Activities

In the academic year 2009-10, the main activities of the network will be concentrated at Leeds. Activities in the academic years 2010-11 and 2011-12 with be mostly held at York and Sheffield, and initial funding will be supplied by these two universities.

Activities at Leeds:
A CWC-WUN seminar series was held in 2009-10 under a double-bill subject, corresponding to the two MCN research lines: Seminar Series Part 1: ‘Theoretical Issues in World Cinemas’; Seminar Series Part 2: ‘Intercultural Dialogue with Japan’.

The first workshop of a series of three was held on 10-11 May 2010 at Leeds. The title of this workshop was: ‘Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Approaches to Cinema’. Part 1 of the workshop focused on the Japanese case; Part 2 considered perspectives on European and World Cinema. Several guests from home and abroad were invited to this workshop.

The first international conference ‘Impure Cinema: Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Approaches to World Cinema’ will be held in Leeds from 2-5 December 2010.   The title of this conference draws on André Bazin’s famous article ‘Pour un cinéma impur: défense de l’adaptation’. This has been translated into English simply as ‘In Defense of Mixed Cinema’, probably to avoid any uncomfortable sexual or racial resonances of the word ‘impure’. We go back to Bazin’s original title precisely for its defence of impurity, which refers, on the one hand, to cinema’s interbreeding with other arts and, on the other, to its ability to convey and promote cultural diversity. This conference will combine cinema’s interdisciplinary and intercultural aspects as a means to contribute to the deprovincialisation of criticism and bridge the divide between aesthetic and cultural studies. It will necessarily contemplate intermedia translations, including literary and theatrical adaptations, as well as cross-media citations. But it will reach beyond this, by locating and analysing the ways in which multiple media share strategic narrative and aesthetic devices which can only be properly understood if their cultural determinants are taken into account.