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In the age of the selfie, this book traces self-portraiture in film and video from the Western tradition in painting and literature into present-day digital media. The essays assess the significance of the self-portrait in the moving image and new media by exploring a varied and international body of works.

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Self-portraiture is a singular form within the broad field of first-person film and video - not so much an account of the filmmaker´s intimate life as a representation of the artist at a given instant. With deep roots in the Western tradition of painting and literature, self-portraiture in the moving image can be considered to be a hybrid practice, not fitting into the traditional definition of documentary or fiction, as it breaks the boundaries of both genres.

The investigative and self-reflexive stance of the self-portrait raises questions about intimacy, the appearance and corporeality of the subject and, more importantly, the medium itself. Today the understanding and definition of this practice is being challenged by the emergence of new forms of self-portraiture brought about by digital media, such as the selfie phenomenon. Against this backdrop, this book reassesses the significance of the self-portrait in the moving image and new media by exploring a varied and international body of works.

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CONTENTS: Laura Rascaroli: Cinewriting the Self: The Letter-Film as Self-Portrait - Dominique Bluher: The Other Portrait: Agnès Varda´s Self-Portraiture - Marlène Monteiro: Vincent Dieutre: The Self-Portrait as Suspended Gesture - Muriel Tinel-Temple: Self-Portraits in Early Video: At Work with the Medium - Alisa Lebow: The Self at a Distance: Simone Fattal´s Autoportrait (1972/2012) - Deborah Toschi/Federica Villa: From Mass Media Studies to Self-Produced Media Studies: Strategies of Self-Portraiture in Pregnancy and Video Diaries - Laura Busetta: The Self-Portrait in Digital Media: Repetition, Manipulation, Update - Gary Kafer: Believing Is Being: Selfies, Referentiality, and the Politics of Belief in Amalia Ulman´s Instagram - William Brown: Self-Administering the Image Virus: Six Months of Selfies.

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