[ecrea] CFP - Industrial Trends: Genre and the Movie Business Iluminace Special Edition

Call for Papers

/Iluminace /vol. 3 (2012) – Special English-Language Edition

*Industrial Trends: Genre and the Movie Business*

Conceptions of film categories have served as a longstanding cornerstone 
of industry practice, one which preconditions the rationalization of 
production decisions, the mobilization of content and themes, the 
tailoring of distribution strategies, the formulation of marketing 
campaigns, and the nature of exhibition and delivery. Yet, despite calls 
for scholars to centralize consideration of industry logic and activity 
(Williams; Neale 1990), little is known about the precise and complex 
ways in which, what could loosely be called, “genres” have actually 
shaped, and continue to shape, the global movie business. The industrial 
dimensions of film genre remain sketchily theorized and poorly 
understood to such an extent that genre’s contributions to relations 
between industrial operations, to the trans-media and transnational 
dynamics of global cinema, and to the industrial appropriation of 
extra-industrial discourses, remain something of an undiscovered 
archipelago obscured by canonicity and epoch-governed historiography. 
Nevertheless, an invaluable opportunity to reconsider how genre 
influences industry conduct has been provided by three key contributions 
to genre studies: recognition of the ever-changing and continuously 
contested discursive character of film groupings (Altman; Mittell; 
Naremore; Neale 1993); appreciation of the logic and results of 
calculatedly “hybrid” approaches to the content of motion pictures and 
their marketing campaigns (Altman; Balio; Klinger; Staiger); and deeper 
understandings of the opportunistic short-to-medium-term economic logic 
that ensures the generation of passing fads, cycles, and trends 
(Moretti; Nowell; Romao; Stanfield). Subjecting the industrial character 
of film genre to new and sustained scholarly interrogation is therefore 
both timely and essential given genre’s status as a governing principle 
of industry activity, the impact of which is felt both vertically and 
horizontally, cutting, as it does, across the various branches and 
sectors of a given industry, as well as across media, across national 
borders, and across reception cultures. It is with these points very 
much in mind that /Iluminace/, the Czech Republic’s leading film studies 
journal, is preparing a special English-language edition which will 
focus on how concepts of genre have shaped industrial logic, strategy, 
and conduct, in different locations, and at different historical 
junctures. Possible topics for essays which will be considered for 
inclusion in the special edition therefore include but are not 
restricted to:

· theorizing genres industrially

· the logic underwriting hybrid production and promotion strategies

· genres and high-end media properties

· genre in relation to sequels, adaptations, remakes, and “re-boots”

· largely ignored but industrially important product lines, film-types, 
and fads

· genre filmmaking and its relationships to topicality and “the newsworthy”

· intersections of public-sphere discourse and industry practice

· the functions and dimensions of genre categories in art and boutique 
cinema

· exploitation cinemas and their genres

· cross-media influences on industrial decision-making

· the transnational configurations of film fads, cycles, and trends

· genre’s roles in distribution patterns and strategies

· invoking genres and generic discourse to promote and publicize movies

· genres of extra-filmic epiphenomena: posters, trailers, websites etc ...

· genres and questions of exhibition practice

· packaging and repackaging genre films for home consumption

Please send by 30 June 2011 your 250 word abstract and a short academic 
biography to (richard_nowell /at/ hotmail.com) 
<mailto:(richard_nowell /at/ hotmail.com)>. All notifications of acceptance 
will be emailed no later than 14 July 2011. If an abstract is accepted, 
essays are to be 36,000–72,000 signs, which equates roughly to 
5,500–9,000 words (including footnotes and a 100–200 word abstract). 
This special edition of /Iluminace/ will be published in hardcopy in 
2012 and will be accessible online through the EBSCO database.*__*

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Nowell, Guest Editor, /Iluminace/.

Richard Nowell, currently lecturing in Prague, is the author of /Blood 
Money a History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle/ and has articles 
published or forthcoming in /Cinema Journal/, /Journal of Film and 
Video/, /Post Script/, and /The New Review of Film and Television Studies/.

*_Works Cited_*

* *

Altman, Rick. /Film/Genre/. London: BFI, 1999.

Balio, Tino. /Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 
1930–1939 (History of the American Cinema, Volume 5)/. London: Simon & 
Schuster Macmillan, 1993.

Klinger, Barbara. “Digressions at the Cinema: Reception and Mass 
Culture.” /Cinema Journal/ 28.4 (1989): 3–19.

Mittell, Jason. “A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory”, 
/Cinema Journal/,/ /40.1 (2001): 3–24.

Moretti, Franco. /Graphs, Maps, Trees/: /Abstract Models for Literary 
History/. London: Verso, 2005.

Neale Steve,. “Melo talk: on the meaning of use of the term ‘melodrama’ 
in the American

trade press”, /The Velvet Light Trap/, 32 (1993): 66–89.

Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre”, /Screen/, 31.1 (1990): 45–66.

Nowell, Richard. /Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher 
Film/. New York: Continuum, 2011.

Romao, Tico. “Engines of Transformation: An Analytical History of the 
1970s Car Chase Cycle”, /New Review of Film and Television Studies/, 1.1 
(2003): 31–54.

Staiger, Janet. “Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood 
Genre History.” /Film Criticism /22.1 (1997): 5–20.

Stanfield, Peter. “Crossover: Sam Katzman’s Switchblade Calypso Bop 
Reefer Madness Swamp Girl or ‘Bad Jazz’, Calypso, Beatniks and Rock ’n’ 
Roll in 1950s Teenpix”, /Journal of Popular Music /29:3 (2010): 437–455.

Williams, Alan, “Is a Radical Genre Criticism Possible?”, /Quarterly 
Review of Film Studies/, 9.2: 121–125.