‘Visions of House and Home Annual Northeast: Historic Film Summer Symposium
Thursday, July 25 — Saturday, July 27, 2014
Wunderkino (“wonder-cinema”) are moving images that ignite our curiosity and engagement and help us to rethink questions of creativity, complexity, rarity and the multiple uses and understandings of amateur and non-commercial films.
From the very earliest film of in-laws cavorting in the Roundhay Garden (1888), domestic settings have provided the backdrop and often the unintentional subject of amateur film. The organisers of the 2014 Northeast Historic Film (NHF) Summer Symposium invite proposals featuring studies of amateur and non-theatrical films that examine house, home, and domesticity. “Wunderkino 4: Visions of House and Home” focuses on understanding how amateur and non-theatrical films offer insight into daily life, domesticity, and the quotidian activity that has often been dismissed as mise-en-scene. How does the performance of domesticity size or resize the frame? What activities define house and home on film? How do notions and conventions of home frame regions, communities, and people in amateur films, industrial films, and educational films? This year’s theme is an effort to draw upon the wide range of approaches that scholars, artists, filmmakers, and archivists bring to the study and use of amateur and non—theatrical film.
We encourage (and expect) participants to incorporate examples of interesting moving images as part of their presentations. NHF houses a 125-seat cinema with 35mm, 16mm, videotape, and DVD projection.
The NHF Summer Symposium is a multi-disciplinary gathering devoted to the history, theory, and preservation of amateur and nontheatrical moving images. For over a decade, the Symposium has been bringing together archivists, scholars, and artists in an intimate setting for three days of viewing and discussing lesser-known, amateur, and found films. NHF is located in Bucksport, a town of 5,000 on the coast of Maine (for more info on NHF, please visit www.oldfilm.org.
Presenters typically have 30-45 minutes in which to deliver their paper and engage in discussion with their colleagues. The symposium is open to archivists, artists and scholars from all disciplines. Please be advised that NHF is a non-profit organisation. Unfortunately, we do not have resources to fund travel and lodging for conference presenters and participants. All presenters and participants must register for the symposium.
Please send 250-500 word abstracts outlining your paper ideas and a brief cv via e-mail to: symposium@wunderkino.org
We are happy to discuss your presentation ideas with you in advance of a formal submission. The Symposium Program Committee will begin reviewing proposals on April 20, 2014, and will finalise the program by May 10, 2014.’