Call for papers

Open until November 26, 2023.

Download call for papers in pdf here.

[For Working Groups please check the information bellow on this page.]

Generic proposal

13th AIM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 

May 28-31, 2024

Escola Superior Artística do Porto

CALL FOR PAPERS

The deadline for submission of proposals: November 26, 2023

- Presentitions

We invite submissions for individual presentations and pre-constituted panels in Portuguese, Galician, Spanish or English, not exceeding 1500 characters (including spaces), in the areas of film, television, video, and digital media studies. The list is indicative and may include other areas. In order to participate in the conference, you can submit your proposal as an AIM member (free registration) or as a non-member (60€ registration fee, paid after acceptance).

Each person may submit one paper proposal, either as an individual presenter or as part of a pre-constituted panel. Some panels may have respondents. Please note that, before submission, AIM members must renew their membership for 2023 until November 20, 2023 (30€/normal; 20€ / undergraduate and masters students).

- Films

The 13th AIM International Congress will also have several special sessions dedicated to the presentation of films by our members that are also directors, screenwriters or part of the technical team. We have now opened a call for films so that any AIM member can submit, in addition to a communication proposal, a film proposal to be screened and commented on during our Congress. You can submit feature films, short films of fiction or non-fiction, video-essays, as long as in a digital format.

To make this submission, you will need to access your member’s area and fill in the appropriate form with the title of the film, synopsis, biography of the person making the submission, role (director, screenwriter, member of the technical team, etc.) and a link to watch the film on a digital platform (like Vimeo or YouTube). Film proposals will be evaluated by a selection committee made up of three members of the AIM’s Board of Directors.

- New publication

In 2024, the papers presented at the AIM International Congress will be accepted as articles for submission to peer review and publication in a book by the prestigious publisher Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. This initiative, which aims to give more relevance and prominence to the high-quality works presented at the Congress, is expected to occur on a regular basis. In due course, all guidelines, deadlines and other rules related to the submission of articles will be presented.

- The Congress

Founded in 2010, AIM – Portuguese Association of Researchers of the Moving Image aims to gather scholars and researchers whose common subjects and research interests are related to the moving image. With this in mind, eleven annual meetings have been organized: at the University of Algarve, Faro (2011), at the Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon (2012), at the University of Coimbra (2013), at the University of Beira Interior, Covilhã (2014), at ISCTE-IUL, University Institute of Lisbon (2015), at the Catholic University of Portugal, Porto (2016), at the University of Minho, Braga (2017), at the University of Aveiro (2018), at the University of Santiago de Compostela (2019), an online edition (2021), an hybrid edition at the University of Évora (2022) and a last one, also hybrid, at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (2023).

Workgorups proposal

• Visual Digital Culture

  This workgroup will address the different iterations of visual culture in digital contexts and the miscegenation of different visual regimes and practices of the gaze. We are interested as much in the ruptures as we are in the continuities brought upon by the transformations in the production, circulation, and appropriation of visual culture, such as those introduced by the Web 2.0, digital cinema, and the small screen media that connect the private and public spheres on a daily basis. We privilege historiographical, cultural, and aesthetic researches of the relations between the different visual regimes such as the cinematic, the televisual, or the artistic. We pay special attention to the theories of intermediality as a way to cross fertilize knowledge about "new" and "old" media and we summon the contributions of film studies, media theory, art history and art theory, to research digital visual culture.
  

  
  

  Suggested topics:

  - media archeology;

  - history of film and television;

  - technologies cultural forms of internet 2.0;

  - internet 2.0 and digital production, exhibition and distribution film experience relocated filmic and audiovisual dispositif theories;

  - contemporary audiovisual culture ideologies;

  - critiques of participatory culture;

  - animation, documentary, live cinema, virtual reality, transmedia, music video, video-essay.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact , ,
  

• Ecocinemas

  The Ecocinemas Working Group maps the relationship between cinema and what we call the natural world, recognizing the human as a mediating element of this articulation, while responding and reacting to the tendency towards anthropocentrism that is found in both film production, and in the plurality of critical approaches canonized in the context of film studies. It promotes a broad discussion of this problem without governance, a priori, by focus on specific time periods, geographical provenances or genres. It explores the heterogeneity and rich configurations that the natural has obtained throughout the history of cinema, in fiction, documentary, and hybrid forms; in works that fit explicitly into the field of ecocriticism, as well as works that contain an ecological subtext that connotes an ecocinematic perspective.

  On the one hand, the Group explores the different ways in which cinema presents animals, plants, fungi, the elements, etc. On the other hand, it looks at the means by which cinema can question and transform these inhabitants and non-human elements of the planet, as well as the dynamics of power and influence that humans maintain with them. The breadth of the debate involves crossovers between more strictly philosophical or aesthetic issues and topics more directly associated with environmentalism and political activism.

  With a foundation in the field of film studies, activities developed in this group benefit from methods and epistemologies from other disciplinary areas, such as ecocriticism, philosophy, ecofeminism, queer studies, landscape and soundscape ecology, biology, botany, and geology, among others.

  
  

  Papers may explore the following topics, among other:

  - Documentary and nature film

  - Poetics of contemplation

  - The temporalities of film and the natural world

  - Extinction and preservation

  - Nature and film genres (cli-fi, eco-horror, disaster film, slow cinema, etc.)

  - Anthropocentrism and non-human and more-than-human point of views

  - Metamorphoses of the natural

  - Nature and soundscapes

  - Cinema and environmental politics

  - Activist moving-image practices

  - Experimental cinema and video-art

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, please contact: jlbertolo@gmail; mailecolbert@gmail.com; mouzinho.susana@gmail.com
  

• Cinemas in Portuguese

  Among the objects of study of the Working Group Cinemas in Portuguese, and as potential guiding themes for this internal Call for papers, are issues related to the systems of co-production, distribution circuits, exhibition and circulation in the cinematographies of the Portuguese, Brazilian and Portuguese-speaking African countries. Special attention will be given to data collection work and to cultural and aesthetic investigations investigations into new processes of production and authorship that build links and inform about local, peripheral and/or supranational identity. All uses of audiovisual/cinema can be used in all different regimes of existence, expressiveness and identity.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, please contact: Leandro Mendonça: ljrmendonca@gmail.com; Jorge Cruz: jlzcruz@gmail.com; laispllara@gmail.com
  

• Landscape and Cinema

  This year, the papers presented by the Landscape and Cinema Workgroup will focus on “Landscape and Frontiers”, to examine how the moving image approaches and depicts territorial and cultural frontiers, as well as identity and emotional boundaries, all of these considered in relation to the representation of worlds, spaces, landscapes.

  
  

  Proposed topics:

  - Borderlands, national and state borders

  - Centres and peripheries, margins, tribal areas;

  - Conflict territories and territorial disputes;

  - Border experiences from geographical, historical and anthropological perspectives;

  - Colonial and post-colonial borders;

  - “Civilization” vs. wilderness in the 21st century;

  - Emotional cartographies and personal journeys in the experience of the border;

  - Migration: belonging, boundaries and borders.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact: Filipa Rosário: filiparosario@gmail.com / Fran Rebelatto: francieli.rebelatto@gmail.com / André Francisco: andrefafrancisco@gmail.com
  

  
  
• Economics and Management in Moving Image

  We invite the entire scientific community to submit their abstracts to our most recent work group Economy and Management in the Moving Image. We suggest topics that are linked to management, financing, bureaucratic, legal and technical processes applied to the production, promotion and distribution of moving image works.
  

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact: cff.moreira7@gmail.com; insclh@gmail.com; angelicacoutinhorj@gmail.com
  

• Filmmakers on Film

  The main goal of the GT "Filmmakers on Film" is to bring film theory closer to the reflection of the filmmakers themselves in their contribution to approaching and understanding both their own work and cinema. We intend to encourage a film theory that uses direct sources as its fundamental references, namely films and all oral and written manifestations of filmmakers. In turn, we propose that the concept of filmmaker encompasses not only the director, but all those who contribute to cinematographic creation, such as actors, screenwriters, editors, directors of photography, etc. The objective of studying cinema from the filmmakers' point of view and putting film theory in dialogue with the thoughts and poetics of each filmmaker is seen as an alternative to the support that film theory has sought from other disciplines such as History, Sociology, Psychoanalysis or, more recently, Cognitive Theory. We intend to stimulate and test the novelty and originality that the theoretical study of cinema can receive from filmmakers. Likewise, we intend to continue existing processes of reflection on the thinking and poetics of filmmakers. Inspired by the book “Theories of Filmmakers” (2002), by Jacques Aumont, the approach that this GT has been developing has expanded the discussion on practically all aspects related to cinema, including the most fundamental questions of filmic work, such as the creative process or the expansion of the notion of “filmography” to include unfinished films.

  
  

  Suggested topics:

  - the thought and poetics of the various filmmakers: directors, producers, actors, editors, directors of photography, etc., through their writings, such as manifestos, letters, books, texts, interviews, or other verbal and/or written manifestations

  - the theoretical dimension of film criticism (namely that produced by critics who are also filmmakers)

  - revisit film theory discussing concepts and themes inspired by the perspective of filmmakers

  - how filmmakers influence each other

  - reports by filmmakers about unfinished or unmade films (to better understand the path of these filmmakers and fit these potential works in their filmography)

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.
  

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact Manuela Penafria: penafria@ubi.pt
  

• Audiovisual Narratives

  Narrative always had, since the beginning of time, great importance for the existence of human beings and the life of societies. In its most basic meaning, narrative presupposes the evolution from one state (a beginning) to another (an end), a transition which occurs in time and is acted by someone (author, narrator, character) or something (camera, the film itself) (Jost and Gaudreault, 1990). In the field of narratology (e.g. Gérard Genette), the act of narrating / enunciating is known as “storytelling”, and the content of the narrative / enunciation is the “story” [told]. AIM’s workgroup Audiovisual Narratives takes up the study of narrative content and form in all kinds of products and by all audio-visual processes, composed of images as well as sounds (together or separately), disseminated throughout all means, and for all types of audience. The sub-fields of literature, publicity, psychology, journalistic media, and the relationship with other art forms are considered relevant for this purpose, as long as presentations stick to narratologically-based form and content, as well as the narrative process and its outcome. We are looking for innovative proposals, original theories, creative film analysis and, of course, subject matter for long-lasting quality reflexion.

  
  

  Examples of specific topics: 

  - The importance of narrative;

  - Story and plot;

  - Matters pertaining to narration (e.g. voice over);

  - The Hero’s Journey;

  - The classical narrative paradigm;

  - Non-linear narrative structures;

  - Recurrences, embeddings, metalepsis, and other narrative patterns;

  - Formal experimentation;

  - Narratives about narrative/metafiction/metanarrative;

  - Narrative (im)plausibilities;

  - Narrative contexts;

  - Narrative forms its uses: society, culture, science, religion, art, etc.;

  - Any particular aspect of storytelling (e.g. characters, plot resolution, twist, foreshadowing, lack of dialogues, narrative worlds, etc.)

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.
  

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  For more information regarding this internal call, contact: mariaguilherminacastro@gmail.com, crdm@esmad.ipp.pt, jorgepalinhos@gmail.com

• Cinema and the Other Arts

  This working group aims to bring together investigations that articulate artistic manifestations in the context of cinema's relations with other arts. It is about accommodating studies that critically observe the bonds and thresholds between the fixed image, the moving image and experimental artistic processes. Cinema, audiovisual, photography and their hybrid forms are presented as strategic territories for us to think not only about the status of the image in contemporaneity, but also its ethical, aesthetic, political and affective uses.

  - The relationships between still image, moving image and experimental artistic processes;

  - Audiovisual and its hybrid forms;

  - Ethics, aesthetics, politics and affects in moving images;

  - Tensions around the relationship between cinema and other arts;

  - The cinema device, its meanings, tensions and reformulations from its technological, aesthetic, architectural, political and economic dynamics;

  - Creative process inherent in avant-garde, engaged or experimental cinema, video art, expanded cinema, activism, artist cinema and installation;

  - What can an image and its movements make see, do?

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact: Anabela Dinis Branco de Oliveira: <literaturaecinema@gmail.com> / Felipe Muanis: <munis@mac.com> / Fernanda Bastos: <fernandabastos1@gmail.com>
  

• Cinema and Education

  Film is an aesthetic object with its own specificities, whose fruition and reading requires a minimum of information on different aspects of its language, in order to understand more completely its expression and its receptive impact. Every film experience entails the potential of its usage and vital application, either from a formal as from a non-formal point-of-view. Therefore, film represents a relevant formative and educational resource, both potentially as accomplished. Its increasing usage as a didactic content or methodology comes from its inventive language, and from a narrative feature that fosters approaches to an unlimited number of themes and contents, referencing existent or simulated realities. Within educational contexts, film encourages experiences that motivate and involve students more intensely in their learning process, strengthening the edu-comunicational ecosystems in their multiple forms. In order to overcome the alienation of schools and society towards film, going from its instrumentalization towards an understanding of its social, cultural and educational specificity and importance, we intend to explore the theoretical and empirical potential of cinema, as a source for knowledge, critical thinking, sensitivity, and creativity.

  
  

  Therefore, this call for papers addresses theoretical, methodological or empirical perspectives that focus on the possible relations between film and education.

  Suggested topics:

  
  

  • Teaching film (pedagogical approaches and projects that explore the artistic features of film);
  • Teaching with film (didactic proposals for the usage of film within different curricular fields and teaching levels);
  • Teaching through film (film artistic experiences produced within educational contexts).

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact: elsa.mendes@pnc.gov.pt, jmoreira@uab.pt or sdtrindade@letras.up.pt
  

• Post colonial and outer cinemas

  We are interested in the discussion of emerging cinemas in postcolonial contexts, many of which are the margins of national cinematography, usually in urban peripheries. By deepening the debate about the presence of "peripheries and margins" in postcolonial and outer cinemas around the world. We are interested in the critical revision of hegemonic and eurocentric forms and representations, as well as the social, cultural, and artistic movements that have promoted the emergence of marginal artists in the film and art market, imposing images, and other representations, as well as the production of artists from the diaspora, and the collective production of minority political groups.

  We want to discuss who are the artists and peripheral groups that are emerging in contemporary cinema and the visual arts, imposing a new agenda to produce images in general, able to discuss the forms of invisibility and forgetfulness with respect to the ancient and recent modes of exclusion and re-colonisation.

  
  

  Suggested topics:

  - Cinemas produced in countries that suffered a colonization process, during the colonial period or after independence cycles;

  - Cinemas produced in the peripheries;

  - Post-colonial concept adopted in contexts of culture, cinema and thought;

  - Latin American decolonial thought;

  - Feminist cinemas;

  - Indigenous cinemas;

  - Bodies and sexualities (non-binary, trans, “bichas”, Queer, etc.) socially marked by exclusion and obliteration, in cinema and visual arts.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, please contact : paulomfcunha@gmail.com
  

• Cinema and Materiality

  The coordination of the WG Cinema and Materialities recommends that proposals focus on the general topic "Cinema and Materialities: Methodological Approaches", although papers outside this thematic scope may be accepted.

  "Cinema and Materialities: Methodological Approaches" identifies a field of processes, analyses, interrogations around methodologies to investigate the materialities of cinema.

  
  

  Suggested topics:

  - cinema as material production;

  - creative processes and stages of development of audiovisual works;

  - film analysis with a focus on the materials worked by cinema;

  - relationships between screenwriting, original or adapted, and film;

  - filmic construction from elements of mise-en-scène (production design, costumes, props, make-up, lighting, and performance), photography, sound, and editing;

  - censorship and self-censorship in the creative process;

  - genetic criticism and forms of creation in traditional arts and audiovisual works;

  - diversity of creative processes and different film forms such as the video essay;

  - links between technology and film creation;

  - new materialities of digital art;

  - archaeology of moving image devices;

  - preservation and restoration, curation and exhibition of the materiality of artistic media;

  - theories of materiality and phenomenology.

  
  

  Communication proposals should be submitted using the appropriate form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  If you have any questions about this internal AIM call, please contact: Caterina Cucinotta - caterinacucinotta@fcsh.unl.pt; Sérgio Dias Branco: sdiasbranco@fl.uc.pt / Alfonso Palazón alfonsopalazon@gmail.com .
  

• Cinema, Sound, Music and Language

  Beyond Michel Chion - Researching sound today

  
  

  For several decades, Michel Chion has been a pivotal reference in academic sound research. However, today, new perspectives are being developed by new researchers. Transdisciplinarity and the possibilities brought forward by artistic practice-based research are also key elements for those who study sound in academia. What are the main opportunities and challenges that sound scholars face today? What references exist beyond Michel Chion? For its 2022/2023 call, our workgroup invites interested parties to help us draw a map of contemporary academic sound research today and contribute to this debate.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.
  

  
  

  Contact/Email: Carlos Ruiz Carmona: ccarmona@ucp.pt; Érica Rodrigues: erica.rodrigues@ulusofona.pt
  

• Silent Cinema and Early Cinema

  The Silent Cinema and Early Cinema WG is calling for original proposals on silent and early cinema (1895-1930). In this first open call, we are particularly interested in:

  - Empirical contributions, such as case studies on a particular archive, film, collection, or historical figure;

  - Papers on peripheral silent film historiographies that have been understudied or under-reported, with an emphasis on the Iberian (Portugal, Spain) and South American (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, etc.) contexts;

  - Theoretical and methodological reflections on silent film research and its implications for the history of national cinemas;

  - Restoration and reuse of silent or early footage.

  
  

  Papers can be submitted in Portuguese, Spanish or English.

  
  

  Proposals must be submitted through the proper form.

  
  

  All proposals will be subjected to blind peer-review by the scientific committee of the 13th AIM International Conference.

  
  

  Should any doubt arise about this internal call, contact: Sofia Sampaio: sof.sampaio@gmail.com