Global Circulations of Film Theory

Global Circulations of Film Theory Conference

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:02:34 +0000

The Global Circulations of Film Theory Conference took place 30-31 August 2024 at King’s College London.

The event can be viewed at the following links:

Day 1

Day 2

The programme, annotated with YouTube time codes for the different sessions, is available here.

The conference abstracts are available here.

Registration is now closed for the Global Circulations of Film Theory conference

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:58:41 +0000

30-31 August 2024

King’s College London

Programme

Joining instructions will be sent out to all registered delegates prior to the event.

Third BFI Workshops

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 24 May 2024 12:16:19 +0000

The third series of BFI workshops ‘Latin American Cinema: Between Theory and Practice’ took place at BFI Southbank on 19 and 26 June and 3 July 2024.

Please find a summary and reading suggestions for each session below:

Session 1: Depth Of Field, Class Conflict and the Latin American Cinema of Domestic Service

Session 2: A screening of the film, Passages: Travelling In and Out of Film Through Brazilian Geography (UK, 2019), directed by Lúcia Nagib and Samuel Paiva, preceded by an introduction and followed by a Q&A with Lúcia Nagib.

Session 3: Theorising Mexican Cinema Through Archive-Films

Third Network Symposium

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 16:34:56 +0000

The third of our network symposia took place online on Friday 8 March. We are pleased to share the recording of the event below.

The topic of this symposium was the ‘circulations’ of film theory. Like the themes of the first and second network symposia, on the ‘sites’ and ‘practices’ of film theory, the ‘circulations’ of film theory opens out to myriad ways in which discourses about film are set in motion and continue to circulate. Circulations of people, films, texts, and technologies facilitate such movement in the history and geography of ideas, intersecting in complex ways with histories of film distribution and exhibition, as well as with the migration and exile of people, to name but some of the diverse ways in which we might think about means and modes of circulation. Three short texts were circulated in advance:

Edward Said, ‘Traveling Theory,’ in The World, the Text, the Critic (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 226-247

James Clifford, ‘Notes on Travel and Theory,’ https://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/inscriptions/volume-5/james-clifford/

Victor Fan, ‘Introduction’ to Cinema Approaching Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), pp. 1-15

Programme:

2-2.30pm: Welcome

Session 1: 2.30-3.50pm:

Chair: Sarah Cooper

Presentations followed by discussion:

Emma Widdis (Trinity College, Cambridge):‘Theorising spectatorship in the early Soviet Union’

Network guest Dina Iordanova (Emeritus Professor, St Andrews): ‘‘Sole Traders’ and Circulation’

Masha Salazkina (Concordia): ‘Romancing Yesenia: Transnational Circulations of Theory and Melodrama’

Session 2: 4-5.30pm:

Chair: Aboubakar Sanogo

Presentations followed by discussion:

Victor Fan (King’s College London): ‘Circulations of Asian and European Film Theory in Cinema Approaching Reality’

Network guest Yizhou Tian (Nankai University and UKCHA Fellow): ‘The Translation and Circulation of Film Theory in 1930s China’

Erica Carter (King’s College London): ‘Blocked Circulations, Archival Interventions’

Recordings

Part I

Part II

Second BFI Workshops

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:22:59 +0000

The second series of BFI workshops ‘Decolonising Film Theory Through Asian Cinema’ was held at BFI Southbank on 6, 13, and 20 February 2024.

Victor Fan, KCL focused on methods originating from Asia; Manishita Dass, Royal Holloway addressed the work of radical Indian filmmaker, Ritwik Ghatak; and Chris Berry, KCL + guest panellists explored questions of truth and public revelation in Chinese documentary.

Please find a summary and reading suggestions for each session below:

Session 1: Decolonisation and Asia as Problematics

Session 2: Film Practice / Film Theory: The Work of Ritwik Ghatak

Session 3: Thinking About Truth and Ethics through Chinese Documentary

Call for Papers: Global Circulations of Film Theory Conference

Andrew Heskins — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 12:28:25 +0000

A hybrid event to be hosted by King’s College London, 30-31^st August 2024

Steering committee: Sarah Cooper, Aboubakar Sanogo, Vinzenz Hediger, Jason McGrath, Masha Salazkina, and David Wood

Deadline for submitting proposals: 29 January 2024

This conference aims to revisit the question of what film theory is by asking where it takes place, how we recognize it, and where we find it across international locales. Starting from the premise that film theory is global, multiple, and coeval rather than something that emanates from the West and then spreads, the conference will focus on bringing to light marginalized or hitherto unknown histories of film theorizing, as well as new engagements with entrenched theoretical debates from different geopolitical perspectives.

The two-day event will draw together different scholarly perspectives from around the world to develop transnational conceptualizations of film theory that can contribute to debates about decolonizing the field.

‘Global Circulations of Film Theory’ seeks to stimulate fresh theoretical discussion, as well as explore collaborative methodologies from different historical perspectives across geographical boundaries.

We invite papers on film theory and theorizing from any area of the globe at any historical moment. Topics might include but are not limited to:

• Circulations of film theory in the pre- and post-1945 age of decolonization;

• Film theorizing and the Global South;

• Places and practices through which film theory circulates across the globe:

— Sites where there is intensive exchange around theory, for example, film schools, festivals, cinemas/cinematheques, conferences, congresses, archives, universities;

— Practices through which film theory circulates, for example, filmmaking, film criticism, translation, publishing, curation, programming;

— Circulations of theory via people, films, texts, technologies, for example, distribution, exhibition, migration, and exile;

• Relations between film theory and practice or praxis;

• Decolonial/anti-colonial/post-colonial approaches to film theory;

• Teaching film theory in the context of decolonizing university curricula;

• The adequacy of ‘film theory’ as a term in a global context.

Please submit proposals of up to 250 words and a brief bio-bibliography of up to 100 words to Sarah Cooper sarah.cooper@kcl.ac.uk by 29 January 2024.

There is the option of virtual or in-person participation in London: please indicate the intended format of your participation (online or in-person) when you submit your proposal.

A limited number of bursaries will be available to contribute to travel costs for post-graduate and early career presenters.

Participants will be informed about selection by the end of February 2024.

The event is funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) as part of the ‘Global Circulations of Film Theory’ network project, www.globalfilmtheory.net.

Hong Kong Crime Films: Criminal Realism, Censorship and Society, 1947-1986

Michael Grace — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 12:24:21 +0000

Kristof Van den Troost. Edinburgh University Press.

Hong Kong Crime Films is the first book detailing the post-war history of the genre before the release of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), the film that put Hong Kong action-crime on the global map. Focusing on what it calls the mode of ‘criminal realism’ in the crime film, the book shows how depictions of Hong Kong’s social reality (including crime) were for decades anxiously policed by colonial censors, and how crime films tended (and still tend) to confound and transgress critical definitions of realism.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Hong Kong Crime Films covers several neglected topics in the study of Hong Kong cinema, such as the evolving generic landscape of the crime film prior to the 1980s, the influence of colonial film censorship on the genre, and the prominence and contestation of “realism” in the local history of the crime film.

Kristof Van den Troost is Assistant Professor at the Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

More here

Chinese Film: Realism and Convention from the Silent Era to the Digital Age

Michael Grace — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 10:38:15 +0000

Jason McGrath. University of Minnesota Press.

The history of Chinese cinema is as long and complicated as the tumultuous history of China itself. Each Chinese cinematic era, whether the silent, the Communist, or the contemporary, has necessitated its own form in conversation with broader trends in politics and culture.

In Chinese Film, Jason McGrath tells this fascinating story by tracing the varied claims to cinematic realism made by Chinese filmmakers, officials, critics, and scholars. Understanding realism as a historical dynamic that is both enabled and mitigated by aesthetic conventions of the day, he analyzes it across six different types of claims: ontological, perceptual, fictional, social, prescriptive, and apophatic.

Through this method, McGrath makes major claims not just about Chinese cinema but also about realism as an aesthetic form that negotiates between cultural conventions and the ever-evolving real. He comes to envision this as more than just a cinematic question, showing how the struggle for realism is central to the Chinese struggle for modernity.

More here

Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea

Michael Grace — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 10:32:15 +0000

Hieyoon Kim. University of California Press.

Celluloid Democracy tells the story of the Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors who reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways through the decades of authoritarian rule that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation. Employing tactics that ranged from representing the dispossessed on the screen to redistributing state-controlled resources through bootlegging, these film workers explored ideas and practices that simultaneously challenged repressive rule and pushed the limits of the cinematic medium. Drawing on archival research, film analysis, and interviews, Hieyoon Kim examines how their work foregrounds a utopian vision of democracy where the ruled represent themselves and access resources free from state suppression. The first book to offer a history of film activism in post-1945 South Korea, Celluloid Democracy shows how Korean film workers during the Cold War reclaimed cinema as an ecology in which democratic discourses and practices could flourish.

Hieyoon Kim is a scholar of dissident culture and media with a focus on Korea. She teaches in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

More here

World Socialist Cinema

Michael Grace — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 10:16:37 +0000

Masha Salazkina. University of California Press.

In this capacious transnational film history, renowned scholar Masha Salazkina proposes a groundbreaking new framework for understanding the cinematic cultures of twentieth-century socialism. Taking as a point of departure the vast body of work screened at the Tashkent International Festival of Cinemas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, World Socialist Cinema maps the circulation of films between the Soviet Bloc and the countries of the Global South in the mid- to late twentieth century, illustrating the distribution networks, festival circuits, and informal channels that facilitated this international network of artistic and intellectual exchange. Building on decades of meticulous archival work, this long-anticipated film history unsettles familiar stories to provide an alternative to Eurocentric, national, and regional narratives, rooted outside of the capitalist West.

Masha Salazkina is Concordia Research Chair in Transnational Media Arts and Cultures at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein’s Mexico and a coeditor ofSound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema and Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures.

More here