Ever since the centenary of cinema there have been intense discussions in the fields of film studies and film criticism about the imminent demise of the cinematic medium, endless articles championing the spirit of genuine cinephilia have proclaimed the death of classical cinema and mourned the end of an era, while new currents in media studies introduced such buzzwords into the discussions as "remediation" (Bolter and Grusin), "media convergence" (Jenkins) or "post-media aesthetics" (Manovich). By the turn of the millennium, the whole "ecosystem" of media has been radically altered through processes of hybridization and media convergence. Some theorists claim that now that the term "medium" has triumphed in the discussions around contemporary art and culture, the actual media have already deceased. Digitized imagery absorbs all media that become mere "phantoms of their former self" (Lutticken).
Moving images have entered the art galleries and new forms of inter-art relationships have been forged. They have also moved into the streets and our everyday life as a domesticated medium at everybody's reach. Can we say therefore that cinema is gradually becoming an "incredible shrinking medium," as David N. Rodowick suggests (in The Virtual Life of Film, 2007), disappearing into the archives and film museums, or – on the contrary – can it be considered as the ultimate, chameleon-like intermedium that can continually shift its shape, "moving from a sculptural to a painterly medium" (Rodowick), or nowadays amid the fashionable CGI and motion capture techniques combining both the "sculptural" and the "painterly" in 3D cinema?
Consequently, should we speak more of an all pervasive "cinematic experience" instead of a cinematic medium? What really happens to film once its traditional medium has shape shifted into various digital forms and once its traditional locations, institutions and usages have been uprooted? What are the most influential thoughts that have surfaced in the discussions of a cinematic post-medium condition? Are film studies headed in the direction of more "piecemeal theory" as advocated by Bordwell and Carroll in their highly influential Post-Theory book, or should we welcome a new turn towards a philosophy of film as Rodowick contends in his Elegy for Theory? What are the major contemporary points of view in approaching motion pictures (from Jacques Rancière's "future of the image" to Lev Manovich's "database aesthetics")?
In light of the above, we invite you to contemplate over some of the major questions that can be asked about film in a post-media age.
We welcome papers addressing the following issues
a) either from a theoretical point of view or b) through concrete analyses of films:

* Revisiting the concept of the medium in a post-media age: the concepts of medium specificity, remediation, media convergence, media archaeology, intermediality, hybridity related to the study of moving images.
* Changing contexts, moving frames: recontextualizations of cinema. Cinema in the gallery, in the museum, in cyber space, etc. (e.g. Simon Pummel: Bodysong http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/bodysong/website.html#).
* Against the myth of the universal language of cinema: the rise of the "accented"/vernacular forms of cinema in an increasingly globalized media environment (films foregrounding native speech, dialects, local and ethnic specificities).
* Old structures in new clothes, dead media/"undead media" haunting the new forms of the moving images? Or the reverse: the impact of new media over classical film genres and the rhetoric of cinema. The rise of post-media genres? (E.g. web series, streamies.)
* Digitally recycled cinema? Retakes on remakes: the issue of cinematic heritage in the digital age (e.g. Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake http://dziga.perrybard.net/).
* The dissemination and domestication of the cinematic medium: institutional and private spheres of moving images.
* Reflexivity in the post-media age? Films reflecting on changing uses/contexts, and forms of the moving images (the films of Atom Egoyan, Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf etc.).

We address this call for papers not only to university scholars, researchers but also to students of PhD programs, or even to M.A/undergraduate university students who wish to engage in a debate on the given topic.

The conference proposes to facilitate academic communication between existing centres of research specializing in film and media studies within different universities, and at the same time, it encourages students on different academic levels to be initiated into scientific research.

The time for presentations is limited to 20 minutes, followed by a 10 minute debate.

The best papers written based on the conference presentations will be published in English in either an individual conference volume (the topic has already raised the interest of the editors of our previous, 2008 conference volume at the Cambridge Scholars Press) and/or in our department's international, peer reviewed scientific journal (Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Film & Media Studies)

Registration deadline: July 25, 2010.
We will notify you about the acceptance of your proposals by August 2, 2010.

Registration: please complete the registration form that you can download from the conference website and send it as an attachment to the following address: 2010.post.media@gmail.com