modern Persian literature, Iranian cinema and Middle Eastern cinemas in literary and film anthologies and journals, such as Iranian Studies and Canadian Journal of Film Studies. She is collaborating with Iran Namag for a special issue on radio to be published in 2022. She has written two novels (in Persian) so far. The first novel titled Hotel Iran will be published in 2021 by Nashr-e Ameh in Tehran. Her second novel, Blue Bird Café is going to be published in Europe in 2021. Sheibani was consulted and interviewed on issues regarding Iranian cinema by broadcasting services and journals such as CBC, PRI, and the New York Times. She is currently working on a book-length project on gender representation in Iranian cinema.
Dr. Meryl Shriver-Rice is a media anthropologist and environmental archaeologist, and director of environmental media at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami. She developed and teaches for the Master’s of Environment, Media, and Culture program and is a founding editor (with Hunter Vaughan) of the Journal of Environmental Media (Intellect Press).
Robert Sinnerbrink is associate professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of New Philosophies of Film (Second Edition): An Introduction to Cinema as a Way of Thinking (Bloomsbury 2021), Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher (Bloomsbury 2019), Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (Routledge 2016), New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (Continuum/Bloomsbury 2011), and Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen 2007, Routledge 2014). He has edited two books (Emotion, Ethics, and Cinematic Experience (Berghahn Books 2021) and Critique Today (Brill 2006)), and is a member of the editorial boards of Film-Philosophy, Film and Philosophy, and Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind.
Professor Jane Stadler holds an honorary appointment in film and media studies at The University of Queensland, Australia. She led a collaborative Australian Research Council project on landscape and location in Australian cinema, literature, and theater (2011–2014) and co-authored Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives (2016). She is author of Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics (2008) and co-author of Screen Media (2009) and Media and Society (2016). Her philosophically informed screen media research focuses on ethics, aesthetics, and the audience’s affective responses, drawing on phenomenological and cognitivist approaches.
Professor John Sutton works in the philosophy of mind, cognition, and action, in cognitive psychology, and in the interdisciplinary cognitive humanities. His main research topics are autobiographical and collaborative memory, embodied memory and skilled movement, distributed cognition, and cognitive history. He is a member of the ARC College of Experts, 2019–2021; Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities; and was first President (2017–2019) of the the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Books and edited collections by Sutton include: Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to connectionism (Cambridge University Press 2007) and Johnson, Sutton, & Tribble (Eds.), Embodied Cognition and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Early Modern Body-Mind. (Routledge 2014).
Dr. C. Claire Thomson is professor of cinema history and director of the MA in film studies at UCL (University College London). She is the author of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (Nordic Film Classics, University of Washington Press 2013) and Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish Informational Cinema 1935–1965 (Edinburgh University Press 2018), editor of Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (Norvik 2006), co-editor of A History of Danish Cinema (Edinburgh University Press 2021), and Transnational Media Histories of the Nordic Model (Palgrave 2023). Her research interests include documentary and public information film, short films, unrealized films, and the cinema of Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Dr. Pia Tikka is a professional filmmaker and EU Mobilitas Pluss research professor at the Baltic Film, Media, and Arts School, Tallinn University. She holds the honorary title of adjunct professor of new narrative media at the University of Lapland, and is a former director of Crucible Studio, department of media, Aalto University (2014–2017). She acted as a main investigator of neurocinematics in the research project aivoAALTO at the Aalto University (2010–2014) and founded her NeuroCine research group to study the neural basis of storytelling. She has published widely on the topics of enactive media, narrative complex systems, and neurocinematics. Her filmography includes international film productions as well as two feature films and interactive films she has directed. She is a fellow of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image and a member of the European Film Academy. Currently, she leads her Enactive Virtuality Lab associated with the MEDIT Centre of Excellence, Tallinn University.
Dr. Hunter Vaughan is a research fellow at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge. Dr. Vaughan is the author of Where Film Meets Philosophy (Columbia University Press 2013) and co-editor (with Tom Conley) of the Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (Anthem Books: London 2018, 2020). His most recent book, Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: the Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (Columbia University Press 2019) offers an environmental counter-narrative to the history of mainstream film culture and explores the environmental ramifications of the recent transition to digital technologies and practices. He was a 2017 Rachel Carson Center Fellow and is a founding editor of the Journal of Environmental Media (Intellect Press). He is currently Principal Investigator, with Pietari Kääpä, on the AHRC-funded Global Green Media Network, and is also Principal Investigator with Anne Pasek, Nicole Starosielski, and Anjali Sugadev on the Internet Society Foundation’s Sustainability and the Subsea Telecommunication Cable Network project.
A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value General Introduction
Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli
This volume’s topic, the varied intersections and conjunctions of motion pictures and public value, is somewhat daunting in its potential scope. As the table of contents indicates, the book is structured in terms of (a non-exhaustive list of) different sorts of value that, we claim, can be understood as yielding public value or values that are partly constitutive of a common good. Given the breadth and heterogeneity of the contributions collected here, organized in seven different sections, our discussion in this main introduction will remain quite general. Each section of the book is preceded by a section introduction, in which we outline the main themes of the section and draw some connections between the individual chapters therein. For now, then, we will aim to do just two things. First, we will sketch a bit of background context for the project, outline its aims, and describe the approaches that characterize the contributions to the volume. Then, we will explain how we are conceiving of the concepts of “motion pictures,” “value,” and “public value” respectively.
Background Context, Aims, and Approach
Background Context
A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value aims to bring probing, thoughtful attention to the issue of public value, as it relates to the cinema in all of its diversity. “Public value,” as we shall see, has been defined in a number of different ways. To us, the concept of public value offers a means of answering questions about which kinds of motion pictures ultimately matter and how they contribute to a good life and society. “Motion pictures,” as used in the title of this volume, is historically capacious in scope, encompassing different periods of screen image production, including contemporary developments related to virtual reality and the proliferation of viewing platforms. One of the benefits of a collaborative, multi-author project is the possibility of anchoring the exploration of public value, not in a single national context, or a few selected genres of moving image-making, but in a rich variety of institutional landscapes, policy formations, and, indeed, types and styles of filmmaking. While analytic in its aspirations, given the intended pursuit of conceptual clarification and concept formation, A Companion to Motion Pictures and
