CINE TECTONICA: FILM ON THE FAULTLINE
The recent earthquakes in Chile, Christchurch and Japan have left a host of powerful images in the minds and memories of millions of people around the world. Film has always played a crucial role in the imagination of disaster. From its earliest days, cinema has registered the impact of seismic events. The aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is recorded on film. In New Zealand, footage from the Napier earthquake of 1931 shows the destruction of the town. Hollywood even recast New Zealand in Green Dolphin Street (Saville, 1947) as the fictional setting for a special effects mega-quake and tsunami.
An earthquake is also a conceptual event of telluric proportions. An emergent seismic consciousness, reflected in a number of contemporary films from Iran, Chile, Haiti, Japan, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Korea, the USA and New Zealand, has shaken to the core those solid and secure political, economic, ethical and ontological categories which ground the project of modernity in its current globalised form. Perhaps the spate of earthquakes in 2010-11 can serve a similar function for our present geopolitical formation as the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755 held for the age of Enlightenment.
The earthquake indicates a fissure, a rupture that forces us to reconsider our established notions of film history and criticism. Faultlines, by definition, are located on the edges of tectonic plates.
Film history and theory too must confront the tectonic shift in focus away from the centre (Europe, North America) toward the periphery (the Southern Cone, the Pacific Rim, China, Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Mediterrean Basin and North Africa).Papers are invited which address any of the following issues:
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fictional and non-fictional representation of earthquakes in film
narrative form, genre and the cinematic image
archival footage and digital witnessing (digital camera, phone, youtube, facebook etc)
social memory and history
modernity, film and ruins
heritage, home, exile
mourning, trauma and survival
disaster as media spectacle
alternative forms of film and media production, distribution and exhibition
racial, ethnic and indigenous experience of natural disaster
urban planning and renewal
disaster capitalism and compassion fatigue
local and national politics
international solidarity and community activism
banality, catastrophe and everyday life
the temporality of crisis, the event and emergency
Please submit an abstract of 250 words by March 15, 2012, along with a short biography, to alan.wright@canterbury.ac.nz
This book will be published by Intellect Press.
CALL FOR ESSAYS OR PROPOSALS ON CHAPLIN
Deadline: June 1 (proposals), July 15 (essays), 2011
We seek essays or proposals for essays to be included in a book of collected critical assessments of Chaplin's films and career. The objective of this collection is to present Chaplin within a wide range of current critical thought. Thus, we are especially interested in work that reflects new theoretical perspectives. Submissions must be in electronic format (.docx or .pdf preferred) as attachments to an email message to Larry Howe, Roosevelt University, (
lhowe@roosevelt.edu).
Deadline for submissions: essays (up to 6000 words) by July 15, or proposals for essays by June 1.
For more information, please contact any of the following:
James Caron: jec@sas.artsci.hawaii.edu
Benjamin Click: baclick@smcm.edu
Larry Howe: lhowe@roosevelt.edu
International Conference
Shakespeare on Screen: Othello
21-22-23 June 2012
Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III (France)
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2011
This "Othello on screen" conference is based on a partnership between the university of Le Havre and the University Paul Valéry Montpellier III and between two research centres: the GRIC (Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures, EA 4314, Université du Havre) and the IRCL (Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age and the Enlightenment, UMR 5186 CNRS, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III).
This international conference will focus on the adaptations of Othello from 1908 to 2012, including Orson Welles' 1952 and Oliver Parker's 1995 versions but also the films that are built on the Shakespearean plot but prefer not to use Shakespeare's text, such as O, directed by Tim Blake Nelson in 2001. It will also focus on less full-flegded versions of Othello by inviting papers on references to the play on all kinds of screens (TV, cinema, computer).
A variety of approaches will be welcomed in this conference. The papers may examine, among other aspects:
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how the play is (textually, aesthetically, ideologically, etc.) transformed when directed for the screen;
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what each adaptation reveals about the culture in which it is set;
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how Shakespeare's playscript (or plot) interacts with national ideologies and representations
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how the screen versions have been influenced and shaped by previous theatre productions;
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how gender and racial issues are treated on screen
Proposals, including a 300-word abstract and a short bio, should be sent to:
Sarah Hatchuel (shatchuel@noos.fr) and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (nathalie.vienne-guerrin@univ-montp3.fr) by 30 April 2011.
Selected papers will be published in the "Shakespeare on Screen" collection, edited by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre).
This "Shakespeare on Screen" conference, focusing on Othello, will prolong the series of conferences around "Shakespeare on Screen", which have been organized at the University of Rouen between 2003 and 2008 and in Le Havre in 2010. The University of Montpellier will host the event for the first time.
What gives this cycle of conferences its coherence and specificity is that it thoroughly interrogates what Shakespearean films do with and to Shakespeare's text. All the speakers share the same interest in the screen adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, but adopt various (historical, educational, cultural, analytical, practical, intertextual) approaches, thus focusing on multiple fields of study that testify to the richness of this research field.
If one film cannot render all the ambiguities of the play text, the confrontation of multiple versions can no doubt successfully convey a multiplicity of interpretations that may merge in the spectators' minds and grow to produce a kaleidoscopic form of meaning. If Shakespearean films have a life of their own, they also reveal the multifarious facets of each play whose hybrid nature is bound to feed "translations" of all sorts. Films based on Shakespeare fall into categories whose boundaries are always being transgressed. The conferences thus encourage scholarly interrogation on what the phrase "Shakespearean film" encompasses. They provide us with diverging assessments of the films, but also deploy a wide array of methodologies used to study "Shakespeare on screen".
Different scales of analysis may be used: some papers may focus on one film or on a selection of films; others may explore one theme or one particular scene considered in a selection of films. Some papers may adopt a primarily filmic approach while others may opt for a mainly textual "Shakespearean" approach. Some papers may contextualise the conditions of production, release and reception of the films; others may explore their ideological roots and impact. Some papers may focus on adaptations while others may focus on references to the plays on screen.
Organization
Sarah Hatchuel (GRIC, Université du Havre, France, shatchuel@noos.fr)
Janice Valls-Russell (IRCL, Université Montpellier III, France, cahiers@univ-montp3.fr)
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (IRCL, Université de Montpellier III, France, nvienneguerrin@orange.fr; nathalie.vienne-guerrin@univ-montp3.fr)
BORDER VISIONS: BORDERLANDS AND FILM
A Joint Conference of Central Connecticut State University
and the Literature/Film Association
Extended Deadline: April 30, 2011
To be held at Central Connecticut State University
New Britain, Connecticut
October 12-14, 2011
LFA (only) Abstracts to: cymiller@tiac.net
The shifting boundaries between languages and national and ethnic identities in the late 20th and early 21st century are changing the notion of borders around the world, as borderland areas become places of hybridity, cultural transfer, and exchange, but sometimes also arenas of violent conflict and segregation. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the resulting end of the Cold War, the expansion of the European Union, and the migratory movements across the continent have led to both peaceful and violent border negotiations and the attempted definition of a "New Europe." With the end of the Cold War, the notion of the "Americas" has been changing, as well, driven by an American foreign policy dominated by border politics, especially toward Mexico and the southern borders. In Spain, the transfers on the borders to North Africa are an enduring topic, as are the border disputes in South Asia and the Middle East.
While land borders are erased and redrawn by social and political realities, conceptual borders are also challenged and reconfigured by various strategies of adaptation from page and stage to screen, as well as by the proliferation of the Internet and new technologies. At the same time, the new digital divide causes new barriers to emerge.
We would like to invite contributions that address the ways in which border conflicts and their resolutions, as well as mediations of different kinds in the borderlands, are reflected in the medium of film and the processes of adaptation. What are the newly imagined and real communities that are being shaped by border politics and how do films address the changing geographical, economic, ethnic, and cultural realities? What images of borderlands emerge from their filmic representations? How do these images influence the audiences and shape an understanding of borderlands among viewers not familiar with the local specifics? How do the filmmakers use the geographical borderlands as a metaphor to comment on other borders and boundaries: narrative, linguistic, or epistemological? How are the borders and boundaries between various media approached, reconciled, or in some cases, violated?
Our Conference proposes to be a space for debating how different communities form senses of borderlands originating from places of knowledge, politics, art, memory, and lived experience, and how these senses contribute to a changing global community. While the European borderlands are one of the main focal points of the Conference, we also welcome submissions that address borders between non-European countries (e.g. North/South borderlands in Vietnam, the Korean border, the US/Canada borderlands, the US/Mexican frontera, Afro-Arabic borders, border conflicts in Israel and the Middle East, etc.), as well as borderlands between page and screen, and conceptual borderlands, as well. We encourage submissions on both fiction and non-fiction films and on different genres or film movements.
Possible Subthemes of the Conference:
• Real/imaginary borders
• Narratives crossing the borders between literature and film
• Adaptations across national, cultural, or linguistic borders
• Language barriers and negotiations
• Modernity versus tradition
• Gender on the borderlands
• Dissolution of borders
• Anxiety about intrusion/Borderlands in horror narratives
• Violation of borders
• Visions of border zones, enclosed areas, no man's land
• New technologies and the digital divide
We invite scholars to submit 250-300 word abstracts for individual presentations (20 minutes) that address any of the proposed themes of the Conference. Abstracts, along with affiliation and contact information should be sent to cymiller@tiac.net by March 15, 2011.
CCSU organizing committee: Dr. Matthew Ciscel, Dr. Jakub Kazecki, and Dr. Karen Ritzenhoff.
LFA conference committee: Cindy Miller, Laurence Raw, and Jim Welsh.
Call for Papers
Music and the Moving Image VI
May 20-22, 2011
Deadline: December 11, 2010
The annual conference, Music and the Moving Image, encourages submissions from scholars and practitioners that explore the relationship between music, sound, and the entire universe of moving images (film, television, video games, iPod, computer, and interactive performances) through paper presentations.
In addition, this year’s conference will include a special session on teaching students about soundtracks. We invite those who teach within film, media, and/or music curricula to submit abstracts about applying particular theoretical approaches to the practice of teaching soundtracks. (For this special session, the faculty member should include with their abstract submission the courses they teach, their departmental affiliation, and the majors represented by their students.) The keynote address will be presented by Philip Tagg (Kojak: 50 Seconds of Television Music; Ten Little Title Tunes). Streaming video of the presentations will be available only at NYU from May 20-30, 2011.
The Program Committee includes Philip Tagg (see credits above); K.J.Donnelly (The Spectre of Sound, British Film Music and Film Musicals); Elsie Walker (Conversations with Directors; editor of Literature/Film Quarterly); and coeditors of Music and the Moving Image, Gillian B. Anderson (Haexan; Pandora’s Box; Music for Silent Film 1892-1929: A Guide); and NYU faculty, Ron Sadoff (The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation; Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood). The conference will run in conjunction with the NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in Memory of Buddy Baker (May 24-June 2, 2011).
MaMI Conference website: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/scoring/conference/