*CFP* "ANIMATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY. RETHINKING IMAGES AND TECHNOLOGY", 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF FILM STUDIES

Animation in the 21st Century. Rethinking Images and Technology

27th International Conference of Film Studies

Rome, 25-26 November 2021

Roma Tre University

Online – Microsoft Teams platform

 

The 27th International Conference of Film Studies Animation in the 21st Century. Rethinking Images and Technology aims to investigate the critical role played by animation in contemporary audio-visual culture. Animated images have a significant and crucial position in current Film and Media Studies: they are the audio-visual horizon in which some of the most decisive and stimulating technological, aesthetic, narrative, political, and cultural challenges are faced. While contemporary works retain some of the fundamental elements of the tradition of animated film, taking them to a new level of sophistication, they also continue to represent a field of absolute experimentation in their audio and visual aspects.

*CFP* "MANY DOORS TO FANTASTICA: THE NEVERENDING STORY & THE EDUCATION OF THE IMAGINATION", EDITED VOLUME

When thinking of family films from the 1980s, the plethora of weird yet engaging movies seems endless. Chief among them was Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 film adaption of The Neverending Story. The film drew from Michael Ende’s 1979 Die unendliche Geschichte: Von A bis Z, known better by the English title which was shared with the film. Ende’s book ultimately spawned three films, two animated series, a hit song which has been covered by musicians in a variety of genres, and a host of short stories written as tributes to the imaginative work. Ende’s work managed to secure a spot in the collective memory of Americans. References to the film and the book populate television shows. This collection of essays seeks to engage in interdisciplinary readings and viewings which will help shed light on the lasting power of Ende’s fictional world.

The multifaceted framework of Ende’s story helps to shape the interdisciplinary approach of this collection. The lines between reality and fiction, between characters, and between purposes are all blurred in such a way that there is much to mine from the stores rich layers. This volume hopes to do the same by investigating the text from a variety of viewpoints, as well as offering pedagogical approaches for the classroom. It also seeks to highlight the various media representations of Ende’s story, including the films and cartoon adaptations. In the end, the book will enrich the reading and viewing experiences for those for whom Bastian and Atreyu are a part of their imaginative fabric, as well as serving as a gateway for those just coming to Fantastica for the first time. Contributors are invited to submit paper proposals that approach the imagination from a variety of lenses.

*CFP* "PIKACHU'S TRANSMEDIA ADVENTURES: THE CONTINUING ADAPTABILITY OF THE POKEMON FRANCHISE", EDITED COLLECTION

In 2021, the Pokemon franchise celebrates the 25th anniversary of its debut in Japan and the fifth anniversary of its popular worldwide AR cellphone game Pokemon Go. In fact, Pokemon is arguably experiencing something of a resurgence and renaissance within the current cultural moment. When a pop-up Pokemon Centre store was opened in London in 2018 to mark the release of Sword and Shield, queues for entering the retail space frequently had to be closed due to demand whilst product lines regularly sold out on a daily basis. In 2019, when the long-running cartoon’s main character Ash Ketchum finally won a Pokemon tournament, major news sites humorously deemed this victory a newsworthy event (Bissett 2019). 

More recently, a revival in Pokemon card collecting has left retail shelves bare and scalpers running rampant whilst mint-condition ‘graded’ cards have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction (Koebler 2021). Meanwhile, the games themselves continue to be adapted to Nintendo’s console platforms, with the Nintendo Switch releasing both remakes of previously popular titles (Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu and Let’s Go! Eevee, Pokemon Snap) as well as new titles exploring hitherto unknown regions (Pokemon Sword and Shield). Much more than a franchise intended to commercially target and exploit children, the Pokemon franchise represents an enduringly popular intellectual property that continues to attract interest across generations.

*CFP* "ANIMATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY. RETHINKING IMAGES AND TECHNOLOGY", 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF FILM STUDIES

Animation in the 21^st Century. Rethinking Images and Technology

Roma Tre University

Rome, 25-26 November 2021

The conference aims to propose a reflection that examines the dynamics and mechanisms behind the creation of some of the most interesting national and international contemporary animation trends. The topics will place them in close connection with the current media scenario (cinema, advertising, videogames, the web, animated documentaries, TV series, contemporary art, digital culture) and with transmedia aesthetic and narrative forms originating from different cultural paradigms.

The conference will pay particular attention to the conjunction between theories and practices and between mainstream and experimental forms. Hence, it intends to investigate animated films as an industrial, narrative, aesthetic and ideological “system” promoting imaginaries, aesthetics, and values. It also delves into the production of artists who move on the borders, free from conditioning and devoted to the more advanced technological research. Therefore, the conference’s overall aim is to revitalize and address the concept of animation in contemporary visual culture, investigating its theoretical, historical, political, and cultural nature in relation to the new moving images.

DEFENSA DE TESIS "PROGRAMACIÓN Y RECEPCIÓN DE ANIME EN LA DÉCADA DE LOS NOVENTA EN ESPAÑA: LA FUNCIÓN DEL DOBLAJE EN LA MODIFICACIÓN DE IDENTIDADES NO NORMATIVAS"

  Próxima defensa de tesis del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Información de la tesis: 


"Programación y recepción de anime en la década de los noventa en España: la función del doblaje en la modificación de identidades no normativas"

Autor/a: DANIEL FERRERA LÓPEZ

*CFP* "THE AUDIOVISUAL THINKING PROCESS IN CONTEMPORARY ESSAY FILMS", ISSUE 18 (SPRING 2022), COMPARATIVE CINEMA JOURNAL

Born out of modern cinema, the essay film departed from the dominant forms of fiction and documentary cinema in order to explore an unknown territory defined by subjectivity, hybridization and reflection, evolving to become “a form that thinks,” as Jean-Luc Godard defined it. The final decades of the 20th century witnessed the consolidation of the essay film, which was enabled by postmodern thought and culture, as well as by the development of video recording technology. In this mode, works by Chris Marker, Roberto Rossellini, Orson Welles, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonas Mekas, Harun Farocki, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, Guy Maddin, Peter Watkins, Chantal Akerman, Alexander Kluge or Johan van der Keuken, among many others, developed a practice of audiovisual thinking for which Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998) could be considered the epitome, marking a turning point that also took place at the century’s end. Over the last twenty years, this essayistic practice has proliferated due to the digital revolution, facilitating diverse experiences of subjectivity and intimacy, and multiplying the possibilities of audiovisual editing; that is, of the very thinking process that defines this filmic form. Taking this itinerary into account, the 18th issue of Comparative Cinema proposes to address the specificities of the audiovisual thinking process in the contemporary essay film.

The most notable studies devoted to the essay film have established its key traits – the audiovisual expression of the thinking process and the self-reflexiveness of subjectivity – and its specificities – issues related to its genealogy, historical path and bond with the literary essay – allowing for the consolidation of this research area. Several edited volumes have been decisive in this regard, including: L’essai et le cinéma (Liandrat-Guigues and Gagnebin, 2004); La forma que piensa (Weinrichter, 2007); Jeux sérieux. Cinéma et art contemporains transforment l’essai (Bacqué et al., 2015); and Essays on the Essay Film (Alter and Corrigan, 2018). 

*CFP* "PERFORMING ANIMATION, ANIMATING PERFORMANCE", BOOK CHAPTER

We are seeking proposals for additional chapter contributions for an edited collection on the intersection of animation and performance.

From the early animators who appeared in whole or in part in their films (think of J. Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl, or Winsor McCay) to the more recent debates about the creative ownership of motion capture characters, performance is a spectre that is present in all forms of animation. ‘Acting’ and performance are often considered integral to the practice of animation, particularly the process of animating characters. In his 2013 book Shadow of a Mouse, Donald Crafton considers animated characters as performers. At the same time, notions of ‘animation’ and coming to life underpin conceptions of performance, coming to bear on how we might understand and theorise performance across multiple disciplines. 

 

This book aims to put ‘animation’ and ‘performance’ in a productive dialogue in a way that will enhance our understanding of animation and performance, both separately and together.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, FEAR 2000: HORROR UNBOUND ONLINE CONFERENCE

Fear 2000: Horror Unbound

(Online) – 10–12 September 2021

 

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and 80-minute panels to be presented at the fifth Fear 2000 conference, Fear 2000: Horror Unbound. Hosted by staff in the Department of Media Arts and Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, this online conference will investigate the increasingly transmedial nature of horror in the twenty-first century.

Established in 2016, Fear 2000 is dedicated to championing work on contemporary horror. Previous events have showcased research from established scholars, early-career researchers and postgraduates focused on cinema, television, animation, video games, music and digital literature. But this has provided only a limited sense of horror's increasing presence in all aspects of popular culture; for our fifth conference, we aim to broaden our scope further and encourage papers that discuss and theorise horror across a wide range of media, including (but not limited to) film, television, theatre, performance, animation, art, photography, music, radio, podcasts, video games, digital media, comic books and literature.

*CFP* "NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS", EDITED COLLECTION

This edited collection will consider Nightmare Before Christmas as a milestone in animation and film history as well as a key cultural object with lasting impact. The book will be inserted in Bloomsbury’s Key Film/Filmmakers in Animation series.

In the thirty years since its release, Nightmare Before Christmas has drawn repeated academic attention. Many of these contributions have seen the film as an entry point to larger arguments about Tim Burton’s work, whether in terms of its animation (Cuthill 2017), representations of gender (Mitchell 2017), and use of fairy tales (Burger 2017). Less often, Nightmare Before Christmas has been considered in relation to other frameworks, such as its presence beyond the film industry, in theme parks (Williams 2020a, 2020b), and the way it negotiated changing cultural expectations of children’s media and horror (Antunes 2020). Though this literature has shed light on several aspects of the film’s significance, there is to date no sustained scholarly inquiry that brings these insights together and examines the historical and cultural significance specifically of Nightmare Before Christmas. This edited collection seeks to address this gap, considering the different layers of meanings and history of Nightmare Before Christmas from pre-production to the present day.

*CFP* "THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL SEMIOTICS OF COMICS AND CARTOONS", VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2, PUNCTUM-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Volume 6, Issue 2 (2020) of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, the online, open-access journal of the Hellenic Semiotic Society. This issue is devoted to "Semiotics of Political Communication", edited by Gregory Paschalidis. The articles, as well as the whole of the issue, can be accessed/downloaded at the journal’s website. We also bring you the new the new call for papers for the Volume 7, Issue 2 of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, devoted to ''The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and Cartoons'', edited by Stephan Packard and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

What more can semiotics do for comics? As early as the 1960s and through to the first decades of the 21st century, comics studies have attracted a large and perhaps disproportionate amount of attention from analytical semiotic approaches that foreground description and theory building: Their combination of pictures and text offering a challenge to any attempt towards a systematic theory of signs, and their experimental treatment of their semiotic inventory as well as the genres, imageries, and conventions of other media and art forms inviting descriptive scrutiny as well as playful engagement. Scott McCloud’s famous Understanding Comics (1993), both praised and criticized for its essentially semiotic approach, provided the foundation for the rise of sequential comics studies. Even the relatively more practice-based earlier work of Will Eisner (Comics & Sequential Art, 1985), on which McCloud built his own, focuses on a description of formal semiotic and semantic relationships. 

*CFP* "THE FROZEN PHENOMENON", EDITED ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION

The record-breaking release of Frozen in 2013 marked a shift in the American animation industry and the Walt Disney Company as a whole. The film has been elevated as a catalyst for the third “golden age” for Walt Disney Animation Studios, restoring the company’s brand identity and ushering it into a new phase. It has also been praised for its pedagogical promise of change and reform of the Disney princess franchise, marking the start of an era characterized by strong, independent female leads that evolve around “richer, more complex stories” (Harris, 2016). Popular critics have lauded the film for improving Disney’s gender role portrayal and for providing role models that are more empowering and realistic for young women – or what American educational scholar Cole Reilly has labelled “an encouraging evolution among the Disney Princesses” (2016, 60). 

The exchange of the traditional heterosexual fairy-tale romance for sisterly love was at the time unprecedented. Finally, from a business perspective, Frozen has set new standards for branding and merchandizing of the film's universe, music and popular characters. As the 10th anniversary of the film's premiere approaches, Frozen remains one of the most loved, recognizable, and marketed Disney films to date. Its enormous exposure and popularity calls for an exploration of its influence on mainstream animation and on contemporary popular culture and society as a whole.

*CFP* "ANIMATED SPACE. ENGAGED ANIMATION FOR THE SPACE(S) WE LIVE IN", SPECIAL ISSUE, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR FILM AND MEDIA ARTS

Since its early days, the animated image has suggested a spatial freedom that challenges the limits of the photographic and traditional filmic space. When, in 1914, Winsor McCay drew himself onto the landscape to interact with Gertie, he was initiating a practice of expanding the space(s) we live in through the use of animated image that lasts until today. And, while early rubber hose animation projected the uncertainty of the accelerating modern life onto the screen, contemporary animation is now seamlessly embedded in our lives, redesigning the facades of our cities, expanding our intimate spaces, bringing to life the digital devices that enhance our body interfaces.

Animation’s wide aesthetic and technical range has made its practice a perfect vehicle for engaging with our environment: From straightforward projections, site-specific installation work, to video-mapping and VR, the city landscape has simultaneously become the ultimate animation canvas and an animated body in itself; From the purely decorative to socially or politically engaged projects that challenge our perception of the world, animation has taken over the surfaces that used to limit our space, to augment our physical experience.

*CFP* "THE FROZEN PHENOMENON", EDITED ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION

The record-breaking release of Frozen in 2013 marked a shift in the American animation industry and the Walt Disney Company as a whole. The film has been elevated as a catalyst for the third “golden age” for Walt Disney Animation Studios, restoring the company’s brand identity and ushering it into a new phase. It has also been praised for its pedagogical promise of change and reform of the Disney princess franchise, marking the start of an era characterized by strong, independent female leads that evolve around “richer, more complex stories” (Harris, 2016). Popular critics have lauded the film for improving Disney’s gender role portrayal and for providing role models that are more empowering and realistic for young women – or what American educational scholar Cole Reilly has labelled “an encouraging evolution among the Disney Princesses” (2016, 60). 

The exchange of the traditional heterosexual fairy-tale romance for sisterly love was at the time unprecedented. Finally, from a business perspective, Frozen has set new standards for branding and merchandizing of the film's universe, music and popular characters. As the 10th anniversary of the film's premiere approaches, Frozen remains one of the most loved, recognizable, and marketed Disney films to date. Its enormous exposure and popularity calls for an exploration of itsinfluence on mainstream animation and on contemporary popular culture and society as a whole.

*CFP* "SOUND ON SCREEN I" 2021 ONLINE CONFERENCE

Sound on Screen I

17th-18th June 2021

Online Conference

The inaugural Sound on Screen conference welcomes submissions from scholars that explore the relationship between music and/or sound and the screen. We welcome submissions from scholars at any career stage, and from a wide range of disciplines such as (but not restricted to) musicology, film and television studies, cultural studies, communications studies and so forth. Film music studies is now a well-established sub-discipline both within musicology and film studies. Volumes such as Mera, Sadoff, and Winters (2017) help frame the field of music and sound ‘within the context of narrative media’ and help shape further the discussion of sound across a multiplicity of screens and a variety of modality of film consumption. 

 

It is within this breadth of contexts that we welcome papers from this popular area of research, but we particularly welcome papers that approach developing avenues of research such as the use of sound in film or television, or music for the smaller screen such as television or on-demand mobile media. Mera, Sadoff, and Winters (2017: 1) claim that ‘screens are now ubiquitous in our lives’, and so the academic study of the accompanying music and sound has never been more pertinent. This conference takes its cue from Chion (1994) and Mera et al. (2017) in drawing together ‘different practices and technologies under the same umbrella without attempting to obfuscate the differences that exist between them’.

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, SECOND VOLUME, THE JOURNAL OF ANIME AND MANGA STUDIES

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS) is eager to announce a Call for Papers for our second volume.

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies is a double-blind peer reviewed, open-access journal published by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. JAMS is dedicated to publishing scholarly works concerning anime, manga, cosplay, and the fandom surrounding these areas. As an open-access journal, JAMS aims to reach an audience of scholars both inside and outside the academe, encouraging public engagement through the digital humanities.

Because anime and manga studies is such a diverse field, JAMS welcomes papers regarding anime, manga, cosplay, and their fandoms as analyzed from any number of scholarly perspectives. Works published in JAMS first volume ranged from media industry history, to the intersections of disability and queer identity.

All papers published in JAMS are published with a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

*CFP* "ANIMATE ENERGIES", SOCIETY FOR ANIMATION STUDIES 32ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Society for Animation Studies 32nd Annual Conference

June 14th-18th, 2021

Online Conference

After postponing its 2020 conference, the Society for Animation Studies is pleased to invite panel and paper proposals for its 32nd annual conference. The conference organizing team has been closely monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic and is now planning a completely virtual online conference. All animation-related proposals will be considered, but applicants are encouraged to consider addressing the theme “Animate Energies” in their proposal.

 

The theme “Animate Energies” has many aspects. It can refer to the energy contained or represented in animation and the energy required to animate. The theme evokes animation’s dialectical definitions and practices—animating the inanimate, endowing with life, making objects move, and, in many cases, the tedious work or mechanical labor concealed behind expressions of freedom and possibility. It also evokes forces, powers, and resources that can be exploitative and exploited, oppressive and oppressed, that can generate resistance or activism, and that can produce or endure unforeseen events. Energy is typically measured by describing action and transformation within a system. Applying such an approach to animation can generate decentered or distributive views of the agency involved in the experience of animating or being animated. 

*CFP* "MAKING MONSTERS: THE PRODUCTION OF TERROR", MEDIA JOURNEYS 2021

Media Journeys 2021

Making Monsters: The Production of Terror

University of East Anglia's

Film Television and Media Departments Media Journeys series of symposiums.

7th June 2021

 

Monsters stalk through modern media. They are heard howling from radio, film and television. They are even spinning their tales on every corner of the World Wide Web. Whether adapting illusory techniques from stage, like Pepper’s Ghost, or creating new and experimental forms of monstrosity that range from classic film monsters to urban legends like the Slender Man, our media worlds are crawling with monsters. This symposium will explore the audio and visual processes, techniques and materials used to create these monsters.

*CFP* "MEDIA AWARDS: BEYOND THE EGOT", 89 ISSUE, THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP

The “big four” American entertainment awards—the Emmy for television, the Grammy for music, the Oscar for film, and the Tony for theater, often referred to by the “EGOT” acronym—have long served as a barometer of mainstream taste cultures in their respective fields. While literature on media awards is not completely absent, its scope has been narrow. Popular press works on the somewhat standardized journalistic narratives surrounding the EGOT, particularly the Oscars. Scholarly literature has largely focused on awards as they pertain to the international art cinema circuit and its attached film festivals, such as the Cannes Film Festival.    

This call, while respecting the literature that addresses these familiar narratives, intends to reimagine and reinvigorate discussion of entertainment awards and their meaning within the media industries.

Awards are a near-ubiquitous feature of media cultures across mediums, narrative forms, industrial roles, and both geopolitical and virtual spaces: The Nolly Awards, for the span of a few years, recognized achievement in Nollywood films, i.e. the cinema of Nigeria; TikTok user Ashley Hufford (@ashleyhufford) recently sought to establish the “Tik Tok Tony Awards”; The Ursa Major Awards is awarded for “the furry arts.” 

*CFP* "REALIZING RESISTANCE EPISODE II: UNCHARTED GALAXIES", VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

With the end of the Skywalker era of the Star Wars saga, and the emergence of spin-offs like The Mandalorian, Resistance, and Rebels, aca-fans from all disciplines have an opportunity to engage with nearly half a century of Star Wars media. As with our previous event, this conference aims to bring together scholars from across disciplines to examine Star Wars media as cultural texts. We invite scholarly and creative interventions with an explicit focus on themes of resistance and justice. How do these films and other media objects contribute to, reflect on, or depart from broader contemporary cultural practices and social discourses?

Since 2019, both the political and media worlds have experienced dramatic shifts and disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, a contentious U.S. presidential election, and an increasing sense of the vulnerability of democratic institutions and processes. Star Wars, as a cultural phenomenon, has also been embroiled in controversies and transitions, from reactions to The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian to the emergence of Disney+ as a principle platform for the continuation of the Star Wars legacy. Star Wars has penetrated into the culture in surprising ways including martial arts classes offering lightsaber training, political protests that feature Star Wars iconography, the co-opting of the Empire and First Order by the alt-right, among many others. We encourage presentations that reflect on these contexts to offer new perspectives and innovative methodological and disciplinary approaches to Star Wars scholarship.

*CFP* "BRINGING LEGACY TO LIFE", STOP MOTION CONFERENCE

Stop Motion conference: ‘Bringing Legacy to Life’ (w/c 26th April 2021)

Animation Research Network Scotland, Edinburgh College of Art

[this is intended to be an in-person event but if covid-19 restrictions remain in place it will become an online event]

 

2020 was a legacy year for animation in Edinburgh – the National Galleries of Modern Art, began to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the legend, Ray Harryhausen and at Edinburgh College of Art, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the animation programme.  Though different in scope and scale, they are connected by a passion for film making, innovation, story-telling and stop motion animation. As we move in to 2021 we reflect on these legacies and how they contribute to our cultural heritage.  Through a two-day conference we will take all things stop motion as its over-arching theme to consider, celebrate and critique this particular form of making.  Possible topics may include (but not limited to):