Call for Papers
Cinema and the City: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

International Conference
November 29-30, 2019

University of Palermo, Department of Architecture, viale delle Scienze
Room 1.3 and 1.4, Main Building

Deadline for proposals: November 6, 2019

The conference aims to explore the relationships established between cinema and urban areas. We want to stress the connections woven between cities and cinema, films, fiction and documentaries – important unconventional sources for the understanding of social and cultural contexts. We intend to focus on the modalities used in films to tell stories – through images and speech – concerning cities, territories, and places, residents’ lives in relation to spaces, to buildings, to landscapes, as well as to its urban culture as a whole. The perspective we have chosen for this conference is interdisciplinary and cinema will be considered as a medium to be understood and interpreted in several, possibly comparative, ways. Actually, cinema, as a specific cultural artefact, expresses both individual and collective viewpoints mirroring cultures and hybridizations that can be explored by various disciplines and comparative perspectives. This complexity, possible reflection of the contemporary world, is perhaps more tangible in cinema than in other expressive forms, making it accessible to many people and at the same time a medium in which several genres and contents meet and can be analysed and compared. We are particularly interested in comparative perspectives and interdisciplinary viewpoints. As a result, the conference aims to engage researchers from different countries and various fields of study in order to explore the multiple ways through which cinema is able to contain and manifest crucial aspects of cities and urban spaces. Anthropologists, architects, urban planners, geographers, sociologists, film critics, semioticians, scholars of aesthetics, of images, of cultural studies, as well as film directors, documentary film makers and designers are invited to share their experiences and their ideas. We intend to collect the articles and publish them in a collective volume.

The Committee welcomes papers on any-related topic. Suggested topics may include:

Cultural and social exchanges and/or conflicts between cultures, people and places
Cultural hybridizations
Urban spaces: the concrete building
Urban spaces: the symbolic building
Urban spaces: beauty
Urban spaces: transformation
Urban spaces: relationships between people
Living, moving, dwelling
Urban economy and the real estate market
Urban rituals
Visual imaginaries
Cities and comics
Film photography and urban spaces
Food and cities
Politics, cinema and cities
Ghettoes and cities as “prisons”
Urban distress and marginalization, inclusion and exclusion
Transforming urban spaces
Centres, suburbs, gentrification
Cities and dreams
Urban biographies: telling the city
Everyday life and urban infrastructures
Domestic spaces and cities
Identity and urban configurations
Old and new methodologies of analysis
Imaginary horizons and cities
Perception, interaction and urban spaces
Urban Resilience/Resistance

Scientific Coordinators
Flavia Schiavo and Stefano Montes

Organizing committee
Flavia Schiavo, Stefano Montes, Leonardo Mercatanti, Federico Montanari, Alessandro Prato, Gaetano Sabato, Giusi Coppola, Massimo Bonura, Alessio Arena

Administrative organisation
Department of Architecture, Università di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze 90128, Palermo

Proposals and information should be sent to:
Flavia Schiavo (flaviaschiavo62@gmail.com) and Stefano Montes (montes.stefano@tiscalinet.it)

Deadline for proposals and biodata: Novembre 6, 2019
Proposal abstract and title: max 250 words
Time for speech: 20 minutes
Languages used in the conferences: Italian, English, French and Spanish

Participation is free, travelling, accommodation and meals are covered by participants.