Apologies for cross posting
>
> Disunited Nations: Cinema beyond the nation-state
>
> Conference: April 27-28 2007, University of Birmingham, UK
> Abstracts (no more than 300 words) should be emailed, by 31st October
> 2006, to the co-organisers: Dr Kate Ince ([log in to unmask]) and Dr
> Michele Aaron ([log in to unmask])
>
> 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 in film studies
> · Film and the tensions or 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 also encourage relevant submissions on cinemas
> that have
> received little critical attention.
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