<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><blockquote type="cite"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font><div>CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED TO 31 MAY 2011<br><br>*World Cinema Now*<br><br>Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory, Second Biannual Conference<br>Monash University, Melbourne, Australia<br><br>September 27–29, 2011<br><br>"World Cinema" has become a new catchword and rallying cry. It points<br>assertively and polemically to what we have all always known, but too rarely<br>taken into account in our critical practice as critics, teachers, or<br>programmers: that the global span of cinema is far wider than what receives<br>general distribution in the commercial multiplexes and arthouses of most<br>countries. Film culture in most places has been slow to emerge from its<br>Anglo-Euro-American habits and biases, even as the past two decades has<br>given us one remarkable 'new cinema' after another: Iran, Taiwan, Romania,<br>Argentina, Africa ... And yet the discourses promoting World Cinema are<br>themselves not without problems and traps. Is there already a canon of World<br>Cinema that is too restrictive and selective? Are we caught in another round<br>of 'star auteurs'? Are we paying enough attention to all the invisible forms<br>of cinema, like shorts and experimental work? Is the Film Festival circuit a<br>satisfactory alternative space for distribution, exhibition and funding of<br>world cinema? How does the digital revolution fit into the World Cinema<br>picture? And quite simply, have we yet gone anywhere near like far enough in<br>our embrace, pursuit and critical exploration of cinemas that are complexly<br>international, multinational, post-national and transnational? This<br>conference will explore both the state and the question of World Cinema Now.<br><br>World Cinema Now invites international film scholars, critics and<br>practitioners to present their thoughts on World Cinema as a contemporary<br>and historical formation. Proposals should address the conference themes:<br><br> - Politics, ideology and social change<br> - Indigeneity and film<br> - Women’s film practice<br> - Distrbution, exhibition and audiences<br> - Locality and identity<br> - Mobility, diaspora and exile<br> - Cross-cultural translation<br> - Mutations in art cinema<br> - Transnationalism and post-nationalism<br><br>Proposed plenary speakers include:<br><br> - Nicole Brenez (Sorbonne, France)<br> - Elena Gorfinkel (University of Madison-Wisconsin USA)<br> - Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany)<br> - Meaghan Morris (University of Sydney and Lingnan, HK)<br> - Granaz Moussavi (Poet & Filmmaker)<br> - R. Barton Palmer (Clemson University, USA)<br> - Song Hwee Lim (University of Exeter)<br> - +1 Mystery Guest<br><br>The Conference Conveners will accept proposals for individual papers or<br>three-speaker panel sessions until 31 May, 2011<br><br>Abstracts of no more than 250-words and a 100-word biography should be sent<br>to: <a href="http://worldcinemanow.monash.edu/">worldcinemanow.monash.edu</a><br>Or visit the conference website at: <a href="http://www.worldcinemanow.com.au/">http://www.worldcinemanow.com.au</a><br><br>----<br>Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the<br>University of Alabama: <a href="http://www.tcf.ua.edu/">http://www.tcf.ua.edu</a><br></div></blockquote></div><br><br><br></body></html>