Ithaca College

Andrew Utterson (Roy H. Park School of Communications and Coordinator of the first-year Ithaca Seminars) has recently published a new book with Edinburgh University Press, a leading international publisher of scholarly books and journals.

Titled 'Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema,' this monograph details how films and filmmakers from throughout the globe have used new technology and experimental practices to reframe – literally and metaphorically – the history of cinema as it continues to resonate today.

This book continues Utterson's research into the history of cinema through the lenses of technological change and contemporary aesthetics. He is the author of the book 'From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age' (Palgrave Macmillan / British Film Institute), among other publications. 

From the publisher's description of his new book: Channelling a focus on the history of cinema into the present and beyond, 'Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema' explores the continuing resonance of the memory of cinema as revealed in the technological and aesthetic expressions of a range of experimental practices. With case studies of films that reflexively foreground and creatively reimagine the past, including 'Shirin' (2008), 'Goodbye to Language' (2014) and 'Francofonia' (2015), the book demonstrates how the medium of film can look simultaneously backwards and forwards, encountering and reframing the past in the present, and offering new ways of thinking about both film history and contemporary cinema alike.