[ecrea] CFP: For a Cosmopolitan Cinema (Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media)

CFP: For a Cosmopolitan Cinema

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

Issue 14 (Winter 2017)



The 14thissue of Alphavilleaims to address the recent cosmopolitan turn 
in film studies in an attempt to investigate the international 
orientation of contemporary cinema in this age of intense cross-cultural 
contact, transnational dislocations, and consumption of ethnicity. In a 
globalised context marked by the normalisation, and mediation of 
foreignness in everyday life, cinema has been established as a 
fundamental cosmopolitan agent due to its ability to promote 
transcultural access to places, spaces and subjectivities.


In this regard, by proposing the idea of cosmopolitan cinema, we wish to 
articulate the migratory and mobile aspect of world cinemas, by focusing 
on how cinematic texts negotiate their cultural specificities and forge 
intercultural connections in order to encourage border crossing. Also, 
our conception of cosmopolitan cinema embraces a possible practice or 
perspective that engages with notions of cultural diversity, otherness, 
and hybridity with a positive and open disposition, rather than succumb 
to the specificities of a national cinema, or restrict ourselves to 
binary oppositions that separate self and other.


A cosmopolitan perspective for film studies, thus, cherishes difference 
by mapping the trajectories of interactive becomings between cultures as 
a mode of critical practice that moves beyond the singular goal of 
universalism, and towards a mediation of contemporary interactions. Paul 
Willemen (2006) suggests a mode of outsideness or in-betweenness, which 
would forge a safe space from which to critically engage with personal 
and cultural dispositions. This, in turn, poses a number of interesting 
questions concerning modes of address. To whom is a cosmopolitan cinema 
being addressed? Can it manifest the internal struggle between self and 
other, through open cultural interactions? Does it concern those of no 
address or fixed abode, occupying a space that lies between the laws 
that govern city and state?


The forthcoming issue of Alphaville, to be published in Winter 2017, 
will be guided by such ideas, welcoming articles interested in 
approaching cosmopolitan cinema, questioning how it relates to a 
globalised context marked by postnational states, neoliberalism, 
postcolonial relationships, bureaucratic, (il)legal, and virtual modes 
of migration, transnational encounters, the weakening of national 
identities and modes of being, and more. Finally, we also aim to cover 
how the multiple projects, imaginations and understandings of 
cosmopolitanism shape representational, aesthetics and stylistic 
cinematic discourses, also considering the recent return to virulent 
nationalism, the shutting down of borders, and the current rejection of 
supranational values in postindustrial countries.


The editors are seeking some articles to complement the current 
selection, and are keen to receive proposals on topics and issues 
including, but not limited to:


- Cinephilia and cosmopolitan audiences: promoting the cult of world 
cinemas, stars, and strangeness

- World identities: authorship and star trajectories in contemporary cinema

- Cosmopolitan institutions and the brand of national cinemas: exploring 
the role of film festivals, distributors, etc.

- Films across borders: cosmopolitan cinema as a strategy of 
internationalisation and border crossing

- Representing worldliness: virtual and real conceptions of world and 
communities

- Aesthetic, stylistic and narrative notions of cosmopolitanism

- Documenting the cosmopolis: nonfiction cinema and the transnational 
imagination

- Aesthetic cosmopolitanism and the dialogue between production and 
consumption

- Cosmopolitanism and national cinemas: multiple belongings and the 
relativisation of the local

- Cosmopolitan spaces of circulation: digital and virtual migration

- Hybridism, multiculturalism and postcolonialism: perspectives to 
approach cosmopolitan cinema

- Narratives of the crossing: intercultural contact, migrations, and exiles



Potential contributors are invited to submit a 250/300-word abstract, 
and a biographical note by January 30, 2017 to the Issue Editors, James 
Mulvey, Laura Rascaroli and Humberto Saldanha, at the following 
address:(issue14.alphaville /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(issue14.alphaville /at/ gmail.com)>. Authors will be notified of 
editors’ decision by 17 February 2016. Following acceptance, authors 
will be required to submit their completed articles of 5,500–6,000 words 
that fully adhere to AlphavilleGuidelines 
<http://alphavillejournal.com/Guidelines.html>, MLA and House Style 
<http://alphavillejournal.com/HouseStyle.html>by  May 1, 2017.


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