[ecrea] CFC: Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Context of Unmade Films

*Call for Chapter Proposals*


    Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Context of Unmade Films

***REMINDER: DEADLINE IS THIS FRIDAY, 8TH DECEMBER***

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Unmade films are a burgeoning area of scholarly inquiry. The rise of the 
film archive, from the Michael Klinger Papers and Hammer Archive, to the 
John Boorman Papers and Stanley Kubrick Archive, all have unearthed a 
treasure trove of abandoned or halted projects, left unmade for a range 
of industrial, cultural and political contexts. This also extends to 
unreleased cinema, those projects that were abandoned in pre-production, 
cut short in production, or simply never distributed, or removed from 
circulation.

Reconstructions and case studies of these hidden histories of the 
“shadow” cinema allow us to begin to understand the way in which 
directors, producers, writers, and film studios operate and the economic 
and industrial frameworks they work within. From Kubrick’s Napoleon – 
the greatest movie never made – to the array of failures or development 
nightmares by the likes of Terry Gilliam, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin 
Scorsese, Hammer Studios, and more beside.

Dan North’s edited collection /Sights Unseen…, /as well as Harry 
Waldman’s /Scenes Unseen… /both make the case for unmade films 
consideration within the wider field of academia, but are specific in 
their subjects, with North focusing exclusively on Britain, and Waldman 
on a small selection of filmmakers. This collection aims to survey this 
new area of empirical study across transnational borders, and make a 
case for the importance of the unmade, unseen, and unknown history of 
cinema.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words are invited on this topic, along 
with a short biography, to form the proposal for Shadow Cinema, an 
edited collection that noted academic publishers have expressed interest 
in. Topics may include, but are by no means limited, to the following:

-       Unmade silent films

-       Unmade classical Hollywood

-       Abandoned or halted studio projects

-       Director case studies (Examples of directors attached to 
significant unmade projects include Francis Ford Coppola, Terry Gilliam, 
Sergio Leone, Lynne Ramsey, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Jocelyn 
Moorhouse)

-       Female directors / writers (as Shelley Cobb writes, 
‘contemporary women filmmakers may very well disappear or end up under 
film history’s radar if we don’t write those histories now’. Case 
studies of unmade films by women filmmakers are often not considered, in 
favour of dominant male names such as Hitchcock)

-       International case studies / international cinema (projects such 
as the Chinese /Empires of the Deep/, still unreleased after almost a 
decade in post-production and with a budget close to $150 million)

-       Unmade / unreleased franchise films

-       Films that their creators / star attempt to keep hidden 
(Leonardo DiCaprio and the case of /Don Plum/)

-       Abandoned Adaptations

-       Legendary projects (Clair Noto’s /The Tourist/; Stanley 
Kubrick’s /Napoleon/; Orson Welles’ adaptation of /Heart of Darkness/)

-       Abandoned collaborations between studios / directors / actors / 
writers etc (Stan Lee and Alain Resnais, for instance)




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