Call for Practice: New Entanglements Special Issue
Call for Screenworks Practice-Research Submissions
Special Issue: New Entanglements: Inter-relations between film and philosophy
Guest Editors: Dr. Elisabeth Brun & Prof. Dr. Christine Reeh Peters
Screenworks Editors: Dr. Matthew Hawkins & Dr. Alex Nevill
This guest-edited Special Issue of Screenworks invites practice-researchers to submit works exploring the theme of film-philosophy from an artistic perspective.
Film-philosophy is a growing strand of thought that argues for a form of philosophizing in, with, and through film. It traces its origins to thinkers of classical film theory such as Jean Epstein, Abel Gance, André Bazin, Sergej Eisenstein or Walter Benjamin. Decades later, the philosophers Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze made philosophical reflections on film as a subject of philosophy. Film-philosophy became a widespread topic at the beginning of the millennium, when mainstream films like Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999) or Inception (Nolan, 2010) came up with deliberately philosophical structures. Since then, the claim “film as philosophizing” (Mulhall, 2001) has become a common denominator for different currents in the continental as much as in the analytical realm. On the other hand, a wide range of positions in filmmaking emerged, which engage in explicit dialogue with philosophical topics or try to evolve through filmmaking the continuation or expansion of philosophical issues –without being an illustration of theoretical currents.
With our call we would like to turn the claim “film as philosophizing” into a premise for film thinking and artistic research through screen works. We encourage submissions of film practice and screen based research that is relevant to philosophical themes or establishes a dialogue with them – whether in the contemporary, modern, or even classical framework of philosophical thought. We particularly welcome screen works that engage with non-Western philosophical traditions.
Topics may include (but are not restricted to):
– thinking through film as a philosophical practice of filmmaking
– self-reflexive strands on the ontology, the materiality, the embodiment or the site of the film image
– thematizing or expanding existing philosophical theories
– zones of intersection between philosophical theory and embodied film practice
Submissions should be composed of screen media practice research supported by a 2,000-word research statement, and be submitted by completing the Online Submission Form. Please read the submissions guidelines for further details.
Screenworks is committed to digital accessibility, so please also check our Accessibility policy, which requires published work to be captioned and complemented by a descriptive transcript. If your work is accepted, we expect you to undertake this before publication.
The extended deadline for submissions is 31st March 2023 1st May 2023 for publication in Autumn 2023.
About the Editors:
Dr. Elisabeth Brun is an Oslo-based film-artist and scholar exploring questions of form, of mediation, and of the relation between human/environment. Her works lingers in the intersection of philosophy, media studies and visual art and takes different forms such as essay films, installations and texts. Brun holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Oslo (2020), 14 years experience as a documentary filmmaker in Public Broadcasting (NRK 2001-2014) and a post-master in Public Art from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her work has been screened as venues/galleries such as Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Seattle Art Museum, Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema and Vienna Short Film Festival. Of recent awards/mentions is Kings College’s Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, Visual Arts (2020), a nomination for Best Video Essays 2021, Sight & Sound, and an Emerging Artist Special Mention at Mimesis Documentary Festival in Colorado, US.
Prof. Dr. Christine Reeh-Peters is a German filmmaker and philosopher living between Berlin, Karlsruhe and Lisbon. She is Junior Professor for Theory and Practice of Artistic Research in Digital Media at Filmuniversity Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam, with a PhD in Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Lisbon. She is also Co-head of the IKF – Institute for Artistic Research at Filmuniversity Babelsberg. She is producer and filmmaker at C.R.I.M. in Lisbon as well as editor of several anthologies and one monograph on film-philosophy. Christine explores the complexity of narration, place and image as well as the links between philosophy and artistic research.
Dr. Matthew Hawkins is a filmmaker and film theorist. He is a Senior Lecturer in Film Practice at London South Bank University where he is also Chair of the Screen Research group. He holds a BA (First Class Hons) and an MA (Distinction) in Film from the University of East London. His practice-based PhD in the area of film-philosophy, affect and narrative cinema was funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is an associate editor for Screenworks.
Dr. Alex Nevill is a cinematographer, filmmaker and lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art in The University of Edinburgh. Working in the UK and internationally he has photographed several independent feature films and award-winning short films. Alex holds an MFA degree from the Scotland Screen Academy and completed his practice-led PhD in the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE Bristol. He is an associate editor for Screenworks.
