[ecrea] CFP: Amateur Film and the Institution (Film History Special Issue)

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CALL FOR PAPERS

*/_Film History_/**//**_-_**_Special Issue: “Amateur Film and the 
Institution”_*

Guest Editors: Enrique Fibla, Masha Salazkina (Concordia University)

Deadline for abstracts:* October 15th, 2016*

**

In recent years, Film Studies scholarship began to pay more attention to 
the effects that various non-theatrical film initiatives – such as 
educational, industrial, and other institutional productions - have had 
on the way modern life is ordered, experienced and imagined. Although 
amateur film initiatives have sometimes been included in such debates, 
their relationship to professional film expressions and institutions has 
not yet been explored in depth. Shifting discourses on the status of 
amateurism vs. professional aesthetics have shaped much of film 
criticism and theory, emerging with particular force at certain moments 
in history. Yet, usually deemed a mere hobby devoted to recording family 
gatherings and trips, amateur cinema’s rich history as a vernacular 
media form, with its own journals, circulation circuits, and particular 
relationship to actuality is yet to be fully explored. Likewise, the 
current amateur digital media explosion has gathered scholarly 
attention, but it remains to be articulated in relation to a more 
comprehensive history of vernacular media. Such histories can 
potentially allow for a new map and timeline of moving image production 
to emerge: countries or regions previously deemed peripheral for film 
history due to their lack of a strong film industry may become relevant 
to rethink the space that film occupies in cultural history globally.

With these ideas in mind, the /Amateur Film and the Institution/ special 
issue looks to discuss the different implications of amateur cinema 
around the world in relation to the technological, social, cultural, and 
economic developments that marked its emergence in different contexts. A 
central task of the special issue will be to interrogate the 
relationship between amateur practices and broader film institutional 
developments and open a conversation by addressing a range of questions, 
such as: What role did amateur production play in the 
institutionalization of film? What kind of alternative institutions did 
amateurs create? How does the development of these practices and 
discourses impact our understanding of the history and geography of 
moving images?

We invite contributions from scholars and practitioners to submit paper 
proposal on the history of film amateur practices around the world. 
Topics may include, but are not limited to:

-Archival institutions and non-professional film

-Non-professional film movements, journals, and festivals

-Amateur pornography

-Political potential of amateur cinema

-Amateur filmmaking and experimental/avant-garde cinema

-Self-made productions and the contemporary digital culture

-DIY technologies and aesthetics

-Amateur film in relation to industrial and educational films

-Histories of critical debates about the status of “the amateur” in film 
and media

-New geographies of moving image history beyond commercial film

-The impact of the study of amateur cinema on film historiography

Send a 500-600 word abstract and a brief biographical note 
to**(enrique.fibla /at/ concordia.ca) <mailto:(enrique.fibla /at/ concordia.ca)> *and* 
(salazkina.masha /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(masha.salazkina /at/ concordia.ca)> by 
*October 15^th  2016*. The editorial team will notify selected proposals 
by *November 1^st 2016*. Completed manuscripts (up to 9,000 words) will 
be due *February 1^st  2017*, and will be accepted for publication 
pending editorial and external readers evaluation. All submissions will 
be subjected to double blind peer review.

For further information on /Film History /journal submission guidelines 
see: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/pages.php?pID=78&CDpath=4

*In addition to scholarly articles, we invite submissions of relevant 
previously unpublished original documents on this topic, in English or 
in translation, to be included in the special issue.*

About the Journal:

//

/Film History/ publishes original research on the international history 
of cinema, broadly and inclusively understood. Its areas of interest 
include the production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of films 
designed for commercial theaters as well as the full range of 
non-theatrical, non-commercial uses of motion pictures; the role of 
cinema as a contested cultural phenomena; the technological, economic, 
political, and legal aspects of film history; the circulation of film 
within and across national borders; and the relations between film and 
other visual media and forms of commercial entertainment. In addition to 
original historical research, /Film History/ also will on occasion 
publish review essays, report on newly available archival collections, 
and make available primary documents.

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