CALL FOR PAPERS!
International Postgraduate Conference: NEW GENERATION CHINESE CINEMA May 26th-27th 2011, London.
Taking market forces and China’s new role as a global leader in economics and culture as the two key aspects of the period from 2000, the New Chinese Cinema conference seeks to draw together the disparate threads of Chinese film practice from the last ten years. Commodification has redrawn the coordinates of Chinese film: from commercial Chinese blockbusters to regional films; from popular genre waves to avant-garde art works; from ethnographic documentaries to amateur works that use digital filming techniques. Out of a changing post-socialist state, unheralded filmmakers have found the opportunity to forge a praxis that expresses the thought of a society under the commodity form. As commodities these films are exchanged within networks that are both local and global in nature, at international film festivals, at amateur screenings in China’s cities and villages and via the Internet. Highlighting the uniqueness and the importance of the films coming out of China in the era of neoliberal globalisation, this conference aims to demonstrate the continued importance of film as a key means through which social change is experienced and expressed.
Papers on the following categories are particularly welcome, though papers on other relevant topics will also be given full consideration:
+ Film as commodity in neoliberal China + Social change and changing film practice + Digital filmmaking and the role of the Internet + Cinema consumption and China’s new urban middle class + Transnational, national, or Cosmopolitan? + The rise of regional film-making in China + Urban reform and gentrification + Genre films e.g. Chinese horror cinema + Blockbuster, and Leitmotif (zhuxuanlu) films + Generational Taxonomy (Fifth, Sixth, Seventh?) – an outmoded concept? + Individual Documentary practice + Eco-cinema in the PRC
Please send abstracts not exceeding 250 words, accompanied by a brief biographical sketch to, keith.wagner * at * kcl.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is 25 February 2011. Submissions from early career scholars and PhD candidates are strongly encouraged. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged via email. Participants will be informed of the committee’s decision by 18 March 2011. Registration will begin in late March.
Keynote Speakers Chris Berry (Goldsmiths College), Yomi Braester (University of Washington), Zhang Zhen (New York University), Lu Xinyu (Fudan University)
Co-organized by: Keith B. Wagner, King’s College London Kiki Tianqi Yu, Westminster University Luke Vulpiani, King’s College London
Co-sponsored by King’s College London, University of Westminster, dslcollection.