[ecrea] CFP The Third International Conference on Balkan Cinema The Great War(s)

Extended Call for Papers: The Third International Conference on Balkan 
Cinema The Great War(s): Our Story, Bucharest, Romania: 8 – 10 May, 2018

Abstracts now due: 10th March, 2018

Please direct all abstracts and any enquiries to: 
(Balkanfilmconference /at/ gmail.com)



Following on the second International Conference on Balkan Cinema that 
took place in Belgrade in 2017, The Great War(s): Our Story aims to 
explore the cinematic narratives of the Great War and of the other 
conflicts in the area. The 3rd International Conference on Balkan cinema 
will focus on exploring the cinematic heritage of the Balkans and the 
one made about the Balkans by foreign film makers; as well as the ways 
these highlight the connections between different war narratives that 
coalesce into “our story”. The ambivalence of the term “our” refers to 
our/Balkan stories; our as belonging to one of the Balkan states. It 
also includes our other defined identities as of victims or 
perpetrators; civilians or soldiers; women and children in devastated 
cities and in the wasteland of the countryside’s or men on the front; 
the generations of participants or to the post generations. The war 
narratives speaking from any involved parties eventually challenge the 
history or work with it; or bring together diverse often confronting and 
competing national histories... However, a lot of other stories are 
relevant for the Balkans although not connected directly with war.
“G.Oprescu” Institute of Art History in Bucharest hosts the event partly 
in commemoration of 1914-18 war but also as the opportunity to analyse 
and map out rich range of insights provided by cinematic images of war 
or told in different cinematic narratives of wars – from the Balkan Wars 
to the wars of the breakup of former Yugoslavia. War has been recorded, 
and narrated as a good story since the invention of cinema. The special 
relation between logics of perception of the war and of cinema is 
extensively argued by Paul Virilio. The war is one of the perennial 
cinematic topics told through a wide range of genre guises- from 
documentaries to fiction films, war spectacles, historical films, 
melodramas, musicals etc. Documentary footage of war is the key 
component in historiography, from “classic historism to post-modern 
narrativism”. The cinematic narratives of war are also source of 
entertainment and pleasure as well as the material for the recognition 
of trauma, suffering, and victimisation. Nowadays highly popular 
archival documentaries or docufiction demonstrate the transformation of 
the films of history into the “memory making films“. They argue the 
cinematic narratives of the past and present wars to be both important 
factors of the politics of remembering and forgetting and the 
constituents of collective/inidividual/national memory and identity.

Being part of the series the conference aims to further develop 
transnational scholarship, transcend Balkanism and exoticism, and offer 
critical explorations of historical and contemporary manifestations of 
South Eastern European cinemas. It also helps the building of the 
transnational community of scholars working on the cinemas of the 
Balkans, South/Eastern Europe, the border and neighbouring region as 
Central Europe or Near East, works of diaspora or communities in exile 
in a time span from early cinema on nitrate stock to contemporary 
digital cinema; and film’s thematic span from the Middle Ages to today.

A range of possible themes for conference papers includes, but is not 
limited to:

o   The First and Second World Wars as the cornerstones of cinema in the 
Balkans

o   War and conflict- a typical Balkan topic?

o   Representation and Self-representation of the Balkans. War and archive

o   Changing concepts of war, changing narratives of war.

o   History and memory in cinematic war narratives

o   Intertextuality and transmediality of the past, present and future

o   Representing/deconstructing “the nation” on screen

o   Cultural memory and Balkan cinema

o   Reading and re-writing film (hi)stories

o   History, Military and Film Archives

o   Multidirectional memory in cinema

Keynote speakers

Prof. dr Dina Iordanova

University of St. Andrews

Prof. dr Nevena Daković
Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade

o   Prof. dr Dominique Nasta Université Libre de Bruxelles
Conference language: English and French

Presentation time: 20 minutes

Extended submission deadline: March, 10th, 2018

Admission notification date: March 25th, 2018

Proposal length: 250 words + short CV (Abstract proposals, names, 
affiliations and short CVs should be sent as ONE Word document) to the 
address (Balkanfilmconference /at/ gmail.com)

Contact & Submissions

(Balkanfilmconference /at/ gmail.com)

Organized by

“G.Oprescu” Institute of Art History, Bucharest
With the support of

Romanian Academy

Romanian Cultural Institute

Romanian Guild of Filmmakers (UCIN)

Romanian Film Archive

altcine
Filmicon. Journal of Greek Film Studies

Programme Committee

Prof. Marian Tutui (PhD, “G.Oprescu” Institute of Art History)

Lydia Papadimitriou (PhD, Liverpool John Moores University)

Dr.Ana Grgić (University of the Arts London)

Dr. Gergana Doncheva (Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of 
Sciences)

Dr. Aleksandra Milovanović (Associate professor, Faculty of Drama Arts, 
Belgrade)

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