199 Chambers Street (BMCC campus)
New York
NY 10007
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began inserting himself into a short scene in each of his films. Once he became a “brand name” director, he would appear early in each film, knowing that audiences would not be able to concentrate on the action until they had seen Hitchcock appear. Usually there was a jokiness to his cameos, but if we take a closer look at all his appearances in his many films, we may discover that he was trying to tell us something. This program will be devoted to figuring out what intentions lay behind all those quick star turns.
“Scenes Through the Cinema Lens” is curated and hosted by Krin Gabbard, who teaches in the Jazz Studies program at Columbia University. In 2014 he retired from Stony Brook University where he had, since 1981, taught classical literature, film studies, and literary theory. His books include Psychiatry and the Cinema (1987), Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (1996), Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture (2004), Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture (2008), and Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (2016). At Columbia he teaches courses on jazz and American culture.