The Research Centre for Music, Media and Place (MMaP) at Memorial University will present a public lecture titled Cinema and Space in Newfoundland and Labrador, on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 7:30 p.m. in the MMaP Gallery on the second floor of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.

Dr. Mark David Turner, currently a post-doctoral fellow in Memorial’s Department of English and School of Music, will present.

Based on his extensive research on film, film policy and filmmakers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Dr. Turner will explore the relationship between film and space in this province. How do we begin to speak of a Newfoundland and Labrador cinema? Does it even exist before the Jones brothers’ The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood? Is there such a thing as a Newfoundland and Labrador cinema? Are there features which unify the practice of film in this province? Dr. Turner will consider these questions as an approach to understanding Newfoundland and Labrador cinema as something rooted as much in space as it is in time. The lecture will be illustrated by clips from the work of Lee Wulff, Atlantic Films, MUN Extension and the National Film Board, as well as other individuals and organizations.  




Dr. Turner’s research has explored the development of film practices in Newfoundland and Labrador from the suspension of Representative Government (1933) to the creation of the establishment of the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation in 1997. On his work, Dr. Noreen Golfman, provost and vice-president (academic) at Memorial, has said: “No one has mined the history of this province’s surprisingly rich legacy of film and filmmaking more than Mark Turner. His research helps us make good sense of the province through its representation in moving images.”

 


Dr. Turner obtained his undergraduate degree from Memorial and continued his studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto where he earned his MA and PhD. He has worked extensively as a film historian, archivist, curator and advocate in Labrador, developing the Labrador Institute’s comprehensive film and video collection at Happy Valley-Goose Bay, preparing the James Robert Andersen collection at Makkovik and is currently in the planning phases of developing a collection for the Torngâsok Cultural Centre on the Labrador Inuit. More recently he has been working with the community of Rigolet to develop a media-language archive.
 


The lecture is sponsored by Memorial University, as a collaboration between MMaP and the School of Music. The lecture is free and all are welcome.

 


For more information about MMaP and this event, please contact 709-864-2058 or mmap@mun.ca, or visit here.