*CFP* "THE 'LITTLE APPARATUS': 100 YEARS OF 9.5MM FILM", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The ‘little apparatus’: 100 years of 9.5mm film

16, 17, 18 June 2022

University of Southampton

 

An international conference hosted in person and online by the Department of Film Studies’ Centre For International Film Research at the University of Southampton.

December 1922 will mark the centenary of the introduction of 9.5mm film to the French cinematographic market.  Pathé Freres first launched their ‘Pathé Baby’ home cinema system on domestic territory in time for the Christmas season, with the promise of a soon to follow lightweight and modestly priced cine-camera using the same narrow gauge, that could fit in a vest pocket (1923, pp. 48–50). In time, the new gauge became available elsewhere -arriving just ahead of Kodak’s 16mm film/cinema system and together signalling the first major boom in amateur filmmaking.

*CFP* "SENSING THE ARCHIVE. EXPLORING THE DIGITAL (IM)MATERIALITY OF THE MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVE", ISSUE 19, FRAMES CINEMA JOURNAL

Shrunken film strips, faded footage, distorted sound, and a harsh vinegar scent; such lamentable deterioration exposes the material vulnerabilities of audio-visual heritage which often determine the work of archivists and conservators. With constant changes in the technology of access have come profound changes to the world of dusty boxes, narrow strip-lit and high-stacked aisles, and data stored in obscure and obsolescent formats. At the same time, audio-visual materials offer new sensory modes of historiography. What kinds of historical knowledge lie within these resources and how can they be revived?

Mass digitisation has transformed the ways in which we can access, understand, and interact with histories stored in audio-visual media. Digitisation highlights the tangibility of the medium, and the fluidity of the material. Archives have always had their absences and lacunae, but digital materiality – or immateriality – produces new instabilities that require novel ways of approaching audio-visual heritage. How does our sensory experience of film history change due to the digital turn? What kind of research behaviours and patterns can this process enhance, and what kinds of research are inhibited?

*CFP* "COMPOSITE IMAGES", ISSUE 7, TRANSBORDEUR: PHOTOGRAPHIE HISTOIRE SOCIÉTÉ

What if the history of photography was ultimately less a history of recorded images than a history of images composed from recorded elements? The rise of assemblages and hybridisation practices in digital cultures prompts us to ask this question. What we today call memes juxtaposes elements that are willingly heterogeneous and whose contrast typically produces satirical effects. In another realm, we notice the proliferation of automatic image generation software that synthesises and combines real or fictional elements with a strong photorealistic charge, sometimes using deep learning technologies. Between these two poles, there’s a need to examine the wide range of practices which overturn the idea of photography as a capture of the real.

These shifts in the notion of photography are not, however, solely due to the rise of digital technology. They draw on a long history of the composite image that we intend to develop in the 7th issue of the journal Transbordeur. Talking about composite images rather than “photomontages” allows us to turn away from a narrative influenced mainly by the twentieth-century avant-gardes (Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism), and to broaden our point of view beyond the field of art. The modern Western discourse using the industrial metaphor of the mechanical assemblage of pre-existing elements does not cover all the ranges of photographic manipulation.

*CFP* "THE MIGRANT ARCHIVE: STUDIES ON MIGRATION THROUGH FILM ARCHIVES", ISSUE Nº 34, REVISTA L'ATALANTE

Historically, cinema has been associated with migration phenomena since its earliest days, when it became the first form of audiovisual entertainment to transcend boundaries and language barriers and be established as an essentially mobile medium, in terms of both production (from the first Lumière camera operators to the large waves of immigrants working in Hollywood, for example) and consumption (with large numbers of displaced peoples and exiles being among the first regular film-goers around the world, as a form of socialisation through a public event) (Allen, Gomery, 1995). In general, apart from some attention to specific cases (e.g. the massive emigration of German directors and cinematographers to Hollywood during the interwar period), it would not be until the 1990s that film studies would begin focusing on phenomena of human mobility as an essential component for understanding the history of cinema. Research in this area would be associated specifically with multiculturalism and post-colonialism, with particular importance given to studies centred on exile, diaspora and migrant experiences (Shohat, Stam, 1994, 2003; Naficy, 1999, 2001). It was no coincidence that studies like these should begin to appear around the same time as the rise to prominence of work by professional filmmakers creating filmic discourses related to their experience as migrants (or that of their families) in countries with consolidated film industries like the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States. Collectively these filmmakers have developed a set of concepts that are fundamental to the idea of “cinema of mobility” as a political movement, both in terms of access to representations of migrants and at the level of the potential development of alternative modes of production and distribution that can destabilise the hegemony of Hollywood and the big media corporations (Iordanova, Martin-Jones, Vidal, 2010).

*CFP* "EL ARCHIVO MIGRANTE: ESTUDIOS SOBRE MIGRACIÓN A TRAVÉS DE LOS ARCHIVOS CINEMATOGRÁFICOS", NÚMERO 34, REVISTA L'ATALANTE

En términos históricos, el cine ha estado relacionado con los fenómenos migratorios desde sus inicios, constituyéndose en la primera forma de entretenimiento audiovisual que trascendió barreras fronterizas e idiomáticas y se erigió en un medio de comunicación fundamentalmente móvil, tanto en términos de producción (desde los primeros operadores Lumière a las amplias capas de emigrantes trabajando en la industria de Hollywood, por ejemplo) como de consumo (con grandes conjuntos de desplazados y exiliados entre los asiduos a las primeras proyecciones cinematográficas en todo el mundo como forma de socialización por la vía del evento público) (Allen, Gomery, 1995). En general, y más allá de la atención a casos puntuales (la emigración masiva de directores y técnicos alemanes a Hollywood en el periodo de entreguerras, por ejemplo), no será hasta los años noventa del siglo pasado cuando los estudios fílmicos hagan hincapié en los fenómenos de la movilidad humana como algo fundamental para entender la historia del cine. En concreto, se trata de trabajos asociados al multiculturalismo y al postcolonialismo, en los que cobran singular relevancia los enfoques centrados en las experiencias exílicas, diaspóricas y migrantes (Shohat, Stam, 1994, 2003; Naficy, 1999, 2001). Estas investigaciones coinciden en el tiempo, no por casualidad, con el ascenso a la primera línea del cine profesional de sujetos que generan discursos fílmicos a partir de su condición migrante (o la de sus familias) en países con cinematografías tan consolidadas como Gran Bretaña, Francia, Alemania y Estados Unidos.  Siembran, entre unos y otros, una serie de conceptos fundamentales para pensar el cine de movilidad con un claro componente político, tanto en términos del acceso a las representaciones de los migrantes, como a nivel del potencial desarrollo de unos modos de producción y circulación alternativos que desestabilicen la hegemonía mediática de Hollywood y los grandes grupos de comunicación (Iordanova, Martin-Jones,Vidal, 2010).

*CFP* "AUDIOVISUAL TRACES", NEXT ISSUE, RESEARCH IN FILM AND HISTORY JOURNAL

The peer-reviewed OA online journal Research in Film and History invites proposals for its next issue "Audiovisual Traces"

Andrey Tarkovsky approached filmmaking as “sculpting in time,” which means that film is able to “capture time.” In the recorded form, as a final product, a film leaves traces through time that can be preserved, reproduced, recontextualized, as well as forgotten and lost. Along this line of thought, these audiovisual traces acquire both temporal and spatial dimensions, material and mnemonic capacities. In this regard, e.g. archival footage filmed in the German Democratic Republic and reused or recontextualized in the German post-reunification cinema can be approached as audiovisual traces, as well as cinematically established representations of the Holocaust carefully reproduced in contemporary fiction films like „Persian Lessons" (Vadim Perelman, 2020).

In the next issue, Research in Film and History invites scholars to critically reflect on the following questions: How can the notion “audiovisual traces” be conceptualized in regard to cinema and audiovisual artifacts of various historical periods and national contexts? What functions can audiovisual traces have? What methods and approaches can be applied to study audiovisual traces? How can audiovisual traces be collected, evaluated, reinterpreted, or even redesigned? We encourage submissions that apply or critically reflect on research methods on the intersection of history, film, memory studies, and digital humanities. We also invite proposals on articles, video essays, and other forms of audiovisual research that focus on theoretically informed case studies.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, NEXT ISSUE, FOLIA TORUNIENSIA JOURNAL

On behalf of the editorial office of the scientific journal 'Folia Toruniensia' (pISSN 1641–3792, eISSN 2657-4837, DOI 10.12775/FT), I would like to invite you to cooperate.

FT is a scientific periodical publication of the Provincial Public Library – the Copernicus Library in Toruń, published in cooperation with the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. The journal contains articles devoted to archival studies, library, and information sciences. The journal's mission is to serve as a forum where the international scholars and scientists present their research since the 16th volume (2016) has been published in the formula Open Access, non-exclusive license Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).

The Editorial Team of 'Folia Toruniensia' currently collects materials for the subsequent volumes. We are asking you to consider preparing articles for publication in our journal. Presently the publishing process is carried out using the Academic Platform of Journals content management system. Therefore, please report texts by APJ. Furthermore, we would like to inform you that by the commitments made, we are planning to close the 21st volume by the end of April 2021.

*CFP* "THE ALLURE OF OBSOLESCENCE", INAUGURAL ISSUE, ARTIFACT & APPARATUS: JOURNAL OF MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

We are excited to announce the launch of and call for papers for a new peer-reviewed, open-access online journal, Artifact & Apparatus: Journal of Media Archaeology. We invite scholars, curators, and practitioners from art history, film and media studies, library and information science, science and technology studies, and related fields to contribute articles on the history, theory, aesthetics, and practice of media objects, broadly conceived. From digital information networks to early electrical communications tools; from closed-circuit video surveillance systems to mechanical typewriters; and from pre-cinematic optical toys to virtual reality artworks, we invite contributors to reconsider the material objects that record, store, transmit, and reproduce texts, images, sounds, and information.

Why "artifact and apparatus"? We want to harness these words' multiple meanings to encourage a revision of media history grounded in its material artifacts and technological apparatuses—both physical and virtual objects (lantern slides, video files, wax cylinders, newsprint) and the traces of their mediation and marks of their materiality (signal loss, bit-rot, deterioration, decomposition), as well as the instruments, machines, devices, and equipment (computers, cameras, cables, projectors) and their functions and dispositifs.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, FIAT/IFTA MEDIA STUDY GRANTS 2021

The Media Studies Commission of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) is dedicated to fostering collaboration between research and archive communities and mediating the growth of scholarly expertise that adds value to audiovisual archives by means of innovative research. To this purpose, the Media Studies Commission has set up the Media Studies Grant as a way to promote and ensure the valorization of academic knowledge for archival practice. It is a programme that offers support for research carried out at FIAT/IFTA member archives or is of direct relevance to one or more of our member archives. Priority is given to projects that are relevant for the history of member archive institutions, or promise innovative insights into (digital) media historiography or archival practice in general.

 

2021 Call for Projects

In 2021, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.

*CFP* "HISTORICAL TRACES OF EUROPEAN RADIO ARCHIVES, 1930-1960", WORKSHOP

"Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960"

28-29 October 2021

University of Amsterdam and / or online

 

Bringing critical perspectives to bear on radio archives is the main departure point for this international workshop, which explores broadcasting, archives and the historical data they have co-produced. This two-day workshop brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars and practitioners invested in theoretically-informed, connective histories about radio archives. It takes up a historical-geographical focus on radio archival collections in Europe that were affected by war and political transformations between 1930 and 1960, including case studies for Axis, as well as Allied, countries during and after World War II.

*CFP* CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS, ISSUE 8, FOUND FOOTAGE MAGAZINE

Found Footage Magazine is an independent and printed film journal distributed worldwide. It offers theoretical, analytical, and informative content that hinges on the use of archival images in media production practices.

Found Footage Magazine is a printed and double-blind peer reviewed film studies publication devoted to the reuse and repurposing of extant media in moving image art.

FFM will select essays/articles that engage with scholar discourses from a wide range of found footage filmmaking theory and praxis.

 

Key words:

Found Footage filmmaking – Recycled Cinema – Collage Film – Archival Film – Compilation Film – Video Essay – Media Remix – Mashup – Supercut

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, 2021 ISSUE, L'AVVENTURA: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ITALIAN FILM AND MEDIA LANDSCAPES

L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes aims at positioning itself at the heart of the contemporary debate on Italian visual and media culture, its history and its present characteristics. The journal’s main areas of interest include:

• Patterns, styles, figures: the evolution of styles and patterns, themes and narratives; the relationship between film and other art and communication practices; modes of production and industrial forms.
• Archive: film and media archives, as much as oral sources.
• Differences: local, national, gender and generational identities as shaped and molded in cinema and media discourse.
• Spectatorship: reception and audience studies within the Italian context or related to the Italian media products circulating abroad.
• Camera: the history and present of Italian photography, as related to visual and media culture.
• Contemporary tale: a fresh look onto contemporary narrative patterns within Italian media production.

*CFP* "MAINSTREAM VS MARGINAL CONTENT IN WEB HISTORY ADN WEB ARCHIVES", 4TH RESAW CONFERENCE 2021

4th RESAW Conference 

Mainstream vs marginal content in Web history and Web archives

17-18th June 2021

University's Belval Campus, Luxembourg

 

 

“Pathetic. There’s no other word for it. The website for the Fête de l’Internet has statistics that are desperately low, to say the least. Do they reflect the state of the Net? They certainly give rise, once again, to that worrying question: if no one in cyberspace knows that you are a dog, is the reason not simply because there is no one in cyberspace?” 

Kitetoa.com, March 2001, retrieved from Internet Archive (archived on 25 June 2003)

While at the end of the 1990s some were complaining that there was no one on the Internet, others were already experiencing success, like the “I kiss you” Web page (1999) – a personal page created by a Turkish man which attracted 12 million visits over five years: “His picture-laden personal homepage, which exclaimed in broken English his love of the accordion, travel, and women was visited by millions and spawned numerous fansites and parodies.” 

*CFP* "GOVERNING GENEALOGIES OF FILM EDUCATION", EDITED COLLECTION

Contributions are sought for an edited scholarly collection, the purpose of which is to introduce readers to a nascent, critical historiographic approach to the formal study and deployment of cinema based upon extensive archival research into the declassified governing paper trail located in government, university, and philanthropic foundation archives in the United States and other imperial locations, and of traces left behind in postcolonial and neocolonial state institutions. 

We invite research that dovetails investigation of production culture and the cinematic public sphere with exposure and analysis of governmental policy and bureaucratic processes. The primary objective of the volume is to shed light on the institution and institutionalization of film and, more broadly, audiovisual education as an international academic discipline, as well as of media governance through the governmentality of university and state programming at bureaucratic and aesthetic levels with complex and lasting implications for global cultures and subject positions.

 

*CFP* "OPENING THE VAULT: MEDIA INDUSTRY STUDIES AND ITS ARCHIVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE SPECTATOR

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous scholars have been unable to physically access archival records, locked away for an indefinite period of time. In the present, various media industries—studios, streaming services, talent agencies, and more —have continued to announce deals, make public statements, and present a digital front that veils the story underneath. With continued conglomeration and corporate security practices winnowing access to materials, even smaller stakes questions—even the amount of eyes on any particular work on digital platforms—are becoming increasingly impossible to uncover without records.

This moment of “pause” for many archival documents thus calls us to both reflect and think creatively. Thomas Schatz notes in The Genius of the System, “Hollywood left its legacy not only on celluloid but also on paper.” Contracts, correspondence, policy memos, audits, balance sheets, and more have all been used to generate new insights into day-to-day operations of moving image production and its political, economic, and social consequences. What does the archive, as a collection of documents, a set of practices, and an institution, reveal about the formation and continued domination of industries? What can those attempting to speak truth to power without records do in their absence? 

*CFP* "FOTOGRAFÍA EN, SOBRE Y DESDE CENTROAMÉRICA", DOSSIER TEMÁTICO, REVISTA ISTMO

“¿Cómo leer las imágenes literarias de Centroamérica sin sentirnos obligados y obligadas a mirar sus imágenes fotográficas y artísticas?, ¿cómo hemos aprendido a leer las imágenes literarias sin mirar las imágenes fotográficas y artísticas …?”. 

Con estas dos preguntas Pablo Hernández Hernández abre su ensayo sobre testimonio y fotografía en América Central, en el que propone que ambas plataformas estéticas, a pesar de su asociación con la referencialidad, producen y materializan un sentido. Las preguntas invitan a relacionar palabras e imágenes o, como sugiere el autor, “actos de palabra y actos de imagen”. Sin embargo, estas mismas preguntas conducen también hacia otro tipo de reflexión: ¿Dónde están las imágenes fotográficas sobre, desde Centroamérica y/o producidas en el Istmo? ¿Cómo circulan? ¿Cómo y dónde se estudian? 

Estas interrogantes no son fortuitas. Los dos volúmenes titulados Sueño de la razón. Fotografía sudamericana (Santiago de Chile, 201X y 2016) no incluyen a ningún fotógrafo o fotógrafa centroamericano/a, si bien México parece pertenecer a esa “Sudamérica”. 

*CFP* "IMAGES & ARCHIVES: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM", CHAPTER BOOK AND VISUAL ESSAY

ICNOVA book collection - a Portuguese editor - prepares an electronic book that gathers some of the texts presented at the Images & Archives seminar in 2019. The proposal intends to deepen the relationships between historical, artistic, anthropological and cultural research on photographs and films preserved in archives, both public and private. The documentary features of these images, their contexts and forms of re-contextualization, exhibition and display, the multiple histories with which they relate and the power relationships that produced and are reproduced by them are among the themes we wish to address, in the context of the "material turn" in the social sciences and the arts. The importance of materiality comes at a time when archives are expanding through digitization and accessibility programs that pose new challenges and opportunities, for both research and artistic practices. The ontological issues of the image in these “duplicate” archives are also noteworthy for this edition. 

A variety of photographic and filmic materials are to be considered, spanning the different periods of these media, as well as interactions with other types of images. We also welcome conceptualizations about the archive as a discourse, in itself a kind of medium. Also relevant are topics concerning conservation, circulation and the accessibility of these images.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ISSUE 2 2020, L'AVVENTURA, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ITALIAN FILM AND MEDIA LANDSCAPES,*CFP* ISSUE 2-2020, L'AVVENTURA: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ITALIAN FILM AND MEDIA LANDSCAPES

L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes aims at positioning itself at the heart of the contemporary debate on Italian visual and media culture, its history and its present characteristics. The journal is rated Class A by the Italian national agency for the evaluation of the university and research system (ANVUR).

The journal’s main areas of interest include:

• Patterns, styles, figures: the evolution of styles and patterns, themes and narratives; the rela­tionship between film and other art and communication practices; modes of production and industrial forms.
• Archive: film and media archives, as much as oral sources.
• Differences: local, national, gender and generational identities as shaped and moulded in cinema and media discourse.
• Spectatorship: reception and audience studies within the Italian context, or related to the Ital­ian media products circulating abroad.
• Camera:  the history and present of Italian photography, as related to visual and media culture.
• Contemporary tale: a fresh look onto contemporary narrative patterns within Italian me­dia production.

*CFP* “ARCHIVES FOR EDUCATION. CREATIVE REUSE FOR STUDENT FILMAKERS”, BFI EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM

As cultural heritage organisations digitise their collections and increase public access, the creative reuse of moving image archive material remains problematic, beset by questions of copyright law, rights clearance and “fair dealing” exceptions. The Archives for Education project provides a new model for the creative reuse of archive film in higher education, giving student filmmakers access to 39 films from the BBC and the BFI National Archive for creative reuse on course-related projects for the first time. 55 institutions have signed up to the scheme, allowing student filmmakers to connect their vision of Britain today with archival representations from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

This one-day symposium, organised by Kingston School of Art and hosted by BFI Education, reflects on the first full academic year of the scheme andexplores the creative and learning opportunities creative reuse can offer to young filmmakers and how the scheme can be developed within and beyond higher education.

*CFP* “COMMUNICATING MEMORY MATTERS: NEXT STEPS IN THE STUDY OF MEDIA REMEMBERING AND COMMUNICATIVE COMMEMORATION”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Communicating Memory Matters: Next Steps in the Study of Media Remembering and Communicative Commemoration

16-17 de Septiembre de 2020

University of Salzburg, Austria

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Karina Horsti (Finnish Academy & University of Jyväskylä),
Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow),
Carolyn Kitch (Temple University),
Randi Marselis (Roskilde University),
Anna Reading (King’s College London)

Memory is a communicative affair. Media and the forms of interaction and sensemaking they enable shape the ways people come to connect to a collective past, store personal reminiscences, and return to bygone moments. As such, every new wave of information and communication technology has brought about shifts in mnemonic culture.