(Post-)Conflict Cinema: Remembering Out-breaks and In-tensions

IV International CECC Conference on Culture and Conflict

December 5-6, 2011

School of Human Sciences – Catholic University of Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal

The history of the 20th and 21st centuries merges with the history of cinema and its latest developments. On the one hand, the emergence of cinema is associated with the idea of a democratic art form. Never before had an artistic manifestation reached and affected so many people at the same time. On the other hand, besides constituting one of the privileged cultural products through which past and current conflicts are represented and thoroughly examined, cinema is a medial construction that serves as a ‘stage’ that interrogates the very act of representation, since it also reflects the problems and conflicts experienced in the context of filmic production. Cinema and conflict went hand in hand from the very beginning. Soon after the appearance of the cinematograph, a short film on the war in Cuba, a war that would lead to the island’s independence, was shown to the public in 1898. In 1915 Griffith famously portrayed a war-torn American society during the Civil War in Birth of a Nation, and raised a huge controversy on the issue of racism.

Keeping in mind the revolutionary aesthetic developments and the consolidation of cinema as a multidimensional art form in the 20th century and at the beginning of the new millennium, it is important to discuss how and to what extent new cinematographies inspired by the examination of issues of memory and oblivion experienced in the last century respond to the challenges imposed by 21st-century conflicts (terrorism, economic and social crises, Islamophobia, various forms of racism, civil wars, exploitation of natural resources, among others).

With a view to discussing the dynamic process of conflict and post-conflict situations, this international conference seeks to analyze how 20th and 21st-century (post-)conflict cinema addresses and (re)mediates the following issues:

- Post-memory, Post-Conflict and New Cinema
- Preserving/Rebuilding cultural heritage
- Reimagining the landscape of the self after conflicts
- Gender and reconstruction in post-conflict societies
- Cultural identities in post-conflict contexts
- Conciliation, punishment and the challenge of democracy
- Human rights in war-torn societies
- Ethics and discourses of legitimation in post-conflict situations
- Film and the Pain of others
- Globalization and post-conflict societies
- Translating the other and the self in times of conflict
- Post-Conflict Cinema in Post-Colonial Contexts

The Conference’s working languages are Portuguese and English.

Please send the Organizing Committee 300-words abstracts for 20-minute papers, as well as a brief biographical note (circa 100 words), to postconflictcinema@gmail.com by July 30, 2011. Proposals should list paper title, name, institutional affiliation, and contact details.

Notification of acceptance will be given by September 15, 2011.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Samuel Maoz (director of Lebanon)

João Canijo (director of Fantasia Lusitana)

Thomas Elsaesser (University of Amsterdam)

Isabel Capeloa Gil (Catholic University of Portugal)

Scientific Committee:

Isabel Capeloa Gil

Adriana Martins

Carlos Capucho

Alexandra Lopes

Organizing Committee:

Adriana Martins

Carlos Capucho

Alexandra Lopes

Mónica Dias

Fabíola Maurício

Daniela Agostinho