Ithaca College

Debates about so-called “cinephilia,” the passions aroused by a medium predicated on various pleasures of spectatorship and reception, has long been a part of how theorists, historians, critics, and filmmakers have thought about cinema.

A recently published scholarly collection, For the Love of Cinema: Teaching Our Passion In and Outside the Classroom (edited by Rashna Wadia Richards and David T. Johnson), explores whether, and how, this cinephilia might also have useful roles to play in how we teach and study cinema. 

Entitled “Lessons of Birth and Death: The Past, Present, and Future of Cinephilia,” Utterson’s chapter argues for a critical cinephilia that engages the lessons of film history as a means to shed light on the cinema of today. Specifically, cinephilia is framed as a meme that might be transmitted from one generation to the next––via the movie theater or classroom alike.

More details on this book and Utterson’s chapter can be found at the Indiana University Press website.