Lev Kulidzhanov's 'Karl Marx: The Early Years'
MARX AT THE MOVIES CONFERENCE
Dear All
This is a Call for Papers for a Conference on Marx and cinema that we are hosting at the University of Central Lancashire. We would really appreciate if you post it on various notice boards and forward it to friends and colleagues. Thanks.
Hope to as many of you in Preston next year!
Best wishes, Lars
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Call for Papers
Marx at the Movies Conference
University of Central Lancashire
March 16-17, 2012
As the Lehmans Brothers filled for bankruptcy on September 15 2008 an era came to a halt. No more was there a belief that ‘the Market’ would work for the greater good as long as it was left un-regulated. As the belief in neoliberal theory and practice collapsed, many turned to the alternative theory – that of Marxism, not least because for Marx the challenge for human thought was not simply to understand the world but to change it.
Not for the first time Marx is ‘fashionable’. As David Harvey observes in his introduction to The Communist Manifesto: ‘The Communist Manifesto of 1847 is an extraordinary document, full of insights, rich in meanings and bursting with political possibilities. Millions of people all around the world – peasants, workers, soldiers, intellectuals as well as professionals of all sorts – have, over the years, been touched and inspired by it.’
The same can be said about filmmakers, film academics and students, in view of the fact that cinema, as a collective endeavour and as an industrial art, is an excellent ground to test Marxist dialectical thought. But how has cinema engaged with Marxist theory and practice? How has cinema engaged in processes to create radical social transformation, including decolonisation and the liberation of women? Is there a revival of Marxism in contemporary film theory and practice?
These are some of the questions we want to discuss during the two-day conference, hosted by theSchool ofJournalism, Media and Communication inPreston – a town of great importance to the history of the working class, as testified by Marx and Engels’ writings.
Papers are sought for topics such as:
* The problems of conveying Marxist thought on screen (including attempts to screen Capital)
* Representation of alienated and non-alienated labour and capital on screen
* The work of Sergei Eisenstein, Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Dušan Makavejev, Satyajit Ray, Ousmane Sembène, Alexander Kluge, Ken Loach, Lars von Trier. Are they Marxist filmmakers?
* Western and Eastern Marxist film theory and history Socialist production, distribution and exhibition of films
* Marxism, Third cinema and the cinema of revolt
* Marxism and feminist cinema
* Marxism, realism and non-realism
* Screen images of Marx, Engels and Lenin
Organising committee:
Professor Ewa Mazierska
Dr. Anandi Ramamurthy
Dr. Lars Kristensen
Deadline for abstracts (max 250 words): 1 December 2011.
Please send abstracts to Ewa Mazierska EHMazierska@uclan.ac.uk Or Lars Kristensen LLFKristensen@uclan.ac.uk
Notice: The conference is not expected to produce a surplus value
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