Representing and Identifying Film Style (1/2/09)
The 17th annual Midwest Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM)
will be held March 20-21, 2009 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb,
Illinois.

Considerations of film style are multifaceted. There are films that
expertly make their cinematic representation clear, such as Terrence
Malick's The New World (2005), while others aim for a more invisible and
neutral, though some might derisively say neutered, representational style.
 Yet, as Timothy Corrigan notes, "Even when they go unnoticed, stylistic
strategies and conventions […] are sometimes the most important and
distinguishing features in a work of literature or film" (85). This call
for papers asks for essays that consider the representation of style, and
desires essays that question and interrogate classical film notions of
invisible as well as visible film style.

For example, do Judd Apatow's brand of films gain any more legitimacy for
film style after indie director David Gorden Green comes in and directs
Pineapple Express (2008)? How does a stylist like Green alter and
transform the invisible film aesthetic that had been formerly established
by Apatow? Similarly, how does Green's aesthetic become co-opted and
subsumed by the Apatow brand?

These questions also shift to matters of film style as they relate to
directors adopting methods that have been customarily used by foreign or
art cinema. In Darren Aronofsky's upcoming The Wrestler (2008), to make
one example, Aronofsky has drawn attention from critics such as Nick
Schager for "exhibit[ing] an economic precision typified by Dardennes-ish
tracking shots from behind." How do these co-opted methods of style inform
a given film and its modes of production? How do its liberal uses of
homage to other filmmakers shape our perception of the cinema in general?
How are these films gaining import through their tracing, appropriating, or
expanding of the historicity behind cinema? How do the modes of production
prevalent in film today complicate notions of purity or cinema verite?

These questions of film style range from the arthouse to the multiplex,
from the James Bond series to the Bourne series aesthetic. As such, all
topics or considerations about film and film studies are welcomed, from
aesthetic, to reception theory, to issues of affect, etc.

Deadline for submission: January 2, 2009.
Please include a cover page with your name, affiliation, mailing address,
and e-mail address.
Accepted contributions will be notified via e-mail by January 19, 2009.
Please submit your 250 word (one page) abstract as an attachment to
mcllm2009_at_gmail.com

-- 
Ogunleye, Yemisi (Miss)
www.iq4news.com

Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/

Media & Communications Dept.,
Birmingham City University,
City North Campus,
Birmingham
B42 2SU