See CFP below:
Film History – Special Issue: “Amateur Film and the Institution”
Guest Editors: Enrique Fibla, Masha Salazkina (Concordia University)
Deadline for abstracts: October 15th, 2016
In recent years, Film Studies scholarship began to pay more attention to the effects that various non-theatrical film initiatives – such as educational, industrial, and other institutional productions – have had on the way modern life is ordered, experienced and imagined. Although amateur film initiatives have sometimes been included in such debates, their relationship to professional film expressions and institutions has not yet been explored in depth. Shifting discourses on the status of amateurism vs. professional aesthetics have shaped much of film criticism and theory, emerging with particular force at certain moments in history. Yet, usually deemed a mere hobby devoted to recording family gatherings and trips, amateur cinema’s rich history as a vernacular media form, with its own journals, circulation circuits, and particular relationship to actuality is yet to be fully explored. Likewise, the current amateur digital media explosion has gathered scholarly attention, but it remains to be articulated in relation to a more comprehensive history of vernacular media. Such histories can potentially allow for a new map and timeline of moving image production to emerge: countries or regions previously deemed peripheral for film history due to their lack of a strong film industry may become relevant to rethink the space that film occupies in cultural history globally.
With these ideas in mind, the Amateur Film and the Institution special issue looks to discuss the different implications of amateur cinema around the world in relation to the technological, social, cultural, and economic developments that marked its emergence in different contexts. A central task of the special issue will be to interrogate the relationship between amateur practices and broader film institutional developments and open a conversation by addressing a range of questions, such as: What role did amateur production play in the institutionalization of film? What kind of alternative institutions did amateurs create? How does the development of these practices and discourses impact our understanding of the history and geography of moving images?
We invite contributions from scholars and practitioners to submit paper proposal on the history of film amateur practices around the world. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
-Archival institutions and non-professional film
-Non-professional film movements, journals, and festivals
-Amateur pornography
-Political potential of amateur cinema
-Amateur filmmaking and experimental/avant-garde cinema
-Self-made productions and the contemporary digital culture
-DIY technologies and aesthetics
-Amateur film in relation to industrial and educational films
-Histories of critical debates about the status of “the amateur” in film and media
-New geographies of moving image history beyond commercial film
-The impact of the study of amateur cinema on film historiography
Send a 500-600 word abstract and a brief biographical note to enrique.fibla@concordia.ca and salazkina.masha@gmail.com by October 15th 2016. The editorial team will notify selected proposals by November 1st 2016. Completed manuscripts (up to 9,000 words) will be due February 1st 2017, and will be accepted for publication pending editorial and external readers evaluation. All submissions will be subjected to double blind peer review.
For further information on Film History journal submission guidelines see: http://www.iupress. indiana.edu/pages.php?pID=78& CDpath=4
In addition to scholarly articles, we invite submissions of relevant previously unpublished original documents on this topic, in English or in translation, to be included in the special issue.
