[Commlist] CFP MAI: women, spectatorship and the cinema of the real

In association with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (UK),/MAI: 
Feminism & Visual Culture/ invites authors with expertise in 
film—narrative or documentary–-and visual and cultural studies, as well 
as in related disciplines, to contribute to our new focus issue ‘Women, 
Spectatorship and the Cinema of the Real’. The issue will be co-edited 
with Dr Laura Canning from the School of Film & Television at Falmouth 
University.

https://maifeminism.com/cfp-women-spectatorship-and-the-cinema-of-the-real/ 
<https://maifeminism.com/cfp-women-spectatorship-and-the-cinema-of-the-real/> 

<https://maifeminism.com/cfp-women-spectatorship-and-the-cinema-of-the-real/>
	
Call for Papers: Women, Spectatorship and the Cinema of the Real 
<https://maifeminism.com/cfp-women-spectatorship-and-the-cinema-of-the-real/>
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*300 to 500-word Abstracts Deadline:* Abstracts by 10 May 2021

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In association with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (UK), MAI: 
Feminism & Visual Culture invites authors with expertise in 
film—narrative or documentary–-and visual and cultural studies, as well 
as in related disciplines, to contribute to our new focus issue ‘Women, 
Spectatorship and the Cinema of the Real’. The issue will be co-edited 
with Dr Laura Canning from the School of Film & Television at Falmouth 
University.

Background & Inspiration

The ICA’s annual film festival ‘Frames of Representation’ (FoR) returns 
for its fifth edition with a programme focussing on the role of 
spectatorship—a collection of works that explore the spaces between 
knowledge and participation through the act of viewing.

The festival continues to be an international showcase for the cinema of 
the real, exploring in-depth the aesthetic and political implications of 
filmmaking as both a collective practice and an art form. Exploring the 
spaces between knowledge and participation through the act of viewing, 
this year’s programme premieres 20 films from Africa, Asia, Europe, 
Latin America and North America, as well as discussions and Q&As.

This year, the festival addresses and resists the theoretical separation 
between (film)makers and audiences, individuals and collectives, 
referencing the writings of Rancière in The Emancipated Spectator.

Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and 
acting; when we understand that the self-evident facts that structure 
the relationship between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to 
the structure of domination and subjection … The spectator also acts, 
like the pupil or the scholar. They observe, select, compare, interpret. 
They link what they see to a host of other things that they have seen on 
other stages, in other kinds of places. They compose their own poem with 
the element of the poem before them. (Rancière 2009: 13)

Documentary and experimental formats—and their intersection—have 
historically constituted fruitful sites of production for female 
filmmakers, their subjects, and their audiences. While E. Ann Kaplan 
could note in 1990 that experimental, realist and avant-garde film all 
come for the most part from

traditions … initiated and developed by white men… This very exclusion 
has enabled women filmmakers to become especially sensitive to issues of 
form and style, and has prevented any blind following of previous 
conventions … we see women filmmakers in all three categories 
re-thinking conventions for themselves (Kaplan 1990: 87),

considerable—and vital—work has been done since then on uncovering 
‘women’s often uncredited and undocumented participation in their 
respective cinema cultures … and how to reconceptualize film history to 
locate the impact of women in that history.’ (Gledhill & Knight, 2015: 2)

Similarly, while semiotic and psychoanalytical models such as those of 
Johnston (1973) and Mulvey (1975), broke historical ground in unpacking 
representations and positing the idea of the female (and/or feminist) 
spectator, these ideas have been themselves subject to contestation and 
revision through the decades, from a move towards cultural studies 
frameworks privileging textual polysemy and audience fluidity in the 
1990s to twenty-first-century considerations of subjectivity, the gaze, 
and spectatorship whose origins are derived from queer theory, cyborg 
theory, intersectionality, the notion of a digital self, renewed 
attention to race and power, globalised audiences, and the renewed place 
of activist feminism.

Hollinger notes that avant-garde and documentary filmmaking ‘do not 
merely run parallel to dominant cinema, but take a reactive stance that 
is oppositional in terms of form, content, production and exhibition … 
as forms of feminist opposition to mainstream filmmaking.’ (Hollinger, 
2012: 67)

This call for papers asks for contributions which speak to creative 
documentary and the cinema of the real in the light of these issues.

Suggested (but not Exclusive) Areas of Examination:

    Creative and/or critical responses to any of the films screened 
during the FoR festival 2020 https://www.ica.art/films/for20
    Women’s authorial voices as expressed through cinema of the self, 
creative documentary, and cinema of the real
    The questioning of traditional hierarchies and structures of 
seeing, listening and acting, and in particular as related to the 
creative work and lived experience of women
    Spectatorship and subject position—including contemporary lived and 
theoretical challenges to our understanding of the spectator’s role and 
agency, and in particular the female spectator
    The work of women in experimental film, experimental documentary, 
and the cinema of the real, particularly as conceived of as counter-cinema
    Women’s non-fiction film and creative documentary worldwide, 
particularly in terms of contributing to a global cinematic grammar and 
challenging hegemonic paradigms, in production and reception
    Historical contributions from women to the practice and form of 
‘creative documentary’, particularly in global cinema
    The relationship between presentation and action, in experimental 
cinema and in the documentary
    The cinema of the real as an element in collective learning, 
community and activism, in particular around women’s communities, 
activism and collaborative practices
    The idea of the image as a space for the renegotiation of positions 
of reception and agency, for fluid dynamics rather than dichotomies
    The cinema of the real as an element in collective learning, 
community and activism, in particular around women’s communities, 
activism and collaborative practices
    Contemporary industrial currents and tendencies in experimental 
documentary and the cinema of the real, particularly in relation to 
funding, structural power dynamics, and the potential 
exclusion/marginalisation of women filmmakers
    The dissolution and/or reconfiguration of boundaries between the 
subject and the filmmaker, and considerations of how these reframe our 
understanding of women’s place as filmmakers and subjects
    The examination of cinematic space/time in terms of possibilities 
for imaginative transformation.

300 to 500-word Abstracts Deadline: Abstracts by 10 May 2021

Full Articles Deadline: 30 September 2021

MAI considers submissions in the following formats:

    academic research articles (6000-8000 words)
    interviews (1000-3000 words)
    creative writing (poems, short stories, creative responses, max 
3000 words)
    video essays (5-10 min + a brief supporting statement 800-1000 words)
    photographs or visual/audiovisual art

All articles will be peer-reviewed.

Proposed publication date: Spring 2022.

MAI formatting guidelines: https://maifeminism.com/submissions/

Please send your abstracts to (laura.canning /at/ falmouth.ac.uk) & 
(contact /at/ maifeminism.com)

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