[ecrea] CFP - V. F. Perkins Symposium: Film as Film Today

(This CFP is also available here 
<https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/film_as_film_today_v_f_perkins_symposium_cfp.pdf>.)

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*_Film as Film Today: On the Criticism and Theory of V. F. Perkins_*
*_Symposium Call for Papers_**_
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*Symposium dates: *4-5 September 2018

*Location:* University of Warwick

*Confirmed keynotes:* Adrian Martin, Laura Mulvey, George Toles

V. F. Perkins (1936-2016) was a foundational figure in the history of 
British film education, a pioneering theorist of the medium, and among 
the most insightful and eloquent writers on the art of film. His 
historical significance for the fields of film criticism and film study 
is uncontested. However, while Perkins’ work – particularly the seminal 
/Film as Film /(1972) – still influences certain strands of scholarship, 
its contemporary relevance for critics, theorists, and students is 
presently underappreciated. This symposium is dedicated to revaluating 
Perkins’ critical methods and arguments by exploring their continued 
utility for those studying film, television, audiovisual media, and 
aesthetics today.

 From his writings for /Movie/ in the early 1960s to recent studies 
such as /La Règle du jeu/ (2012), Perkins progressively refined a 
sophisticated critical project. A key aspect of his work was its 
commitment to defining why and how the form of particular films 
contributes to their aesthetic achievements or limitations. Yet Perkins’ 
approach was also notable for its specific meta-critical, theoretical, 
and methodological character. The evaluative criteria he proposed were 
grounded in the properties of the medium while striving to resist 
essentialism. Developed via ongoing dialogue with competing aesthetic 
accounts, Perkins’ criticism and meta-criticism set forth original 
theories of filmic expression, interpretation, and spectatorship. 
Perhaps most distinctively, his evaluations and theorising were always 
embodied in precise, evocative, jargon-free close readings.

Perkins leaves us with a body of work which poses important questions 
and challenges for the study of film, television, media, and aesthetics 
today. The aim of this symposium is to grapple with these questions and 
rise to those challenges by engaging with the nature and implications of 
Perkins’ proposals and approaches. Papers might respond to any aspect of 
his criticism, theory, or pedagogy from any perspective. They may also 
explore its contemporary relevance in relation to any audiovisual medium 
– from film or television to digital media, from the gallery film to the 
audiovisual essay. Possible topics could include but are not limited to:

*- *‘“How” is “What”’: Perkins and style, theories of ‘form’/‘content’

*- *‘Must we Say What They Mean?’: Perkins and interpretation, 
aesthetics, hermeneutics, poetics

*-* ‘Where is the World?’: Perkins and film-philosophy, phenomenology

*-* ‘Moments of Choice’: Perkins and close reading, textual analysis

*- *‘Authorship: The Premature Burial’: Perkins and direction, 
expression, intention

*- *‘Participant Observers’: Perkins and spectatorship, cognition, reception

*- *‘The evidence of feeling’: Perkins and emotion, affect

*-* The medium as ‘inherently impure’: Perkins and intermediality, 
medium specificity, adaptation

*- *‘A synthetic theory’: Perkins and aesthetic criteria, theories of 
evaluation, criticism

*- *‘Movie’: Perkins and the popular, taste, definitions of ‘art’


Papers must be no longer than 20 minutes; the deadline for submissions 
is *Friday 16 March, 2018*. Proposals are to be sent as Word attachments 
to *(VFPerkinsconference /at/ warwick.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(VFPerkinsconference /at/ warwick.ac.uk)>***and should include the 
presentation’s title, a 250-word abstract, and a short biographical 
statement.

We hope for an edited collection to emerge from the symposium’s 
proceedings. The organisers are James MacDowell (Warwick) and Andrew 
Klevan (Oxford).


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