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Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories Conference 2014 in Frankfurt, August 20-24 2014
Critical Thoery, Media and Film: Exploring the Frankfurt Legacy, August 20, 2014

Frankfurt with its university and research institutes, in particular the Institut für Sozialforschung, has a legitimate claim to being one of the founding places of contemporary critical film and media theory. Combining philosophical aesthetics, a focus on media technology and a sociological outlook, authors such as Adorno and Horkheimer, Kracauer, Benajmin and later Habermas and Kluge have made significant contributions to the study of media culture and helped pave the way for the emergence of film and media studies as a critical discipline. In film studies in particular, authors such as Miriam Hansen, Gertrud Koch and Heide Schlüpmann have continued to develop the framework of critical theory to create new avenues in the study of film and media culture.

On the occasion of Goethe Universität’s centennial celebrations in 2014, the international conference ‘Critical Film and Media Theory. Exploring the Frankfurt Legacy’ proposes to assess the historical contribution and contemporary perspectives of a critical theory approach to film and media culture.

Contributions are welcome on various aspects of critical theory, film and media, from the impact of critical theory on the history of film theory and media studies to debates about the media and politics to the impact of critical theory on postcolonial, queer and other recent strands of cultural theory in film and media studies.

The conference program will feature a number of keynote lectures and other plenary events, as well as a conference dinner.

A call for papers will circulate internationally in May or June 2013. The conference language is English with simultaneous translation provided for selected contributions in German.

The conference is hosted by the Institute for Theater, Film and Media at Goethe Universität and the Institut für Sozialforschung in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories (filmtheories.org).

Contact and further information: Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger, Institute for Theater, Film and Media, Goethe-Universität 
Prof. Dr. Axel Honneth, director, Institut für Sozialforschung

Events

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FILM & MEDIA 2016. 2016Questions of Cultural Value
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We extend a warm invitation to Film and Media scholars worldwide to submit proposals for Papers of 20 minutes’ duration for presentation at FILM & MEDIA 2016: The Fifth Annual London Film and Media Conference. We also welcome proposals for complete Panels of three Papers. The conference will be held at the Friends’ House Conference Centre, Bloomsbury, London WC1. The UK HQ of the Quaker movement, this beautifully refurbished landmark venue sits opposite Euston Station and is only a few mintes’ walk from St. Pancras and King’s Cross rail stations, the British Library and the British Museum, and the wider delights of the historic Bloomsbury district and the West End.
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Strangers to Ourselves: “Enemies from Within” and the Moving Image
The Eleventh Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies, December 23, 2015
Distressed by past, current, and emergent civil wars in our region and by an apparently growing chasm between subcultures that are isolated in their own media environments and view others in their community with perplexity and intolerance, the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University invites scholars to submit proposals that critically explore literal and figurative “enemies from within” and their relation to moving images.
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Society for Phenomenology and Media
18th Annual Conference Puebla, Mexico. February, 17-19, February 17, 2016
Doctoral students are invited to submit proposals, but should note that SPM limits the number of papers from students.
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A Hundred Years of Film Theory
Münsterberg and beyond: Concepts, Applications, Perspectives, June 29, 2016
A century after Hugo Münsterberg´s… …pioneering publication of 1916, The Photoplay. A Psychological Study, an international and interdisciplinary conference will look at audiovisual media from a broad variety of perspectives and disciplines. The conference will highlight Münsterberg´s achievements as a scholar, who began his academic career at the University of Leipzig before going to Harvard, via the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg.
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Virtuality, Becoming and Life
Deleuze Study Conference Rome 2016, July 04, 2015
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FilmForum 2016
XXIII International Film Studies Conference XIII MAGIS Film Studies Spring School 9 – 15 March, Gorizia, March 09, 2016
FilmForum/MAGIS Spring School is an international film and media studies conference (especially aimed at MA and PhD students and early career researchers) organized by the University of Udine (Italy) in collaboration with: Concordia University, Montreal; Fachhochschule Potsdam; Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main; Université de Lausanne; Université de Montréal; Université du Québec à Montréal; Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3; University of Malta. Inaugurated in 2003, FilmForum has now become one of the most important events in the field of film and media studies, also being considered highly influential across several other disciplines. The School is in fact internationally renowned for its interdisciplinary flair, for the originality of its approaches, and for its cutting edge topics. For its 2016 edition, FilmForum promotes two research projects
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Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form: Corporeality and Early Cinema
Fourteenth International Domitor Conference , June 14, 2016
Moving pictures fascinated early audiences by depicting inanimate objects in motion; rolling waves and phantom rides were lasting favorites. First and foremost, however, the film camera captured bodies moving about in everyday life as well as bodies performing for the camera: workers leaving the factory, Sandow flexing his muscles, Annabelle dancing. Film’s wondrous and uncanny capacity to deliver imaginary corporeal presence took advantage of and amplified modernity’s novel forms of body culture. Indeed, even the naming of the medium’s machines and corporations indicated its organic impulse (bio, vita, living, animated). As the medium industrialized and accelerated its intermedial cross-pollination, it supplanted unnamed “models” with stars and superstars while it presented everyday bodies in non-fiction genres. Over time, producers tested storytelling techniques, acting styles, programming approaches, and exhibition practices, thereby negotiating and transforming the relationships between screen bodies and audience response. From the “cinema of attractions” to the feature film, spectatorship has always been corporeal.
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The ICFVCMS 2016. London 18-19/01/2016
18th International Conference on Film, Visual, Cultural and Media Sciences, January 18, 2016
The ICFVCMS 2016 : 18th International Conference on Film, Visual, Cultural and Media Sciences is the premier interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of new advances and research results in the fields of Film, Visual, Cultural and Media Sciences. The conference will bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and scholars in the domain of interest from around the world.
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XXII Udine International Film Studies Conference Udine, March 18-20, 2015
A History of Cinema without Names: A Research Project, March 18, 2015
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CFP Fata Morgana, Quadrimestrale di Cinema e Visioni, n.26
"Teoria", August 01, 2014
Le trasformazioni recenti del cinema, i mutamenti tecnologici, il proliferare di linguaggi contigui a quello cinematografico e il variare dei modi di fruizione, impongono oggi una riformulazione di tutti quegli approcci teorici che nel corso dei decenni hanno contribuito prima a isolare l’oggetto cinema, poi a individuarne caratteri e specificità.
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2014 / Call for Papers / Upcoming Permanent Seminar Conferences
The Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories is very pleased to present the Call For Papers for its 2014 Conference: Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where is “Frankfurt” now? , February 17, 2014
CFP below, and our online CFP abstract submission form follows at bottom. See you this summer in Frankfurt!
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2014 Chicago and Evanston Conference
The Image in Early Cinema: Form and Material Thirteenth International Domitor Conference Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, USA 21-25 June 2014, June 21, 2014
Early cinema emerged within a visual culture that comprised a variety of traditions in art and image making. Even as methods of motion picture production, distribution, and exhibition materialized, they drew from and challenged practices and conventions in, for example, photography and painting.
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SCMS 2014 Conference
Seattle 2014 Call for Paper, Panel, and Workshop Proposals, November 10, 2013
The Society for Cinema and Media Studies announces its call for proposals for the 2014 conference. Please join us Wednesday, March 19 through Sunday, March 23, 2014 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel.
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Rendering (the) Visible II: Figure
February 7-8, 2014 — Moving Image Studies, Georgia State University, February 07, 2014
The doctoral program in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University welcomes paper proposals for a meta-disciplinary conference on the concept of the Figure.
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FilmForum 2014 XXI Udine International Film Studies Conference Udine, April 2-4, 2014
AT THE BORDERS OF (FILM) HISTORY Temporality, Archaeology, Theories, September 28, 2013
The XXI Udine International Film Studies Conference is interested in exploring the concept of historicism in contemporary media theory, challenging the connections between media theory and media history-making. At The Borders of (Film) History is expected to explore and map the boundaries between history, theory and theory of history today. In the latest issue of Film History (Vol. 25, no. 1-2, 2013), Jane Gaines claims: “My skepticism should not imply that, in taking the ‘historical turn’, we took the wrong turn, but rather that we didn’t ask enough questions about where we were going.” The “historical turn” represented a fruitful debate in terms of conceptualising history and historicising theory. It represents a dialectical shift from Film History to Cinema History (as an ensemble of practices, discourses and dispositifs) and it enlightens the need of rethinking its objects and methodologies. New Film History’s most effective breakthrough lies in the practice of conceptualising Early Cinema through Foucault-inspired notions like discontinuity, epistemic break, archaeology (Elsaesser, 2004). This perspective is now considered as “a pioneering media archaeological approach” (Strauven, 2012) – a crucial step in criticising teleological historiography. The current mediascape has progressively shown the need of reconsidering each medium’s identity as part of a network of media discourses. In this lanscape, Media Archaeology represents a way of shaping and radicalising the debate: it “emphasizes the thingness of things” and underlines operational and performing possibilities while approaching an object of study (Sobchack, 2011). Here Media Archaeology is conceived not as a discipline, but rather as a methodological hypothesis able to liven up diverse contemporary debate around media with new sources coming from materialist, historicist, and realism-oriented backgrounds.
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CHROMA: GIORNATA DI STUDI SULL'IMMAGINE A COLORI TRA CINEMA E MEDIA
Universit? degli studi di Firenze ? Plesso Didattico Santa Verdiana, September 18, 2013
La giornata di studi intende offrire un confronto tra studiosi e professionisti di diversa formazione accomunati dall?interesse per il tema del colore nel cinema e nei media. Chroma nasce dall?idea che lo studio dell?immagine a colori tra cinema e media debba fondarsi su una visione interdisciplinare in grado di tener conto sia delle declinazioni storiche e teoriche che dei problemi tecnici e applicativi del colore. Fin dalle sue origini, infatti, la storia del cinema e dei media moderni ? stata strettamente legata con la storia del colore e delle sue tecniche di produzione e riproduzione. Dalla colorazione a mano delle prime fotografie e pellicole impressionate tra Otto e Novecento fino agli odierni sistemi di colorazione digitale, la presenza o l?assenza del colore nelle immagini non ha mai cessato di orientare le scelte degli addetti ai lavori e degli spettatori. Nello scenario contemporaneo, in particolare, l?introduzione di tecnologie digitali di correzione e manipolazione del colore, a cui saranno dedicati alcuni interventi, ha determinato un forte ritorno d?interesse per il potenziale espressivo del colore, consentendo a molti cineasti di alterare il colore fin dalle singole parti dei fotogrammi, con una sorta di ritorno in chiave aggiornata alle tecniche di colorazione del cinema delle origini. Oltre alla nascita di nuove problematiche squisitamente legate al mondo digitale, le potenzialit? offerte stanno influenzando tutta l?industria cinematografica: dalle metodologie di ripresa sul set, alla post-produzione, fino al formato di distribuzione nelle sale. Allo stesso tempo, il colore ? divenuto un argomento di riflessione sempre pi? praticato nell?ambito dei film studies e dei media studies internazionali, come testimoniano alcuni convegni organizzati negli ultimi anni e la pubblicazione di un numero consistente di studi e monografie dedicati all?argomento. All?interno di questo quadro di riferimento, Chroma proporr? un articolato ventaglio di interventi sulla storia, il linguaggio e la tecnica, proponendo riflessioni teoriche ed esemplificazioni sulle pratiche del colore nel cinema e nei media del passato e della contemporaneit
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Doing Women?s Film and Television History
The Second International Conference of the Women?s Film and Television History Network ? UK/Ireland, April 10, 2014
Building on the success of the first ?Doing Women?s Film History? conference held in 2011, this three-day international conference will bring together researchers in women?s film and television history, archivists, curators and creative practitioners to explore and celebrate all aspects of women?s participation within the visual media industries across the globe and in all periods. The conference will provide a forum for the latest research into women? s work in film and television production (both on and off screen), in film distribution and exhibition, their roles in television ranging from presenters and personalities to commissioners and controllers, as well as women?s activities as film and television critics, consumers and fans.
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45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
Narrated space and represented space: the city in cinema, literature, theatre, April 03, 2014
The session intends to treat certain statements stressing the relationship between cinema and the city and the interdisciplinary interpretation of the cinematographic work
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9è Seminari sobre els antecedents i orígens del cinema
Objectivitat i efectes de veritat. El cinema dels primers temps i la tradició realista, November 14, 2013
El 9è Seminari, que se celebrarà a Girona el novembre de 2013, està organitzat pel Museu del Cinema, el Departament de Geografia, Història i H. de l'Art de la Universitat de Girona i el Proyecto del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad "La construcción del imaginario bélico en las actualidades de la Primera Guerra Mundial".
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NECS 2013 Conference
Media Politics - Political Media, June 20, 2013
The conference will play host to a special panel series prepared by the HOMER network, an international group engaged for almost 10 years in promoting and developing the historical study of movie-going, exhibition, and reception.
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Film-Philosophy Conference 2013:
Beyond Film , July 10, 2013
Reflecting the synergy of filmmakers and philosophers within the field of film-philosophy, our conference will be structured around joined keynote talks by pairs of filmmakers and philosophers, who will open the floor for vibrant discussions with the conference participants.
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Cosmopolitan Screens
University of Glasgow, 28-30 June, 2013 , June 28, 2013
The 23rd International Screen Studies Conference is organised by the journal Screen and will be programmed by Screen editors Tim Bergfelder, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Alastair Phillips and Jackie Stacey.
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Intersection
Contemporary Italy in Music, Art, Literature, and Cinema , June 07, 2013
In a world that is made relentlessly more composite and multidimensional, the intersecting of art, cinema, music, and literature can help us re-configure rhythmically and synergetically the dissonant and discrete realities in which we are immersed.
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Convegno Internazionale: I Situazionisti: Teoria, Arte e Politica
30 maggio 2013 - Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia Aula Verra Via Ostiense 234- Roma, May 30, 2013
SEGRETERIA SCIENTIFICA: Ivelise PERNIOLA SEGRETERIA ORGANIZZATIVA: Costantin JOPECK, Alice MARINELLI
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Contemporary Women’s Cinema Global Scenarios & Transnational Contexts
May 28-29, 2013 , May 28, 2013
Aula Magna del Rettorato Via Ostiense 159 Rome Humanities Institute at Stoney Brook Dipartimento di Filosofia Comunicazione e Spettacolo
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Videoludica e nuove forme della visione
Presentazione della rivista G|A|M|E – The Italian Journal of Game Studies, May 23, 2013
Il Master di I livello in "Video Full HD, 3D, immersivi e interattivi in ambienti di elevata convergenza e crossmedialità" dell’Università degli Studi Roma Tre incontra redattori e autori della rivista G|A|M|E – The Italian Journal of Game Studies
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Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories Conference 2014 in Frankfurt, August 20-24 2014
Critical Thoery, Media and Film: Exploring the Frankfurt Legacy, August 20, 2014
An international conference organized by the Institute for Theater, Film and Media at Goethe-Universität and the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt, in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories, August 20-24, 2014.
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Hollywood and the World
A Diversity and Recognition Project - Second Global Conference, November 10, 2013
The popularity in Western culture of all things Hollywood reflects the eternal fascination with the world of Hollywood cinema. This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks to explore issues of Hollywood films and their international influence across historical periods and within cultural, political and social contexts both in the US and abroad. We are also interested in exploring this cinema in personal experience and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical perspectives.
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FILM AND MEDIA 2013: The Pleasures of the Spectacle
The Third Annual London Film and Media Confenrence 27-29/06/2013, June 27, 2013
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.
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World Film 2013
International Conference on Film and Media International Conference on Film and Media International COnference on Film and Media, May 18, 2013
The conference WORLD FILM 2013 is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to film and media studies. The theme of the conference is Between Dreams and Reality. The conference is interdisciplinary and might be interesting for philosophers, film theorists and practitioners, psychologists, architects, artists, critics, journalists and all people interested in cinematography.
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Second International Colloquium of the Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theory
The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Theory and Historiography of Cinema, November 01, 2011
It is often repeated that before being an art, before being an industry, cinema was initially a technology. At the beginning, moreover, the camera was as intriguing as the illusion that it managed to recreate. And if the initial fascination with the cinematographic mechanism waned quickly, it resurfaces at regular intervals following the emergence of each new technology that changes the way films are produced, distributed or exhibited, and even, more fundamentally, the way we think about cinema. Over the past thirty years, several studies have traced the development and socioeconomic consequences of new technologies which, year after year, shape and redefine what cinema is. But what exactly is the significance of all these kinds of machines and devices for the theory and historiography of cinema? Have they helped open new avenues of thinking and new methodologies or break down some misconceptions at the heart of Film Studies? This colloquium seeks to question the impact of technological innovations on the development of the critical discourse and historiography of cinema. The pervasiveness of the “technological” in the history and theory of cinema demands its further investigation. The aim of this colloquium is to evaluate the importance of technological innovation in the articulation of a critical discourse in film studies. More specifically, it seeks to comment on the impact caused by the introduction of new technologies on the theory and historiography of cinema, that is to say, to investigate how these technologies have altered the way we think about cinema, its fundamental properties, and its potential uses. Film scholars all know of the “four legendary moments” of the technological history of film evoked by Peter Wollen – the invention of the Lumière Cinematograph, the arrival of sound, that of color, and finally the introduction of “widescreen” formats – but how exactly have these shaped the discourse of theorists, historians and other film critics? And what about other, lesser known or forgotten innovations that have emerged at various times in film history? We could not, moreover, neglect the advent of digital technologies and CGI (computer generated images), whose countless cinematographic applications caused major upheavals in the course of reflection on cinema, upheavals whose full extent has not yet been measured. The history of film theory is punctuated with reflections that, occasioned by these technological upheavals, manage to escape the extreme positions that are often used to summarize the debate (technology as a “panacea” or as a “scourge” of the modern world) and instead propose a more nuanced and stimulating perspective on the fundamental properties of cinema.
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XVIII International Film Studies Conference
The Archive Memory, cinema, video and the image of the present, April 05, 2011
It was Jacques Derrida who reminded us that the word archive (Archè) combines the idea of beginning and that of command: the place where things get started, and where the sources reside, but at the same time the place where the Law arises and where it finds its dwelling. In the regime of the image the archive is – in a single concept – the storage of recorded and transmitted images, but also what Jacques Rancière defines as «the organization of the sensible» (le partage du sensible); that instance which regulates, institutes and organizes the places and positions of access to the experience of the visual. Nevertheless the archive is not a one-dimensional concept: it is not only made by objects and concreteness, but also by void spaces, missing elements, silences, which preserve not only the transmittable history but also the trace of what could have been but was not and nevertheless continues to persist in the present times. While a widespread tradition always understood history as a vertical narrative that emerges from an origin and is written like a book by a constituent subject; the archive appears as a radical dishomogeneity, irreducibly paratactic and organized through a vast multiplicity of elements.
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Sergei Eisenstein’s Unpublished “Notes for a General History of Cinema”. World Premiere
September 30 – October 2, 2010, Columbia University, New York, NY , ,
A Conference staging the critical reception by scholars in the field.
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Women and the Silent Screen VI
University of Bologna, Italy, June 24, 2010 – June 26, 2010 , ,
The Sixth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference will celebrate the diversity of women’s engagement with silent cinemas across the globe through a series of scholarly panels, keynote addresses, and archival film screenings. Continuing the dynamic spirit that characterized previous conferences in Utrecht (1999), Santa Cruz (2001), Montréal (2004), Guadalajara (2006), and Stockholm (2008) the conference will provide an open and friendly atmosphere for the exchange of research and insight into women’s involvement in the first four decades of film history.
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The Arthemis International Conference. "Moving Images Studies: History(ies), Method(s), Discipline(s)"
Concordia University, Montreal, June 4-7 2010, ,
The ARTHEMIS conference wishes to offer an international forum for scholars to reflect on the theory and practice of film and moving image studies from historical and epistemological perspectives.
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XVII International Film Studies Conference
March 16-18, 2010, January 12, 2010
The Film Canon
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XVI Udine International Film Studies Conference Permanent Seminar on History of Film Theories
Udine, March 23, 2009
Call for papers

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Geographies of Film Theory
London, June 26 (evening) – June 28, 2008, ,
The conference has been designed to engage specifically with intellectual fields that concern both the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies and the Screen Studies Group through an examination of the development and diffusion of film theory.
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Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theories
XV Udine International Conference, March 03-04, 2009
An international network gave life to a Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Theories. The XV Udine Conference will host on March 3 and 4 the first meeting organized by the seminar.
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XV Udine Conference
Cinema and Comics. Affinities, differences and new forms of interference, March 03-06, 2008
Interest in comparing cinema and comics is not new. At first glance, there are any number of apparent affinities and similarities between them.
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