[Commlist] CFP: The films of Peter Watkins

CALL FOR CHAPTERS / CFP- REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF PETER WATKINS

Email: (watkinsmonoform /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(watkinsmonoform /at/ gmail.com)>

Deadline for submissions: June 1^st 2022

We invite chapter proposals (300-500 words) for an edited volume of 
critical essays dealing with film director Peter Watkins to be published 
as part of the University of Edinburgh /ReFocus/series (series editors 
Robert Singer, Stefanie Van de Peer, and Gary D. Rhodes) which examines 
overlooked international directors and brings them to a constellation of 
new discourses.

 From beginnings in the short film and a pair of landmark docudramas 
for the BBC (/Culloden/and /The War Game/) to a rich and varied nomadic 
phase taking in narrative fiction, US production, embrace by 
Scandinavian nations, and capped by a fruitful and committed late career 
unbound by questions of duration and representational strategy – Watkins 
has been a touchstone director for film and documentary pedagogy, as 
well as influencing practitioners in the fictional and factual realms.

Watkins, who also taught at a number of institutes throughout his career 
as a practitioner, developed a parallel theory of the ‘monoform’ – the 
gradual and potentially irreversible elision of multiple media forms and 
flows into a mass hegemonic language. Though deeply self-critical and 
pessimistic in tone, how might we reinterpret Watkins and the 
contemporary media landscape through these ideas?

We are looking for proposals (300-500 words) for original chapters that 
either critically elucidates a work in the Watkins filmography, or finds 
an original intersecting context in which to analyse a number of 
Watkins’ works.

A non-exhaustive list of suggestions:

  * Possible futures in documentary
  * Docudrama and ‘the real’
  * Watkins and formal restriction and expansion: the short, the
    longform film, the collaboration
  * Peace and pacifism
  * Deconstructing and reconstructing public image
  * The collective protagonist
  * The BBC and creative freedom
  * The monoform and social media
  *

Feel free to propose a different approach entirely. Final chapters will 
be between 6000-8000 words.

Proposed timeline

  * June 1 – deadline for abstracts/CVs
  * July 1 – response from editors
  * October 30 (all subsequent dates provisional) – submission of chapters
  * December 30 – returned with​ revisions
  * January 30 2023 – resubmission (if required)
  *

Interested scholars should send a 300-500 word proposal and a 150 word 
bio by June 1st, 2022, to Daniel Brookes at: (watkinsmonoform /at/ gmail.com)

Daniel Brookes is a lecturer in film and television at the University of 
Worcester and the University of Bristol. He has an upcoming publication 
in /Crime Fiction Studies/ regarding narrative form in the Netflix hit 
series /Making a Murderer/.

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------