*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ISSUE 39, LA VALLE DELL'EDEN / EAST OF EDEN: JOURNAL OF CINEMA, PHOTOGRAPHY, MEDIA

For a long time, screenwriting has been largely ignored by film scholars, in Italy as well as in other countries. Film Studies have been – and partially still are – dominated by an auteur-centered approach, where the only relevant figure of the cast & credits is the director. But in the seventies, thanks to seminal books such as Pauline Kael’s The Citizen Kane Book (1974) – recently “rediscovered” because of David Fincher’s Mank (2020) – and Richard Corliss’ Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema (1974), things started to change. In Italy, the widespread influence of the politiques des auteurs had joined forces with the Rossellinian-Fellinian distrust – not to say contempt – toward the screenplay and the professional figure of the screenwriter. It is not a chance that, in Italy, when research in this area finally started, it avoided directly addressing the Italian screenwriters. The first important Italian scholarly books and essays were devoted to screenwriting in general (Giuliana Muscio’s anthology Scrivere il film, 1981), or to classical Hollywood screenwriters (Guido Fink’s essay on Samson Raphaelson, 1994). In the last twenty years, a new generation of film scholars has produced a series of stimulating, well researched books and essays on Italian screenwriting and screenwriters, from the silent years to the present (among others, see: Federica Villa, 2002 and 2010; Silvio Alovisio, 2005; Maria Pia Comand, 2006; David Bruni, 2011). Today, Italy has a significant production of studies on screenwriting in the Italian cinema. But of course there are still many unaddressed questions. For example, there is no systematic study, based on archival research, devoted to the scripts of the “commedia all’italiana”, a genre where writing plays a very relevant role. There are no studies on the big Italian directors conducted through the perspective of their collaboration with a screenwriter (i.e. Luchino Visconti and Suso Cecchi D’Amico).

This new monographic issue of La Valle dell’Eden wants to map this vast territory, and try to locate still unexplored areas. The curators are particularly interested in essays focused on:

• Theoretical and methodological issues concerning the history of the studies devoted to Italian screenplays and screenwriters, inside and outside the academia, included screenwriting manuals. 
• Archival research on a single screenplay, investigated in its various stages, from story to shooting script. 
• Adaptations, contacts and relations between screenwriting and other media and art forms, both “low” and “high”, such as literature, television, radio, comics, “fotoromanzi”. 
• The screenplay as a text to publish, and the relationship between screenwriting and the publishing industry. 
• Representation and auto-representation of the screenwriter, both in the film community and in the public discourse. 
• The screenplay as production project, as blueprint in the context of the fund rising process. 
• The role of screenplays and screenwriters in film festival and screenwriting contests, such as Premio Solinas, and the function of screenwriter organizations, such as the Writers’ Guild Italia.

 

This monographic issue is mainly devoted to cinema, from the silent era to the present. Proposals concerning solely contemporary TV series will not be taken into consideration.

 

Submissions and deadlines

Authors need to submit their proposals (500-word abstract) and bio to one of the curators (giaime.alonge@unito.it; giacomo.manzoli@unibo.it; andrea.minuz@uniroma1.it; federica.villa@unipv.it), as well to the journal’s editorial staff (eden@unito.it) by March 31, 2021. The deadline for full articles (max. 5.000 words) is September 1, 2021. No payment of Article Processing Charges is required.

 

La Valle dell'Eden / East of Eden is a film and media studies journal, founded in 1999 and published by the University of Torino, in collaboration with the Universities of Pavia and Genova. The journal uses an open review system, in order to foster a lively and fruitful discussion among authors and reviewers, thus promoting frankness and cooperation and avoiding the stiff rituals of traditional peer-review.