[Commlist] CFP: Short Film in the Balkans and Eastern Europe

ILUMINACE announces a Call for Papers for its new themed issue:

Short Film in the Balkans and Eastern Europe

Guest Editors:
Fabio Bego (Independent Researcher)
Ana Grgic (Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania)
Irina Tcherneva (CNRS — Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 
France)

Deadline for abstracts: February 15, 2025
Deadline for submissions: May 15, 2025

Archives are spaces of power expressions. They are places where power is 
stored and information is selected and converted. At their foundation, 
archives are essentially patriarchal, paternal, and colonial 
institutions designated to preserve and expand the political order which 
founded them, however archives are also “sites of memory” which preserve 
traces of cultural and social experiences, practices, and resistances. 
For this special issue, we invite scholars to consider how short films 
reinforce and challenge archival power. Our aim is to draw attention to 
the way in which short films reverberate and reflect the 
(dis)continuities of state-building projects, political activism, and 
regime changes in the Balkans and Eastern Europe throughout the 20th and 
21st centuries. More than thirty years after the end of the Cold war, 
the region now demands a decolonial view of its past, archives and 
memory, one that is shaped by “a multivocal discourse”, encompassing 
multiplicity of creative expressions and intersected temporalities.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
*The aesthetics and history of an evolving short cinematic form 
(politics of production and usage of audiovisual archives in Eastern 
Europe and the Balkans; censorship in archival film practices and 
creative approaches used in short films to circumvent censorship, etc.)
*Exhibition practices and spaces (film festivals and short films; film 
collections and modes of programming short film; film museum 
exhibitions; curation and programming of archival short films in 
cinemas; short film programmes on TV and digital streaming platforms, etc.)
*Short film and archives (short film archives, regional cooperation and 
civic engagement; low budget and DIY approaches to experimenting with 
short forms and archives; queer film history and archiving in the 
context of the short form; community and collective archiving, 
resistance archives and short audiovisual forms)
*Short film and memory (transition from analog to digital in the context 
of film archives and accessibility; memory and short cinematic forms in 
a digital age; re-use of archival short films in compilation film; 
curating and exhibiting short films in film museums or cinematheques)
*Transnational perspectives, inter-regional connections, and decolonial 
practices (third cinema; the non-aligned movement; militant films, 
newsreels and anti-colonial move- ments; feminist movements and short 
film practice; short films and post-colonial/postimperial histories in 
the Balkans and Eastern Europe)

We invite scholars to submit papers that engage with these topics, 
offering fresh perspectives and rigorous analysis. Submissions should be 
original, unpublished works that contribute to the study of the short 
film form in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Please send an abstract (250 words + 3–5 bibliographic references) and a 
short bio (150 words) to (lucie.cesalkova/at/nfa.cz <http://nfa.cz>), 
(jiri.anger/at/nfa.cz <http://nfa.cz>), (irina.tcherneva/at/cnrs.fr 
<http://cnrs.fr>), (bego.fabio/at/gmail.com <http://gmail.com>) and 
(ana.grgic/at/ubbcluj.ro <http://ubbcluj.ro>) by February 15, 2025. The 
authors will be informed of the decision by February 28, 2025. The 
deadline for submitting the full article is May 10, 2025. The special 
issue is slated for publication in January 2026. No payments are required.

The detailed submission guidelines can be found on our journal’s 
website: <https://iluminace.cz/ <https://iluminace.cz/>>

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