[Filmfestivalresearch] Live Cinema III: Festival of Research and Innovation 2020 - Call for participation

Atkinson, Sarah sarah.atkinson at kcl.ac.uk
Tue Jan 21 11:44:24 CET 2020


Live Cinema III: Festival of Research and Innovation 2020

Nottingham, UK.


Taking place across the week commencing 18th May 2020, this festival will feature a programme of live cinema screenings, leading academic research, master classes, workshops, an exhibition and demonstration track, Q&A sessions, and world premieres of new artistic commissions and exclusive live events.



Live Cinema III will showcase the creative and critical advances in the multi-faceted field of live cinema which encompasses a diverse range of forms. These include experimental expanded cinema, the global live-casting of cultural and entertainment events and live performance during film screenings - indeed any instance of the live augmentation of screen spectatorship. This festival marks a unique historical juncture and provides an opportunity to draw together and reflect upon the many landmark and contemporary moments where the trajectories of liveness and emergent screen technologies have intersected. It is 50 years since the touchstone publication of Gene Youngblood’s book ‘Expanded Cinema’ which revolutionised notions of cinema-making and viewing through its pioneering consideration of videos, computers and holography as cinematic technologies. Furthermore, it is 30 years since the publication of Philip Auslander’s influential ‘Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture’. The combination of the central ideas of these two works resonate more than ever when considering the new chimeras of contemporary live screen experience. Take for example, Netflix, and their recent purchase of a physical cinema venue. This was clearly a commercially strategic move, as was their partnership with UK-based organisation Secret Cinema on an elaborate immersive experience based around the series ‘Stranger Things.’ These hybrid forms - which blend the live with the mediated, the cinematic with the televisual and with the theatrical - are symptomatic of the enduring significance of collective viewing experiences, despite the predominance of individualised screen consumption perpetuated by the streaming revolution.  Moreover, these complex moments of convergence where commercial, technological and artistic imperatives collide - underscore the important need for the ongoing study of live and experiential screen-based phenomena.



We are currently seeking contributions for the two-day academic programme which will commence on Thursday 21st May. These contributions may take any presentation format: traditional academic papers, workshops, pre-constituted panels, practice-based contributions, technical demonstrations and alternative formats. We welcome proposals from a broad range of disciplinary contexts such as arts and humanities, computer science, social science, leisure studies, cultural geography, organisation and management studies – including contributions that consider the impact of Live Cinema on other disciplinary fields and approaches. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary enquiries which embrace methodological innovation. Areas of significant contribution will be focussed on instances where the live and digital coalesce in the formation of live screen experiences. These may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

  *   Live Cinema and the conceptual relationship to meta-cinema, post-cinema, expanded cinema;
  *   Liveness, mediation and presence: rituals and happenings; individualisation versus collectivity;
  *   Geographies of liveness: local, national and global exhibition and distribution infrastructures, livecasting of cultural and entertainment experiences, tours, touring, pop-ups, mobile exhibition, site-specificity;
  *   Convergence and intermediality: Intersections between stage, screen and television;
  *   Media spectacle: Event Cinema, Event Films, Media Events, ‘Eventization’ and the new screen experience economy, theme parks, installations;
  *   Audience participation and interaction: Hecklevision, ‘barrage cinema’, sing-a-longs, cult movie practices, ‘call backs’, Secret Cinema, Punchdrunk, audience creativity, fan created content, cos play, role play;
  *   Embodied experience: affect, cognition, haptics, AI and algorithms, biofeedback, wearables, gestural interfaces, visual tactile integration and proprioceptive devices;
  *   Performance and Performativity: VJ, live remix, live soundtrack scoring, immersive theatre;
  *   New Screen Technologies: 4DX, 3D, Magic Leap, Motion Capture, Immersive Sound, XR, Mobile screens;
  *   Immersion and interactivity: Second screen, dome screens, digital engagements, E-sports, accessible, sensory and inclusive technologies and experiences;
  *   Organisations and infrastructures: festivals, cinemas, distributors, new business models, IP, economic considerations, policy dimensions and brand engagement, labour markets, models of working in the screen experience economy;
  *   Activist and political uses of cinema: guerrilla screenings, interrupted screenings, radical, alternative events, film forums;
  *   Innovations inexperience design: game hybrids, pervasive gaming, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs);
  *   Placemaking and collective experiences: Film festivals, public screens, tourism, leisure industries and ‘destination events;’
  *   Newness, novelty, exclusivity and scarcity:  experiential ephemera, promotional screenings, materials and paratexts, historicization.

Potential contributors should submit a 300 word abstract and a short 100 biography to LiveCinemaFestival2020 at gmail.com<mailto:LiveCinemaFestival2020 at gmail.com> by 4pm on March 2nd 2020.  Decisions will be sent out on week commencing 16th March, 2020.


Live Cinema III: Festival of Research and Innovationis a collaboration between Live Cinema UK, Live Cinema Network, King’s College London and University of Nottingham.  The LCF2020 academic strand is convened by Sarah Atkinson & Helen W. Kennedy. For further information contact Professor Kennedy, Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies at the University of Nottingham: Helen.Kennedy at Nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Helen.Kennedy at Nottingham.ac.uk>







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