DÁ FALA

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS
Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading, Reading
27th January 2016
Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, King’s College, London
28th January 2016
Coordinator: Maria do Carmo Piçarra

Agostinho Neto, Frente Leste, Angola 1968. © Augusta ConchigliaThe fortieth anniversary of Portuguese decolonisation of Africa has acted as a catalyst in discussing how Portugal ‘imagined’ colonial politics through moving images and how these propagandist portrayals began to be questioned by the Portuguese ‘Novo Cinema’.  This can be seen in works that were censured and prohibited. Portuguese colonial cinematographic representations were later challenged by films made in
the context of the liberation movements and by images that emerged out of the national cinematographic projection (Frodon) of the new Portuguese-speaking African countries.
This conference intends to go some way in highlighting common aspects in the emergence of cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, which have all been studied individually. In addition, it will provide a reflection on the roots of the emergence of the ‘New Cinema’ from the militancy that uses film as a means of changing society and focussing on the birth [in images] of new nations, being projected by the programs of the Marxist parties that assumed power. The aim of the conference is
also to analyse how, through ‘Third Cinema’, the ‘Cinema Novo’ of Brazil and Cuban Cinema, more specifically, in addition to the authors of the French ‘Rive Gauche da Nouvelle Vague’, all played a role in questioning and rupturing the colonial representations of the Portuguese dictatorship and, most of all, in the formation of the projects and cinematographic archives of emerging African nations.
This conference also intends to question, apart from the reasoning of nationalist propaganda, how did these new countries tell the story of their own history through film and cinema (Godard/Ishaghpour)?  Finally, it will be discussed how, given the ‘urgency of the present’, the redemption of the past (Benjamin) is realised through a ‘cinema of
resistance’ (Deleuze), such as that of Pedro Costa, and by other moving images artistic practises?
Communication proposals (of up to 300 words) will be received until the *21th November* 2015 through the conference email address (alephconferencia@gmail.com <mailto:alephconferencia@gmail.com>).
Proposals will be reviewed and decisions communicated early *December*.
Examples of topics can be found below:
- Internationalist cinema and the filmed emergence of nations
-  “Imagined” colonialisms. From colonial and militant propaganda
cinema to a “cinema of resistance” (Deleuze)
-   Contributions towards a genealogy of New Cinema(s). From nations
to people
-   (Post-)Colonial representations
-  Intermediality on colonial and post-colonial representations and
decolonization of the moving images
-   From censorship processes to images “in spite of everything” (Didi-Huberman).
-       (Post)colonial genre(s)
-       Artistic practices and investigations regarding the “colonial archive”
-       Neocolonialism in moving images
*Organising committee *
Lúcia Nagib, director of the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading
João Paulo Silvestre, Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, King’s College London

Rosa Cabecinhas, Head of the PhD Program in Cultural Studies (University of Minho and University of Aveiro) and Associate Professor at the Social Sciences Institute, University of Minho
Maria do Carmo Piçarra, postdoctoral researcher, Centre for Film
Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading / Communication and
Society Research Centre, University of Minho / CEC – FLUL / University
of Lisbon
Abdoolkarim Vakil, Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies & Department of History, King’s College London
José da Costa Ramos, Professor at ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
*Specialists and invited artists*
Ana Balona de Oliveira, postdoctoral researcher, CEC – FLUL / University of Lisbon / Institute for Art History of the New University of Lisbon
Catarina Laranjeiro, filmmaker and doctoral researcher, CES – University of Coimbra
Daniel Barroca, artist
Filipa César, artist
José Manuel Costa, director of Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema
Lee Grieveson, director of the Graduate Programme in Film Studies at University College London and co-principal investigator of  ‘Colonial Cinema: Moving Images of the British Empire’
Maria Benedita Basto, professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 8
Paulo Cunha, researcher, CEISXX – Universidade de Coimbra
Pedro Costa, filmmaker
Raquel Schefer, artist and professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Robert Stock, professor, University of Konstanz
Ros Gray, theorist and lecturer in Fine Art (Critical Studies),
Goldsmiths College, University of London
Teresa Castro, art historian and professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle– Paris 3
*Supporting institutions *
Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures, University of Reading
Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture, King’s College
Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho
Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema
Aleph - Rede de investigação e conhecimento crítico da imagem colonial