Inaugural European Conference on Film and Documentary (EuroFilm) 2014 Brighton

Con­fer­ence Topic

2014 Con­fer­ence Theme: “Indi­vid­ual, Com­mu­nity & Soci­ety: Con­flict, Res­o­lu­tion & Synergy”

Con­flict from ear­li­est times has been a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the human con­di­tion. The strug­gle between our indi­vid­ual selves and our social selves arises from what makes us unique on the one hand, being chal­lenged by our being part of an inter­de­pen­dent struc­ture of rela­tion­ships on the other.

The spe­cific blend of expe­ri­ences, abil­i­ties, atti­tudes, and aspi­ra­tions, that helps to define us, can sit some­times uncom­fort­ably along­side our com­mit­ments to those clos­est to us, our com­mu­ni­ties and our cul­tures. This can lead to con­flict at dif­fer­ent levels.

Con­flict within com­mu­ni­ties and soci­eties is inevitable given that these groups are based on com­mon­al­ity of geog­ra­phy, val­ues, atti­tudes, and beliefs that help to dif­fer­en­ti­ate one from another. The dialec­tic engen­dered by diver­sity, how­ever, although it may lead to con­flict, can play an impor­tant role in the expan­sion of ideas in com­mu­ni­ties and soci­eties. One major chal­lenge of mod­ern soci­ety is to har­ness the syn­ergy that emerges from the inter­ac­tive dialec­tic gen­er­ated by these differences.

All forms of media pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing film and documentary-​makers, have long rec­og­nized these dif­fer­ences and fric­tions when they try to explain con­flict through var­i­ous nar­ra­tives, as well as the sys­tem­atic explo­ration of ideas, words, and artis­tic expres­sion. By propos­ing such a wide-​ranging 2014 con­fer­ence theme, the orga­niz­ers hope to encour­age excit­ing new avenues of research, inspire the cre­ation of new explana­tory con­cepts, and pro­vide a con­text for aca­d­e­mic and per­sonal encoun­ters. The resul­tant exchanges it is hoped will stim­u­late syn­er­gies that cross national, reli­gious, cul­tural and dis­ci­pli­nary divides, a bridg­ing idea cen­tral to the global vision of IAFOR.

Con­fer­ence Topics

The con­fer­ence theme is “Indi­vid­ual, Com­mu­nity & Soci­ety: Con­flict, Res­o­lu­tion & Syn­ergy” and the orga­niz­ers encour­age sub­mis­sions that approach this ques­tion from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives, and is designed to elicit a wide vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions as avenues of research. How­ever, the sub­mis­sion of other top­ics for con­sid­er­a­tion is wel­come and we also encour­age ses­sions within and across a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines and fields related to film and doc­u­men­tary, including:

• Film Direc­tion and Production
• Film Crit­i­cism and Theory
• Film and Lit­er­a­ture: Artis­tic Correspondence
• Biog­ra­phy
• Film His­tory
• Doc­u­men­tary History
• Archive-​Based Studies
• Films and Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Use of the Inter­net and video sharing)
• Animé and Dig­i­tal Film Production
• Films, Fes­ti­vals, and Fans (Audience/​Fan responses to film)

NOTE: Suc­cess­ful pre­sen­ta­tions in these streams may be sched­uled along­side rel­e­vant papers sub­mit­ted as a part of the Euro­Film sis­ter con­fer­ence, Euro­Me­dia.

Pub­lish­ing Opportunities

Authors of Accepted Abstracts will have the oppor­tu­nity of pub­lish­ing their asso­ci­ated paper in the offi­cial con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings, and a selec­tion of papers will be con­sid­ered for inclu­sion in the inter­na­tion­ally reviewed IAFOR jour­nals asso­ci­ated with the con­fer­ence. For more infor­ma­tion about the IAFOR Jour­nal of Media, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Film and other jour­nals, click here.