FILM AND MEDIA 2013: The Pleasures of the Spectacle

We are pleased to announce that FILM AND MEDIA 2013: The Third Annual London Film and Media Conference, organised by Academic Conferences London, will be held from 09.00h on Thursday 27 June to 16.30h on Saturday 29 June 2013 at the Institute of Education Conference Centre, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1, UK.

The Conference theme for 2013 is The Pleasures of the Spectacle. This major international conference will again seek to explore, celebrate and critique the screen-based traditions of film, TV and digital media in all their manifold dimensions. This pioneering annual conference is likely to be of considerable interest to established scholars, early career Faculty, young researchers, and anyone with a commitment to learning about global film and media in a dynamic and friendly academic context.

Please see our 'Acceptances' directory below for news of the ongoing acceptance of proposals for Papers at FILM AND MEDIA 2013 from nearly 40 countries around the globe.

Reflecting a very wide range of research interests they come from established and emerging scholars in the UK, Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, The Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA.

Conference Focus: The Pleasures of the Spectacle

The arrival of the cinema in the final decade of the 19^th Century marked the completion of a quest for extended visual representation in motion, with all its attendant revelations of the modern world. Within just over three decades, synchronised sound had provided a further amplification, opening up the twin channels of the audio-visual.

The new medium offered the generalised pleasures of looking and hearing, but in emphatic terms – concentrated attention focussing on the high intensities of the cinema screen. It stressed visuality and audibility under conditions of increasing narrative rigour, and mounting spectacle. A further pleasure was entailed – membership of social audiences, entertained in the great movie palaces of the 20^th Century.

These pleasures sometimes arose from the medium’s engagement with the real, sometimes from its fantastical departures from the everyday. They offered various forms of psychic release (as in comedy), sometimes reinforced powerful human drives (such as the sexual). Sometimes, perversely, their delights arose from their involvement of the spectator in apparently unpleasurable experiences of fear and dread (as in horror).

From the mid-20^th Century Television shifted the focus of pleasure from the social arena of the movie theatre to the domesticity of the home, and from the endless circulation of individual film texts to the pleasurable ‘flow’ of television, with its broad generic mix of audio-visual messages and its more diffuse manipulation of the audio-visual.

New media dramatically extended the range, in particular by loosening up the manipulation of sound and image – and providing consumers with the pleasures of a higher degree of control – and by ‘personalising’ media experience more directly. The power of digital media demonstrates just how far the audio-visual has come since its early fascination with the pleasures of the ‘real’, now offering both mundane and extreme forms of illusion and delight.

FILM AND MEDIA 2013 will consider the many ways in which the spectacle has been constructed, and in which the spectacle afforded by film and media creates varieties of pleasure for audiences and spectators. These will range from the basic forms of pleasurability involved in looking at, and listening to, audio-visual messages through to the complex psychic regimes involved in these processes, the social nature of the practices of viewing and listening, and the broader politics of pleasure where sound and vision are concerned.

Alongside distinguished Keynote Addresses to be confirmed, we invite proposal for Papers of 20 minutes’ duration, as well as proposals for Panels of three Papers. Papers are not required in advance. Final Papers, submitted after the event, are eligible for consideration for publication in our annual E-Book Reader. Please submit your Proposal (strictly 180-200 words) plus brief CV (not more than 100 words) for Peer Review only via the online form available at www.thelondonfilmandmediaconference.com.

Revised Deadline for Proposals: 31 March 2013

(but early application is strongly advised)

Please consult our Advisory Notes for Speakers, available for download on the website. Please note that Speakers are required to complete early registration (at discount rates) by 30 April 2013.

Registration Rates 2013

Early Bird (until 30 April 2013; mandatory for Speakers)

Early Bird Regular £170.00

Early Bird Concession £120.00

Standard (1 May to 26 June 2013; not available to Speakers)

Standard Regular £190.00

Standard Concession £140.00

Onsite Registration (not available to Speakers)

Onsite Standard £240.00

Onsite Concession £190.00

Day Rates

We regret that Day Rates are not available at this event.

As an entirely independent and self-financing initiative, and one which is massively subsidised by voluntary labour on the part of our organisers, please note that we are unable to offer financial support for intending Speakers or Delegates.

Above and beyond the central Conference focus this is once again an 'open agenda' event built around the research interests of the constituency. Our previous events in 2011 and 2012 involved a total of more than 300 presentations from some 40 nations. By way of illustration, here are some of our previous Panels:

African Identities / Animation / Architectural Space in Film and TV / Black Film and TV / Bollywood / Censorship and Media Ethics / Cinema from Hong Kong and Taiwan Cinematic Cities / Crime Fictions Cultural Connections / Cultural Contexts for British Cinema / Experimental Media / Feminism and Post-Feminism / Film and TV Documentary / Film and TV Families / Film and TV Landscapes / French Cinema Horror and the Uncanny / Independence / Indian and British-Asian Film and TV / Intercultural Media / Israeli and Palestinian Cinemas / Italian Film and Media Japanese Film and Media / The Life and Death of Current Affairs TV / Masculinities Media Audiences / Media Design / Media in the Philippines / Media Masquerades Media Theory / Mediating Health / Narrative and Audience / National Identity /  New Forms of Production / Postmodern Film and Media / The Public Interest /  Queerdom / Questions of Authorship and Genre / Race, Social Class and Gender Representations of History Representing Religion / Science and Ecology / Social Media / Social Representation / Stardom and Celebrity Time / Turkish Cinema TV and Regional Identity / TV Histories / UK Popular Culture / War