Roland Barthes' Cinema by Philip Watts

On April 8, 2016, a panel discussion on Philip Watts' book with editors Vincent Debaene, Sam Di lorio and Dudley Andrew, moderated by Madeleine Dobie

Philip Watts left a near complete manuscript of his book on Roland Barthes’ Cinema when he died in 2013. His manuscript was edited for publication by four colleagues and friends, Vincent Debaene, Sam Di Iorio, Dudley Andrew and Yves Citton. Translated into French by Phil's wife Sophie Queuniet, the book was published by De l’incidence éditeur in 2015 to critical acclaim, and is now coming out in English with Oxford University Press. Three of its editors present Philip Watt’s work and talk about the editorial process they used to bring the project to completion.

In connection with the publication of this book, Anthology Film Archives is hosting a weeklong retrospective of films connected to Barthes' work: "Roland Barthes at the Movies" which will run from April 8-17. Its opening night double feature, Robert Bresson's ANGELS OF SIN (1943) and the Sam Wood/Marx Brothers collaboration A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), will take place at Anthology at 7 P.M. on April 8, just after the Columbia panel. For more information, see anthologyfilmarchives.org

“Philip Watts' ground breaking work on Roland Barthes and cinema is a gift to film studies, to literary studies, and to theory. No other critic could match Watts in combining close textual analysis with historical insight. His encounter with Barthes' resistance to cinema shows a deep and refined critical vision, leavened by wit that Barthes would have appreciated." --Alice Kaplan

Philip Watts was Professor of French at Columbia University and Chair of the French Department from 2008 to 2012. A specialist of twentieth-century French literature and film, he is the author of Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France and co-editor of Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics.