[Commlist] Special issue CFP: Women’s Autobiographical Filmmaking

*Call for Papers*

**

*Women’s Autobiographical Filmmaking*

Special issue of/Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media/, Summer 2026

Guest editors: Dr Felicia Chan (University of Manchester) and Dr Monika 
Kukolova (University of Salford)

Autobiographical filmmaking refers to films created by filmmakers that 
tell stories about their lives, experiences and memories. These may be 
truthful or partially fictionalised, remembered clearly or 
misremembered, or a combination of these, usually in ways that also 
explore how film as a medium itself can do this — a form of 
practice-as-research, if you like. We are interested in exploring with 
potential contributors whether there might be a gendered nature to this 
mode of filmmaking / life-remembering / self-narrating? Do filmmakers 
who identify as women tell different stories about themselves and their 
lives from those who identify as men, or do they do so in a different 
way? How do women filmmakers navigate their simultaneous objecthood and 
subjecthood in the eye of the camera (Everett, 2007)? Much of the canon 
in film studies is constituted by works of male auteurs, all in one form 
or another said to be exploring their lives, their pasts and their 
selves on screen: think of figures like Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, 
François Truffaut, Shane Meadows, the list goes on. This structural 
domination is being continually challenged (Gledhill and Knight, 2015) 
and moves to rehistoricise women’s filmmaking have seen increased 
attention on figures from Agnès Varda through to Greta Gerwig though 
much more remains to be done on women filmmakers in the global majority.

There has been a longer history of scholarship on women’s literary 
life-writing (Smith and Watson, 1998; Neuman, 2016; Brodzki and Schenck, 
2019) but less so on women’s life-writing on/through film as a mode of 
self-narration. How have women filmmakers had to navigate the industrial 
structures of filmmaking with all its gatekeeping mechanisms, including 
access to capital? To what extent are these gatekeeping mechanisms 
disproportionately discriminatory towards women? 

We are inviting proposals to explore any area of the subject, although 
we are especially keen to receive proposals from scholars studying the 
ways women in the global majority use cinema to write themselves and 
their memories into post/colonial histories. We would also like to 
invite proposals on alternative publication formats such as the video 
essay, and shorter provocations, interviews or reports.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  * Filmmaker case studies
  * Close readings of individual films
  * Industry analysis
  * Autobiographical film as method
  * Challenges to theoretical orthodoxies, e.g. auteur theory,
    canon-making, etc.
  * Decolonial approaches to gender studies and women’s filmmaking

Full-length articles: 5,500-7,000 words, including notes but excluding 
references

Video essay: Approx. 3-15 mins, plus accompanying text 500-1000 words

Short reports, provocations, reviews, interviews, reflections: 
1,500-2,500 words

Full-length articles and video essays will be subject to full peer 
review. Guidelines 
here:https://www.alphavillejournal.com/Guidelines.html 
<https://www.alphavillejournal.com/Guidelines.html>

Publication Timeline
15 May 2024, abstract due

31 May 2024, notification of editors’ decision
15 January 2025, full video essay / manuscript due
Publication: Summer 2026


If you are interested in contributing to this issue, please send a 
300-word abstract along with a brief biography, in the same file, to Dr 
Monika Kukolova ((M.Kukolova /at/ salford.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(M.Kukolova /at/ salford.ac.uk)>_)_

Feel free to contact us with any questions.

/Alphaville/is a diamond open-access journal, and it requests no fee 
from authors or readers. Visit us at https://www.alphavillejournal.com 
<https://www.alphavillejournal.com/>

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