Ghent, Belgium, October 16-17, 2020

*UPDATE: Our conference is going ahead, online. We will continue to

adapt to the changing world. Based on abstract submissions Screening

Censorship Conference will continue to adjust to circumstances, and

implement best practices of virtual attendance to ensure the safety and

comfort of delegates, presenters and attendees. The new deadline for

abstracts is August 15, 2020. For more information, please contact

(**daniel.biltereyst@ugent.be <mailto:daniel.biltereyst@ugent.be>**)

and/or Ernest Mathijs (**ernest.mathijs@ubc.ca

<mailto:ernest.mathijs@ubc.ca>**).*

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.

*Keynote participations will be a combination of live, virtual and

recorded addresses.*

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)

  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 47^th

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 21^st 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@ugent.be

<mailto:daniel.biltereyst@ugent.be>) and Ernest Mathijs

(ernest.mathijs@ubc.ca) by *August 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).

Conference website: www.censorship-symposium.org

<http://www.censorship-symposium.org>

As more filmmakers have entered into academic institutions, and other

film practitioners have sought to engage with philosophy, the

relationship between filmmaking and theory has become entwined in

dynamic ways. The confluence of theory and practice has impacted on the

relationship between forms, platforms and content. Further, it has

interrogated how the process of filmmaking can create new knowledge and

can apply theory to the filmmaking process to open up new ways of

practising.

Constructions of the Realseeks to bring together documentary-based

practitioner-researchers writing about their processes of making. Drawn

from a range of global perspectives, each chapter aims to reflect a deep

engagement with the creative-theoretical processes of film and media

making located in a phenomenological world. Through a range of diverse

and situated practices, the book engages with current debates about the

role of creative scholarship, making a claim for documentary and

non-fiction filmmaking as a necessary practice for framing, critiquing

and interpreting the world.

Agnès Varda coined the termcinécritureto describe film as emerging from

a subtle and complex process involving reconnaissance, inspirations,

writing, shooting and editing (2014). We embrace this emphasis on the

creative entanglements of relationships and things encountered by the

filmmaker. Through prioritising process, we see non-fiction filmmaking

as a creative act, messy and full of contradictions. We welcome authors

who can speak to these issues from their own practice.

Alongside this, we are interested in non-fiction filmmaking that

disrupts the “reassuring mutual reinforcement of sound and image”

(Marks, 2000) of traditional documentary by suggesting new forms,

structures and intentions.

/We are initially seeking a 300 word abstract for eventual chapters of

5000-6000 words. Please include a short author bio (100 words) and brief

bibliography (in addition to the abstract length) with your abstract./

Deadline for abstracts is: August 11, 2020.

Draft chapters will be due in the first half of 2021.

You can send abstracts, and any questions you have, to

constructionsofthereal@gmail.com

We actively encourage practitioner-scholars from the Global South as

well as Indigenous and First Nation practitioners.

Some provocations for the book chapters include:

The Expanded Essay Film

What are the new directions that the essay film is heading in, and how

are practitioner/academics working with the affordances of new

technologies and platforms?

The Other-than-Human

What strategies can be employed to shift perspectives from the

anthropocentric?

Contested Spaces

How can filmmaking practices reveal and critique histories and

sovereignty of place?

Disruptions and Transgressions

How can strategies of disruptions and transgressions challenge the

gendered or colonial gaze?

Making Memory

How can non-fiction filmmaking create memory for the practitioner, speak

into silences, and make a past in order to restore the present?

Filming the Self

Can filming the self achieve ‘reconciliation’, how might this be

achieved and at what cost?

Archive as Practice

How can moving-image archives be recycled to reframe social

relationships  across time and space?

Amateur-Professional

What can working with amateur home movies offer as a method to explore

professional practice?

Publisher for the Book

We intend to publish with Intellect Books, in particular as part of the

book series Artwork Scholarship: International Perspectives in

Education, edited by Anita Sinner, Associate Professor in the Department

of Art Education at Concordia University, Canada, and Rita Irwin,

Professor of Art Education in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy

at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

You can find more about the series

here:

https://www.intellectbooks.com/artwork-scholarship-international-perspectives-in-education

Intellect Books | Artwork Scholarship: International Perspectives in

Education

<https://www.intellectbooks.com/artwork-scholarship-international-perspectives-in-education>

Series Editors: Anita Sinner and Rita Irwin. The aim of Artwork

Scholarship is to invite debate on, and provide an essential series

resource for transnational scholars engaged in analyses of the emergent

paradigm of creative research involving the visual, literary and

performative arts that advances pedagogical and experimental

perspectives, reflective and evaluative assessments ...

www.intellectbooks.com

Book Editors

Kim Munrois a documentary maker and lecturer at RMIT University. She has

published broadly in books and journals on the intersections between

documentary theory and practice.Catherine Gough-Bradyis an award-winning

documentary producer and director who has published widely on the

emergent use of video as a method of academic discourse.Christine

Rogersis a filmmaker and scholar and her non-fiction writing has been

published in journals, newspapers and anthologies. She co-edited the

bookMediations: Working Papers on Media and Practice, RMIT University,

with Professor Lisa French and Dr. Jenny Weight. Liz Burkeis a

documentary producer, whose work has been distributed through broadcast

television and film festivals. Her area of academic research is the

intersection between interactive documentary and the essay film. She

lectures at Swinburne University of Technology.Liz Baulchis a film

producer whose narrative and experimental films have screened widely on

the international film festival circuit. Her current creative practice

and area of research is the recontextualisation of the Australian family

in amateur home movies. She lectures at Deakin University.

mediated images, it was, to a large extent, the /genericity /of films
like these which so concerned Jameson and led him to judge them as
lacking in historically critical depth. This perspective has to some
extent persisted in studies of period and historical dramas, where
engagements with the past in popular genres like horror, comedy and
science fiction are considered less ‘serious’ or historically
significant. Meanwhile, Jameson’s reading of postmodern nostalgia as
inherently regressive, despite being subsequently questioned (see, for
instance, Hutcheon 2000; Dika 2003), has encouraged some studies to look
sceptically on the presence of nostalgia, reading it as a more or less
straightforward indicator of longing for a simplified, comforting past
rather than as a complex phenomenon.

Yet, links between genre and nostalgia have only deepened in the
increasingly media-saturated 21^st century. More genre films and
programmes have opted for past settings, and more period dramas, in
their style of historical adaptation, have rejected traditional notions
of ‘authenticity’ in favour of self-reflexive genericity. As such, this
one-day symposium, which we hope will lead to the development of an
active research network, seeks to explore connections between film and
television genres and nostalgia, memory and other manifestations of the
past. The aim is to facilitate dialogue between these two rich and
increasingly interconnected areas of study, and to connect scholars at
all levels working in these areas.

Possible areas that may be explored include, but are not limited to:

* Retro style in film and television genres such as comedy, horror,
science fiction, the Western, noir, etc., and specific case studies
of genre texts engaging with these styles

* Reappropriations of past genre tropes in period dramas or other
generic forms

* Other forms of media, such as books, music videos and video games
(e.g. /L.A. Noire/, 2011), which engage nostalgically with film and
television genres

* Foregrounding ignored or marginalised histories (e.g. via new
representations of gender/race/class/sexuality) in period genres
(e.g. literary adaptations, Westerns)

* Revisiting genre texts on new platforms (e.g. streaming services),

and the role of nostalgia in ways of watching (e.g. binge watching,
or interactive texts like /Black Mirror: Bandersnatch/, 2018)

* Nostalgias for genre texts and the nostalgic practices of fans,
audiences and/or fan-creators

* Recycle, remake, reboot: nostalgia’s role in genre seriality and
multiplicities

* The role of nostalgia in the reappraisal, re-release and/or
canonisation of genre texts

* Key filmmakers, showrunners, or other creatives engaging with genre
and nostalgia/new appropriations of the past (e.g. Greta Gerwig,
Ryan Murphy, Spike Lee, Armando Iannucci)

* Genre stardom and nostalgia

* The role of nostalgia in genre development, stages, eras and/or cycles

* Genre narratives about nostalgia/memory (e.g. /Da 5 Bloods/, 2020;
/Ready Player One/, 2018; /13 Going on 30/, 2004, /Westworld/, 2016-)

* Nostalgia in hybrid genres (e.g. /Ashes to Ashes/, 2009-2010; /Back
to the Future/, 1985; /Ripper Street/ 2012-2016)

* Rewriting or rethinking historical narratives via genre (e.g. /Once
Upon A Time…in Hollywood/, 2019; /Jojo Rabbit/, 2019; /Chernobyl/,

2019)

* The past in the introduction of new generic styles and forms (e.g.
steampunk, neo-noir)

* Retro period ambiguity (e.g. /It Follows/, 2014; /The Guest/, 2014;
/Sex Education/, 2019-)

We welcome abstracts for standard 15-20 minute conference papers, as 

well as for alternative forms of presentation (e.g. panel discussions,
video essays, posters, extended abstracts, etc.).

Please send abstracts of c.200-250 words, along with a short biography
and an indication of the presentation format, to the organisers: Dr
Caitlin Shaw (c.shaw3@herts.ac.uk <mailto:c.shaw3@herts.ac.uk>) and Dr
Laura Mee (l.mee2@herts.ac.uk <mailto:l.mee2@herts.ac.uk>) by October
2nd 2020. We anticipate that this will be a free event.

dialogue with ongoing scholarly discussions of exploitation film and
pornography so that scholarly communities can better attend to Findlay’s
work and its rich, complex sexual and textual politics and stylistic
skill and innovation. Essays may focus on individual films or on themes
and topics that pervade her work.

Possible areas of inquiry could include: Findlay’s striking
sexploitation collaborations with her then-partner Michael Findlay; her
turn to hardcore and the evolution of her style across the 1970s; the
role of horror in her oeuvre; the craftsmanship of her non-directorial
work; sexual and gender politics; marketing, distribution, and reception
of her work across time; or other creative and productive angles.

Essays included in the refereed anthology will be of approximately 5,000
to 8,000 words, referenced in Chicago endnote style. We especially
welcome work from BIPOC, female, queer, trans, and other traditionally
underrepresented groups and voices.

The Films of Roberta Findlay will be one of the scholarly editions to be
published by the University of Edinburgh Press in a series of
anthologies examining overlooked American film directors. Series editors
are Robert Singer, Ph.D., Frances Smith, Ph.D. and Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D.

Please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract and email them directly
to the anthology’s editors by August 31, 2020.


Peter Alilunas, Associate Professor, Cinema Studies Department,
University of Oregon: pka@uoregon.edu <mailto:pka@uoregon.edu>
Whitney Strub, Associate Professor, History Department, Rutgers
University-Newark: wstrub@gmail.com <mailto:wstrub@gmail.com>