[ecrea] CFP: Rethinking the Attractions-Narrative Dialectics:New Approaches to Early Cinema

*Call for papers for the conference:*

**

*/Rethinking the Attractions-Narrative Dialectics:
New Approaches to Early Cinema/*

**

*Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium*,*November 9-10, 2018*

http://earlycinemaconference.com/

_Confirmed keynotes: _

Professor André Gaudreault

Professor Charlie Keil

Since the 1980s and the introduction of the notion of the cinema of 
attractions by André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning, the dialectics of 
attraction and narrative has organized much of our understanding of 
early cinema. The proponents of cinema of attractions have argued that 
the period lasting for a decade until about 1905 was dominated by 
exhibitionist cinema (as opposed to the voyeuristic narrative one) which 
solicits the attention of the spectator either by its own status as a 
technical novelty, or by aligning itself with the modes of 
representation of the performing arts rather than those of dramatic 
illusion. Characterized by preference of display over the construction 
of diegesis, of temporal punctuality over chronological development, and 
of direct address to the spectator over effacement of its rhetoric 
potential, cinema of attractions demonstrates that the future of cinema 
need not have been in the pursuit of narrative form.

Taking that lesson to heart, scholars such as Charlie Keil who 
investigated the ensuing period in detail saw the transitional era 
(c.1907 – 1913) not as one in which narrative naturally found its place 
in film but as a period in which through a painstaking method of trial 
and error filmmakers and film audiences alike learned how to make and 
comprehend narrative films through deployment and interpretation of a 
range of stylistic devices (editing, framing, camera movement, 
mise-en-scène, lecturing, etc.).

When precisely one period ends and the other begins has also been a 
matter of extensive debate. In a number of scholarly contributions over 
the years Charles Musser (1991, 1994, 2006) has argued that numerous 
films from the cinema of attractions period such as passion plays and 
fight films are primarily concerned with conveying stories. More 
generally, for Musser, narrative film became the dominant far earlier 
than the cinema of attractions proposal would allow for.

The dialectics of attraction and narrative is undoubtedly an 
illuminating way to think about this period. But it has come at a price 
of subduing other potentially elucidating perspectives. For instance, 
new cinema history has both downplayed and taken for granted the 
categories of fiction and non-fiction which it inherited from 
traditional film history – the idea that the dichotomy between fiction 
and non-fiction was exemplified by Méliès’ trick-films and the Lumière 
brothers’ actualities. One only needs to look at the categorization of 
various genres in Richard Abel’s /Encyclopedia of Early Cinema/ to see 
that film content remains the primary way of distinguishing fiction from 
non-fiction genres. But this miscategorises numerous films. Consider 
contemporary reports which regularly cite films we regard to be fictions 
as instances of canned theatre, effectively actualities of theatrical 
performances. Whereas for /Uncle Tom’s Cabin /(1903) it was said that 
“Edison, the inventor of the moving picture machines, suggested to Mr. 
Brady the advisability of having films made of this mammoth production” 
(/Grand Forks Daily Herald/,//December 20, 1903, 5), /La lune à un mètre 
/(1898) was described as “a life motion picture /reproduction/ of a 
celebrated French spectacular piece” (/Philadelphia Inquirer/, September 
4, 1899, 10). Conversely, early train films appear to explicitly ask of 
audiences to espouse specific imaginative attitudes that the 
philosophers of art agree to be constitutive of fiction. /Haverstraw 
Tunnel /(1897), for instance, is described as follows: “In all previous 
instances the audience has sat passive and witnessed scenes in motion, 
but in the latest example the position is, so to speak, reversed, and 
the spectator becomes part and parcel of the picture, for, by the 
exercise of the very slightest /imagination/, he can fancy himself 
perched upon the cow-catcher of an American locomotive tearing along at 
the rate of sixty miles per hour, with the landscape simply leaping 
towards him” (/Biograph Bulletins/, 36). In other words, the 
fiction/non-fiction pair or the varying imaginative mode of engagement 
with films presents at least one form of approaching early cinema 
neglected by the emphasis on the narrative-attraction dialectics.

Other attempts at shifting the emphasis away from the 
narrative-attraction pair or at least complicating the relationship have 
also been made. Joshua Yumibe (2012) has, for instance, emphasized the 
sensuous aspect of colour in early cinema. Jennifer Lynn Peterson (2013) 
has written about the dreamlike qualities of travelogues during the 
period. The relation of early cinema to science has also garnered 
increasing attention (Scott Curtis 2015, Oliver Gaycken 2015). Perhaps 
most innovatively, Charles Musser (2006) has proposed the cinema of 
contemplation and the cinema of discernment as alternative models in 
which the spectator is absorbed by the film and actively evaluates the 
work, respectively.

There has also never been as much primary material available as today 
thanks to digitalization. Whereas earlier scholars were faced with a 
relative dearth of materials scattered around various archives, nowadays 
projects such as Media History Digital Library allow access to millions 
of easily searchable documents. Given that what made the study of early 
cinema a significant subfield in film studies in the first place was the 
increased availability of films from the period starting with the FIAF 
conference in Brighton in 1978 (Wanda Strauven 2006), perhaps the sheer 
amount of materials available to us now can usher in a similar 
reconceptualization of early film history.

This conference seeks to both critically reflect on the continued use of 
the concepts of attraction and narrative in our accounts of early cinema 
and to pursue new avenues for exploring this period. Theoretical, 
historical, computational, and methodological proposals are all welcome. 
Topics may include but are by no means limited to:

-Critical analysis of the cinema of attractions

-What is the minimum to call something a narrative film?

-Is attraction/narrative an objective feature of the film text? A 
phenomenon of reception? Combination thereof? Something else?

-What constitutes the “dominant” in a given historical period (number of 
films produced, aesthetic value, income generated, reception)?

-What does it mean for audiences to construe something as attraction as 
opposed to narrative? What counts as proof?

-Contributions to the Musser-Gunning debate (importance of catalogues, 
reception, etc.)

-Early cinema genres and their relationship to contemporary categorizations

-Films that eschew standard categorizations

-What constitutes a fiction film in early cinema? What constitutes a 
non-fiction film?

-How does the Méliès/Lumière dichotomy relate to fiction/non-fiction 
distinction?

-What is the relationship between fiction/non-fiction and 
attraction/narrative?

-The importance of fiction/non-fiction categories for early cinema

-The importance of imagination for the engagement with early cinema 
(what were people supposed to believe? What were they fooled into 
believing? What were they supposed to make-believe? What could they not 
but disbelieve?)

-The importance of the categories of truth and falsehood for early 
cinema (fake newsreels, reconstructions, etc.)

-Cinema of contemplation

-Cinema of discernment

-The sensuous aspect of early cinema

-Early cinema’s dreamlike quality

-Early cinema and the scientific attitude

-Various forms of hybridity in early cinema (fiction/non-fiction, 
intermediality with legitimate theatre, magic theatre, vaudeville, etc.)

-What constitutes the filmic text in early cinema? (The images alone? 
Together with lecturing and other sound accompaniments? The program?, etc.)

-How has the growing digitalization of materials changed our 
understanding of early cinema (What is the influence of the increased 
availability of materials for the quality of generalizations about the 
period? What new research questions does computational processing of big 
data afford?)

-New cinema history approaches to the study of early cinema(s), with 
issues of exhibition, distribution, audience’s experiences of film and 
cinema, etc.

-Early cinema outside of Europe and America

Please send proposals (title, up to 300-word abstract, up to 5 
references, affiliation, contact details, and a short bio) to Mario 
Slugan ((mario.slugan /at/ ugent.be) <mailto:(mario.slugan /at/ ugent.be)>) by Friday, 
April 27, 2018. The notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 
Friday, June 1, 2018.

Due to secured support, there will be no conference fees and a limited 
travel fund for postgraduate students and early career researchers whose 
papers are accepted will be made available (two bursaries in the maximum 
amount of €500 each).

Authors whose papers are selected will also be invited to contribute a 
chapter for an edited peer-reviewed volume the publication of which is 
currently under discussion with an international academic publisher.

Conference organized by Mario Slugan and Daniël Biltereyst, and 
sponsored by DICIS <https://www.digitalcinemastudies.com/>(Digital 
Cinema Studies) and European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and 
innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 
746619.

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