Disunited Nations: Cinema Beyond the Nation-State
27-28 April 2007 Midlands Arts Centre, Edgbaston, Birmingham
Over the last few years a number of terms have been employed to conceptualise cinema beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, such as transnational cinema, accented cinema and transvergent cinema. Such terms respond both to the emergence within international cinema of a considerable body of work in which questions of migration and passage are uppermost, and to the increasing internationalisation of film production itself, as co-financing across national borders becomes the norm, and film producers are ever more reliant on global companies and media conglomerates to get films funded. As these trends have developed, the entrenched national identities of cinematic tradition have begun to dissolve, giving way to alternative criteria for discerning and inscribing identity as well as more uncertain geographies. Films have often focused on situations of conflict and the conflicting cultural identities produced by immigration or by characters in transit or on disputed and border territories. Where such conflict previously served to enhance discussion of the national, ethnic, regional, religious, generational and even gender differences have now overtaken issues of national identity as the dominant tensions that film narratives are called upon to dramatise or work through even, or especially, as they comment on the nation-state.
The 'Disunited Nations' symposium invites papers from a range of subjects and disciplines that address this context. Possible related topics include:
· the shift away from traditional frameworks of national identity in cinema and film studies
· film and tensions and differences both within and between nation states
· postcolonial and/or globalised cinema
· film and foreign policy and/or contemporary international politics
We are especially interested in work on Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, but encourage relevant submissions on cinemas that have received little critical attention.
Abstracts (no more than 300 words) should be emailed by 31 October 2006, to the co-organisers: Dr Kate Ince ([log in to unmask]) and Dr Michele Aaron ([log in to unmask])
Kate Ince
Director of Graduate Studies
Centre for European Languages and Cultures
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT
Tel: +44 121 414 5972
Fax: +44 121 414 3834
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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