[Commlist] CFP: Screening Censorship: New Histories, Perspectives, and Theories on Film and Screen Censorship

We are pleased to announce the CFP Conference for the conference 
"Screening Censorship: New Histories, Perspectives, and Theories on Film 
and Screen Censorship", Ghent, Belgium, October 16-17, 2020

Academic keynote speakers: Professor Richard Maltby (Flinders 
University, Australia) Professor Linda Williams (University of 
California, Berkeley, USA)
Professional keynote speakers: Manuel Mozos (filmmaker, Portugal)
Rachel Talalay (film director/producer, US/Canada)

Throughout the history of film and cinema, censorship has existed 
everywhere–in all kinds of shapes, colors, and dimensions. The act of 
restricting the free production, circulation, screening and consumption 
of movies was never unique to authoritarian regimes. Age restrictions, 
film cuttings, bans, industry discouragements, and other types of 
censorial interventions also occurred in countries where media freedom 
and the freedom of speech were and are highly regarded principles. 
Censorship has had far-reaching implications on filmmakers, 
distributors, exhibitors, and audiences across generations, and across 
genres. Hard, strict institutional censorship often came alongside 
implied or ‘suggested’ forms of soft censorship, including, importantly, 
the self-censorship or audiences disciplined into particular viewership 
positions.

Today, soft and hard censorship co-exist in even more fluid forms. The 
acts of banning, regulating, trimming, and tailoring films for 
‘harmless’ consumption, by bureaucracies, pressure groups and activists, 
are frequently embedded within wider debates about media use. But film 
nonetheless remains a ‘banner issue’, a point of reference for what 
constitutes screen censorship.

From the long tradition of investigating film censorship onwards, this 
conference aims at reflecting upon recent changes in policies, 
strategies and practices of film censorship, both in the past and in 
today’s media landscape. Amongst the many questions, this conference 
asks: •	What are film history’s lessons from censorship? •	What are the 
contours of censorship today? •	Is censorship still a useful concept? 
How has it changed? •	How do new or renewed sensitivities influence 
censorship today, in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, 
ageism, ableism? •	How do censorships compare, across time, space, 
genre, and technologies? •	What is the role of social media in debates 
about censorship? How do we define film censorship in times of massive 
content moderation on social media platforms? •	How does film censorship 
work on different screens: in the theatre, on television, on in-flight, 
mobile, across multitudes of digital screens? •	What are the 
‘aesthetics’ of censorship today and what is the function of pastiche, 
subversion, ‘just joking’, and other kinds of boundary-challenging work? 
•	What do recent controversies and provocations reveal about the 
evolution of censorship? •	What is the relationship between incidents 
and interventions in production culture, artistic integrity, and 
censorship? •	What is censorship’s relationship with ‘hardcore’ and 
explicit material, past and now? If censorship is not always a simple 
matter of repression from above, but of conflicting discursive 
constructions arising from below, how do we account for the history of 
the emergence of hard-core pornography beyond thinking of it as the 
liberalization of censorship?

Screening Censorship also invites reflections on the changing research 
environment:
•	What are the tools for studying censorship today? •	How have digital 
technologies affected the study of censorship? •	What is the influence 
of new film and cinema historiography in exploring practices of 
distributing, screening, consuming and audience’s experiences of film 
and screen censorship?
Screening Censorship aims to showcase academic and industry voices on 
the issue of the shifting practices of censoring films on the different 
screens. The four keynote addresses confirmed for the symposium reflect 
that goal. The conference is organized in tandem with the 47th 
International Film Fest Ghent (FIAPF accredited, Variety’s top-50 
must-attend), and aims to examine how film and cinema censorship, as a 
concept and as a practice (ad hoc and post hoc), functions 20 years into 
the 21st Century.
Screening Censorship welcomes contributions for 20-minute presentations 
from scholars, artists and practitioners whose work pertains to topics 
and themes of film and screen censorship. We are seeking abstracts for 
individual papers and panels of three or four contributors on topics 
including, but not limited to:
•	Theories, concepts, and discourses on film censorship, control, 
discipline, silencing, content moderation
•	New film censorship policies, strategies, tactics, practices
•	The aesthetics of film censorship, subversion, pastiche
•	Activism and resistance
•	Film censorship, audiences and reception
•	Institutions and power
•	Comparison, entangled history, histoire croisée
•	Film censorship and the museum: archives, heritage, platforms
•	Artistic integrity, interventions, re-use
•	Film censorship cases, controversies, panics
•	Digital tools and new methods for doing film censorship research today

Please send abstracts of 300 words and a 100-word biography to Daniel 
Biltereyst ((daniel.biltereyst /at/ ugent.be)) and Ernest Mathijs 
((ernest.mathijs /at/ ubc.ca)) by June 15th, 2020, and address any queries to 
the same addresses. Abstracts should be submitted following this order: 
(a) author(s); (b) affiliation; (c) email address; (d) title of 
abstract; (e) body of abstract; (f) bibliography. E-mails should carry 
the subject line: Screening Censorship Abstract Submission.
Conference sponsored by Digital Cinema Studies (DICIS, FWO Flanders) in 
collaboration with The Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (UBC) and the 
Center for Cinema and Media Studies (UGent).

Conference venue: Film-Plateau, Paddenhoek 3, Ghent, Belgium. 
Conference website: www.censorship-symposium.org  (under construction)
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