ILUMINACE

The new themed issue is out now!
⏩️Filmic Matter and Geographic Specificity

Guest editors: Byron Davies and Jiří Anger
Read the issue here 👇https://iluminace.cz/en/magno/ilu/2025/mn3.php?l=en

The materiality of film and audiovisual media has often been understood in universal terms, or through the language of canonized Western thought. This special issue demonstrates the diverse ways in which filmic matter can be articulated in relation to local and geographic contexts. Case studies in manufacturing, preservation, circulation, and artistic appropriation of both photochemical and digital film across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa highlight the extent to which cinema is shaped by the availability (or unavailability) of specific physical materials and resources.

The issue features both written papers and audiovisual essays. The lineup includes:

⏩️Byron Davies – Jiří Anger: Toward a Geographically Specific Understanding of Filmic and Media Matter: An Introduction to a Special Issue
⏩️Marek Jancovic: Cinema’s Atmospheric A Priori: How Weather and Environment Shaped Celluloid Film Manufacturing and Raw Material Supply at Fujifilm, Daicel, and Agfa
⏩️Jennifer Nightingale: Knitting on Location: The Norfolk Knitting Pattern Film Series (audiovisual essay)
⏩️Libertad Gills: Por un cine cachinero: Reappropriation as a Survival Strategy in Contemporary Experimental Cinema from Guayaquil (audiovisual essay)
⏩️Maxime Harvey: Language Matters in the Geography of AI: French-Language Uses of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Filmmaking
⏩️Aleksei Ziniuk – Margarita Galandina: Refiguring the Buryat Photographic Archive: Ethnographic Visuality, Vernacular Montage, and Shamanic Temporality
⏩️Laurence Kent: Hussein Shariffe’s Filmic Ruins: Archival Noise and The Dislocation of Amber (1975) (audiovisual essay)
⏩️Bori Máté: Ritualization and Táltos Procedures in Péter Lichter’s Nutrition Fugue (2018)
⏩️Ludo de Roo: Kidlat Tahimik: Metaphorical Journeys in Decolonial Cinema
⏩️Floris Paalman: Moving in Circles: Space and Place in Media Archaeology and the Art of Jop Horst

Article outside the themed section (in Czech language):
⏩️Tereza Frodlová – Jakub Egermajer: Medieval Partisan in Color: Restoration of the Film Jan Roháč of Dubá as a Source of Cultural History

📖The issue also contains book reviews.

ℹ️Printed version available soon: www.eshop.nfa.cz/iluminace

Iluminace No. 2/2025 is out now! The theme is: A Conversation Beyond the Script. As part of this, we are publishing seven articles:
🟤 Jan Černík / Jan Trnka: Shifting Screenwriting — The Past, Present and Future of the Craft. An Introduction to a Special Issue “Conversation Beyond Script”
🟤 Claus Tieber: Fascinating Rhythm. The Screenwriting of Sound Symphonies for American and European Film of the 1930s
🟤 Martin Kos: Copyright, Credits, and Write-for-Hire Creativity. Authorship and Authority in Czech Silent Screenwriting
🟤 Rosamund Davies: Talking to You. Addressing the Viewer in Virtual Reality Narratives
🟤 Cecilie Levy: Subjective Access and Focalization in VR
🟤 Maria Chiara Oltolini: Storytelling Beyond Dialogue and Preschool Animation. Rethinking Audiovisual Narrative in the TV Series The Sound Collector
🟤 Imran Firdaus: The Living Script. Proposing an Adaptive Practice in Humaira Bilkis’s Things I Could Never Tell My Mother (2022)

And three more studies outside the theme:
🟤 Nicholas David Hudac: The Anti-Star. Věra Hrubá Ralston and Fault Lines of Classic Models of Stardom
🟤 Veronika Klusáková: “You All Have Such a Wholesome Look.”
Class and the Gothic Family in Ozark
🟤 Jiří Horníček: Filmový formát 9,5 mm coby obchodní artikl.
Historie firmy Cinéma v kontextu českého amatérského filmu v letech 1932–1952

The issue also includes an interview with Cristi Puiu and review of the book Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen.

☝️The complete issue can be found here: https://www.iluminace.cz/en/magno/ilu/2025/mn2.php?l=en
ℹ️Printed version available soon: www.eshop.nfa.cz/iluminace

The new themed issue is out now!
▶️ Animation Studios: People, Spaces, Labor

Guest editors: Ewa Ciszewska (University of Lodz) and Pavel Skopal (Masaryk University)
Read the issue here 👇https://www.iluminace.cz/en/magno/ilu/2024/mn3.php?l=en

The issue includes:
▶️ Michal Večeřa – Szymon Szul: How Serials Reshaped Animation Production. Comparative Analysis of Animated Film Serials Produced by the Studio in Gottwaldov and ‘Se-Ma-For’ Studio of Small Film Forms (1960s–1980s)
▶️ Tereza Bochinová – Agata Hofelmajer-Roś: The Agency and Effect of Technical Equipment on Animation Production in Studios Se-Ma-For and FS Kudlov in the 1970s and 1980s
▶️ Emil Sowiński: From Semi-Amateur to Professional Production Conditions. The Irzykowski Film Studio and Animation in the Late People’s Republic of Poland
▶️ Jane Cheadle: Transcontinental Studio Collaboration in the Production of the African-futurist Anthology Kizazi Moto
▶️ Colin Wheeler: Bring Your Toys to Work. Desk Displays at the Animation Studio

Book reviews:
📖 Liri Alienor Chapelan: Refusing to Fade. Soviet Domestic Photography Archives as Memory Strongholds
(Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko, In Visible Presence:
Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos)
📖 Jan Bergl: I provizorní zastávka může být cíl
(Jiří Anger, ed., Digitální Kříženecký: Nový život prvních českých filmů)

Printed version available soon 👉 www.eshop.nfa.cz/iluminace

Our recent special issue, Configuring Computer Labor in Film and Audiovisual Media, guest-edited by Veronika Hanakova, has received multiple acknowledgments in Sight and Sound’s Best Video Essays of 2024 poll.

👉 https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/polls/best-video-essays-2024

This is what researcher and filmmaker Kevin B. Lee wrote:
“Any of the four video essays featured in this issue would make my list on its own, but taken together it’s a truly formidable collection, exploring cinema and media’s complex and evolving relationship with computer technology. Kudos to Veronika Hanáková for conceiving and curating such a strong and timely issue for the Czech film journal Iluminace.”

A special shoutout to Occitane Lacurie, whose video essay »Ordinatrices: About the Negative Spaces of Early Computing« ranked in the top five of the year with six nominations!

See the full issue here 👇
https://www.iluminace.cz/en/magno/ilu/2024/mn2.php

🖼 Still image from Ordinatrices: About the Negative Spaces of Early Computing (Occitane Lacurie, 2024), courtesy of the artist

📣 ILUMINACE announces a call for papers for its new themed issue:

👉 Theme: A Conversation Beyond the Script

Guest editors: Jan Trnka (Národní filmový archiv), Jan Černík (Palacký University)
Deadline for abstracts: November 15, 2024
Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2025.

During the past decade, the field of writing for the screen and its academic reflection has undergone several changes. The biggest challenges for the screenwriting community (mainly in the USA but not only there) have been the financial remuneration of screenwriters, their job opportunities, and the rise of artificial intelligence. It resulted in another WGA strike, with which many regional screenwriting associations stood in solidarity. Screenwriting studies are responding to this with a gradual change of perspective. Alongside the continued interest in teaching screenwriting and narrative patterns, we are increasingly encountering case studies on regional approaches to writing, scripting for short formats and VR which can be understood as a tendency to broaden the field of interest and opportunities for screenwriters.

We are calling for contributions that address the complex and multifaceted nature of dialogues and conversations in the screenwriting and audiovisual industry. This theme can be grasped in two ways: either as a reflection of dialogues in scripts and audiovisual art or as an insight into the filmmakers' debates during the development and production phases or as ways of negotiating between screenwriters and production companies. Papers may reflect both traditional approaches to writing and new technologies such as AI and VR.

For the forthcoming issue, we invite authors to send us abstracts dealing with any of these possible (but not exclusive) topics:

* Dialogues and Discourse in Screenplays: Examining how character dialogues function within scripts to convey subtext, emotion, and narrative progression.
* Plurality of Voices and Polylogues: Analyzing scripts that feature multiple voices and complex conversational structures, reflecting the diversity of perspectives.
* Dissemination of Information: Investigating how information is shared through dialogue, affecting audience perception and engagement.
* Storytelling Through Conversation: Exploring the role of conversational dynamics in shaping narrative and character arcs.
* Collaborative Conversations in Filmmaking: Understanding the impact of dialogue between writers, directors, and other stakeholders on the creative process.
* Intercultural Dialogue in Film and Television: Studying how cross-cultural interactions are represented and negotiated through dialogue in screenplays.
* History and Theory of Screenwriting: Reflecting on the evolution of screenwriting practices and theoretical approaches.
* Teaching Screenwriting Techniques: Discussing pedagogical methods and strategies for teaching dialogue writing and screenplay construction.
* Narrative Strategies in Audiovisual Media: Examining innovative narrative techniques in film, television, and new media, focusing on the integration of dialogue.

For further inspiration, see the literature cited at: https://www.iluminace.cz/artkey/inf-990000-1400_Call-for-papers.php

We invite scholars and practitioners to submit papers that engage with these topics, offering fresh perspectives and rigorous analysis. Submissions should be original, unpublished works that contribute to the academic discourse on screenwriting and filmmaking.

Please send an abstract (250 words) and a short bio (150 words) to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by November 15, 2024. The authors will be informed of the decision by December 15, 2024. The deadline for submitting the full article is February 15, 2025. No payments are required.