[Commlist] CFP - Spectral Cinema & Contested Landscapes

*Spectral Cinema and Contested Landscapes - Brazil*

*23-25 April 2025*

*University of São Paulo*

*
*

Call for Papers – deadline 8th November


What constitutes the potency of a ghost? What delineates its nature? 
Ghosts, or more broadly spectres encompassing monstrous, mythical, or 
religious entities, are often conceived as embodiments of divine, 
spiritual, or otherworldly forces, resonating with echoes of a traumatic 
past underscored by its political ramifications. Consequently, spectres, 
along with spectral cinemas, emerge as enigmatic entities transcending 
temporal confines, cultural paradigms and worldviews, offering poignant 
responses to the hegemonic dictates of the present. They articulate 
dissent against the market-driven acceleration and the wanton 
devastation of the environment, advocating instead for the recognition 
and sustenance of alternative existential, ancestral, affective, local, 
and global narratives.


The “Spectral Cinema and Contested Landscapes” symposium invites 
contributions to the debate surrounding spectres manifest within 
corporeal forms, which are invariably shaped by multifaceted markers of 
identity such as gender, race, and sexuality. In this vein, we are 
particularly intrigued by the intersecting trajectories evident in the 
genesis and cinematic representations of films, engaging in dialogue 
with indigenous, black, feminist, and queer cinemas.


“Spectral Cinema and Contested Landscapes - São Paulo 2025” is the 
second iteration of the international symposium held at the University 
for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK in 2022, and the subsequent special 
issue of the Moving Image Arts and Review Journal (MIRAJ) in 2023. It 
encompasses an academic symposium at the University of São Paulo, 
Brazil, and a series of public-facing events in the city of São Paulo, 
including, among others, film screenings and artistic performances.


Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Roz Mortimer (UK)


We warmly welcome artists, practitioners, theorists and early-stage 
researchers to present their work. In this context we are considering 
cinema in its broadest sense and works presented and discussed will 
include any permutations of film, video art, television, installation, 
audio works, AR, VR and games.


Potential areas of inquiry are:

• Spectres as manifestations of forgotten, repressed or buried trauma

• The politics of dead bodies in unjust, unresolved and political deaths

• Ghosts as active participants with agency and intention

• Spectrality and spectatorship

• Spectral ecologies

• Spectral futurism

• Fabulation, fantasy and the supernatural

• Phenomenological interpretations of place

• Temporal and spatial disjunctions of the uncanny

• Exorcisms and healing by haunting

• Haunted landscapes

• Spectral manifestations – seeking visibility

• Ghosts, spirits and the more-than-human in religious and folk belief

• Animate and inanimate bodies

• Bringing the phantom into being – haunting as radical activism


Please submit a 200-300 word abstract + a 100 word bio + contact 
information (all on the same document) with links to practice-based work 
if appropriate, to the email address *(cinemaespectral /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(cinemaespectral /at/ gmail.com)>* by the 8th of November 2024.


Selected papers will be announced by 10th of December 2024.


Organising committee: Roz Mortimer, Cecília Mello, Renato Trevizano.

Scientific committee: Roz Mortimer, Cecília Mello, Renato Trevizano, 
Erly Vieira Jr, Guilherme Lima de Assis, Esther Hamburger, Cristian 
Borges, Mariana Queen Ifeyinwaeze Nwabasili and Gilberto Sobrinho.


This event is organized by the Graduate Program in Audiovisual Media, 
with the support of the Department of Film, Radio and Television and of 
LAICA - Laboratório de Investigação e Crítica Audiovisual, School of 
Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo.


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