[ecrea] CFP: The Politics of Faith, Spirituality, and Religion in Southeast Asian Cinemas

CFP: The Politics of Faith, Spirituality, and Religion in Southeast 
Asian Cinemas
10th Biennial Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference (ASEACC)
July 23-26, 2018, Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

In Southeast Asia, the tropes of faith/belief, spirituality and religion 
are frequently inseparable from the political––whether specific regimes, 
groups, movements or longer 'undercurrents'––in a way that challenges 
post-enlightenment, rationalist/secularist conceptions of the political 
and the modern. As the products of these rapidly changing societies with 
diverse and long-historical philosophies and practices of faith, 
religion and ritual, Southeast Asian cinemas have often occupied 
disputed theoretical and aesthetic ground, particularly in their 
engagements with politics. Local cinematic forms have consistently 
resisted any absolute break with the power structures and attendant 
narrative and aesthetic discourses that link the regional past to its 
national presents. The resultant connection drawn by many local films 
between modernism and approaches to life, politics and representation 
that implicitly or explicitly eschew Western secularism have frequently 
served as a source of consternation or dismissal from both local and 
global audiences and critics.

In the decades since 9/11, however, as religion has become ever more 
visible and the post-European Enlightenment ideal of separation between 
public and private spheres has been increasingly destabilized throughout 
the world, films engaging with the profound continuity of local 
aesthetic and spiritual pasts in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines 
and elsewhere have also begun to gain more regular acceptance in the 
foremost bastions of cinematic legitimacy in Europe, East Asia and the 
United States. How might works like these––and perhaps more important, 
those less universally appreciated offerings that preceded 
them––challenge and expand our understanding of what cinema is and does? 
How might the analysis of Southeast Asian cinemas, genres, or particular 
films inspire a critical rethinking of the position and role of 
religion, faith and other “old” systems of belief in processes of 
regional transformation and decolonization, and the production and 
spread of modernity and nationalism they fostered?

Perhaps the most pressing question in this context: in light of the 
alarming contemporary expansion of politico-religious conservatism and 
authoritarianism throughout the region, might Southeast Asian films, 
filmmakers and theorists be especially well positioned to formulate a 
critical response that elides the polarizing valorization of secularism 
so often deployed by Western critics?

Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

● Representation of religion, religious themes, and spirituality in cinema
● Faiths, identity-based politics, sectarianism
● Cinema as a vehicle for the adaptation and continual development of 
religious or traditional ideologies and systems of thought
● Cinema as a mediator between religious and political authorities and 
the public
● Cinematic reference to, or quotation of, traditional systems of belief 
and forms of expression
● Cinema and Institutional investment in defining and promoting tradition
● Faith/religion and reception, exhibition, distribution (ex. themed 
festivals)
● Films as interventions into religious politics/cultures and sectarian 
politics
● Faith/religion/spirituality, film, and consumer culture
● Religion and censorship
● Islamic themed films as a contemporary phenomena in Indonesia and 
Malaysia (and elsewhere)

ASEACC welcomes presentations related to the conference theme or to 
Southeast Asian cinemas more broadly. Past conferences have included 
site visits, screenings, and presentations from academics, critics, 
filmmakers, archivists, and others interested in Southeast Asian screen 
media.

Please check our website archives and conference programs for past paper 
topics as we are less likely to accept topics that have been covered 
before: http://seaconference.wordpress.com/

Abstract Submission Deadline: October 31, 2017. Please send an abstract 
(max. 300 words) and short bio (max. 100 words) to: Katinka Van Heeren 
((cvanheeren /at/ hotmail.com) <mailto:(cvanheeren /at/ hotmail.com)>), Patrick Campos 
((patrick.campos /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(patrick.campos /at/ gmail.com)>), and Sophia 
Harvey ((soharvey /at/ vassar.edu) <mailto:(soharvey /at/ vassar.edu)>).

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