Call for Proposals, Experimental Fiction Filmmaking Festival and Conference

18th – 19th July 2024, University of Salford, Media City UK.

Submission deadline: Friday 17 May 2024

The second Experimental Fiction Filmmaking Festival and Conference aims to explore and define the boundaries of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking (EFF) by bringing together PAR academics, film scholars, industry professionals and independent filmmakers for a series of workshops, presentations and screenings. 

EFF draws upon traditions in cinema, experimental film, art cinema and expanded cinema, but also specific philosophical concerns and practitioner insights and sensibilities. EFF is not tied to one particular movement or period of cinema history, some of its varied histories can be traced back to the modernist period in the early 20th century, for example the early works of Surrealism in cinema, photogenie and the work of Jean Epstein and Louis Delluc, or the experiments in montage of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. More contemporary examples can be found in the work of Agnes Varda, Vera Chytilova, William Greaves, Lars von Trier, Claire Denis, Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Harmony Korine, Luis Bunuel, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Tsai Ming Liang, Wong Kar Wai, Philippe Grandrieux, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mike Figgis, and many others. However, the aim of this event is not to re-reclassify the history of cinema based on narrative or formal markers, but rather to establish and develop a set of experimental methods and approaches to fiction film production, which will expand on the creative potential of cinema and provide guidance and inspiration to both established and emerging filmmakers, in a rapidly developing technological context. Alongside this practical experimentation, the event asks how experimental fiction filmmaking might enable new modes of critical engagement and interpretation with the processes developed and the films made, within their theoretical, philosophical and ethical contexts.

Film fiction continues to be a form of storytelling under constant development, whether in terms of exploration of film’s unique audio-visual possibilities of expression and communication, or new processes afforded to filmmakers through changing cultural and technological contexts. Therefore, film fiction can benefit from new conceptualisations of storytelling that are rooted both in the specificity of film as a  medium, and the way different contexts and processes might be brought to film anew. Practice-as-research in film is a useful approach to developing such new conceptual approaches.

Some of the questions that the INEFF Festival and Conference hopes to address include but are not limited to:

1. What are the creative possibilities and boundaries of experimental fiction filmmaking?
2. Which processes of collaboration can inform novel and meaningful experimental fiction film outputs?
3. How might new technology shape new narrative fiction forms?
4. How might experimental fiction filmmaking lead to novel modes of critical engagement and interpretation?
5. How might we define Experimental Fiction Filmmaking?

We welcome proposals for workshops (up to 30 minutes), film screenings (up to 20 minutes) and work installations/demonstrations (negotiable). 

We also welcome more traditional papers. However, these will be split between content you provide online on ineff.org (either your paper, video presentation or mixed media), and a five-minute live summary as part of a thematic panel, which will inform a lively critical discussion during the event. 

Submission Guidelines:

Proposals should include

1. Short statement about how your practice and/or research links to the notion of EFF (200 words)
2. A short proposal or outline of how you would envision contributing to the event (details of a paper, workshop, or sharing/screening practice) (300 words)
3. Link(s) to any relevant practice.
4. 100-word bio. 

Please use this form to express your interest in participating 

The submission deadline is Friday 17 May 2024. 

Visit www.ineff.org for more information. For any enquiries, please contact us on ineffsymposium@gmail.com