Download call as pdf-file here.

Call for Papers and Films:

Shoot, Rip & Burn:

Cinema's Digital Insurgency

San Francisco State University

November 1-2, 2007

Presented by the SFSU Cinema Studies Graduate Student Association

Keynote speaker: Lynn Hershman Leeson

The rapid development and proliferation of digital media technologies have been alternately heralded as a revolution, a revelation, and a curse. For cinema, the rise of digital culture still seems to raise more questions than answers…

  • Is digital cinema an oxymoron?  In an age of new media, do "cinematic" practices and theories remain useful? 
  • How have new digital media changed our conceptions of what cinema is… and what it can be?
  • What cinematic possibilities have been opened or foreclosed by digital media? 
  • To what extent will a digital cinema contravene the politics of traditional cinema?
Regardless of the speculations offered about the future of cinema, it remains clear that new modes of making, distributing, viewing, and reading “films” suggest not only new sets of critical concerns, but new means of addressing those concerns.Accordingly, graduate students are invited to submit works that interact with issues of cinema in the digital age. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to utilize some form of digital media (e.g., PowerPoint slides, interactive DVDs, etc.) in support of their presentations (20 min. max. length).We also invite submissions from student filmmakers whose work engages issues of digital cinema and technology. These films will be screened together as part of a special panel, accompanied by discussion with the filmmakers themselves.Possible topics could include (but are not limited to):
  • YouTube, the internet, and new frontiers for cinema
  • Distribution, copyright law, and accessibility in the digital age
  • Issues of gender, race, class, nationality, etc. in digital cinema
  • The politics of digital cinema - are there any revolutions in its making?
  • Digital cinema and genre
  • Documentary and the digital edge between fiction and non-fiction
  • The new digital auteur
  • Experimental filmmaking and digital surrealism
  • The materiality and aesthetics of digital media
  • High/low culture and the digital
  • Pornographic digital forays
  • Issues and representations of postmodernism and posthumanism
  • Digital bodies and the simulated human form
  • The role/effect of digital technologies in film criticism and film theory

Deadline for submitting abstracts and films is September 15th, 2007.

Email abstracts (300 – 600 words) to sfsucinema@gmail.com along with a short biographical statement (including your contact info and institutional affiliation). Please also include a brief description of your presentation strategy in your abstract.

Films (in DVD format only) may be sent to the following address:

ATTN: SFSU Graduate Film Conference

Cinema Department (FA 245)

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94132