Cosmopolitan Cinema
Arts and Politics in the Second Modernity
International Conference
organised by Prof. Dr. Matthias Christen & Dr. Kathrin Rothemund
3.-5. April 2014 at the University of Bayreuth/Germany
The conference program can be downloaded here.
Moving
unfettered between nations, markets and identities in a globalized
world, the cosmopolitan has become a key trope of contemporary identity
formation. Being all in one an anthropological assertion, a moral ideal
and a political agenda, cosmopolitanism has proven itself to be an
intellectually highly prolific concept across disciplinary boundaries.
It offers a new take on the flows of people, money and ideas,
circulating between nations and continents, as well as on the
negotiation of cultural difference. Taking up the notion of a world
society as sketched out in the Age of Enlightenment, current debates on
cosmopolitanism stress the moral and political obligations towards
Others. It positions groups and individuals, rather than nation states,
as agents to the fore of cultural and political reasoning. Inspired by
the German philosopher Immanuel Kant the idea of a world history aimed
at the establishment of a concordant world society implies a utopian
stance by providing a counter-offer to real world hegemonic structures
in times of globalization. However, while legal, political and civic
varieties of cosmopolitanism have been discussed intensively over the
last years, a province, being particularly prone to utopianism, still
plays a rather marginal role: the arts in general and cinema in
particular.
We
argue that the utopian vision engrained in cosmopolitism provides a
formative framework for cultural production. Literature, art, theater,
dance, cinema and other media offer creative and challenging
perspectives on cosmopolitanism otherwise primarily conceived of in
moral, legal or political terms. By creating a cosmopolitan imaginary,
the arts, and cinema especially, offer a third space and can be
considered as probing societal forms within an aesthetical realm:
relating spaces and places, narrating interconnections of agents,
objects and layers, creating fictional and artificial worlds.
The
conference will situate cinema within this cosmopolitan imaginary of a
second modernity. Cinema can become – or has always been – a
cosmopolitan agent in the global network, which comprises flows of
movement, expansion and progression. In this sense, a cosmopolitan
cinema can be understood as a political cinema that enables difference
and perforates national boundaries. Within cinema and media studies such
a perforation of nationality has lead to a diversity of terminologies.
Our concept of cosmopolitan cinema takes on established discourses of
film studies such as third cinema, world cinema, accented cinema,
postcolonial cinema, transnational cinema or various forms of the cinema
of migration. At the same time it distances itself from these concepts
by tapping into cosmopolitanism’s long-standing tradition within
European philosophy.
By
establishing the notion of a cosmopolitan cinema we want to open up new
perspectives on some of film studies’ key categories such as œuvre or
authorship as well as on theoretical reflections of specific films
usually discussed in that context. We want to embrace this task by
turning our attention towards films arising outside of the major
cinematographies as well as pointing out fractures and instability
within hegemonic discourses on Hollywood or European art house-cinema.
We also want to challenge classical film-theoretical approaches
concerning their political-aesthetical notion of cosmopolitanism. In
order to do so we want to allocate theoretical debates, which have been
rarely adopted within film studies – in spite of, or due to the fact,
that they enable or necessitate a new perception of and new approaches
to film. This will allow us to reevaluate film history and film theory
with regard to film as a means of projecting and probing model worlds as
well as to incorporate approaches of other research areas – such as
theories of networks, creolization and globalization as well as
discourses on a second modernity.
The
conference’s task will be to broaden the discussions on films produced
in and depicting a globalized world. We would therefore welcome a
dialogue about the cultural impact of cosmopolitanism on the arts as
well as in-depth inquiries into specific (filmic) examples.
Conference Structure
A. Cosmopolitanism – Theoretical contexts
We
want to encourage a debate on terminology concerning cosmopolitanism.
Whether global, transnational, international, accented, migratory, third
or other cinema – each concept offers a different perspective on
cinema. Whether the above-mentioned terms are self-attributed or
academic categories grasping global film movements – each signifies a
specific relation between cinema and society. Positioning cosmopolitan
cinema within this terminological set and discussing it in relation to
further concepts such as a second modernity or utopianism provides the
initial challenges of the conference.
B. Cosmopolitan Cinema
The second part focuses more specifically on cosmopolitanism in and of cinema.The main research areas for the conference will be:
- cosmopolitan space and place (e.g. relations between periphery and center; transgressing and rebuilding borders; outer, inner and confined spaces; performative spaces of film festivals, etc.)
- cosmopolitan agents (e.g. authors, directors, cinematographers, actors; fictional characters such as travelers, terrorists, soldiers, migrants, refugees)
- cosmopolitan institutions (e.g. film funding institutions, film festivals, distributors; institutions as feature characters)
- film form and stylistic features (e.g. genre, sound, mise-en-scène, montage)
- cosmopolitan (hi)stories (e.g. narrative aspects; film historical perspective)
