Since its publication 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has influenced vast swathes of popular culture. Adaptations have starred cinema legends from Boris Karloff and Robert De Niro to even Alvin and the Chipmunks. From tales of science gone mad (Jurassic Park) to stories of understanding the other (E.T., The Hulk, Arrival), traces of the story and its themes have spread across our media. With “Frankenstein (Re)Membered,” video artist and film historian Chris Gerrard collects these diverse fragments from the birth of cinema until the present day and, in the tradition of Victor Frankenstein himself, attempts to stitch them back together into an adaptation of the original Shelley novel.

This film aims to draw out the thematic throughlines both of Shelley’s original novel and the multitudinous adaptations, placing their responses to the text in historical context and in relation to each other. For instance, one section reads the fear of “science gone mad” in the era of the atom bomb, while another contrasts the positive and fearful reactions to the female body as betrayed by adaptations of the Bride of Frankenstein. Visual contrast allows for active participation by the audience in the form.

This form not only thematically parallels the creation of the “monster,” by being a revivified collage of disparate elements, but also draws on the work of other video essayists. Daniel Morgan described Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema (1988) as playing with the afterlives of cinema, with Godard’s heavy use of collage as a post-cinema form that uses the medium as a source for both visuals and critical insight, while building something new on top. This work aims to continue that aesthetic and conceptual project.

Biography

Dr. Chris Gerrard is a video artist and film historian, focusing on how experimental aesthetics can facilitate knowledge exchange and political change. Their practical work focuses on collage, archival footage, and cinema history, and has been shown at galleries worldwide. Their written work explores the aesthetic development of cinema and television, as well as the impact of popular science fiction. They are the programme leader in Creative Media at Bath Spa University, as well as recently pioneering the Digital Media Arts course at the University for the Creative Arts’ Institute for Creativity and Innovation.