Call for Papers

International Conference

« Brian De Palma: The Politics of Images »

Thursday, June 5 & Friday, June 6 2025

Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University – Site Saint-Charles - Auditorium

"I make political cinema"
Brian De Palma (Libération, Feb 5, 2002)



In 2025, the US filmmaker Brian De Palma will turn 85. To celebrate this New Hollywood pioneer and his impressive body of work (30 feature-length fiction films, not counting ongoing projects, documentaries and shorts), this symposium will look at the director's filmography primarily through political and aesthetic approaches, aiming to offer a fresh perspective on a much-studied body of work. It will also be an opportunity to look at his lesser-known works.
“It’s not easy to combine aesthetic fascination with political reflection,” noted Martin Barnier and Laurent Jullier (283), but that's exactly what De Palma did in a prolific, eclectic, provocative, and committed career. The 1960s, which coincided with the director’s film debut, marked a turning point in the history of the United States, and the rest of the world. Profound social, political, and geopolitical upheavals gave rise to protest movements and an outpouring of violence that was reflected in the film production of the period (Corrigan 1991; Prince, 2000; Thoret, 2003; Wood, 2003): the assassinations of the Kennedys in 1963 and 1968, then of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968), the Vietnam War and the protests it sparked (1965-73), the Watts riots (1965) at the heart of the civil rights movement, the feminist struggle, the hippie movement, Woodstock (1969). ... the rejection the 1950s moral conventions gave way to the motto “sex, drugs and rock'n roll.” The collapse of the studio system in favor of television, the rejection of norms, and the climate of countercultural rebellion allowed independent, offbeat directors like De Palma to build careers within a movement later known as New Hollywood (Biskind, Villenave).
Brian De Palma’s first six feature films, made between 1968 (Murder a la Mod) and 1972 1972 (Sisters)–including the madcap Hi Mom! (1970), starring Robert De Niro, are often less well known, but seem particularly attuned to the political, ideological, and cultural upheavals rocking American society. We would welcome studies of this early corpus whose aesthetics of political subversion, we believe, became one of the guiding threads of his future work.
Greetings (1968) and Causalities of War (1989) deal with the Vietnam War through the lens of the veteran figure in the former, and war crimes in the latter, while political assas-sinations can be found in Blow Out (1981) and Snake Eyes (1998), two thrillers that use voyeurism and surveillance in the pursuit of political conspiracy. In a more contemporary period, De Palma revives the explicitly political mode, notably in his film about the war in Iraq, Redacted (2007), which draws parallels between the war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq, as if to remind us that history keeps repeating itself. De Pal-ma is concerned with the discrepancy between videos from surveillance devices, or those shot with miniature cameras circulating on the Internet and, paradoxically, the near invis-ibility of war on television.
The film examines both cinematic “impurity” (who films? with what?) and the role of audiovisual images in writing history (for whom? to tell what?). Finally, his latest film Domino (2019), a transnational thriller set in Europe, takes as its “topical” subject the fight against Islamic terrorism. Its French subtitle, “La guerre silencieuse” (“The Silent War”), suggests that it is an extension of his earlier war films, in which he takes the theme of violence in the name of an ideology, no longer on a battlefield but in an urban environment.
De Palma also explored the theme of organized crime in such seminal works as Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), and Carlito’s Way (1993), examining the systemic vio-lence that dominates American society and its complex relationship to the “American Dream,” putting the issue of immigration at the forefront, as Hawks and Wellman had done before him.
In this conference, we propose to address the explicit and implicit political dimension of the filmmaker’s work, both in terms of the subjects chosen and the aesthetic form (split-screen, sequence shots, slow motion, complex camera movements, gaze connections, etc.), and in relation to the film’s generic markers (see, for example, Linda Ruth Williams’ work on the erotic thriller).
To that extent, we would like speakers to first consider the political dimension of De Palma’s work in its links with the history of the United States and along three main lines: foreign policy, domestic policy and cultural approaches (feminist, queer, intersectional...).

While his admiration for Hitchcock’s work and the Hitchcockian sequences that permeate his films have been widely studied (Wood 2003, Allen 2004, Greven 2013), the recurrence of specific audiovisual forms in De Palma’s oeuvre invites us to reflect on their origins and classifications. Is this interplay of intertextual references the mark of a filmmaker’s playful pleasure, or does it reflect deeper political issues where the reflexive emergence of an intertext comes to question De Palma’s imaginary? This technical master, known for his split-screens (see Douglas Keesey’s detailed study 2017), slow-motion and sequence shots (Léon 2013), also directed sequences seemed straight out of silent slapstick movies (The Wedding Party, 1969), demonstrating a meticulous attention to the audiovisual form in his work, whose political stakes we wish to question. Transfilmic studies (if possible outside the realm of Hitchcock and Antonioni) will therefore be welcome, as well as political reflections on the polysemic concept of "mannerism" and its possible redefinitions and implications.

In a broader sense, De Palma’s cinema regularly highlights cinematic and/or audiovisual mechanisms that underscore the artificiality of the worlds he creates. One thinks of the sets and games of disguise in Body Double (1984), which takes place within the film industry, or the protagonist’s manual work on sound and image editing in Blow Out. This conference will provide an opportunity to consider the mechanisms of aesthetic, ideological, and political critique, particularly through the use of metafiction and reflexivity. (Roche 2022)
It will also provide an opportunity to study De Palma's cinematic output diachronically, and to propose one or more classifications. Beginning in 1960 with the short film Icarus, can De Palma's oeuvre be considered as classic, modern and/or postmodern, in relation to or at odds with the time of its production? How does the filmmaker also appropriate genres (thriller, action, fantasy, war, comedy, etc.) and confront them with their ideolog-ical and political potential?
Ultimately, De Palma’s films invite us to uncover the multiple relationships they weave with other art forms, giving us the opportunity to study cinematic “impurity” in relation to issues of political subversion. Consider, for example, the relationship to fantasy and horror literature through his adaptations of Stephen King’s novel Carrie (1974/1976) or Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987/1990), to the architecture of the shopping mall in Body Double, to the visual arts in Dressed to Kill (1980), to music and sound in Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Blow Out. (Peretz 2007) How does intermediality, in the sense of the relationship to other arts, generate an additional, sometimes political meaning within De Palma's films? Does this intermediality question the place of cinema in a hierarchy of the arts that would lead us to perceive it a subversive popular art?

Proposals may therefore address the following topics:

- Analyses of “political” films and/or “political analyses” of Brian De Palma’s films;
- New ideological and political approaches to his work (feminist, intersectional, queer, etc.);
- Analysis of the relationship between audio-visual images, politics and the writing of history;
- Critical, ideological and political issues of intertextuality, reflexivity and metafiction;
- Ideological and political issues in relation to genres (thriller, action, fantasy, war, comedy, etc.);
- The relationship with other arts, intermediality in De Palma's work and the political place given to cinema.

The conference is part of the “Films and Series: Politics of Audiovisual Forms” programme of the RiRRa21–University the Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, in collaboration with Textes et Cultures – Artois University.

A keynote address will be given by Eyal Peretz, author of Becoming Visionary. Brian De Palma’s Cinematic Education of the Senses (Stanford University Press, 2007.

Paper proposals (a 200-300 word abstract, an indicative bibliography, and a short biography) in English or French should be sent before 15 January 2025 to the three co-organizers, Julien Achemchame (RIRRA 21 - Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University), Julie Assouly (Praxis et Esthétique des Arts – Artois University), Elena Tyushova (CRÆ- Picardie Jules Verne University):

julien.achemchame@univ-montp3.fr
julie.assouly@gmail.com
tyushova.elena@gmail.com


Scientific Committee
Claire Cornillon (Nîmes University), Sébastien Lefait (Aix-Marseille University), Elizabeth Mullen (Bretagne Occidentale University), Delphine Letort (Le Mans University), David Roche (Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 University), Jean-Philippe Trias (Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 University), Jennifer Verraes (Paris 8 University), Baptiste Villenave (Caen Normandie University).

Bibliographie sélective / Selective bibliography

• Richard Allen, “Hitchcock, De Palma, and the Fate of the Modernist Image” In Hitchcock: Past and Future, London: Routledge, 2004 (226-244).
• Martin Barnier et Laurent Jullier, Une Brève histoire du cinéma. 1895-2020, Paris, Librairie Arthème Fayard / Pluriel, 2021.
• Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1998.
• Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema Without Walls, New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers, 1991).
• Chris Dumas, Un–American Psycho – Brian De Palma and the Political, ‎ Bristol, Intellect, 2012.
• Jean-Michel Durafour, Brian De Palma Epanchements : sang, perception, théorie, coll. « Esthétiques », Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013.
• David Greven, Psycho-Sexual : male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin, Austin, U. of Texas Press, 2013.
• Laurence F. Knapp (ed.), Brian De Palma: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers), Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2003.
• Douglas Keesey, Brian De Palma's Split-Screen: A Life in Film, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
• Geoff King, “New Hollywood Violence”, in Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster, London: I.B. Tauris, 2000 (147-167).
• Luc Lagier, Les mille yeux de Brian de Palma, Paris, Les Cahiers du cinéma, 2008.
• Benjamin Léon, « L’écran dans l’écran : Notes sur le plan-séquence chez Brian De Palma », La Furia Umana, 2013, 4, pp.91-102.
• Agnès de Luget et Magalie Flores-Lonjou, « Elia Kazan versus Brian De Palma : leur guerre du Vietnam », dans Questions internationales n° 55, mai-juin 2012, p. 106.
• Eyal Peretz, Becoming Visionary. Brian De Palma’s Cinematic Education of the Senses, Redwood City (Cal.), Stanford University Press, 2007.
• Stephen Prince, Screening Violence, New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers U. P., 2000.
• Nathan Réra, Outrages : de Daniel Lang à Brian de Palma : une enquête, Pertuis, Rouge profond, 2021.
• David Roche, Meta in Film and Television Series, Edinburgh, Edinburgh U. P., 2022.
• Jean-Baptiste Thoret, 26 Secondes, l'Amérique éclaboussée, Perthuis, Rouge Profond, 2003.
• Baptiste Villenave, Le Nouvel Hollywood (1967-1980), Rennes, PUR, 2022.
• Linda Ruth Williams, “Brian De Palma ‘Sex is terrifying’” (83) & “Suture and the Narration of Gender: The Gore, the Whore, and the Nosy Detective” (112-138) In The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005.
• Wood, Robin, “Brian De Palma: The Politics of Castration”, In Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan... and Beyond, New York, Columbia University Press, 2003 (81-91).