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SUMMARY:Screen Media Group Presents: The False Archive: Unbearable and Imp
 ossible Images in Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suicides’ - Anna Backm
 an Rogers (University of Stockholm)
DTSTART:20140218T171500Z
DTEND:20140218T190000Z
UID:TALK50912@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Darius Lerup
DESCRIPTION:The Screen Media Group are delighted to present Anna Backman R
 ogers (Stockholm University)\, who will be presenting ‘The False Archive
 : Unbearable and Impossible Images in Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suic
 ides’. In terms of its narrative\, Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suici
 des’(adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides) centres on themes of h
 aunting\, loss and mourning\; as such\, it is a melancholic and profoundly
  cinematic meditation on the inexorability of time\, the passing of youth 
 into adulthood and false recollection. What renders this film an extraordi
 nary adaptation of the novel\, however\, is the way in which Coppola evoke
 s these themes through the very materiality of the film\, so that it becom
 es in and of itself a work of mourning. Stereotypical or clichéd images b
 orrowed from advertising and soft pornography (read here as a collective a
 rchive) are de-stabilised by the spectre of something dark and troubling t
 hat evades rational explanation and precipitates a deconstruction of the A
 merican Dream (specifically notions of adolescent femininity and beauty). 
 In the process of doing so\, Coppola not only probes issues of implicit vi
 olence and control within the adolescent rite of passage\, but also the un
 speakable and ineffable emotions of loss and grief and the coping mechanis
 ms we invoke to deal with the crisis of death. This paper will focus speci
 fically on Coppola’s use of the cliché as a visual mode for evoking the
  unbearable sensations of grief\, the passing of time and the inaccuracy o
 f memory.\n\nThis seminar presents a continuation of the ongoing Screen Me
 dia lecture series Mnemotechnics and the Archive\, which considers the way
 s in which individual\, institutional and social memories have been unders
 tood to relate to media forms that participate in their inscription\, subv
 ersion\, perpetuation and effacement.\n\nAnna Backman Rogers is a postdoct
 oral scholar in the cinema studies department at Stockholm University\, Sw
 eden. She has forthcoming monographs on rites of passage in American Indep
 endent Cinema (Edinburgh University Press\, 2014) and Sofia Coppola (Bergh
 ahn\, 2015). She has published work on the films of Jim Jarmusch\, Gus Van
  Sant\, Sofia Coppola\, and Miranda July.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DP
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