[Commlist] Fate of a Format: Substandard Cinema Symposium and Edited Collection call for papers

FATE OF A FORMAT.
SMALL-GAUGE CINEMA IN POST-WAR ITALY.
FORMATS, GEOPOLITICS, AND INSTITUTIONS, 1940’s-1960’s

International Symposium and Edited Collection organized by University of 
Udine
in collaboration with HomeMovies National Film Archive of Bologna

Confirmed Keynote speaker: Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota)

As a forerunner of today’s ubiquitous small screens and personal 
devices, substandard cinema has accompanied the history of film since 
the very beginning of the 20th century, increasingly colonizing leisure 
time and domestic space.  This pervasive technology can be interpreted 
as a political and institutional device of power that also provided a 
way to mold and structure private “sites of identity construction” 
(Doane 1987, Rogers 2019).
Small format films elicited and encouraged new forms of desire, inducing 
emancipatory practices of technical creativity, while cultivating new 
material and intellectual needs that paved the way for television, the 
internet, and smartphones. As a key instigator of techno-industrial 
shifts in politics and entertainment, it has constituted one means of 
effective biopolitical design in liberal and totalitarian regimes alike. 
These small formats served multiple functions: they proved useful in 
transforming spaces, communicating ideas, convincing individuals, and 
producing subjects in the service of public and private aims (Acland, 
Wasson 2011).  During the interwar period in Italy, the fascist regime 
put extra effort into the experimentation, promotion and standardization 
of the small-gauge cinema with these purposes in mind.

“Fate of a Format. Small-gauge cinema in post-war Italy” aims to sketch 
a geography of substandard film’s uses and circulation in Italy and 
trace the industry’s transformations as they unfolded in the aftermath 
of the second world war up to the full democratic era. Scholarship about 
Italian cinema has contributed to an increased understand of the 
implications of substandard film formats for distinct cultural domains: 
educational (Taillibert 2000; Grasso 2015), religious (Mosconi 2018), 
amateur and private (Mosconi-Farinotti 2005; Cati 2009; Simoni 2018), 
scientific (Casonato, Canadelli 2019), political (Mariani 2017).
For this symposium and edited collection, we seek contributions that 
stress the infrastructural dimension of this field. In doing so, we 
invite contributors to question the “non-neutrality” of the technical 
processes (Yue 2020) linked to the production, distribution and 
promotion of substandard film stocks; their integration into national, 
regional and local realities; and the discourses that informed the 
decisions concerning their definitions, uses and objectives.
We therefore imply a conception of the format not just as a technical 
term but rather as a complex cultural object and a critical node 
(Volmar, Jancovic, Schneider 2020) or, as Jonathan Sterne defined it: “a 
whole range of decisions that affect the look, feel, experience, and 
workings of a medium” (Sterne 2012: 7).

We are interested in proposals addressing substandard film in Italy or 
international perspectives in conversation with the Italian context:

·      Substandard film manufacturing in post-war Italy (Italian 
manufacturers and workers or Italian branches of international companies)
·      Personalities and offices related to the substandard film market 
in Italy
·      Italian relationships with European and global histories of 
substandard film
·      Substandard filmmaking and circulation in cine-clubs and film 
associations networks
·      Substandard film’s institutional role (non-governmental 
organizations, private or public companies, hospitals, schools, 
universities, museums, etc.)
·      Military uses of substandard film formats
·      Experimental and amateur film with emphasis on the substandard format
·      Substandard film for television
·      Substandard film formats’ introduction, standardization or 
decline/persistence (i.e. 9.5mm clubs in the post-war period)
·      Substandard film materiality (technical innovation and 
obsolescence, source materials and supply chains, etc.)
·      Substandard film projection in special theaters, film festivals, 
national and local exhibitions and contests
·      Film journals and magazines devoted to substandard film
·      Substandard film marketing


The conference will take place February 25th in a blended format in 
Udine, Italy, and online. Contributions in Italian and English are welcome.


Submission deadline November 30, 2021.

Notification by December 10, 2021.


We invite proposals for papers or panels of up to 200 words. Please make 
sure to attach a short biographical note (up to 50 words) to:


Andrea Mariani: (andrea.mariani /at/ uniud.it) <mailto:(andrea.mariani /at/ uniud.it)>

Simona Schneider: (simona.schneider /at/ uniud.it) 
<mailto:(simona.schneider /at/ uniud.it)>
---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------