[ecrea] CFP: Decentring Axis cinema – Filmmaking in states allied to Nazi Germany

Decentring Axis cinema – Filmmaking in states allied to Nazi Germany

A Leverhulme Trust-funded workshop, 2nd-3rd April, 2015. Manchester.

The purpose of this workshop is to consider the particularities of national cinemas within the Axis, while seeking to find unifying patterns across the filmic discourse, filmmaking practices and industry organization of countries that entered the Axis in pursuit of a variety of national goals. A related aim of this workshop is to decentre scholarship on Axis cinema by looking beyond Nazi film. The Axis is understood to mean sovereign states allied to Nazi Germany, including but not limited to Japan, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

There has been a general lack of critical engagement with the individual cinemas that make up the Axis and there has been no or limited significant academic attempt to consider filmmaking within the Axis as a whole, or to assess the overlaps and connections between individual Axis members. On those occasions when academics did turn their attention to Axis film, Nazi cinema continued to dominate the discussion. This centre-focused approach has prevented considerations of the potential links between Axis member states that bypassed the centre of the alliance. While historians have begun to question the extent to which Nazi Germany was able to assert its will within the Axis and shape the domestic policy of allied states, film historiography has continued to focus on Germany’s relationship with individual allies, and its attempts to shape the European filmmaking map.

This workshop aims to present a more complex picture than the image of German demands and Axis acquiescence that emerges from existing scholarship. The aim of this workshop is to challenge the accepted view of Axis cinema as owing its characteristics solely to the emulation of Nazi trends, and the faithful adoption of industry structures and organizational initiatives. This workshop hopes to offer a decentred approach to Axis cinema and in the process explore the national specificities and unifying characteristics of Axis cinemas. The ‘centre’ of the Axis will be seen as one of the many and varied factors that demanded the attention of Axis film policy decision makers, industry bosses, filmmakers, exhibitors and audiences.

Proposals are invited for papers on the broad topic of Axis cinema. Papers that address international cooperation between the allies of Nazi Germany, and papers that seek to dislocate the analysis of films made by an Axis member from constant references to Nazi Germany are particularly welcome. We welcome all levels of academia to apply.

Papers that address the following (but not exclusively) are encouraged:
•	national identity
•	anti-Semitism
•	industry organization and ideology
•	propaganda films
•	entertainment films
•	race, ethnicity, gender
•	absence/presence

Please send abstracts of 300 words and brief biography by 14th November (togabor.gergely /at/ manchester.ac.uk)  and/(ork.taylor /at/ bangor.ac.uk). We are pleased to be able to contribute towards the travel and accommodation costs of those selected to present at the workshop.


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