13:50: Marlon Miguel

13:50-14:00: Conversation with Sarah Moses – ‘On Translating Deligny.’

14: 15-30: Screening Ce gamin là (Deligny & Victor, 1975)

15:30 – 16:30: Responses Joost de Bloois (Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam), Blandine Joret (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam) & Peter Verstraten (Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University) & Discussion

ECTS Requirements

For obtaining the ECTS Students are expected to:

• read Fernand Deligny, Camering: Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image, edited and introduced by Marlon Miguel. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2022 (12 hours);
• attend the event (4 hours);
• submit a written response to both the book and the event (1000 words) (10 hours).