African Film and Politics Conference
Conference organised by the
Africa Media Centre, University of Westminster
Date: Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 November 2013
Venue: University of Westminster, London
This is the first call for papers for a two-day conference on African film and politics in changing local and global contexts. Film in Africa, just like popular music, theatre and literature, has reflected and affected past and present political realities. African filmmakers have developed effective and powerful film stories infused with political ideologies, values and everyday politics. Global, national, regional and personal political themes are evident in some of the most popular African films. Some of the films become popular because audiences easily recognize the political portrayals and subtle themes reflected on the screens.
The African film industry is itself ridden with tension, power and politics. Funding, training opportunities, language use, story structures and roles with films are often distributed according to existing political priorities. It is arguable that power relations have followed political thinking. Conditions and the environment of filmmaking in Africa have been political since colonial times. After independence film politics is more evident in front of and behind the camera. African film audiences are now using social media in ways that have complicated the political dimensions.
However, there are questions about how power and politics has been included in African film. Which African political story is told through films? Whose voice is represented? Who speaks on behalf of whom? To what extent have films expanded identities, power and political relations? In what way has politics influenced film production, distribution, exhibition and consumption in Africa? If political stability and political socialization are the answers in the African film industry, what then are the questions?
This conference seeks to debate issues of politics, ideology, power and diversity in African film industry. It seeks to examine, amongst other issues, how broadly-defined politics relates to generational, gender, ethnic, racial, traditional/modernity and language issues in African films. The conference welcomes contributions that will debate these issues from different theoretical and methodological orientations.
Papers may focus on, among other topics, the following:
• Political history, myth and identity in African film; • Racial, class, religious and ethnic politics in African film; • Audiences and the reception of politics in African films • Indigenous language films and everyday politics • Gender and sexual politics in African cinema; • Politics of exhibition, financing and distribution of African film; • Power politics and crises in African Cinema • Film festivals and the development of national cinemas in Africa; • Auteur politics, Political film genres and form • Collaborative filmmaking in the global north/trans-national collaborations • Liberation and emancipation in African film philosophy • Filmmakers exiled or imprisoned for their work.
• Institutions, policies and film agencies
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS
The deadline for submission of abstracts is Friday 9 August, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified by Friday 30 August, 2013. Abstracts should not be more than 300 words long. They must include the title of the conference, presenter's name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the title of the paper.
Please ensure when saving your abstract that your name is part of the file name.
Please email your abstract to Helen Cohen, Events Administrator at:
(journalism@westminster.ac.uk)
PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION
This two day conference will take place on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 November, 2013. The fee for registration (which applies to all participants, including presenters) will be £175, with a concessionary rate of £95 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments lunches and administration costs. Registration will open in September 2013.
(Source - Versfeld & Assoc.)
Writer's Guild of South Africa Meeting - Durban - 5 August 2013 - 6pm - Ike's Bookshop
48A Florida Road, Morningside, Durban
Topic: How To Publish Your Work
Business Development Manager of Adams Book Store, Cedric Sissing will share the process of publishing, give tips on the best publishing methods and explore self-publishing. He will endeavour on the journey of publishing, ensuring that performance writers not only produce their work but also publish in order to reach a wider audience and to obtain copyright of the published work.
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Entrance is free for this meeting.
(Source - Writer's Guild of SA)
Some Poetry For You
Winter Song
The mindless things we did in Winter
To the sound of trains in the night,
While the white swallows are bitter
As words coming into the light.
Paragraphs have nothing left of the sea
In them but her mouth wades
As a lagoon was a tumult of soliloquy
Over the bridges and glades.
Upon these confines of death moonlight
Pulls the shelf
Of rowers, old sea captain’s right.
The reef lures him away sleeping to self
Of a dream outside the mirror.
Timothy Sparks July 2013
Edition by +Fred Felton
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