[ecrea] Call for Chapters: A Companion to Arctic Cinema

Editors Emma Vestrheim and Luis R. Antunes are pleased to announce the 
preparation of A Companion to Arctic Cinema (under contract with 
Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2018) and to ask for expressions of 
interest in contributions to the book.

A Companion to Arctic Cinema is a collection of original essays authored 
by experts and leading scholars in a range of topics that provide a 
comprehensive overview of the history and variety of forms of films made 
in the Arctic regions of the globe.
 Major contributions have recently been made that encourage us to 
appreciating the cultural, aesthetic and intellectual importance as well 
as the timeliness of Arctic Cinema. Arctic Cinema is not only a 
geographically limited form of cinema nor any of kind of creative and 
cultural movement with limited conceptual importance. On the contrary, 
issues of liminality, identity, ecology as well as issues of race, 
gender, genre and politics raised by Arctic Cinema are strong enough to 
place it at the forefront of contemporary discussions on film. Our first 
and foremost goals with the publication of this Companion to Arctic 
Cinema is to create schoalry interest and appreciation for the depth and 
complexity of the ontological issues that guide cinematic creation in 
the Arctic regions of the globe.
Anne Stenport and Scott Makenzie deserve the credits of coining the 
concept of Arctic Cinema and developing the first frames of reference on 
different typologies and issues connected to Arctic film. Stenport’s and 
Makenzie’s work on Arctic Cinema is an important contribution and 
impulse just as much as it is an invitation for us to expand its 
multiple layers, branches and complexities that can only be fully 
addressed through the work of a range of film and culture scholars that 
can comprehend the various issues that give substance to Arctic Cinema. 
Despite the important contributions already made through several 
publications on Arctic cinema, much is yet to be done. Arctic cinema is 
still often considered a subdivision of Nordic cinema, and this 
Companion to Arctic Cinema assumes the responsibility to contribute to a 
broader understanding of Arctic Cinema that gives it its deserved place 
and autonomy within film studies. As result of the Symposium on Arctic 
Cinema that the editors of this Companion organized at the Norwegian 
University of Science and Technology, in partnership with the Institute 
for Comparative Research on Human Culture and the Department of Art and 
Media Studies, we managed to gather an impressive array of papers and 
discussions around various topics related to Arctic Cinema and we have 
been inspired and stimulated to publish this Companion to Arctic Cinema 
as a way to offer new research and a comprehensive overview of the 
topics for film and media scholars but also for a wider audience of 
readers spanning from different disciplines related to Arctic studies. 
The vision guiding this Companion to Arctic Cinema is based on our 
belief that Arctic Cinema is not just a sub-division within Nordic 
cinema, but an object of research with ontological, and why not 
ecological, importance and autonomy in the context of film studies.
   This Companion to Arctic Cinema seeks to take advantage of this 
extremely timely topic of research. Our goal is to gather scholars with 
research interests connected to Arctic forms of cinema with the aim of 
promoting a discussion and presenting this idea of Arctic Cinema in 
relation to an ecologic ethnography of the Nordic regions of the globe. 
The Arctic has recently been subject of interest within scientific 
fields, but it has not received the same degree of attention from film 
studies. This will, however, change and we believe it is imperative to 
include film studies in the academic discussions leading to a deeper 
understanding of the Arctic, since it is our conviction that film has a 
potential to make use of its aesthetic and experiential qualities to 
trace the identity of the Arctic in angles that can appeal to film 
scholars, anthropologists, literature scholars and other fields of 
cultural studies.
        Arctic Cinema gives expression to an eco-ethnography that 
represents, through different film genres and modes, how local and 
regional cultures but also geography and climate have been depicted by 
film and translated into film aesthetics. Some directors, such as Jan 
Troell and Knut Erik Jensen, have revealed the Arctic in captivating new 
ways, showing that the Arctic is not about snow and ice alone but about 
how local cultures relate to those sensory elements. Moreover, the 
Arctic has a history that is not exclusively environmental but is 
cultural and ethnographic too. There are numerous aspects why Arctic 
Cinema is such a strong and emergent line of research on the fields of 
film and ethnographic studies. The main reason is that it results from a 
confluence of elements that function in two ways. One one hand, the 
Arctic Cinema serves as an ethnographic investigation of its local 
communities. One the other hand, it projects those cultural and 
ethnographic elements onto a global context. Film is a privileged medium 
to record many of the experiential aspects of the Arctic and it is 
through the authorial language of some of the directors from the Arctic 
Cinema that those experiential aspects find a global projection and 
reach audiences that may never have been acquainted with the Arctic but 
are nevertheless exposed to it in its cinematic form.
        Due to the privileged geographical position that the Norwegian 
University of Science and Technology, as an institution, occupies within 
the Nordic context, we have managed to establish a number of contacts 
and expand a considerable network with scholars that have been dealing 
with films made above the Arctic circle. We believe the first Companion 
to Arctic Cinema will be an opportunity to gather the first globally 
comprehensive study of Arctic Cinema with studies from scholars based in 
the regions of Iceland, Norway, Greenland, Finland, Russia and Sweden.

DEADLINE: Please submit an abstract (300 words) and a short biographical 
note to (luis.antunes /at/ ntnu.no) and to (emma /at/ cinemascandinavia.com) by no 
later than January 31st.
Chapter will be between 5000 and 7000 words.

Submit any queries to (luis.antunes /at/ ntnu.no) or (emma /at/ cinemascandinavia.com)

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Thank you and best wishes,
Emma Vestrheim and Luis R. Antunes


Luis R. Antunes
University of Kent and Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Film Studies and Aesthetics

www.luisrochaantunes.com; http://www.ntnu.edu/employees/luis.antunes

Author of The Multisensory Film Experience: A Cognitive Model of 
Experiential Film Aesthetics: 
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo23680188.html

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