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Cinemascope - Independent Film Journal www.cinemascope.it Issue 6 September - December 2006 Call for Papers Powerful Reflections Moving Analysis and Exercise of Power edited by Francesca Liguoro Please, send your proposal to [log in to unmask] Power, in its relations and effects, is so often taken either directly or indirectly as the central dynamic for understanding. Cinema, it seems, offers an opportunity to get beyond and/or qualify this perspective, helpful and even fruitful as it is and has been, but also limiting and perhaps not well suited to appreciating film in its specificity nor reality in its diversity. The theme is much more precise than exploration of other perspectives. Cinemascope invites thoughtful reflections --- from professional scholars and others who have the courage to affront this challenge --- on ways of understanding that will turn this power-based analysis inside out. Film and its analysis opens up many spaces in the field or webs of power so that other realities, perspectives and understandings can emerge. Cinemascope is excited about devoting an issue of their online journal to ways that late 20th cc analysis and its achievements can provide a basis for advances in film studies today, and indeed for the particular contributions of film and its theory to human understanding for these times. The following observation may help to clarify the theme and orient reflection, beginning with a sketch of the place of power in recent action and analysis, but also a particular challenge to that analytic key issuing from what is arguably the closest elaborated analysis of power The logics of power constitute superior keys of reading in the interpretation in full range of interrelations in dynamics. Obviously, power is displayed in many forms. There are forms based on force, on oppression, on physical violence or psychological imposition. There are forms grounded in charisma, on self-affirmation and authority, on the experience of an individual or group. There are forms of power based on admiration, reverence, and on the faith and trust placed in someone. By means of such forms, power affects and even regulates all relations in which human beings live: familial, social, interpersonal, professional, political, economic. In this way, power is directly implicated in the cultural, social and political structures. As a result, to know where power is, and how to regulate it is necessary for social and biological survival, but also any kind of optimization. This is explored theoretically. For instance, a bio-anthropological interpretation of human action serves to focus attention once again on the concept of power as a determinant in various current manifestations. In this way, then, the principle of the survival and indeed domination of the fittest and strongest in nature is linked to modern cultural norms (among others), lending primordial and biological basis to human behaviours. Before this insistence on the centrality of power in action and thought, the Marxist theorist John Holloway (in his book Change the World Without Taking Power) has delivered a challenge: conceptualize the above-mentioned relations and structures without the support of a foundational investigative and interpretative category like that of power; abandon the concept of power as a point of reference in the interpretation of the real and in the struture of thought itself. Cinemascope invites analyses of this drama of power and its displacement as found in cinema and its theory. In light of the difficulaty of appreciating the full impact of Hollowayıs challenge, but also the necessity to ground and locate that confrontation within the operations of power which remain very real and energetic, Cinemascope proposes three approaches and programs: 1. Unmask and bring to light dynamics of power --- either of an oppressive or charismatic nature --- present in films which do not have power (personal, political, sexual, social, economic, etc.) as explicit themes and in which this political-ideological background is not evident, but rather where the dynamics of power are unexpectedly and unforseeably hidden. 2. Analyze the stylistic modalities of films with an explicit political ideological theme where by the use of such modality, there is the attempt by means of film language to deconstruct, without or with success, the dynamics of power. 3. Identify and clarify ways that recent films (or a film) either confirm or disprove suggestion such as Hollowayıs that power and its dynamics are giving way to and clearing a way for other basis of analysis and action Being well-aware that power excercises its influence even more by the logic of forms than the logic of contents, Cinemscope welcomes studies that consider the operation of power by means of the cinematographic language (use of sound, editing and framing, the use of light, etc.). In addition to these, Cinemascope welcomes parallel studies which analyze cinematic style from philoosophical, social, historical and political points of view focusing attention on cinematographic representation.... At the same time, on this occasion Cinemascope cannot accept proposals concerning the cinema industry or the culture industry in general in so far as they are not inherently part of the focus on representation. The objective of Cinemascope is to discover the extent to which cinematic representation is part of the construction of the category of power as a dominant key in interpretation of reality, and how much, to the contrary, that it is able to be part of the process of deconstruction of that category. DEADLINES Proposals: April 30, 2006 Notice of Acceptance of Proposals by Cinemascope: May 14, 2006 Reception of Articles: July 16, 2006 Length of Articles: max 5000 words Issue Editor: Francesca Liguoro Editorial Board: Giustina DıOriano, Frank Coffey Language: English * * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon. After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. **