It's Really Hard to Watch Films Properly: Noah Cowan Guest Lecture

Film is intended to be the most "efficient" of editioned art forms. Thousands of "identical copies" are made available across multiple platforms, all of which are meant to re-present the same experience with the artwork. Of course, the reality is more complicated. Filmmakers create their films in a deliberate way, for a particular environment, and to affect an audience in a highly-determined manner. The rise of direct-to-consumer streaming platforms and the ubiquity of mobile devices drastically varies the current experience of watching films. In this multimedia lecture with film clips, former SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan breezes through the history of cinema with an eye to authors' intents and how the medium's "editioning" process has supported and thwarted their desires.

This event is presented in conjunction with MFA's summer exhibition 'What is an edition, anyway?' The exhibition surveys historical practices of creating and distributing editions, presenting an array of limited-edition artist's books, prints, album covers, original artworks, and other objects from the McEvoy Family Collection and the collection of Thomas Cvikota. Newly commissioned projects by Enrique Chagoya, Daniel Clowes, Ala Ebtekar, Jonn Herschend, Stephanie Syjuco, and Hank Willis Thomas respond to these traditions through photography, performance, illustration, and installation.

Noah Cowan is the former Executive Director of SFFILM, following roles as the Artistic Director of TIFF Bell Lightbox and the Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival. Cowan also co-founded the pioneering distribution company Cowboy Pictures as well as Global Film Initiative, a non-profit funder and educational distributor. He is the Executive Producer of Jem Cohen's Benjamin Smoke and the co-curator of multiple exhibitions, including David Cronenberg: Evolution and Transformation.