*CFP* "CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FILMS OF ADAM CURTIS", ONLINE CONFERENCE

Critical Perspectives on the Films of Adam Curtis

Online Conference

Wednesday 8th September 2021

 

Critical Perspectives on the Films of Adam Curtis is a one-day, interdisciplinary conference hosted in collaboration with the University of Nottingham’s Institute for Screen Industries Research which critically examines the films of the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. The keynote speaker for the conference is Professor Brian Winston. Professor Winston is the Chair of the Lincoln School of Film and Media, founding chair of the British Association of Film, Television and Media Studies and has served as a governor of the British Film Institute. He has published over 17 books as well as receiving a US prime-time Emmy for documentary script writing and a Special Jury prize from the British University Council for Film and Video. To register for the conference please visit our Eventbrite page.

*CFP* "AFTER NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR: BRITISH DYSTOPIAS, FROM 1984 TO THE PRESENT DAY", SPECIAL ISSUE, SILLAGES CRITIQUES JOURNAL

1984 is the date in the future when the action in Orwell’s premonitory novel was supposed to take place. When people in the real world of 1984 came to realise that history had caught up with that originally fictional date, worried interrogations started to emerge as to whether Orwell’s fiction had actually come true. Whether we now lived in the dystopian world that the novel had foreseen, i.e. in the world of Big Brother – a world of omnipresent surveillance screens, greedily confiscated power structures, constant linguistic revisionary tactics, and ruthlessly utilitarian biopolitics. Orwell’s striking modernity was apparent to everyone, ordinary citizens and journalists, sophisticated literary critics and astute political thinkers, and of course shrewd artists of all sorts, including film directors and novelists. We did indeed live in ‘Dismaland’, as Banksy’s 2015 anti-amusement art installation (featuring fifty other dystopian artists) would much later make clear.

It was evident that the dystopian streak tapped by a discouraged, dying novelist in the dreary post-WWII period had not been exhausted. Far from it. As a matter of fact, the genre seems to have been continuously gaining momentum, and it will come as no surprise to anyone that today’s younger generations enjoy watching series or reading novels that deal with dystopic political or post-apocalyptic situations. Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots (2009), Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (2011-), Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From (2017), or Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (2019), constitute the most obvious body of recent evidence of a revival. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, 16TH ANNUAL IRISH SCREEN STUDIES SEMINAR

16th annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar

Ulster University, Magee Campus (Derry)

6-7 May 2021 (Online)

 

The Irish Screen Studies Seminar provides a unique platform for the presentation of new work – research, practice, and research through practice – by scholars and filmmakers from third-level institutions in Ireland, as well as those working on Irish screen-related topics in other universities and colleges worldwide.

The seminar is aimed at academic researchers and practitioners in film and screen cultures in the broadest sense, touching on audio, film, television, digital media, transmedia, gaming and related interdisciplinary activity. The ISSS actively promotes the exchange of ideas and offers postgraduate and early career researchers and practitioners an ideal opportunity to present evolving screen-related research and practice in a constructive and encouraging forum. Conference papers will be archived on the Irish Screen Studies website.

*CFP* "ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE BBC", SPECIAL ISSUE, CRITICAL STUDIES IN TELEVISION

In 2022, one hundred years will have passed since the formation of the British Broadcasting Company, later to become the pioneering public service broadcaster best known as the BBC. The BBC has had an enormous impact on television culture in its first one hundred years, providing a blueprint for independent publicly funded broadcasting. The BBC has been a testing ground for new developments in broadcasting technology and infrastructure. It has provided space for programme makers to innovate new forms, as well as to display national traditions - and invent some of its own. It has offered important public space to playwrights, scientists, politicians, musicians, historians, performers and many more thinkers to enlighten, to amuse, to infuriate. 

Its formative mantra of ‘inform, educate, entertain’ has undergone many modifications over time but these aims remain core to its contemporary ethos. Its goal of providing impartial and balanced news, current affairs and analysis has been tested numerous times in divisive political climates. It was born of a patriarchal, colonialist and elitist view of cultural uplift. How has it changed over its long life?

*CFP* "NEW FRONTIERS? CHANNEL 4'S MOVE OUT OF LONDON", ONE DAY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

New Frontiers? Channel 4’s Move out of London

A One Day International Conference, Watershed Cultural Cinema, Bristol

11 March 2020

Hosted by the Moving Image Research Group, University of the West of England Bristol and the BAFTSS Screen Industries Special Interest Group

Although this conference has been occasioned by developments within the UK’s screen industries, we hope it will offer both UK and non-UK researchers the opportunity to discuss and debate developments in the reconfiguration of regional screen industries, and to present research projects and work-in-progress that examine the relationships between centre and periphery in any country.

In October 2018 Channel 4 announced that it would be relocating its London National Headquarters to Leeds, with Glasgow and Bristol also set to become regional ‘Creative Hubs’. Part of Channel’s ‘4 All the UK’ strategy, these new bases are designed to ‘attract and develop talent from across the UK, both on and off-screen, and support the significant increase in the organisation’s Nations & Regions spend on creative content’ (Channel 4 website).

*CFP* "DECOLONISING FILM EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND", SYMPOSIUM

Symposium: Decolonising Film Education in Scotland

Friday April 24th 2020, 10am-4pm

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

Lectures and discussions focusing on the decolonisation of the curriculum have taken place around the UK in the last few years, and QMU’s Film & Media scholars are contributing to this debate by organising a one-day event that focuses on Scotland’s film education in all its shapes and forms.

At this event we hope to go further than merely diversifying the canon, by thinking through the meaning and practice of decolonising reading lists, staff quotas, educational resources, film screenings and other educational content. This event has been conceived to challenge longstanding omissions that limit how we understand Scottish identity and society. In order to continue to interrogate and broaden our vision of a Scottish future on the screen, we need to include a wider range of perspectives, reflecting the increasing diversity of Scottish experiences and identities in terms of class, disability, gender, geography, language and race.

*CFP* “KIPLING IN THE NEWS: JOURNALISM, EMPIRE AND DECOLONISATION”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Kipling in the News. Journalism, Empire, and Decolonisation

17-18 April 2020

City, University of London

Keynote speakers will include

Professor Janet Montefiore (editor of the Kipling Journal), historian of media and empire.

Dr Chandrika Kaul (University of St Andrews).

Professor Harry Ricketts (University of Victoria, author of The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling).

Professor Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford), novelist and postcolonial critic.

This conference sets out to explore the importance of journalism to Kipling’s literary life and, in so doing, to ask larger questions about the relationship between journalism, empire, and decolonisation. It also invites meditations on the continued relevance of these questions in the ‘post-truth’ era of the twenty-first century and in the age when our current Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, sees fit to recite ‘Road to Mandalay’ in Myanmar.

*CFP* "REPRESENTING THE SCOTTISH PAST IN FILM, TEXT, AND MEDIA", SCOTTISH STUDIES 2019 FALL COLLOQUIUM

Scottish Studies 2019 Fall Colloquium

‘Representing the Scottish Past in Film, Text, and Media’

Centre for Scottish Studies

University of Guelph

“The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.” – Antony Beevor

Depictions of medieval and early modern Europe have captured the imaginations of the young and old since the nineteenth century. Continued revisiting and reshaping of historical narratives in film, television, and literature highlight the ways in which the pre-modern past continues to resonate with twenty-first century audiences. Interest in texts such as Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015), HBO’s Game of Thrones, Showtime’s The Tudors, Starz’s Outlander, The History Channel’s Vikings, BBC’s Wolf Hall, and Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen draws attention to the ways in which we persistently engage with these past narratives while bringing them into dialogue with contemporary popular culture. In doing so, these texts ask us to consider the relationship between race and national identity, as well as issues of sexuality, gender, and equality. As the growing conservatism of national governments dominates global discourse, the perceived brutality, oppression, and general uncertainty of life in a ‘less civilized’ age provides a way for contemporary societies to grapple with the issues at hand.

*CFP* "EUROPEAN ELECTIONS: POPULISM & EUROSCEPTICISM", MEDIAFLOWS CONGRESS

European Elections: Populism & Euroscepticism

Valencia, Spain | 20-22 November 2019

For further information, please visit the Mediaflows congress web page or contact the Organising Committee by email:

• Germán Llorca Abad & Guillermo López García (Directors). German.Llorca@uv.es, Guillermo.Lopez@uv.es
• Vicente Fenoll & Marina Requena (Secretaries). Vicente.Fenoll@uv.es, Marina.Requena@uv.es

The European elections of May 2019 take place in a scenario of particular uncertainty. The rise of populist movements of different ideologies, often linked to Eurosceptic positions, is combined with a crisis situation in the European Union. Institutional crisis, deriving fundamentally from the consequences of Brexit, the exit from the United Kingdom, scheduled for October of this year. But there is also an economic and political crisis, in a world where Europe's influence is tending to decline.

*CFP* “DISCOURSES OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: FROM WINDRUSH TO BREXIT”, DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY, LEICESTER

Discourses of immigration and citizenship: from Windrush to Brexit

Thursday 27th June 2019

De Montfort University, Leicester

The media coverage of the Brexit Referendum in 2016 focused disproportionately upon the notion that Britain close its borders and reduce immigration if the country left European Union.  Media discourse on the issues of immigration, race and ethnicity are best described as negative, whilst Government policies on immigration, appear to promote a hostile environment in order to deter potential immigrants. This discourse is not new, sixty years ago when the Windrush generation arrived in Britain they faced discrimination, prejudice and last year, a number of them who had arrived legally, most likely as children, were  been removed from the UK because they were unable to prove they had a right to remain.

So what if anything has changed in the intervening years since Empire Windrush docked in 1948 bringing to the UK hundreds of Caribbean migrants? What parallels are there between the media discourse of Windrush and newer migrants from Eastern Europe or further afield?  Does post-Brexit Britain mean incidents like Windrush will be legitimised as the UK takes control of who is welcome in the country?