Andrew Utterson presents paper at international conference organized by the University of Nottingham, UK

By Andrew Utterson, September 13, 2021

Andrew Utterson (Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies) recently presented via Zoom at an international interdisciplinary conference organized by the University of Nottingham, UK on the films of British documentarist Adam Curtis

At a conference entitled 'Critical Perspectives on the Films of Adam Curtis' – organized by the University of Nottingham, UK through its Institute for Screen Industries Research and sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK) in its centennial year – Utterson joined historians and media and other scholars to reflect on the work of iconoclastic British filmmaker Adam Curtis and his four decades of BBC documentaries.

Utterson presented a paper on 'The Computer Histories of Adam Curtis.' In it, he placed Curtis's filmic essays, and their recurring focus on computers and related systems and sciences, within a wider history of imagined futures and utopian and dystopian discourses concerning our relationship with computers in conceptualizing self and society.

Among other publications, Utterson is the author of the books From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2020).