[ecrea] CFP The Moving Form of Film: Exploring Intermediality as a Historiographic Method

CALL FOR PAPERS (DEADLINE: 30^TH JUNE 2017)

We welcome submissions for the II IntermIdia Conference:

THE MOVING FORM OF FILM:

EXPLORING INTERMEDIALITY AS A HISTORIOGRAPHIC METHOD

6-8 November 2017, University of Reading, UK

As part of the AHRC/FAPESP-funded IntermIdia Project 
(www.reading.ac.uk/intermidia), led by investigators from the University 
of Reading (UoR), UK, and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), 
Brazil, this international conference seeks to invite discussion of 
intermediality as a historiographic method.

Conference Convenor: Prof Lúcia Nagib

UoR Investigators: Prof Lúcia Nagib (PI); Alison Butler (Co-I); Prof 
John Gibbs (Co-I); Dr Lisa Purse (Co-I); Dr Albert Elduque (PDRA); Dr 
Stefan Solomon (PDRA).

UFSCar Investigators: Dr Luciana Corrêa de Araújo (PI); Dr Flávia 
Cesarino Costa (Co-I); Dr Samuel Paiva (Co-I); Dr Suzana Reck Miranda 
(Co-I); Dr Margarida Adamatti (PDRA).

Administrator: Richard McKay.

CONFIRMED GUEST SPEAKERS

Keynote Speakers:

- Alain Badiou – French philosopher, former Chair of Philosophy, 
Université de Paris VIII

- Luciana Corrêa de Araújo – Professor of Film Studies, Universidade 
Federal de São Carlos

- Robert Stam – University Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University

- Ismail Xavier – Professor of Film Studies, University of São Paulo

Plenary Speakers:

- Ágnes Pethő – Professor of Film Studies, Sapientia Hungarian 
University of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca

- Lisa Shaw – Reader in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, University of 
Liverpool

Opening Conference Screening and Guest Speakers:

Screening of Dong (2006, 66 minutes), documentary directed by China’s 
greatest filmmaker Jia Zhangke on the celebrated painter Liu Xiaodong.

Post-screening discussion with:

- Jia Zhangke (tbc)

- Cecília Mello – Lecturer in Film Studies, University of São Paulo

- Jean-Michel Frodon – Former editor of the Cahiers du Cinéma, current 
Professorial Fellow in Film Studies and Creative Industries at the 
University of St. Andrews

*

 From its birth, the film medium has fuelled debates around its 
possible specificity versus its obvious connections with other arts and 
media. In recent days, with the advent of digital technologies that 
trigger and depend on media convergence, it has become indisputable that 
film is inherently intermedial, giving scope for reconsidering film 
history in light of the medium’s moving, all- encompassing form. As 
Alain Badiou summarises, it is impossible to think cinema outside of a 
general space made of its connections to the other arts. He says: 
‘Cinema is the seventh art in a very particular sense. It does not add 
itself to the other six while remaining on the same level as them. 
Rather, it implies them – cinema is the “plus-one” of the arts. It 
operates on the other arts, using them as its starting point, in a 
movement that subtracts them from themselves’ (2005: 79).  This 
conference will build on such an understanding by investigating the ways 
in which intermediality, rather than obstructing, enhances film’s 
artistic endeavour. More pointedly, it will ask: how can intermediality 
help us to understand the history of cinema as a whole?

Broadly speaking, ‘intermediality’ refers to the interbreeding of 
artistic and technical medial forms. The uses of the term hark back to 
the 1960s and Higgins (1966; 1981), who applied it to an array of 
countercultural artistic phenomena of the time. Through the years, the 
concept has evolved to encompass an ‘inflation’ of definitions (Pethö 
2010), which concur in the celebration of ‘hybridisation’, 
‘transnationalism’, ‘multiculturalism’ and cross-fertilisations of all 
sorts. As for cinema, intermediality has gained prominence among other 
more established approaches, such as comparative, intertextual, 
adaptation and genre-based studies, for its wider premise that keeps the 
interrogation into the properties of the medium constantly on the 
critic’s horizon (Rajewsky 2010). This conference will look at medial 
interstices, intercultural encounters and creative clashes where the 
specificities of cinema are questioned and re-fertilised into new forms. 
Its ultimate aim will be to stimulate an overarching exploration of and 
theorising on the uses of intermediality as a historiographic method.

We welcome proposals which explore the following issues, with particular 
emphasis on histories and historiographies of cinema and the film medium:

Intermediality and historiography;

Intermediality and the history(ies) of cinema

Intermedial and intercultural encounters;

Intermediality as hybridity;

National cinema(s) and intermediality;

Experimental cinema and intermediality;

Early Cinema and intermediality;

Multi-mediality in New Cinemas;

Border-crossings in genres and genders;

Intermediality and new technologies;

Comparative medial approaches across regional, national and 
transnational cinemas.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All proposals should be on subjects relevant to the objectives of the 
conference, as described above. Proposals must be submitted in English. 
Please submit your title, abstract (max. 300 words), short bio (max. 150 
words), e-mail address and institutional affiliation.

For pre-constituted panels (between 3 and 4 participants), please follow 
guidelines above, appoint a panel chair and add a panel title and 
description of max. 200 words.

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to (intermidia /at/ reading.ac.uk) . 
Deadline for submissions is Friday 30 June 2017. Please use the same 
e-mail address for general information.

Notification of accepted proposals will be given by Monday 31 July 2017.

Details of the registration fee, the conference programme, and the 
registration process will be announced shortly thereafter on the 
IntermIdia Project website: http://www.reading.ac.uk/intermidia/

Support: AHRC, FAPESP, University of Reading.

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