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[ecrea] CFP - L'Atalante #25

Wed Apr 19 21:44:56 GMT 2017




We are pleased to announce the call for papers of the next issue of L'Atalante: Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos which, under the title of “The Endurance of Nostalgia. Melodramatic Narratives in Contemporary Fiction”, is open to contributions dealing with how contemporary films and television series are redefining the genre of melodrama. You can find detailed information at: http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement <http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement>.

The deadline for article proposals for the Cuaderno section is July 10th
2017. The issue will be published in January 2018.

We sincerely hope that this information may be of your interest. Please feel free to share this call among your contacts. Thank you in advance.

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos
http://www.revistaatalante.com <http://www.revistaatalante.com/>
(coordinacion25 /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(coordinacion25 /at/ revistaatalante.com)>
(info /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>

The Endurance of Nostalgia: Melodramatic Narratives in Contemporary Fiction

It has been said that of all film genres, melodrama has the greatest capacity to awaken nostalgia. The passage of time underscores the impossible nature of recovering a loss anchored in a bygone era, which cannot be brought back except as a memory, and which is embodied in the “presence of a melancholy character while the spectator becomes fully aware of the wound of time” (Marzal, 1996). Described as the genre of genres, melodrama has also been characterised as an especially powerful vehicle for desire, sacrifice and pain. Its strength lies “not in the plot, but in the subject whose inner wound will still be open even when the story closes” (Company, 2002).

The general focus of this monograph is to explore how contemporary films and television series are redefining the genre of melodrama. Which discursive traditions do they inherit from classical melodrama and which traditions do they abandon? What expressive resources endure, either explicitly or in veiled form, in the updated version of the genre?

Films like The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002), Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007), Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos, Pedro Almodóvar, 2009), Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), or The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix Van Groeningen, 2012), and television series like Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO: 2011) or The Affair (Hagai Levi, Sarah Treem, Showtime: 2014-) evoke and update certain clichés of melodrama, imbuing them with a contemporary narrative complexity. Chiefly, these non-linear poetics focusing on nostalgia highlight an awareness of the passage of time in a romantic relationship or family structure marked by a usually irrecoverable and extremely painful loss. The ongoing dialectic between the two time-periods¾a bright, happy past and a bitter, hopeless and grey present¾suggests that the romantic relationship depicted is not one phenomenon evolving into another but both phenomena simultaneously. In this way, extended over the narrative is a kind of discursive position on the incomprehensible, the fleeting, the unstable and the hurtful associated with the relationship which, in a different yet parallel way to classical melodrama, produces a kind of atemporality that vests the diegetic time with a multifaceted dimension.

However, catalysing moments still prevail in the narration over narrative cores, as shown for example in The Deep Blue Sea, constructed around a woman’s anxiety over the impending departure of her lover, or Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008), built around the promise of new beginnings that the Wheeler couple pretends to hold, but which are no more than castles in the air that collapse the moment they try to make them a reality. Moreover, melodrama continues to be “a drama of signs” (Le Vitte, 2002: 102), and this is underscored by examples like Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) or Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO, 2011), which pay homage to the symbolic mise-en-scèneof the paradigmatic melodramas of Michael Curtiz, and especially Douglas Sirk, through its re-presentation.

It is no accident that these titles, just like some of Sirk’s “unhappy endings”, “transgress the Hollywood pattern that invariably associates the closure of the diegesis with the final reunion of the leading couple” (Company, 2002: 157). Other conventions of the classical American film industry that are subverted in films like Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015) or The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2015) are those that place the heterosexual couple at the heart of the conflict. While previously it was the woman, or more precisely her role of wife and mother that guaranteed family cohesion, melodramas today are exploring homosexuality, transexuality and the primacy of the individual interests of the woman over sacrifice and repression, resulting in endings that echo that of Ibsen’s visionary and, in its day, unprecedented A Doll’s House (1879).

Put briefly, some of the research questions we propose for the development of contributions to the monograph are:

-In view of the complexity that characterises contemporary film and television, is it possible to speak of a new model of melodramatic narrative?

-How are the structural features of melodramatic narrative evolving? What changes can be identified to the organisation of the different narrative stages, and what effect do they have on the story as a whole? Who is the narrator in contemporary melodrama? Who holds the knowledge throughout most of the story and with whom does the mega-narrator (Gaudreault) sympathise?

-How is the character in melodrama evolving in the context of the questioning of the heterosexual nuclear family as the ethical and ideological model that underpins power structures and relations in the constellation of characters?

-How is melodrama evolving aesthetically, in terms of its visual motifs, mise-en-scèneor cinematography? What intertextualities does it deploy in relation to its redefinition of classical melodrama?

-In terms of the convention of the family made up of a heterosexual couple and their offspring as a central nucleus and their victory as the climax of the happy ending and the guarantee of symbolic closure, what clichés are being challenged by contemporary offerings, and what others are being revived? How is melodrama opening up to the exploration of gender issues?

-Finally, we are particularly interested in the analysis of the above questions in the works of filmmakers that best illustrate them, such as Todd Haynes, Terrence Davis, Stephen Daldry, Sofia Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar and Wong Kar-Wai.

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos accepts submissions of unpublished essays on topics related to film theory and/or praxis that stand out for their innovative nature. Below are a few aspects to keep in mind:

·Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission guidelines of the journal <http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions> and to the standards and scientific rigour expected of an academic publication.

·Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously addressed in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics previously addressed in the journal may be rejected. The content of the issues published to date can be consulted on the journal's website <http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=issue&op=archive>.

·All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that will respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double blind peer review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias. In the event of a very high number of submissions, the Editorial Board will make a prior selection of the articles to be peer reviewed, choosing the articles deemed the most appropriate for the issue. Failure to observe the submission guidelines and/or standards of originality and academic rigour will result in rejection of the submission by the Editorial Board without external review.

·Authors of accepted submissions will be contacted within six months.

·Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including all sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as .rtf, .odt or .docx files, using the template provided for the purpose. Files containing the author's statement (.pdf) and any images (.psd, .png, .jpg, .tiff) must be uploaded to the website as complementary files. A detailed version of the submission guidelines can be found at the following link <http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions>. Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected automatically.

·If the L'Atalante team decide to publish the issue in which you article will appear in a bilingual edition, you will be required to provide the translation and cover the costs of proofreading the text (in some cases, this cost may be waived for students and unemployed researchers who provide proof of status).

·L'Atalante does not offer any compensation for published articles. For more information: (info /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>

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