*CFP* "GEORGE A. ROMERO: A CANNIBALIZED BODY OF WORK?", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

International Conference

George A. Romero: A Cannibalized Body of Work?

November 24-25, 2022, Montpellier, France

 

Dug up in 2019, The Amusement Park (1973), and released in theaters in June 2021, commissioned by the Lutherian Church, stands as a reminder that George Andrew Romero (1940-2017) was not just the director of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and creator of the modern zombie. By focusing on an old man abandoned in a theme park where he will be subjected to all sorts of humiliation and abuse, the Pittsburgh director once again fires away at US-American society and remains faithful to an aesthetics whereby the figures of Gothic horror are portrayed in a raw realist mode.

Prompted by this posthumous release, and considering the continued relevance of Romero’s stories of contamination, zombified lives, and deserted stores and streets in the light of a global pandemic, this two-day international conference aims to decenter the habitual views cast on a body of work that has been cannibalized by the living dead. From 1968 to 2009, ten out of the sixteen feature films directed by Romero have ignored the creature to focus on witches in Jack’s Wife/Season of the Witch (1972), vampires in Martin (1977), killer monkeys in Monkey Shines (1988) and faceless yuppies in Bruiser (2000).

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF ABEL FERRARA", BOOK CHAPTER

Over his four-decade long career, Abel Ferrara has built himself a reputation of being one of the most audacious and unconventional filmmakers in contemporary cinema. After his beginnings in the exploitation circuit of late 1970s he developed to become one of the central figures in the ‘indie’ wave of the 1980s and 90s and is by now a frequent guest at the leading international film festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno.

Ferrara’s unique career covers the entire cinematic spectrum from grindhouse to arthouse but has seldomly been at the center of scholarly attention. The prospective collection of essays (planned to appear in the ReFocus series at Edinburgh University Press) aims to close this gap by offering a comprehensive critical survey of the director’s multi-faceted oeuvre covering his narrative features as well as his documentaries and his work for television.

In order to ensure a broad range of methodological, theoretical, historical or philosophical perspectives on Ferrara’s work, scholars of film studies and related fields such as cultural studies, screen and media studies, or philosophy are invited to submit a short abstract (approx. 300 words) for essays to be included in the collection. 

*CFP* CALL FOR PROPOSALS, CRITICAL COMPANIONS TO POPULAR DIRECTORS SERIES

The series covers many directors who have not been studied previously in academic publications and whose works nonetheless are highly renowned nowadays. The intent of the series is to offer interesting and illuminating interpretations of the various directors’ films that will be accessible to both scholars of the academic community and critically-minded fans of the directors’ works. Each volume combines discussions of a director’s oeuvre from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of the directors’ works. In this sense, the volumes will be of interest (and will be instructive) for students and scholars engaged in subjects as different as film studies, literature, philosophy, popular culture studies, religion and others. We welcome proposals for both monographs and edited collections that offer interdisciplinary analyses, focusing on the complete oeuvre of one contemporary director per volume.

Proposals may include (but are certainly not limited to) the following directors:

• Woody Allen; 
• Luc Besson; 
• Katryn Bigelow; 

*CFP* "BODIES OF WATER IN AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION & FILM", BOOK CHAPTER

We invite abstracts for a new book of original essays which explore the meaning and/or function of still or moving bodies of water -- lakes, rivers, the sea, gulfs, streams, ponds, canals -- in narratives by African Americans.  In particular, we seek other innovative and provocative critiques of images of water in 20th and 21st Century African American fiction and film, poetry and drama.  At once, a few pieces of literature and film come to mind:  August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean; Zora Neal Hurston’s Janie Crawford in the Everglades; Michelle Cliff’s short story collection, Bodies of Water; so much of Toni Morrison’s fiction; readings of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; Spike Lee on Hurricane Katrina; and, Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou, for example.  Our volume wants analyses which acknowledge the legitimacy of but move beyond the familiar or conventional interpretations of the Atlantic Ocean Middle Passage and/or Transatlantic Slave Trade.  

Some possible questions for African American analysis, including environmental or ecocritical contemplation:

• What roles do bodies of water play in African American literary and filmic creative imagination?  In particular, how does the trope of water/waterways get interwoven into works by African American authors and filmmakers?  

*CFP* "SPIES AND SECRET AGENTS ON EASTERN EUROPEAN SCREENS", SPECIAL ISSUE, STUDIES IN EASTERN EUROPEAN CINEMA JOURNAL

While various generic manifestations of popular cinema in Eastern Europe have attracted increasing scholarly attention, as testified, for instance, by special issues of SEEC devoted to sci-fi and musicals, a  research gap can still be observed regarding the espionage genre in the region, despite the fact that some of the Eastern European titles of this variety have become box office hits. The lukewarm academic interest in Eastern European spy thrillers thus far can perhaps be partly explained by the low cultural prestige of the genre and its assumed adherence to the hegemonies and realpolitik of the Cold War – implicit preconceptions that the proposed special issue is designed to address.

 

Aside from screen stories with a central focus on clandestine affairs, we also encourage studies on works that present secret agents in a range of generic frameworks, such as historical dramas, biopics or comedies.

• Some of the possible topics and approaches include:
• The espionage genre and cinematic secret agents before World War II
• Spy films and Cold War

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, I INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF CINEMA AND FILM ANALYSIS

I International Symposium of Cinema and Film Analysis (Online)

17-19 November 2021

 

We are delighted to invite proposals from academic researchers to be presented at the I International Symposium of Cinema and Film Analysis; organized by the CNPq research group CineArte – Cinema, Film Analysis, and Intellectual Experience. The event will be held online from 17-19 November 2021, and our goal is to deepen and broaden the exchange between research works centered on film analysis by gathering different perspectives, observing the outcomes when selecting different theoretical approaches and methodologies, and seeing how film language can be intertwined with numerous fields of study.

We are interested in the moving image studies, sound, film analysis definitions, case studies, changes throughout the time, and debates centered beyond movies, such as the interchange between other fields of study within the Arts and Human Sciences. The Symposium is a result of an interdisciplinary exchange between researchers who investigate the relationship between cinema, audiovisual, by selecting film analysis as a methodology within different usages and contexts. 

*CFP* "POETIC INSURRECTIONS. ROMANTIC LEGACIES IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY FILM AESTHETICS", INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDIES CONFERENCE

Poetic Insurrections. Romantic Legacies in Modern and Contemporary Film Aesthetics

Research Centre for Visual Poetics (University of Antwerp)

20-21 January 2022

 

The ‘return’ to Romanticism in the recent consideration of modernist cinemas (see Richard Suchenski, Projections of Memory: Romanticism, Modernism, and the Aesthetics of Film; Daniel Morgan, Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema) can be taken as a way to frame the apparent contradictions in the work of a number of key figures: the revolutionary cinema of Jean-Luc Godard seems at odds with the seeming reactionism of a sanctification of natural beauty in his ‘late’ works. The strict materialism of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, in its turn, gave way to reflections on the necessity of myth and utopian ideals in the politicization of art. And although the cinema of Marguerite Duras is characterized by a destructive negativity, her films exhibit a minute attention to material presence. We believe that the same contradictions that characterize these works can be found in the films of a number of contemporary filmmakers - Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Hong Sang-soo, Wang Bing, Lav Diaz, Albert Serra etc. - allowing us to align them with the project of aesthetic modernism. It is our contention (one we share with Nancy & Lacoue-Labarthe, Rancière, J.M. Schaeffer and others) that this project can indeed best be approached by considering its romantic undercurrent.

*CFP* "EL CINE DE LUIS GARCÍA BERLANGA (1921-2010)", Nº 25-2022, REVISTA FOTOCINEMA

El año 2021 se conmemoró el centenario del nacimiento del director Luis García Berlanga, uno de los cineastas españoles más internacionales e influyentes de nuestra cinematografía. Su universo fílmico, único y singular, ha traspasado la ficción para proyectarse en la realidad que está más allá de la pantalla, como reconoció la Real Academia Española (RAE) al incluir en el diccionario el término “berlanguiano”.

Desde su primera película, Esa pareja feliz (1951), codirigida con Juan Antonio Bardem, hasta la última, París-Tombuctú (1999), pasando por otros títulos significativos como Calabuch (1956), ¡Vivan los novios! (1969), su trilogía Nacional (1978, 1980, y 1982), La vaquilla (1985) o Todos a la cárcel (1993), Berlanga ha reflejado medio siglo de la intrahistoria de España con ironía y cierto jolgorio festivo. La mirada de este director, acompañada en gran parte por la pluma del guionista Rafael Azcona, ha retratado de manera sarcástica, pero a la vez conmovedora, la idiosincrasia de la realidad española. En el cine de Berlanga la trama, con situaciones esperpénticas, absurdas, caóticas, carnavalescas, reflejadas con un tono de humor negro, satírico y festivo, se despliega en planos secuencia corales donde los múltiples y variados personajes se mueven de un espacio a otro, mientras hablan y hablan. Personajes miserables, pero entrañables. Personajes atrapados en el “arco berlanguiano”, en esa estructura dramática que impide que puedan llevar a cabo sus sueños, alcanzar sus metas, y que hace de las películas de Berlanga crónicas de un fracaso, como el propio director decía.

*CFP* "DOCUMENTARY FILM IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: THEORY AND PRACTICE", EDITED VOLUME

This interdisciplinary edited volume seeks to illuminate theoretical and practical perspectives on the production, reception, and analysis of ethnographic and documentary film in Latin America and the Caribbean. We invite scholars, critics, filmmakers, and other interested authors to submit proposals as outlined below.

While there is a substantial and growing literature on narrative films of the global south, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the theoretical and practical issues of making, producing, distributing, and watching documentary and ethnographic films within the region. Such work is long overdue given the increasing number of high-quality documentary and ethnographic films that continue to emerge from and about Latin America, the Caribbean, and its myriad diasporas. Therefore, this edited volume represents an important step toward thinking about issues relevant to the production and analysis of documentary and ethnographic film across the global south.

Topics for essays could include but are not limited to considerations of

• a film or group of films 
• the work of a filmmaker or group of filmmakers 

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF CLAIRE DENIS", EDITED VOLUME

With a career spanning over three decades (1988-Present), French filmmaker Claire Denis has demonstrated not only a remarkable longevity in a notoriously fickle industry, but a continuing fascination with the possibilities of film as form, as art, as language. Simultaneously idiosyncratically French yet global in their outlook, her films test traditional boundaries, between genres, cultures, fiction and autobiography, perhaps evidencing what Denis herself refers to as her ‘dreamy distance with reality’. Denis exhibits the genre eclecticism which characterises the careers of many great auteurs, from Stanley Kubrick to Seijun Suzuki, with her explorations of the postcolonial (Chocolat, White Material), horror (Trouble Every Day), romance (Let the Sunshine In), sci-fi (High Life), and thriller (Bastards, The Stars at Noon). While forging relationships with a small troupe of acclaimed actors (including Alex Descas, Isabelle Huppert, Beatrice Dalle, Juliet Binoche and more recently Robert Pattinson in her English language debut High Life and the forthcoming The Stars at Noon), she often works with the same musicians (Tindersticks), Director of Photography (Agnès Godard), and screenwriter (Jean-Pol Fargeau). Clearly the product of a single creative vision working in the traditions of world cinema, Denis’ films also adopt and subvert ‘mainstream’ conventions. ReFocus: The Films of Claire Denis is a timely look at an artist at the height of her powers, and with an impressive oeuvre which is iteratively reinterpreted in light of new works.

*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* "STEVE MCQUEEN: 'I WANT THE BURDEN'", 14TH ANNUAL CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS SYMPOSIUM

Steve McQueen: “I want the burden”

14th Annual Contemporary Directors Symposium

Friday 24 September 2021 (provisional date)

Online

University of Sussex

 

Working across a range of formats, from video art and gallery installations to Hollywood to BBC1 with his recent Small Axe pentalogy, Steve McQueen’s prodigious output has been marked by formal ambition and political urgency, engaging most notably, but not exclusively, with black experience in racialised settings. This symposium interrogates his body of work, its political, aesthetic and institutional dimensions, and the interfaces between them.

Keynote speaker: Dr Clive Nwonka, University of York

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF JOAQUÍN JORDÁ", EDITED COLLECTION

With a career that lasted almost fifty years, Joaquín Jordá (1935-2006) is one of the main figures in unconventional, heterodox and combative Spanish cinema. A leader of the Barcelona School of Film, an innovative movement within Spanish cinema in the sixties, Jordá exiled himself to Italy, where he practiced militant cinema and political activism. After returning to Spain, he worked as a translator and prestigious screenwriter, before reactivating his career as a filmmaker in the nineties. From the end of that decade onwards, and coinciding with a stroke that marked a turning point in his career, he was best known in two ways: as one of the principal creators in the area of new documentary film in Spain and through his educational activities in screenwriting and creative documentary.

Through his work, it is possible to trace the history of a particular kind of cinema devoted to politics and its development in a world where political struggles are often fragmented and dispersed. Jordá is an interdisciplinary creator who seamlessly combined his work in cinema with political activism, literature and education. Despite being recognized at the end of his career by international film festivals (Torino Film Festival and Festival International du Documentaire-Marseille) as one of the most original, innovative and powerful documentary filmmakers of his time; he is still not well known internationally.

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF DAVID MAMET", EDITED COLLECTION

We are seeking abstracts of 250-500 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on David Mamet to appear in late 2022. We have received a number of strong proposals already, but looking for a few more to add to the volume’s lineup. The intended scope of the work is to analyze Mamet’s unique position as an artist of note in both the theatre and the cinema, as well as his very specific ideas about dramatic structure, performance style, and economical visual storytelling. It will argue, for the first time, that Mamet’s film work is an essential, but underappreciated dimension of his artistic career.

Possible areas of inquiry could include: Mamet’s films as writer/director; Mamet as script doctor; Mamet as screenwriter for other directors; Mamet and dramatic theory; Mamet and gender; Mamet and adaptation; Mamet and adaptation of theatrical productions; Mamet and Jewish identity; Mamet and confidence games; Mamet and Chicago; Mamet and performance; Mamet and visual style; Mamet and dialogue; Mamet and profanity; Mamet and politics; Mamet and class; Mamet and frequent collaborators; Mamet in popular culture; Mamet and celebrity; Mamet and Hollywood; Mamet and magic; Mamet and authorship. Areas outside of those listed here are also welcome.

*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* "WRECK AND RUIN: THE CAR CHASE ON FILM", EDITED COLLECTION

Though a staple of the modern action genre, the car chase has attracted very little academic study. From its origins in the silent movie era to the breakneck chaos of the 1970s to its contemporary reliance on digital effects, the car chase is a quintessential cinematic sequence. Often the centerpiece of action films, car chases unify narrative, style, and spectacle to maximize the impact of the drama on spectators. 

 

And yet, despite their ubiquity, outstanding questions remain: What are the origins of the car chase, and how did it come to dominate the action genre? What stylistic changes have taken place over time in the way filmmakers execute these sequences on screen? What general trends in cinema history led to their saturation? How have filmmakers adapted to new technologies when designing, shooting, and editing car chases? What role do car chases play in defining visions of gender on screen? Are car chases pure spectacle, or can they be something more? The proposed volume intends to explore these questions and more, all with a defining goal: to explicate an important feature of cinema that has gone un-attended.

*CFP* "REFRAMING THE NATION: RACIALIZED & QUEER DIASPORIC WOMEN OF COLOUR AND QUEER INDIGENOUS CANADIAN INDEPENDENT WOMEN FILMMAKERS 1990-2020", EDITED COLLECTION

Reframing the Nation is the first critical film anthology from an intersectional Canadian context that is dedicated to a close engagement with impactful films produced by racialized diasporic, indigenous, and Queer BIPOC independent women filmmakers in Canada. This collection charts the cinematic visions and perspectives of first and second generation diasporic and indigenous filmmakers and Queer BIack, Indigenous, Women of Colour Canadian Independent Women Filmmakers working from 1990-2020. Works considered can be shorts or features that are independent Canadian productions. Independent films tend to reflect artistic practices that are rooted in personal, political, aesthetic, cultural, philosophical, and social justice concerns, they are typically arts council funded and/or co-produced with other agencies. A vital component of independent film is that the filmmaker maintains artistic/editorial control over their work. Comparative papers between Canadian productions and international productions are welcome.

Please Submit Abstracts (300 words) & short bio (125 words) up until April 15, 2021

Notification of acceptance: within three weeks of receipt of the abstract.

*CFP* "THE FILMS OF WILLIAM WYLER", ESSAY COLLECTION

In 1925, William Wyler was the youngest director at Universal.  His final film was in 1970.  This forty-five-year career not only spanned the silent to the sound era, but also connected classic Hollywood to “new Hollywood.”  The range of his films also traverses a wide spectrum of genres: from westerns, The Westerner (1940) to adaptations of classic literature, Wuthering Heights (1939); from crime thrillers, The Desperate Hours (1955) to rom-coms, Roman Holiday (1953); from controversial topics, The Children’s Hour (1961) to musicals, Funny Girl (1968), a body of work capped by his three Best Picture/Best Director efforts: Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the big-screen epic Ben-Hur (1959). 

His three Oscars for Best Director are an achievement surpassed only by John Ford.  Wyler also garnered awards for those he worked with, steering five actresses and two actors to Academy Awards in leading roles, as well as seven acting Oscars in supporting roles.  The range of his work and his role in the studio system make Wyler an interesting, if not enigmatic, study in “auteurship.”  His life experience as one of Hollywood’s early immigrant artists also speaks to the foreign influence on classic Hollywood.  These are just a few of the areas in which this collection of scholarly essays seeks to contextualize and theorize his entire canon and his relationship to American cinematic history and American culture.

*CFP* "THE ESSAY FILM AS A SELF-REPRESENTATIONAL MODE", SPECIAL ISSUE, EKPHRASIS: IMAGES, CINEMA, THEORY, MEDIA

In cultural anthropology, subjectivity is an inherent part of the human condition; our perception, affects and sense-making stem directly from it. It exists at an individual level because human beings are sentient and thinking subjects reflecting upon themselves and upon the context in which they are inserted. At a social level, subjectivity depends on large scale cultural formations which predetermine choices and behavioural patterns imbuing them with political overtones. In cinema, these two components of subjectivity may be expressed through what Lisa Lebow calls first person documentary films, which designate a /mode of address/ and not a filmic genre: “[…] these films ‘speak’ from the articulated point of view of the filmmaker who readily acknowledges her subjective position” (2012, 1).

These films include a broad range of practices: the essay film, the self-portrait and the video diary, among others. Historically, essay films have been directed at least since the 1920s and the cinematic masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) is actually placed in this category by many film theoreticians. From the 1970s onwards it proliferated across different geographies and cultures, spreading in the world cinema landscape. Generally considered a hybrid and creative form of cinematic expression, the essay film eludes a single and irrefutable definition, which makes it an interesting topic for research and ever more so nowadays that film is mixing with other sculptural art forms and invading the gallery and the museum.

*CFP* "A HANDBOOK OF INDIAN INDIE CINEMA", BOOK CHAPTER

Each year, a large number of Indian Indie films are released that suffer from lack of viewership even when it comes to their target audience, not to mention critical assessments: films that are regional, experimental in nature or have fresh, timely interventions. 

Many among these deserve recognition, not only from general audiences and moviegoers but also from film scholars and the academia. With the onset of streaming sites and OTT platforms, some of these have made it to the limelight, although a systematic handbook that discusses and features many of these films is currently, absent.

We look forward to filling this gap by compiling an accessible handbook of Indian indie films that also sets to capture the various conceptual paradigms, through close engagements.

We welcome abstracts of not more than 300 words along with a bio-note at this mail: indiecinemavolume@gmail.com. The last date for the submission of abstracts is March 31, 2021.