*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* "ARTISTS' MOVING IMAGE, ECOLOGY AND FUTURE PRACTICES", ISSUE 10 (1/2), MIRAJ: THE MOVING IMAGE AND ART REVIEW JOURNAL

Issue 10:1/2 aims to imagine and examine how practices in artists’ film and video can be transformed by a dedicated attention to notions of the Ecological in its many expanded forms. We invite scholars, artists, writers, film-makers and curators to explore what our role can be in engaging with new ways of thinking and making in response to the climate emergency.

This issue of MIRAJ will therefore address key areas of critical concern, from the culpability of the moving image industry’s extractive and management practices, to the rich potential of the artistic and film making community to shape, challenge and disrupt dominant disciplinary knowledge and habitual practices and its role in the practical organisation of other futures.

 

We invite scholarly articles and essays that:

• Examine how dominant disciplinary knowledge and habituated practices of the moving image can be challenged and reimagined;
• explore the value of transdisciplinary and epistemological frameworks to offer new perspectives and models of practice;

*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* "THE AUDIOVISUAL THINKING PROCESS IN CONTEMPORARY ESSAY FILMS", Nº 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. 

*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* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY", ESSAY COLLECTION

We are currently soliciting 250-500 word abstracts for essays to be included in an essay collection on Alejandro Jodorowsky to be published as part of the University of Edinburgh ReFocus series, which examines international directors (series editors: Robert Singer, Stefanie Van de Peer, and Gary D. Rhodes). As the first comprehensive anthology focusing on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s career, this collection seeks to deepen our understanding of Jodorowsky as a filmmaker and artist.

 

Essays may focus on:

• Jodorowsky-directed features: Fando y Lis (1968), El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973), Tusk (1980), Santa Sangre (1989), The Rainbow Thief (1990), The Dance of Reality (2013), Endless Poetry (2016), and Psychomagic, A Healing Art (2019), including also unfinished work and the legendary status of his unrealized Dune adaptation. 

*CFP* "A CRITICAL COMPANION TO JULIE TAYMOR", CRITICAL COMPANIONS TO CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS LEXINGTON BOOKS SERIES

Considered as a true visionary, Julie Taymor is one of the of the most experimental and intellectually engaged film and theatrical directors working today. Her fusion of folklore, pop-culture, and classic literature has resulted in a series of fascinating and intellectually demanding works, both on stage and screen. From her beginnings with downtown not-for-profit theater through her Broadway successes and failures to her idiosyncratic career in Hollywood, Taymor has proven herself a notable and important artist. 

This collection will explore Taymor’s career, with an emphasis on her work in film, from Fool’s Fire (1992) to more renown productions such as Titus (1999), Frida (2002), The Tempest (2010) and the recent The Glorias (2020). As the first comprehensive scholarly volume on Taymor, covering her entire career in cinema, we are currently inviting the submission of 250-300 word abstracts for essays to be included in A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor set to be published in the Lexington Books series Critical Companions to Contemporary Directors, edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna.

*CFP* "CINEMA AND ARCHITECTURE/URBANISM/MEMORY IN ROMANIA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EAST EUROPEAN FILM BULLETIN

Romanian cinema is at the forefront of addressing the challenges that the country faces today, often linking troublesome memories to urban spaces. Recent films such as Radu Jude’s I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History as Barbarians and Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada address collective processes of remembering by linking them to physical places - public as well as private -, thereby exemplifying the way in which memory is dependent on and projected onto the locus of the city. Media artists, such as Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, have also explored the topographies of memory. At the crossroads of the country’s past and future, architecture is a powerful force for cinematic storytelling, displaying a feeling of “restorative nostalgia” (Svetlana Boym) as well as a desire for change. 

As part of its Romanian focus 2021, the East European Film Bulletin is preparing a special issue on the topic of architecture and memory in Romanian cinema, television, video art and experimental film. We are looking for contributions that examine and analyse the diverse relationships between cinema, architecture and memory and their links with Romania’s complex memory, both remote and recent.

*CFP* "AEFIS-20: EXPERIMENTAL FILM, VIDEO ART, AND THE BORDERS OF CINEMA", A BRITISH SOCIETY OF AESTHETICS SYNERGY CONFERENCE

AEFIS-20: Experimental Film, Video Art, and the Borders of Cinema

A British Society of Aesthetics Synergy Conference

Queen Mary University of London

London, UK, November 5-6, 2020

This conference aims to highlight the contribution of experimental films and video art to contemporary culture. For this purpose, one should emphasize the way in which experimental films and works of video art differ from paradigmatic films, as well as the way in which experimental film and video art, as appreciative categories, differ from one another. The idea is to realize a synergy between, on the one hand, the research carried out in analytic aesthetics on notions such as appreciative category, art form, medium, and genre, and, on the other hand, the historical and stylistic research, as well as the artistic and critical practice, in the domains of experimental film and video art.

*CFP* "DECENTRING THE AVANT-GARDE: LANDSCAPE, TRAVEL AND THE GAZE IN EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO", SPECIAL ISSUE, VOL. 57, PAPERS ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

The special issue of Papers on Language and Literature (vol. 57) aims to highlight the work of filmmakers working on the margins of the avant-garde, including those using traditional (8 mm or 16 mm) and new (hybrid) media formats, and the ways they (re)address the questions of landscape, travel and the gaze. Although certain avant-garde films, including those made by Vertov, Bolotowsky, Kubelka, Winkler, Lehman, Welsby, Snow, Fischinger, Dutta, Rashidi, Takahiko, Frampton, Brakhage and others, have received some attention from researchers, there exists a number of underrepresented works, which use landscape and travelogue forms to challenge the hegemonic master narratives and undermine the image of majority groups and interests, continuously breaking the taboos and censorship of the mainstream (film) culture. Likewise, this issue will hopefully extend the use of some recent revisionist theories, which have moved beyond structuralist-formalist thinking to incorporate intermediality and heterogeneity (Branden), spectatorship and (gendered) body politics (Lambert-Beatty), corporeal turn in avant-garde film (Osterweil), expanded cinema practices (Sutton), materialism (Walley) or personal registers (Kase), to the study of landscape and travelogue films, many of which clearly de-center formalist strategies.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, ISSUE 7, FOUND FOOTAGE MAGAZINE

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 Film
• Collage Film
• Archival Footage
• Compilation Film 
• Assemblage Films
• Recut movies
• AV Remix
• Mashup
• Supercut

*CFP* “IMAGES SECONDES: POST-CINEMA PRACTICES OF RESEARCH AND CREATION”, SPECIAL ISSUE, THE IMAGES SECONDES JOURNAL

The third issue of the French journal Images secondes questions the heuristic and critical potential of the notion of "post-cinema" in the context of a general reflection on the "reconfigurations" (de Rosa and Hediger, 2016) of the cinematic medium in the age of networked digital media. We agree with Shane Denson and Julia Leyda that if post-cinematic media "concern the emergence of a new 'structure of feeling' or 'episteme', new forms of affect or sensibility", then "traditional scholarly forms and methods for investigating these issues are unlikely to provide adequate answers" (Denson & Leyda, 2016: 6).

For this reason, this issue of Images secondes will give priority to contributions that depart from the traditional forms of academic publishing to develop formats which explore the unique potentialities of online dissemination. As the goal of this issue is to investigate the complex and polyhedral relationships between cinema and online new media, we see this as an ideal opportunity to explore the epistemological potential of practice- based research, artistic research, research-creation and "performative" research (Haseman, 2006). We therefore invite contributors to propose written articles, but also video formats, hypertexts, visual, sound, interactive, hypermedia works...

*CFP* “INTERACTIVE IMAGES AND NEW NARRATIVES”, SPECIAL ISSUE FOR THE REVUE FRANÇAISE DES MÉTHODES VISUELLES

Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles, while acknowledging the preponderant role of photography and cinema in the evolution of research practices, remains open to other types of (audio)visual methods. And if researchers can claim to be from visual sociology or visual anthropology, they can also be from other disciplines, in an institutionalization of disciplines or sub-disciplines more or less asserted in this field (PINK, 2003). Since The Nuer (1940) by Edward EVANS-PRITCHARD and Balinese Character (1942) by Margaret MEAD and Gregory BATESON, the resulting photographic and then film production (Jean ROUCH among the precursors) is necessarily linked to aesthetics and the history of visual art in a complex and often ambiguous relationship. 

Documentary film, for example, is part of the history of cinema and the history of visual methods. It is logical that documentary film should be permeable to the introduction of digital technology and then to its almost-generalization, which goes much further than the abandonment of silver film by the creation of new formats that are more or less stable in their evolving aesthetics. Jacobo SUCARI, in a classification of contemporary documentary (2012), adds to the usual categories of "documentary of cinematic tradition" and "video documentary" four other categories that illustrate the tensions between film and video: 1) the documentary in a contemporary art process, 2) the expanded documentary, 3) the transmedia documentary and 4) the web documentary. The porousness between visual methods in social sciences and the art of documentary filmmaking inevitably leads to the implementation of methods inspired by this rapid upheaval of forms through digital technology. 

*CFP* "THE POLITICS OF COLOUR MEDIA", 17TH ISSUE, FRAMES CINEMA JOURNAL

Although colour has historically been trivialised as superficial, feminine, cosmetic, and decorative, the 17th issue of Frames Cinema Journal, guest edited by Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson, interrogates and celebrates colour as a potent political force. Colour media around the globe, chief amongst them film and television, have established, reinvented, progressed, and aestheticised national, political, social, and cultural profiles, evolving an ideological currency alongside their aesthetic values. This issue of Frames therefore examines the political power of colour media by simultaneously gazing at these intersecting ideological, technical, and aesthetic histories. Precisely because colour does not comprise a single technology or set of visual practices, but a host of interlocking apparatuses and contingent aesthetic principles, we invite submissions that attend to any aspect of chromatic media from around the world.

From the analogue histories of colour in the studio and laboratory, to the practicalities of chromatic coding and programming in the digital era, from the aesthetic issues of colour in experimental media practice, to its value for state-sponsored propaganda, and from issues of national progress and transnational relationships, to colour’s role in forging oppositional subject-positions and identities, we are eager to hear from contributors working on original research involving previously unexamined chromatic media, particularly in relation to contexts outside Western Europe and America.

*CFP* "DECENTRING THE AVANT-GARDE: LANDSCAPE, TRAVEL AND THE(OTHER'S) GAZE IN EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO", SPECIAL ISSUE, PAPERS ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE JOURNAL

As experimental film practice is still the most prevalent in (yet not confined to) western Europe, North America and Britain, the special issue of Papers on Language and Literature aims to highlight the work of filmmakers working on the margins of the avant-garde, including those using traditional (8 mm or 16 mm) and new (hybrid) media formats, and the ways they (re)address the questions of landscape, travel and the other’s gaze. Although certain avant-garde films, including those made by Vertov, Bolotowsky, Kubelka, Winkler, Lehman, Welsby, Snow, Fischinger, Dutta, Rashidi, Takahiko, Frampton, Brakhage and others, have received some attention from researchers, there exists a number of underrepresented works, which use landscape and travelogue forms to challenge the hegemonic master narratives and undermine the image of majority groups and interests, continuously breaking the taboos and censorship of the mainstream (film) culture. Likewise, this special issue will hopefully extend the use of some recent revisionist theories, which have moved beyond structuralist-formalist thinking to incorporate intermediality and heterogeneity (Branden), spectatorship and (gendered) body politics (Lambert-Beatty), corporeal turn in avant-garde film (Osterweil), expanded cinema practices (Sutton), materialism (Walley) or personal registers (Kase), to the study of landscape and travelogue films, many of which clearly de-center formalist strategies.

*CFP* “HISTORIES OF MICROANALYSIS AT THE INTERSECTION OF FILM, SCIENCE AND ART”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Histories of Microanalysis at the Intersection of Film, Science And Art 

4-6 de Junio de 2020

Philipps University Marburg, Germany

The desire to study the motion of humans and other animals is deeply embedded in the technological, social and aesthetic histories of film. For a long time, the focus was on individual behavior and individual actors. This changed in the 1950s and 1960s when anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, sociologists and ethologists increasingly turned to film to analyze movement as an element in systems of social interaction. Informed by cybernetics, systems theory and structural linguistics, researchers such as Ray L. Birdwhistell, Gregory Bateson, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Adam Kendon looked for patterns in what they regarded as the continuous, multi-sensorial stream of interaction/communication behavior. Film and later video became important tools to tap into this stream, to stabilize it and facilitate close attention to minute details through repeated viewings of brief stretches of interaction. 

Bringing to consciousness “visible, yet unseen” phenomena that sometimes lasted for only fractions of a second, film promised to open a window onto the microtemporalities and processuality of social systems. But such analysis also reflected back on the (micro-)temporalities of film itself. This point was not lost on experimental filmmakers like Hollis Frampton, who drew on studies of movement interaction in his theoretical and aesthetic reflections on film. The field of interaction studies also overlapped with developments in contemporary dance and performance art, drawing choreographers like Irmgard Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay into the circles of communication research, while also influencing aesthetic approaches to dance and performance.

*CFP* "(RE)FOCUS ON LANDSCAPE AND TRAVELOGUE FORMS IN AVANT-GARDE AND EXPERIMENTAL FILM", SPECIAL ISSUE, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE JOURNAL

As evident in academic literature, the study of often marginalized avant-garde and experimental works, seen as a peripheral yet distinctive mode of film and art practice, is likely to facilitate contemporary film, visual arts and visual culture studies. Many post-war productions, including those directed by such artists and filmmakers as Vertov, Bolotowsky, Kubelka, Winkler, Lehman, Welsby, Snow, Fischinger, Dutta, Rashidi, Takahiko, Frampton, Brakhage and others, seem to have received little attention from researchers despite being successfully preserved by international centers dedicated to the conservation, study and exhibition of independent, experimental and avant-garde cinema. 

Moreover, both landscape and travelogue forms, although central for the history and aesthetics of many national literatures, art movements and cinemas, remain another underexposed aspect of 20th century experimental film imagery, which should be investigated in terms of periodization, production and meaning-making processes pertaining to the artist’s construction and rendering of the surrounding reality. Hence, given the paucity of material offering a number of in-depth scholarly analyses of works of individual artists, it seems that there is a growing need for publications in the field other than wide-ranging anthologies and interview books.

*CFP* "CINE EXCESS XIII: INDEPENDENT VISIONS OF EXCESS", 13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL ON GLOBAL CULT FILM TRADITIONS

The 13th International Conference and Festival on Global Cult Film Traditions

Birmingham City University Presents:

Cine Excess XIII

Independent Visions of Excess

7th- 9th November 2019

Birmingham City University (and related screening venues)

Confirmed Guests of Honour:

Jen and Sylvia Soska (Rabid [2019], American Mary)

Norman J. Warren (Terror, Inseminoid)

Keynote Speakers:

Dr Stacey Abbott, Roehampton University 

Professor Ernest Mathijs, University of British Columbia

*CFP* "THE PICTURESQUE: VISUAL PLEASURE AND INTERMEDIALITY IN-BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA, ART AND DIGITAL CULTURE", CONFERENCE

"The Picturesque: Visual pleasure and intermediality n-between contemporary cinema, art and digital culture"

October 25-26, 2019

Romania

Continuing our series of conferences dedicated to rethinking intermediality in contemporary cinema and visual culture, we propose to initiate a discussion around aspects of intermediality that may unfold from the perspective of the picturesque.

The much-debated notion inherited from the art theories of the late 18th century originally denoted both an aesthetic quality (something pleasing to the eye situated between the serenely beautiful and the awe-inspiring sublime) and a particular visual impression (something that looks like a picture in nature). It anticipated and later became deeply entangled with many of the ideas of Romanticism, of modernity and postmodernity by shifting the appeal of images from knowledge to imagination, sensation and mood, by applying the frame of art to life, or the frame of one art to another, and emphasising the abstract aesthetic value of a kind of pictured vision. Photography appropriated it as a strategy of so-called pictorialism and popular culture perpetuated it in various forms of spectacularization from the early dioramas and panoramas to today’s ubiquitous digital screens through which we continually reframe our lives in picturesque images.

*CFP* "'WOULD YOU KINDLY?': CLAIMING VIDEO GAME AGENCY AS INTERDISCIPLINARY CONCEPT", Nº8/2019, G|A|M|E, THE ITALIAN JOURNAL OF GAME STUDIES

The new issue of G|A|M|E proposes a re-examination of the concept of agency in games. We welcome contributions that address the idea of agency from a variety of academic perspectives, taking into account its interdisciplinary history and application, in order to expand our critical understanding of the concept more broadly. We therefore invite scholars from all fields to reflect on different notions of agency, not only in relation to physical and digital games, but also to other media and art forms as they impact on games and game studies. At the end of the influential first-person shooter Bioshock (2K Games, 2007), its critique of the rhetoric of choice and freedom emerges from the dialogue between the protagonist Jack and the visionary despot of Rapture, Andrew Rayan. Rayan's seemingly innocent question ‘Would You Kindly?’ conceals a cognitive trigger that casts a shadow over the protagonist's actions. By shattering the illusion of free will for both character and player, the game breaks the fourth wall and confronts the user with the question: who is being/has been controlled?

Already central to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction as well as that of design (e.g. Sherry Turkle, 1984; Brenda Laurel, 1991), agency was redefined more than twenty years ago in Janet Murray's seminal volume Hamlet on the Holodeck (1996, p. 123) as ‘the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices’. To this day, the concept of agency is still prominent in scholarly debates on video game and game design: to describe a key ontological category that delineates the multiplicity of paths as well as the breadth of choices made available by interactive texts; and also –closer to Murray’s acceptation– to define a primary category of video game aesthetics, a textual effect attached to the pleasure of taking meaningful decisions within virtual environments.