Type:
Symposium
Date:
September 8, 2016 to September 10, 2016
Location:
United Kingdom
Subject Fields:
Film and Film History, German History / Studies
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
German Screen Studies Network Symposium 4: Living Pasts, Unfolding Futures
AND
GSSN Postgraduate Workshop (see details below)
September 8 – September 10 2016
King’s College London & Queen Mary University of London
Organising Committee: Prof Erica Carter (King’s College, London), Dr Alasdair King (Queen Mary, University of London), Dr Annie Ring (University College London), Eleanor Halsall (GSSN Network Coordinator, King’s College London).
Supported by the DAAD and Goethe-Institut.
As the UK German Screen Studies Network (GSSN) enters its fourth year, the GSSN steering committee is calling for contributions to our next annual symposium. As in previous years, the event aims to draw together film scholars, students, teachers, industry practitioners, and interested members of the public to explore issues relating to German-language cinema past and present. The symposium will be preceded by a postgraduate workshop (see CfP below), and will include public screenings, panel discussions and workshop sessions.
1. PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM
This year’s symposium focus is on Living Pasts, Unfolding Futures. Since the inception of cinema, commentators on film have observed the medium’s special capacity to shape experiences of past, present and future time. Writers on early film aesthetics marvelled at film’s modernist ability to remodel time; new cinematic technologies (parallel montage, superimposition) collapsed past, present and future into filmic moments of simultaneity; emergent genres – historical drama, but also fantasy film or science fiction – made of the past a usable experience in present time or, conversely, projected visions of dystopian or utopian futures.
Two key foci are anticipated for a symposium that addresses these core attributes of screen media past and present. We seek contributions, first, that explore new modes of production, representation, consumption and/or interactive ‘prosumption’ in contemporary German-language screen media. Our invited distinguished speaker, Prof Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt), has been asked to open the symposium with a keynote lecture drawing on his current research on the productivity of culture in an era of accelerated innovation.
Secondly and relatedly, the symposium will explore the new questions raised by contemporary media innovations for our understanding of the relation between cinematic pasts and media futures. A planned workshop, led by Dr Senta Siewert (Frankfurt), and focusing on the Berlin Arsenal-Kino’s Living Archive project, will examine the role of film archives in forming screen futures. Without the engagement of contemporary practitioners and critics, an archive merely exists, palely reflecting the contents it preserves. The symposium will contribute to critical and practical engagement with the archive by focusing on how screen futures are crafted from the film materials of past periods in cinema history.
As in previous years, the format will be dialogic and participatory. We invite contributions organised as commentaries on extended film extracts and/or archival and media artefacts. Since the event will be open to academic and non-academic participants, we are looking for contributions that combine intellectual ambition with broad accessibility.
Submissions may take three forms:
individual proposals for single contributions. These will be 20 minutes in length for panels of two, 15 minutes for panels of three. Proposals should name the title of a film from which an extended extract will be shown. The organisers will endeavour to bring individual contributors together in themed panels.
Panel proposals prepared in advance, with a maximum of three participants per panel. Two to three extended film extracts should be selected for each panel.
Film titles: there will be several screenings in the course of the symposium, and contributors are invited to propose titles for inclusion. Please indicate if you would be prepared to provide a short introduction to the film.
Please send abstracts of up to 150 words (or 250 words for a panel) by Monday 15 February 2016 to eleanor.halsall@kcl.ac.uk. Suggested foci for contributions include:
Contemporary media-technological transformations;
Cinematic time and other media temporalities;
Re-presentations: bringing early cinema to life;
Imagining the future: utopian and dystopian visions in cinema;
Affective pasts and futures;
Cinema’s third machine: the role of film criticism and historiography in shaping screen futures;
Archival interventions, media archaeologies and multi-media;
Media acceleration, slow film and television, viewing futures.
2. POSTGRADUATE WORKSHOP
Call for participation
4th National GSSN Postgraduate Workshop
Venue: Queen Mary, University of London
10.00 – 15.00, September 8 2016
Postgraduate students are invited to present their research on any area of German screen studies in an informal environment during morning and early afternoon sessions on September 8 2016. We encourage the broadest range of subjects. Presentations are limited to 20 minutes.
Participants in the workshop are also encouraged to attend and submit abstracts for the two-day GSSN Symposium Living Pasts, Unfolding Futures, which will begin at 16.00 on September 8. Bursaries will be available to offset the participation costs of postgraduate students for both events.
Organisers: Sophie Burt (University of Oxford), Rafael Dernbach (University of Cambridge).
Please send an abstract of up to 150 words by Monday 29 February 2016 to scbburt@gmail.com. Please also copy your email to the GSSN Network Coordinator, eleanor.halsall@kcl.ac.uk