Marie Rebecchi (Université d’Aix-Marseille)
Louis Delluc developed the concept of photogénie extensively through his film criticism and theoretical essays during the early 1920s. Photogénie refers to the unique, transformative power of the cinema to reveal the hidden beauty, emotional depth, and “essence” of people and objects, through the cinematographic lens. Delluc’s writings on photogénie directly influenced contemporaries, in particular Jean Epstein who expanded on photogénie in both theory and practice. Epstein took the term further, infusing it with a “techno-animistic” dimension. This talk will focus on Epstein’s reinterpretation of the concept of photogénie, in particular to highlight the shift from an idea of photogénie still linked to the notion of beauty to an idea of photogénie (Epstein’s) open to the idea of mechanical and animistic intelligence of the cinematographic machine.
CV:
Marie Rebecchi is Associate Professor in Aesthetics and History of Cinema at the Aix-Marseille Université and member of LESA. She was postdoctoral researcher at EHESS (Paris) and she taught at Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. Her publications include: Sergei Eisenstein. The Anthropology of Rhythm (Nomas, 2017 with E. Vogman), Paris 1929. Eisenstein, Bataille, Buñuel (Mimésis, 2018), Puissance du végétal. La vie révélée par la technique (Les presses du réel, 2020, with Teresa Castro and Perig Pitrou). She has been visiting fellow at the University of Lausanne (2020-21) and Yale University (Dall 2023). She is working on the project The Kaleidoscopic Image. An Alternative Archaeology of Optical Modernity.