CALL FOR PAPERS INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP FEATURING AFRICA: EXPLORING THE PLURALITY OF AFRICAN DIGITAL FILM CULTURES Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle, University of Liege (Belgium) LIEGE, 3/4 OCTOBER 2014 Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 15th of July Since the birth of the Nigerian and Ghanaian video film industries, between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, video (and later digital) films have become a major expression of contemporary African popular culture. However, in the following years specific local factors and the influence of Nollywood success’s on local cultural entrepreneurs encouraged the birth of other production ventures in many regions of the continent, determining the emergence of what we might call an “African boom” in digital film production. This phenomenon is characterized by a plurality of voices and experiences that are only partially ascribable to Nollywood influence, thus requiring the formulation of new interpretative models able to grasp each video production experience’s specificity. This workshop intends to encourage scholars and researchers to go beyond the existing scholarship on Nollywood and to question its relevance for the study of other digital film industries around the continent and within Nigeria itself. In this sense, we would like participants to formulate theoretical and methodological perspectives that could shed light on aspects left aside by the existing scholarship, and that could question and complicate the conceptual framework based on African popular culture theory which has informed much of what has been written on the video phenomenon until today. We would like researchers to present case studies that stress the specific economic, social and cultural trajectories of digital filmmaking ventures in the continent, and that highlight the eventual similarities and differences with the Nigerian phenomenon. We suggest looking at national, regional and even individual specificities in order to enrich our understanding of the transformations in processes of cultural production and consumption that the introduction of analog and digital technologies have generated all over Africa. The questions this workshops intends to address are multiple, and touch upon aspects of digital film production, circulation, and consumption, as well as films’ contents and aesthetics. Topics of interest to the conference organizers include, but are not limited to: - What are the specific economic, cultural, social and political factors that shape video film production in different regions of the continent? How do these specificities impact on the economics and aesthetics of film production? - What is the relationship that these emerging industries entertain with local political, religious and ethnic powers and how do these relationships influence the economy and aesthetic aspects of film production? - What are the economic, social and cultural motivations that push people to engage in filmmaking in contexts in which basic incomes are not guaranteed? - How are stardom and celebrity constructed in the context of different African video film industries (including Nollywood itself), and how are they socially perceived in contexts conditioned by witchcraft imaginaries that often tend to mistrust individual success? - How does the local production and circulation of digital films interact with the relationships between city dwellers and villagers? - How do different local oral and literary traditions shape the specific narrative and aesthetic patterns adopted in the films? - How are different colonial histories interpreted in films and how do these histories condition the way films are produced and commercialized? - How does the audience relate to the emergence of these production phenomena and how do specific local consumption experiences (through private television, video clubs, cinema theatres and so on) condition audience reception? - What is the impact of technological transformations on video films’ circulation? And what is the effect that different modes of technological circulation (via internet, satellite televisions, local televisions, or pirated copies) have on the way films circulate and on the way films are experienced by their audiences? - How are these emerging video film industries perceived on a transnational level? What are (if any) their transnational networks of circulation and what is their relationship with diasporic groups? The collection of case studies that we want to put together by answering to these questions will: – identify new theoretical approaches to the study of African digital film production; – produce a thick description of these phenomena, by embedding them in specific social and cultural contexts; – further the understanding of the African present, and the position of the African subject in the contemporary world. The organizers of the conference invite scholars working in areas related to the theme of this conference to submit an abstract (no more than 350 words) and a short CV by the 15th of July 2014. Please address your abstracts and inquiries to Alessandro Jedlowski ([email protected]) and Giovanna Santanera ([email protected]). Organizing Committee: Alessandro Jedlowski (University of Liege), Joel Noret (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Benjamin Rubbers (Université de Liège), Giovanna Santanera (University of Milan « Bicocca »/EHESS). Scientific Committee: Tejaswini Ganti (University of New York), Jonathan Haynes (Long Island University), Matthias Krings (University of Mainz), Brian Larkin (Columbia University), Ramon Lobato (Swimburne University of Technology), Birgit Meyer (University of Utrecht), Onoome Okome (University of Alberta), Katrien Pype (Catholic University of Leuven/University of Birmingham), Patrick Vonderau (University of Stockholm).
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:52:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015