The Fan Studies Network

​CFP: For a Cosmopolitan Cinema

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

http://www.alphavillejournal.com/

Issue 14 (Winter 2017)

The 14^th issue
of Alphaville aims to address the recent cosmopolitan turn in film studies in an attempt to investigate
the international orientation of contemporary cinema in this age of intense crosscultural contact, transnational dislocations, and consumption of ethnicity. In a globalised context marked by the normalisation, and mediation of foreignness in everyday life,
cinema has been established as a fundamental cosmopolitan agent due to its ability to promote transcultural access to places, spaces and subjectivities.

In this regard, by proposing the idea of cosmopolitan cinema, we wish to articulate the migratory and mobile aspect of world cinemas, by focusing on how cinematic
texts negotiate their cultural specificities and forge intercultural connections in order to encourage border crossing. Also, our conception of cosmopolitan cinema embraces a possible practice or perspective that engages with notions of cultural diversity,
otherness, and hybridity with a positive and open disposition, rather than succumb to the specificities of a national cinema, or restrict ourselves to binary oppositions that separate self and other.

A cosmopolitan perspective for film studies, thus, cherishes difference by mapping the trajectories of interactive becomings between cultures as a mode of critical
practice that moves beyond the singular goal of universalism, and towards a mediation of contemporary interactions. Paul Willemen (2006) suggests a mode of outsideness or in-betweenness, which would forge a safe space from which to critically engage with personal
and cultural dispositions. This, in turn, poses a number of interesting questions concerning modes of address. To whom is a cosmopolitan cinema being addressed? Can it manifest the internal struggle between self and other, through open cultural interactions?
Does it concern those of no address or fixed abode, occupying a space that lies between the laws that govern city and state?

The forthcoming issue of
Alphaville, to be published in Winter 2017, will be guided by such ideas, welcoming articles
interested in approaching cosmopolitan cinema, questioning how it relates to a globalised context marked by postnational states, neoliberalism, postcolonial relationships, bureaucratic, (il)legal, and virtual modes of migration, transnational encounters, the
weakening of national identities and modes of being, and more. Finally, we also aim to cover how the multiple projects, imaginations and understandings of cosmopolitanism shape representational, aesthetics and stylistic cinematic discourses, also considering
the recent return to virulent nationalism, the shutting down of borders, and the current rejection of supranational values in postindustrial countries.

The editors are seeking some articles to complement the current selection, and are keen to receive
proposals on topics and issues including, but not limited to:

• Cinephilia and cosmopolitan audiences: promoting the cult of world cinemas, stars, and strangeness
• World identities: authorship and star trajectories in contemporary cinema
• Cosmopolitan institutions and the brand of national cinemas: exploring the role of film festivals, distributors, etc.
• Films across borders: cosmopolitan cinema as a strategy of internationalisation and border crossing
• Representing worldliness: virtual and real conceptions of world and communities
• Aesthetic, stylistic and narrative notions of cosmopolitanism
• Documenting the cosmopolis: nonfiction cinema and the transnational imagination
• Aesthetic cosmopolitanism and the dialogue between production and consumption
• Cosmopolitanism and national cinemas: multiple belongings and the relativisation of the local
• Cosmopolitan spaces of circulation: digital and virtual migration
• Hybridism, multiculturalism and postcolonialism: perspectives to approach cosmopolitan cinema
• Narratives of the crossing: intercultural contact, migrations, and exiles

Potential contributors are invited to submit a 250/300-word abstract,
and a biographical note by January 30, 2017 to the Issue Editors, James Mulvey, Laura Rascaroli and Humberto Saldanha, at the following address:
issue14.alphaville@gmail.com.
Authors will be notified of editors’ decision by 17 February 2016. Following acceptance, authors will be required to submit their completed articles of 5,500–6,000 words that adhere to
Alphaville guidelines, MLA and house style by
May 1, 2017.

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