Buon 2014

Buon anno a tutti!!!!!

Divertitevi, bevete (se non dovete guidare) e comportatevi bene (ma non troppo)!!!!!

Buon Natale!

Buon Natale a tutti i lettori di Cult Television!

Come ogni anno vi ricordo che siete ancora in tempo per qualche regalo solidale:

Emergency

Terres des Hommes

Save the Children

Medici senza Frontiere

Auguri!

Media Mutations 6

Segnalo l'appuntamento annuale con Media Mutations, conferenza organizzata dall'Università di Bologna (27/28 maggio 2014) dedicata ai modi di produzione e alle forme narrative della serialità televisiva contemporanea. 

Ecco il CFP:

Media Mutations 6. Modes of Production and Narrative Forms in the Contemporary TV Series.


Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti, May 27th-28th, 2014


Invited keynote speaker: Catherine Johnson (University of Nottingham)

Media Mutations, the international conference on audiovisual media studies, comes to its sixth annual edition. This year’s theme is the relationship between modes of production and narrative forms in contemporary scripted television series in the United States and in Europe. The industrial structures of television, from labor organization to economic models of monetization, all shape the types of content that is created: the stories that the medium tells and the ways in which it tells them. This year’s conference seeks to explore changes brought in the past decade by new models of business, new technologies and new forms of integration within the media, and the resulting changes to television narratives.
We invite submissions that cover the following topics, favoring proposals that are able to intersect across different areas:

•   Narrative models and industrial structures: the influence of extratextual factors (organizational structures, institutional policies, production patterns, economic models and types of distribution) on the form and language of TV series.

•   New forms of monetization: the relationships between television series, ancillary products and branded extensions in a context of digitization and cross-media storytelling. What effect is the trend towards gamification having on TV series? What elements in series are highlighted by broadcasters according to diverse cross-platform monetization strategies? How is this influenced by contexts of distribution?

•   Genres: the impact of changing economic considerations in re-shaping subgenre traditions (dramas, sitcoms) and in inventing new genres and hybrid forms. To what extent does the TV series format, and its various genres and subgenres, influence and regulate audience expectations?

•   From TV watching to user experiences: the effects of the transition of media broadcasters from content providers to designers of user-oriented experiences based on scripted series. In what ways is added value provided to television texts? What kinds of new cross-media skills are required from TV professionals in the context of expansion of, and integration with, digital media content?

•   Global content flows and local contexts: the discourse of television as a national medium in the shaping of production cultures. In what ways is this discourse influenced by economic, technological and cultural changes? What is the role of production and distribution routines (i.e. dubbing, acquisition, promotion) in the modification (forms and identities) of original series into different local contexts?

•   Theoretical definitions: the identification of effective models in the contemporary milieu, thirty years after the Second Golden Age. The evolution of aesthetic and product-related definitions such as quality TV, high-concept series and narrative complexity.

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian. There will be no conference fee. Proposals of no more than 250 words (for 20-minute talks), should be sent to Luca Barra (luca.barra@unicatt.it), Leora Hadas (lhadas.uni@gmail.com) and Paolo Noto (paolo.noto2@unibo.it) by January the 27th 2014. Please attach a brief biography (maximum 150 words) and an optional selected bibliography (up to three titles) relevant to the conference theme.

Contemporary Horrors: Destabilizing a Cinematic Genre

Altra segnalazione per questa conferenze sull'Horror che si svolgerà presso l'Università di Chicago il 25 e 26 aprile 2014.

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The turn of the millennium has witnessed a uniquely dazzling renaissance in cinematic production within the horror genre. How do we account for the prolific production and prodigious diffusion of horror film since the turn of this last century?  From thematic topoi to cinematographic style, horror cinema of the past 10-15 years has witnessed numerous trends emerge, cross-pollinate internationally, and re-enter the genre in cycles of repetition and transformation accelerated by digital production and distribution technologies. And yet, the sheer proliferation and remarkable diversity of vital horror filmmaking makes defining the genre perhaps more challenging than ever before.

In the 21st century, as horror cinema has become more clearly than ever a global genre, those films that find their way to U.S. movie theaters represent only a small fraction of the total quantity made. Just as the vast majority of horror filmmaking now occurs independently of major studio support, practices of distribution and viewing have expanded and evolved with the internet making this impressive range of films available to fans around the world. One is left to question how structures of global information and capital (and strategies for evasion of such structures), affect the form and function of filmic negotiations of horror. In other words: What delineates horror as a genre in the 21st century? How have shock, fear, and the fantastic been defined in recent horror productions? If horror has become somehow an almost “universal” idiom of global experience, what unifies our senses of trauma? How are memory and melancholy supplanted by obscenity and anxiety?

To engage these and other questions, we welcome speakers who take diverse paths toward contemplation of the contemporary horror film and the questions it raises as a transnational cinematic genre.  A panel of independent horror filmmakers will convene to inaugurate the conference.  Adam Lowenstein, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, will provide the keynote.

Topics that may be considered include but are not limited to:

-        Gore and images of violence; body horror; torture porn/spectacle horror

-        Auteurs and auteurist approaches to genre; alternative collaborationist approaches

-        The significance of horror within contexts of national cinemas and the significance of national contexts for understanding international horror

-        Transnationalism and border-crossings (international co-productions, émigré filmmakers, transnational influences)

-        Remakes and genre formulae; translating and transducing horror across cultures and time

-        New forms/patterns of distribution and spectatorship; Methods of advertising and publicity

-        Queerness and gender issues in horror; the legacy of Carol Clover, Linda Williams, Robin Wood in horror criticism

-        The relationship of art-house cinema to genre (i.e. Haneke, Del Toro, Von Trier, Denis)

-        Monsters and monstrosity

-        The “found footage” film  (Paranormal Activity, [REC], Cloverfield, etc.); “home movies” and the unheimlich

-        Media in horror and “haunted media”; outdated medial artefacts between nostalgia and fear; the afterlife of formats

-        Models for independent production

-        The eroticization of the monstrous and the abject

-        Technologies of horror and horrific technics: instruments of para-transmission

-        Horrified psyches: anxiety, melancholy, depression, and affective models

-        Horror as Event

-        Speculative realism at the movies: the object’s ontology in the horror film.

Abstracts of a maximum of 200-250 words are due no later than February 1, 2014 by email to contemporaryhorrors.uchicago@gmail.com.

Mechanisms of Monstrosity Conference

Segnalo questa interessante conferenza che si svolgerà al Mansfield College di Oxford il prossimo 27 luglio 2014.

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This years Monsters and the Monstrous conference will focus on the mechanisms of monstrosity itself and the forms of othering and difference that cause a society, a culture and a historical moment to label someone or something as monstrous. As such, whilst iconic monsters such as Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula can themselves be seen to embody a particular cultures sexual, racial, and even biological anxieties, we wish to focus on those forms of abjection that can be seen to have initiated or fueled such a “monstrous” response. Contemporary examples might include paedophiles, parents in the widest sense (mothers and usually step-fathers in particular) who kill their children, sex offenders and even immigrants. More recently, reactions to bankers, the perceived greed of corporations, and even natural phenomenon (global warming, tseunami’s, tornado’s) have elicited similar responses. Consequently it is both the groups, even phenomena, that are othered or seen to “polute” and destabilse the normalised “us” of society, and the reasons and mechanisms of why and how that we wish to explore.

These monstrous technologies, as labelled by some theorists, or what we might also call the mechanics of monstrosity are utilised by ideologies of patriarchy, nationalism, imperialism and capitalism, to name but a few, to victimise those that defy or exceed categorisation or that threaten to corrupt or dissolve the hetero-normative subject and the societal “I”. Whilst this points to the monsterisation of groups, or individuals that fail to belong to the “group,” due to their, gender, sexuality, disability or ethnicity, it also suggests the inherent monstrosity of the group, culture, ideology that creates and enforces such systems of demarcation and exclusion. As such the nature of the machinery of monstrosity created, maintained and disseminated by and throughout a particular culture will also be examined. It is also worth noting of course that whilst such mechanisms differentiate between those that are included and excluded, that even with the category of the “us” there are often further sub-divisions of purity and privilege, or what we might call “non-monstrosity.” Here then hierarchies of class, caste, gender and ability can be seen to be equally monsterising in the way it differentiates both inside and outside the category of “us”.

This call for proposals then asks for consideration of the above in relation to differing cultures and societies as well as specific historical moments that produced and utilised ideologies of monstrosity, in terms of sex, gender, ethnicity, disability, class etc., to delineate notions of societal inclusion and exclusion, and various hierarchies within them.

Examples of the above can be seen in, but are not exclusive to, the following categories:

Collective, Social, National- neighbours, enemies and outsiders – real and imaginary lands
- supernatural realms and spiritual otherness
- human, non-human and animal
- colonialism, post-colonialism and borderlands
- barbaric acts, piracy, cannibalism, genocide
- surveillance, control and dissemination

Gender and Sexuality- heteronormativity, male hierarchy, patriarchy, matriarchy and  feminism
- LGBTQ
- asexual, non-sexual, hermaphrodite and non-reproduction
- alternative sexual practices, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia

Individual, Internal- skin colour, hair colour, blemishes, tatoos, piercing
- fashion, costume, cosmetics and body enhancement
- customs, rites and religious practice
- disability, body difference, chronic conditions and mental health
- class, caste, age, language, dialect

Phenomena- natural disasters, acts of God, global warming and extreme weather
- ideological monsters, economic collapse/crisis and GM crops and foodstuffs
- media, internet and virtual spaces, hacking, trolling and bullying
- WMD’s, chemical weapons, warcrimes and enhanced torture

Proposals for panels and alternative forms of presentation are strongly encouraged on the above and any related topics.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Monsters and the Monstrous and Sins, Vices and Virtues.

What to Send
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 14th February 2014. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 16th May 2014. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Monsters12 Proposal Submission

All abstracts will be at least double blind peer reviewed. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs .

Rob Fisher: m12@inter-disciplinary.net
Simon Bacon :simonmonster@inter-disciplinary.net

Almost Human della Fox

In un futuro non troppo lontano e molto violento i poliziotti sono affiancati da un partner androide. Il poliziotto John Kennex (Karl Urban) si risveglia dopo due anni di coma dopo un agguato di una organizzazione criminale ed è deciso a scoprire la verità sull'evento che ha ucciso un suo collega umano e gli ha fatto perdere una gamba. Con un nuovo arto robotico e un collega androide di vecchia generazione, Dorian (Michael Ealy), John rientra al servizio del suo capo Maldonado (Lili Taylor).