Conferences
‘Funny People these Foreigners’
A call for papers has been issued for ‘Funny People these Foreigners’, an international conference on international comedy, organised by the Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Research Centre, the University of Salford. After the success their conference last year, ‘What Have You Got In That Box? - Comedy and Regional National Identity’, they are inviting proposals for papers that investigate any aspect of comedy with an international perspective. Proposals (maximum 300 words) should be sent to Dr C.P. Lee (c.lee [at] salford.ac.uk) or Dr Andy Wills (a.willis [at] salford.ac.uk), by 17 March. The conference will take place 5-6 June 2008.
Fifth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference
The Fifth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference is to be held at Stockholm University, Sweden, 11–13 June 2008. Previously held at Utrecht, Santa Cruz, Montreal and Guadalajara, the conference promises a combination of archival screenings, keynote addresses and scholarly panels, on the theme of women and cinema during the first four decades of film history; that is, women as directors, screenwriters, producers, actors and filmgoers.
There’s a Call for Papers, which asks for abstracts of 200–300 words, together with a paper title and a two-line biographical statement, to be submitted by 15 December 2007, to wss@mail.film.su.se. More details (in English as well as Swedish) on the conference website.
Peripheral Early Cinemas
The theme of the 10th Domitor conference has been revised. Previously called ‘The Regional Dimension in Early Cinema’, it will now be called Peripheral Early Cinemas. It will take place 17-21 June 2008 at Perpignan, France and Girona, Spain. The revised theme of the conference is described thus:
The notion of “Peripheral cinemas” is geographical concept: cinema that is made or viewed far from the institutional center (for example, national capitals). But the designation is not only spatial. It also involves cinemas produced on the margins of developing industrial and cultural institutions.
“Peripheral” then, connotes “regional” or “provincial,” but these characterizations are relative to the specific historical period. It was Barcelona, for instance, that was the actual capital of Spanish filmmaking in 1900. Furthermore, the idea of “regional” or “provincial” is not relevant to numerous places (Italy, USA, not to mention non-Western countries).
As a result, the concept of “local cinema” becomes very problematic.
The official languages will be English, French and Catalan. The conference will be in Girona for the first three days before hopping across the border to Perpignan for the rest. A call for papers has now gone out, with a deadline of 31 December 2007. Domitor is an international organisation dedicated to the study of early cinema, defined as cinema in all its aspects to 1915.
Modernity and Visual Culture
1st-2nd November 2008
Oxford University, UK
Keynote Speakers
David Trotter (Cambridge University)
Laura Marcus (Edinburgh University)
Maggie Humm (University of East London)
In the wake of recent analyses of the landscape of visual cultures at the end of the nineteenth century, new contexts have become available for understanding the emergence and shape of modernism. This conference seeks to unpick our tangled model of the relationships between the established arts in the modernist period and between modernism and popular culture, and to illuminate the types of reactions occasioned in the established arts by the emergence of modern mass media. Papers on any aspect of the relationship between modernist literatures and cultures with visual culture, including cinema and fine art, are welcome.
Speakers are encouraged to use visual material in their presentations. Send 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers to Andrew Shail (andrew.shail [at] at-annes.ox.ac.uk), by 1 April 2008. Panel proposals are welcome – please include contact details and affiliations for all speakers.
Visual Empires
The fourth Visual Delights conference, Visual Empires, will take place at the University of Sheffield between 3-5 July 2009, and a call for papers has been issued.
Popular visual cultures have been central to the construction and propagation of imperial and colonial narratives and have helped define the nature of Empire. They have been intrinsically linked to discourses about the rise and fall of Imperial fortunes in the 19th and early 20th centuries and have been studied as both evidence of imperial attitudes to race and colonial subjects and as propaganda texts which helped spread and cement imperial and colonial ideologies. This conference seeks to explore this rich visual archive and to examine the roles played by popular visual culture in the construction of narratives concerning issues of race, identity, colonial and imperial ideologies, nationalism, patriotism and the ‘Visual Empire.’
We would like to receive suggestions for papers with deal with these issues in popular cultural forms such as photography, advertising, cinema, theatre, the magic lantern, ethnographic display and world’s fairs before 1930. Suggested themes could include:
- Photography and constructions of ‘otherness’
- Ethnographic display and racial identities
- Advertising and imagined colonies
- Cinema and the mapping of Empire
- The magic lantern and the topography of Empire
- Music hall and the patriotic show
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to Simon Popple (s.e.popple [at] leeds.ac.uk) or The Louis Le Prince Centre, The Institute of Communications Studies, The Houldsworth Building, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. The deadline for submissions is 1 November 2008.
The conference will be jointly hosted by the Louis Le Prince Centre, University of Leeds and the National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield. It is held in conjunction with the journal Early Popular Visual Culture.
Colour and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive
Conference: 10-12 July 2009, Bristol, UK
Call for Papers: This conference addresses questions emerging through a renewed interest in colour film and as an interdisciplinary subject. The event is part of an AHRC-funded project on colour film, led by Professor Sarah Street. While colour is a fundamental element of film forms, technologies and aesthetics it is rarely singled-out for analysis. The aim of the conference is to extend previous work on colour and to consider its form and functions from a range of perspectives within four major strands: histories and technologies; film theory; philosophies and aesthetics of colour; the ethics, practices and theories surrounding the deterioration and conservation of colour film. In addition to formal conference papers, the event will include screenings of prints from the BFI National Film Archive. We invite proposals which address broad issues raised by colour and the moving image. The conference will provide a forum for discussion which is informed by, and directly addresses, the interrelations of the theory, history and aesthetics of colour film and of moving image technologies in their broadest sense. Proposals which focus on questions of colour in one or more of the following areas are particularly welcome:
- star systems
- reception theory
- pre-filmic, pro-filmic and onscreen spaces
- fantasy, spectacle, realism and/ or ‘natural’ colour
- colour theory
- synaesthesia: theories and practices of the interrelations of colour, sound, music as sensation
- chromophilia/chromophobia
- distanciation and avant garde film
- colour and genre
- film histories and new technologies: video, DVD, small screen technologies as new viewing spaces
- Colour systems including Kinemacolor, Dufaycolor, Chemicolor, Agfacolor, Technicolor, Eastmancolor
We invite abstracts of c.200 words for individual papers or pre-constituted panels consisting of 3 papers to be submitted by 1st September 2008. Please send abstracts to dram-colourconference@bristol.ac.uk. If you prefer to submit your abstract by post, the address is as follows: Colour and the Moving Image Conference, c/o Dr Liz Watkins, Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UP, UK.
