CFP: contemporary Australian cinema

From: Rebecca Prime [[email protected]]

CFP: “Cinematic Homecomings: Exile and Return in Transnational Cinema”

 Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2013

Papers on topics relating to themes of post-exilic return and reverse migration in Australian cinema are welcome for anthology under contract with Continuum.  This is a replacement essay - hence the short deadline. For the purposes of this volume, exile will be defined broadly to include émigrés, expatriates, refugees, and internal exiles such as indigenous peoples.

Please submit proposals of 250-300 words, plus a short bio., to Rebecca Prime ([email protected]) by July 1st.  Articles must be completed by Sept. 1st.

See below for a project description:
The history of cinema charts multiple histories of exile. From White Russians in 1920s Paris to the German émigrés in 1930s Hollywood to blacklisted Americans in 1950s Europe, these histories have had a profound impact on the evolution of cinematic narratives and aesthetics. But while the effect of exile and diaspora on film practice has been fruitfully explored from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as in Hamid Naficy’s Accented Cinema, the issues raised by return have yet to be fully considered.

This volume will contribute to broader debates concerning transnational cinema by addressing the questions raised by reverse migration and the return home in a variety of historical and national contexts, from postcolonialism to post-Communism.  By looking beyond exile, articles will query the possibilities of geographical and emotional return.  Is return located in the physical homeland, or rather in the acceptance of a hybrid identity that transcends national boundaries?  Also of interest are questions relating to production and reception/industry.  After years spent working in different modes of production, how do exiled filmmakers readapt to the industrial context of their home countries? Given the opportunity to once again address an audience of compatriots, what issues do they choose to prioritize in their films of return? How do their years of exile affect their domestic critical reception?

This volume seeks to investigate these and similar questions from a range of historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.  Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

·           - Post-exilic artistic reinvention

·               -  The “homecoming” (i.e. reception) of films made in exile

·                - Case studies of individual productions

·           - Cinematic narratives of return

·               - The politics of exile and return

·               - The imagination of home and cinematic space

·               - The reintegration of exilic identity

·               - Theorizations of mobility


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