Todd Berliner is a Professor of Film Studies at UNC-Wilmington. He received his PhD at Berkeley, he's received 2 Fulbright Scholar awards, and he's a Fellow of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. Berliner is a deep thinker about film, and his new book, Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, is not a typical coffee table book. Still, the topic is film, something accessible to everyone.
"Bursting Into Song in the Hollywood Musical." Multi-Media Presentation, Reception, Book-Signing with Todd Berliner. Thursday, April 6 at 6:30pm, UNCW's King Hall
UNCW's Film Studies Department is hosting a public celebration for Berliner's book this Thursday evening, featuring a reception, book-signing, Q&A, and a multimedia presentation focused on one of the lighter aspects of the book: Bursting Into Song in the Hollywood Musical. The presentation will inform, but according to Berliner, also delight the audience with a bevy of clips drawn from the history of musical cinema. Thursday, April 6 at 6:30pm in UNCW's King Hall.
Berliner's book explores the aesthetic capacities of Hollywood cinema, analyzing how aesthetic pleasure is accomplished in 4 main categories: Narrative, Style, Ideology, and Genre. Listen to Berliner talk about the book above, and listen below to 2 controversies his book may raise in Film Studies-and Philosophy-departments.