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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

WSWS arts editor David Walsh to speak at York University in Toronto

16 January 2007

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David Walsh, arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, will speak at York University in Toronto this Wednesday evening in a lecture sponsored by the Film Graduate Students Association.

Walsh’s presentation, “Film, History and Socialism,” will focus on a discussion of problems in cinema from a Marxist perspective. The most social art form, cinema is a century old; its birth and evolution coincide with the history of the twentieth century—to develop a serious theory of the history of cinema requires a theory of the twentieth century.

The talk will especially emphasize the importance of a historical approach to cultural and political problems, in opposition to postmodernism and similar trends. To answer the question—Why is there such a crisis in American filmmaking?—for example, one needs to consider the social and intellectual conditions under which ‘classical Hollywood’ cinema arose, in particular the influence of left-wing and socialist ideas in the 1930s and 1940s.

What have been the consequences, through the anticommunist blacklist and other means, of the criminalization of left-wing thought in Hollywood and American culture generally? What is the state of global cinema today? On what might a new, revitalized cinema be based?

Wednesday, January 17, 7:30 p.m.
Vari Hall, Theatre VH-A, York University
4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario

Vari Hall is at the top of the main university bus loop, just beyond west end of York Lanes Mall. Theatre VH-A is just inside the front entrance. There is an express bus to York University from the Downsview subway station.