[ecrea] call for papers - Film Journal - Screening the Supernatural

CALL FOR PAPERS

SCREENING THE SUPERNATURAL

Film Journal, the international peer-reviewed online journal founded by 
SERCIA (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/filmjournal), is seeking 
contributions for a special-themed issue on the supernatural in film, 
edited by Andrea Grunert ((mail /at/ a-grunert.de)).

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 30th November 2015

“The Haunted Screen” is the title used both by Lotte Eisner for her 
famous reading of German Expressionism and Lee Kovacs for her 
investigation of ghost figures inspired by the literature-based Gothic 
tradition in film from the 1930s and 1940s to interpretations of the 
supernatural in productions of the 1990s. Nineteenth-century literature 
was preoccupied with phenomena which exist above and beyond nature and 
the vampire entered English literature via Byron and John Polidori, 
becoming especially popular a hundred years later with Bram Stoker’s 
Dracula. Spiritual séances, most fashionable in the late nineteenth 
century, mingled spiritualism and spectacle, anticipating new 
entertainment media such as the cinema. At the intersection of reality 
and fiction, belief and spectacle, film appeared as a form of modern 
magic. Even today, digital creation has not dispossessed film of its 
magical aura and the power to bring to life and enchant. As a projection 
of thoughts, film gives visibility to the unknown and explores the 
unconscious. It represents everyday reality and recreates the world of 
dreams, creating a space in which religious belief and superstition 
co-exist.

This issue of Film Journal seeks to explore the various occurrences and 
functions of the supernatural in film. It proposes to investigate the 
narratives and the methods of narrative mediation, as well as questions 
of representation and perception. Written in different contexts and very 
different in style, Eisner’s and Kovacs’ books, reveal the 
complexity of the topic and the historical, ideological, social and 
aesthetic aspects at stake. Narratives of the fantastic cross 
spatio-temporal and generic boundaries, creating a feeling of 
instability through the blend of generic elements. By exploring the 
abyss between rationality and fantasy, films dealing with supernatural 
phenomena and devices recall the complexity of the viewing experience in 
cinema which is composed of feelings, body reactions and thoughts. As 
Octave Mannoni put it, the modern viewer does not believe in illusion 
anymore, yet, part of him/her is still captured by the suggestive power 
of the image and the spectacular.

Why are elements of the mystifying and supernatural so fashionable today 
and how is cinema able to keep this fascination alive? The mixture of 
spiritualism and entertainment at cinema’s roots continues to find 
expression in contemporary films and their updating of ghost tales under 
the auspices of psychological knowledge. Christopher Nolan’s The 
Prestige (USA/UK, 2006) deals with both the “uncanny” (events which 
can be explained by using logic) and the “marvelous” (events which 
are unexplainable), two concepts described by literary theorist Tsvetan 
Todorov. Moreover, the mystifying elements borrowed from Gothic 
tradition fulfill the viewer’s wish to be entertained by unmasking the 
illusion at the very heart of filmmaking. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock 
Holmes (2009), for instance, allies the pre-cinematic world and its 
preoccupation with the magical with a taste for spectacular events far 
from everyday experience.

Occult rituals integrated in the narrative delve back to the historical 
roots of film while also pointing to contemporary tendencies in 
filmmaking. The photographic representation of ghosts often follows 
older forms of representation, that of fluid, transparent bodies such as 
they appeared in nineteenth-century occultism. From the silent film to 
ultra-contemporary productions, what have been the aesthetic approaches 
to ghosts or spirits in cinema? There are filmmakers who forgo special 
effects – sometimes for financial reasons – and allow ghostly 
visitations to be played by actors, while still filming them 
“realistically”. But then, what is the most realistic way to film a 
ghost or spirit? Questions that may be raised concern the significance 
of the different approaches – mise-en-scène devices for representing 
external reality, as opposed to ghosts and phantoms, or the images and 
sounds of the supernatural realm and how editing, sound effects and 
music score contribute to the creation of a world beyond our experience 
and knowledge.

The supernatural invades all genres. At the end of Allan Dwan’s The 
Iron Mask (1929) D’Artagnan and his Musketeer-friends are dead, but 
appear again as translucent, ghostly figures (an effect created by 
overexposure) to greet the audience. Seen from our point of view, the 
sequence seems to comment on the history of film, anticipating the end 
of the silent era by showing one stars, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., in one 
of his last roles. In today’s cinema, elements of the fantastic 
increasingly inspire film, updating generic forms and devices, in films 
as different as Clint Eastwood’s western Pale Rider (1985) or 
Bertrand Tavernier’s French-American production In the Electric Mist 
(2009). Horror films and science fiction tales narrate the supernatural 
within their own frame of conventions. Vampires, werewolves and other 
creatures that haunt the cinema from its beginnings have been reborn in 
films addressing adolescent audiences. What points in common does 
Polidori’s Vampire have with Edward in the Twilight Saga films? And 
what links Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula to its predecessors or the 
latest update of the figure in the US television Dracula (2013-2014)? 
New readings of the vampire figure have also appeared in Neil Jordan’s 
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (USA, 1994), 
Byzantium (UK/Ireland, 2012) or Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive 
(UK/Germany, 2013).

Angels and demons, zombies and aliens people the realm of the 
supernatural. Yet, the “other”, the unknown is not only expressed by 
photographed or computer animated characters. It may be an invisible 
threat, creating constant tension, as in The Blair Witch Project (1999). 
Phantoms or zombies and other creatures challenging normalcy can be seen 
as materializations of fear, as figures of individual and social crisis. 
The supernatural expressed through horror film devices and the 
recurrence to spirits may be linked to loss, grief and death, as in two 
very recent productions, David Keating’s Wake Wood (Ireland/UK, 2008), 
the first theatrical release from Hammer Films in 30 years and Conor 
McPherson’s The Eclipse (Ireland, 2008). The mourner, who is unable to 
overcome the death of a beloved person, is haunted by visions which the 
cinema materializes. Trauma, inner images and sensations are brought to 
the surface of the film. The fantastic may be experienced as a real 
presence by characters facing fear, guilt and grief. Once again, 
occultism and psychology are blended in a filmic discourse that relies 
on generic devices and aesthetics (like film noir in The Eclipse). In 
Spellbound (1945), psychiatric experience and surrealism are brought 
together to depict mental images, whereas one of the recent 
Hammer-productions, The Woman in Black (2012), the adaptation of a 
successful British play written in the eighties, but set in the 
Edwardian era, constantly reveals the psychological meaning behind the 
conventions of the horror genre.

The Eclipse and The Woman in Black are only two, recent samples of a 
variety of films which explore encounters between everyday life and the 
supernatural. In so doing, they attempt to deal with the complexities of 
past, present and future and reveal the extent to which film is able to 
overcome the boundaries of time and the constraints of realism. Just as 
the voice of Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950), the voice of a dead 
man, may echo the magical power of film – or its power to allow the 
viewer to “suspend disbelief” – so the ghost of the 
protagonist’s dead wife in The Eclipse is a signifier of the abolition 
of boundaries. At a time of interest in the occult and realms beyond 
rationality, it would indeed be interesting to examine how “magical” 
thinking is integrated in film, not only in more recent Native American, 
Aboriginal or Maori films (Whale Rider, Nikki Caro, NZ/Germany, 2002), 
but in Jim Sheridan’s In America (Ireland/UK, 2002), for example, 
which blends Irish folklore with voodoo and contemporary New York society.

Please send inquiries and proposals to (mail /at/ a-grunert.de) and 
(filmjournal.sercia /at/ gmail.com) by 30th November, 2015. Completed articles 
should be submitted by 30th June, 2016.

Select bibliography

Botting, Fred. Limits of Horror: Technology, Body, Gothic. Manchester: 
Manchester UP, 2010.
Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema 
and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. 2nd edition. Berkeley, University of 
California Press, 2008.
Kovacs, Lee. The Haunted Screen: Ghosts in Literature and Film. New 
York, McFarland, 2005.
Lafond, Frank. Cauchemars américains: fantastique et horreur dans le 
cinéma. Liège, Céfal, 2003.
Morgan, Jane. The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film. 
Chicago, University of Southern Illinois, 2002. Richardson, Michael. 
Surrealism and Cinema. Oxford, Berg, 2006.
Skal, David J. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel 
to Stage to Screen. London, Faber & Faber, 2004.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary 
Genre. Ithaca, NY, Cornell UP, 1975.



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