The conference explores the ways in which animated form mobilises or challenges ideas of the essay film. We, therefore, encourage submissions that engage with how animation represents complex and intersecting social issues and power relations. Major axes of social division in a given society at a given time operate not “as discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each other and work together” (Collings and Bilge, 2016, p. 4). It is very challenging to convincingly visualise and configure these phenomena and how they intersect. But animation seems perfectly placed to rise to this challenge, due to its hybrid, metamorphic and pervasive tendencies.

Focussing on the relationship between the essay film form and animation, the conference explores animation as a set of communicative techniques which give voice to resistance to social discrimination and inequality, effectively addressing a range of human issues in all their complexity. Looking at the intersectionality of race, class, gender and ethnicity, as part of our engagement in the understanding of diversity in contemporary societies and historically, we aim to highlight the importance of the animated essay form to communicate these messages, and to ask questions. 

Conference organisers: Professor Paul Ward, Dr Romana Turina and Dr Bartek Dziadosz