Audiovisualtopia

23-24 October 2015 * Madrid, España

Conference Abstracts: Keynote & Featured

Speakers + Participants
KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Nuria Triana Toribio, University of Kent, UK: “Awards Culture: Spanish Cinema and the Rise
of the Prize”

The Goya prizes, the Spanish Oscars, are the instruments by which the Academia guides Spanish
cinema through what seems to some critics to be a narrow path, elevating certain types of
filmmaking and ignoring others. In short, it is an institution for branding cinema and generating a
particular type of Spanish film culture.

This keynote address is divided into two parts. First I will address how it befits national film
institutions and professional lobbies to encourage consistent and non-contradictory (and yet
diverse) national cinema discourses, particularly if these enable transnational distribution or if
these images are useful in nation/community building ventures. Then I will focus on how we
could question the purpose of using the same instruments of control and branding on behalf of
other nations and territories. For this, I will engage with the Goya a la Mejor Película Iberoamericana
category of the awards. Is this prize a declaration of possession? Is this a hangover of post-colonial
sentiment? Is it a valid claim to exerting authority over Latin American film cultures in the field of
cinema by the Academia? Or is it something else entirely?

I hope to inspire the conference participants to interrogate the awards culture in which cinema is
immersed.

FEATURED SPEAKER

Janet Wasko, University of Oregon, USA: “Cinema and Money: The Hollywood Model”

From its beginnings, the US film industry developed as a capitalist enterprise. This paper will raise
a number of questions about the influence of this model, including (but not limited to):

What films have been produced (and not produced)?

How has film production and reception been organized?
 Who has been involved in and benefited from film production/distribution?
How have films been distributed and exhibited (nationally and globally)?
How has the success of the Hollywood model influenced other film industries?

These difficult questions have been addressed by (some) film scholars and various critics over the
years. However, a critical perspective has often been missing and a capitalist model has been
assumed. This paper will argue that the critical study of political economy of film can provide a
helpful lens through which to answer some of these questions.

Keywords: Hollywood, political economy, film industry, film history

PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order by author’s last name)

Dilara Bostan & Mesut Bostan, Marmara University, Turkey: “Postmodern Ethics in Cinema:
Ethics of Contemporary Fairy Tale Adaptations in Hollywood”

Fairy tales are the favorite source of Hollywood scriptwriting. Recently number of these
adaptations increased. It can be easily understood with respect to the logic culture industry. Fairy
tales are intercultural and can be easily diffused to the different markets and accepted by diverse
audience groups. The interesting thing about the new trend is that there is a postmodern turn in
these movies apart from the classical storytelling. The editing is no more conventional and the
stylistic tricks are obvious in these movies. Social conventions are also violated and now there are
aimless and marginal characters. Cathartic plots are abandoned and cause and effect relationships
are broken. There are now different identities and different kinds of representations. These new
tendencies reveal new questions about ethics in cinema, identity and representation issues. For
example, in classical narratives there are some ethical codes that enable the hegemony on societies.
But in postmodern fairy tales the distinction of good and evil is blurred, the gender roles are
changed, and identities are dissolved. In this sense the postmodernity is an ambiguous ethical
condition. In “Maleficent” (2014) the story is told from the witches’ point of view. And the princess
image which used to be a metaphor of purity and goodness doesn’t play such a role in the story.
The new princesses can be a warrior, a hedonist or grudging as ordinary characters. On the other
hand princes are no more heroes. Giants, dwarfs and beasts also can be good. In this study we can
detect these kind of ethical changes in contemporary fairy tale adaptations in Hollywood.
Semiotics will be our main theoretical framework. The discourse analysis will be also used in this
study to decipher the new moral codes of these narratives.

Keywords: Visual Ethics, Film adaptations, and Postmodern Cinema.

Marcus Anthony Brock, Stony Brook University, USA: “Possibility Models & Heroes:
Equalizing Some of Us, Sensationalizing the Sum of Us”

Ain’t cutting my hair ‘til the good Lord come

I ain’t open my eyes ‘til we all walk free

‘Til the color of our skin, it don’t mean a damn thing

I ain’t open my eyes, open ‘til we all walk free

-Joshua James, Coal War1

The images of eyes closed until we all walk free suggests the author is walking in darkness. That
we are in darkness? Currently, ‘cultural malaise’ spans the world. The difference in our
Audiovisualtopian society: We can actually access the macabre or joy quite easily. Thus, when
Newsweek deems Ethiopia, ‘A Graveyard for Homosexuals,’ we look. According to Nicholas
Mirzoeff, we now have the right to look. But do we?2

My discussion will begin with curated portraits, paintings, music/sound clips, and social media
examples that allow myself and the attendees to think through current affairs and question
whether there is any redemption for the represented, and underrepresented. I will also discuss the
media’s roles in sensationalizing oppression. The utopia provides escapism for aspirational bodies
to exist beyond antiquated paradigms, but antiquated paradigms often drive the media narrative. I
am considering visual phenomena such as “thugs” in the media, Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover
story, Thug Kitchen, and the “art of the selfie,” by then bridging Toni Morrison’s Paradise with
surrealist painters, René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, and Salvador Dalí’s Le Sommeil. The
world is on screen. Because of this, cultural transmission is occurring faster than ever before. Thus,
if utopias are aspirational places, why does the hyper-availability of media imply that utopia is
soon approaching?

As Toni Morrison states in a PBS interview, “All paradises, all utopias, are designed by who is not
there, those who are not allowed in.”3

1 Joshua James. “Coal War.” Build Me This. Intelligent Noise, 2009

2 Baker, Katie. “A Graveyard for Homosexuals.” Newsweek. 12 Dec. 2013

3 Morrison, Toni. PBSNews Hour. 9 Mar. 1998.

Keywords: Race, Sexuality, Social Media, Media, Sensationalism, Afrofuturism

Christopher Chavez, University of Oregon, USA: “The New ‘Good Neighbor’s Policy’: Disney
and the Cultivation of the Latin American Market”

At the onset of the World War II, Walt Disney and a team of artists and writers traveled
throughout Latin America as part of a state-sponsored effort designed to foster good-will among
strategically important nations including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba. While the tour was
primarily a diplomatic mission, it was also a commercial effort designed to promote The Walt
Disney Company and its films. Along the way, Disney appropriated local talent, promoted the
company and ensured global distribution of their films. In the seventy-years since the end of the
FDR’s Good Neighbor’s Policy, significant changes in technology, the marketplace and television
practices have fundamentally altered the ways in which cultural production is distributed globally.
At the same time, Disney has continued the process of strategically cultivating the Latin American
market. Using Disney’s children television properties as my focal point, I examine the discursive
mechanisms that enable the company to define, and therefore efficiently manage and control, its
dominion. In doing so, I focus on the role of language in facilitating Disney’s attempts to create a
unified Global Latino market that spans both the US and various nations throughout South
America. While much has been written about Disney programs, I examine the industrial
discourses and strategies that set the pre-conditions for that programming.

Key words: Television, Latin America, Political Economy, Disney, Globalism

Vanessa Ciccone, University of Oregon, USA: “Perception and Special Effects: An inquiry into
effectiveness: CGI special effects vs. practical effects”

For centuries motion pictures have given filmmakers the ability to affect their audiences both
visually and emotionally. In horror films, filmmakers use a variety of special effects to enhance the
imagery of their films. These enhancements allow filmmakers to instill fear into their audiences. In
the film An American Werewolf in London, make-up artist Rick Baker revolutionized the use of
practical effects when transforming David Naughton’s character into a werewolf. Practical effects
are special effects that are produced physically, without the aid of a computer. These effects
include make-up, prosthetics, animatronics, lighting, set design, and in-camera effects.
Technological advancements of new cinematic constructs have given filmmakers the ability to
create new worlds that, in previous years, were unimaginable to create; these constructs paved the
way for Computer Generated Images, or CGI. CGI effects are ones created by computers. In 1997
when An American Werewolf in Paris was released, director Anthony Waller utilized CGI special
effects, instead of practical effects, when transforming various characters into werewolf’s. These
transformation scenes were no met with as much praise as its predecessor. If we were to have a
better understanding of how our brains ingest practical effects and CGI it would allow us to
determine which one better conveys the emotion fear. By using Masahiro Mori’s “uncanny valley”
this paper will demonstrate which type of special effect is more effective at relaying the emotional
response of fear to its viewer: practical effects or CGI.

Key Words: CGI, Practical Effects, Technology, History, Perception

Mª Teresa González Mínguez, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain: “The

Regency Period and Timeless Concerns in Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I am a huge Jane Austen fan. Like many people, I see
myself in Austen’s novels because I remain worried about the questions that interest her and
because I admire her stingy critical view of the world and its inhabitants and her interest in
distinctive ways of seeing. I reread Pride and Prejudice since I was a young girl. I love book
adaptations such as Awakenings and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict. I have watched the
six-part miniseries of Pride and Prejudice produced by the BBC in 1995 several times. This TV series
seems to have changed the image of Jane Austen into a celebrity, but it is Joe Wright’s 2005
Working Title film production the one which adds a more realistic tone to life in the Regency
period.

My contention in this paper is twofold: first, to show what we gain from being faithful to Jane
Austen and second, to demonstrate how Joe Wright refashions the novel and gives it a more
timeless and universal appeal by exploring some of the rigidities of the Regency period such as
dating or social control and by highlighting innovative views such as the focus on the body, the
modern nineteenth century and Mary Wollstonecraft’s idea of marriage in a down to earth setting.

Keywords: Jane Austen, Joe Wright, Pride and Prejudice, realism, universal concerns

Brian Michael Goss, Saint Louis University-Madrid, Spain: “Tourists, Travellers, Vagabonds:
An Auteur Analysis of Michael Winterbottom’s Road Movies”

Following brisk elaboration of the auteur theory, I argue that prolific, genre-diverse British director
Michael Winterbottom’s road movies range from stylistically innovative and politically resonant to
complacent and androgenic-aggrandizing. Heading off the dense traffic of road movie concepts
and terminology, I emphasize “tourists”, “travellers” and “vagabonds”.

The tourist is identified with transient diversion to conventional specifications that lends itself to
the commodification of experience. Like tourism, Winterbottom’s The Trip (2010) and The Trip to
Italy (2014) present largely undemanding fare; while the films venture implicit criticism of
masculine status competition, the idiom of comedy shades “overgrown adolescents” Steve and
Rob as they act out middle-aged sexual adventurism. The Trip to Italy in particular exhibits little
engagement with its setting beyond beautiful scenery (closely articulated to young Italian women,
in a classic trope), alongside bourgeois food, hotels, and vehicles that shape the two men’s tourist
trajectory. Road movies do not inevitably collapse into “radicalism”.

By contrast, the traveller is conceptualized as seeking genuinely transformational encounters in

new environments. In Genova (2008), bereaved Joe and his daughters Kelly and Mary exit from
snowy Chicago after wife/mother Marianne’s death in a car accident. More than migrating to a
benign climate is in play as Joe makes the sideways admission that he is on a quest for discovery.
Removed from the locale of the fatal accident, the family confronts the trauma that it had been
suppressing in a transformative climax—even as the film is largely silent on the privileges that
enable their extended travel to Europe.

Finally, the vagabond is conceptualized as the undisciplined subject, an agent of “chaos”,

“wayward and erratic” for possessing neither a settled path nor definite destination. In this vein,
In This World (2002) constitutes a stunning human document that fashions an innovative
admixture of documented reality and fiction. Protagonist Jamal “plays” himself: an Afghan
refugee from the Peshawar, Pakistan who sets out to London without papers to claim asylum. As
Jamal makes his fraught journey—through stops and starts, improvisations, interactions with
fixers, dispensing bribes as needed—push factors to emigrate and the contours of global classism
are in clear focus.

These three forms of mobility are not mutually exclusive—and at least one of Winterbottom’s films
presents shadings of the tourist, traveller, and vagabond in different moments (Everyday, 2012).
Moreover, Winterbottom’s films are attentive to strict regulation and curtailment of movement as
human rights issues (Code 46, 2003; Road to Guantanamo, 2006). Nevertheless, categorizing films is
not an end in itself. Analysis of the films, with auteur theory and the road movie genre on board,
teases out political postures that range from complacent to confrontational toward “the way things
are”.

Keywords: Michael Winterbottom, Auteur Theory, Road Movies, Tourists, Travellers, Vagabonds

Mary Rachel Gould, Saint Louis University, USA: “Visions of Classrooms without Walls:
Documentary Film and Democratizing Pedagogy”

The “classroom without walls” is a space where the university and community fluidly interact and
intersect during the course of a semester. Prisons are not often thought of as community spaces or
places with fluid boundaries. This paper represents the efforts to use experimental and
documentary film production techniques to accomplish the objectives of the “classroom without
wall” through a collaboration between students on a university campus and students in a prison.
The course in Digital Storytelling brought together a group of university students and a group of
currently incarcerated men to produce short-format films based upon collaborative pre- and post-
production efforts. Drawing upon the concepts of praxis, dialogics and humanization this
ethnographic account draws from the work of Paulo Freire and the challenge put forth to engage
the other in intellectual ventures.

Adrián Gras-Velázquez, Swarthmore College, USA: “The representation of same-sex

relationships in Spanish film and the case of Reinas’(2005): Celebrating Marriage?”

The concept of family has been contested as of late, and there exists a scarcity of information
regarding same-sex families in Spain (see, for example, Pichardo Galán, 2011). Several
contemporary Spanish films have put same-sex relationships and queer characters as the
protagonists, but their representations don’t tend to challenge the prevailing status quo: that same-
sex relationships are acceptable as long as they mirror their heterosexual counterparts.

This paper will analyze Reinas (dir. Manuel Gómez Pereira, 2005), the first Spanish film to put
same-sex marriage at the center of its narrative, and how heteronormative ideologies are at the
same time reinforced and questioned. I propose a discussion of the interrelationship between
sexuality, the home, and same-sex families in view of the social, cultural, legal, and political
changes that have occurred at both a national and international level over the past ten years.

This paper will examine notions of social space, sexual identity, and the family concept, and
discuss the evolution of the representation of same-sex relationships in Spanish cinema. Finally, it
will also posit the question as to whether it is in new media, rather than film, where audiences can
find more contemporary representations of what it means to be queer in present-day Spain.

Keywords: marriage, same-sex relationships, queer studies, Spain, cinema

Begoña Gutiérrez, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain: “Intertextuality in Mad Men:

traces of Hitchcock in the contemporary screen”

One of the most critically-acclaimed shows within the contemporary TV series boom, Mad Men
(AMC, 2007-2015) portrays the advertising world around Madison Avenue (New York) during the
1960s. This paper explores the formal parallelisms, continuities and discontinuities between the
universe of Mad Men and the cinematographic works of Alfred Hitchcock, widely known as “The
Master of Suspense”. Through textual analysis, it traces some of the intertextual relationships
between different scenes of Mad Men’s first season and the following films by Hitchcock: Rear
Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959). I argue that Mad Men creator Matthew
Weiner draws on different aspects of these films such as the narrative and aesthetic construction of
main characters, the articulation of film shots, and the presentation of interior and exterior
scenography. This inspiration is particularly significant because, through its retrospective
portrayal of the past, the series not only introduces the viewer in one of the key decades in U.S.
history, but it also represents this period of time by appropriating and transforming key aspects of
Hitchcock’s innovative cinematographic language. Overall, this analysis of intertextual traces in
Mad Men illustrates how the identity of the contemporary screen scene is informed by
consolidated narratives and strategies that contribute to the temporal and expressive interplay
between cinema and television.

Keywords: Mad Men, Contemporary TV series, Intertextuality, Alfred Hitchcock

Javier Jurado, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain / Université Paris Ouest, France: “Prize
policies and the image of the New Spain (1964-1976)”
Spanish cinema in the years of “Desarrollismo” was marked by several contradictions that
reflected the difficult adaptation of the regime’s moral attitudes toward embracing a capitalist
economy. Women’s rights, consumerism, tourism and fashion were some of the fields that, when
represented on Spanish screens, reflected the frictions of the last two decades of the dictatorship.

In our paper, we would like to analyse how state policies on cinema dealt with these matters. In
particular how prizes, that involved succulent economic incentives, were given to films that
adapted to the official rhetoric of both modernisation and traditional values. Our approach will
cast some light into the shadows of the “National transcendence” prize that was included in 1964’s
law on cinematography development and has been largely ignored by researchers both in Spain
and abroad.

The films selected by the government to represent the image of the country were mainly those that
originated in the Official Film School, known as Nuevo Cine Español. However, there were also
movies like Aborto criminal (Ignacio F. Iquino, 1973) and Experiencia prematrimonial (Pedro Masó,
1972) whose strong ideological message reflected the reaction to liberalism and the efficiency of
partisan discourses regarding the distribution of allowances.

Keywords: Prize policies, “Desarrollismo”, Nuevo Cine Español, ideological cinema, censorship

Jaime López Díez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain: “The Mother-child relationship in
Bayona’s The Orphanage”

The film The Orphanage (El orfanato) by Juan Antonio García Bayona (2007) is one of the most
successful horror/suspense Spanish movies. Along with REC (Balagueró and Plaza, 2007), which
was released the same year, it took the baton of Amenabar’s The Others and set the course for the
post-Filmax generation of Spanish filmmakers to achieve international acclaim. Family is its main
motif, as it occurs in many other horror movies, according to Robin Wood (The American Nightmare:
Essays on the Horror Film, 1979). At the core of The Orphanage is the tragic relationship between a
mother and her child. In this article we will analyze this relationship from a psychoanalytical point
of view. We will focus on the motifs that mark it in the film, and their evolution. We will also refer
to another film by Bayona, The Impossible, as well as to the episodes of the television series Penny
Dreadful directed by him. In all of them, the mother-child relationship is also key to the story.

Keywords: film studies, psychoanalysis, mother-child relationship, horror movies, Spanish movies

Miren Manias-Muñoz, University of the Basque Country, Spain: “Promotion mechanisms for
small cinemas: the case of Loreak (2014) within the San Sebastian Film Festival”

Due to the democratization of technology, it is easier than ever to make a film. Producers and
audiences are now able to start the production of an audiovisual project, if a minimum of its
funding is guaranteed. However, oversupply of content is also a fact and small cinemas are
struggling for visibility.

Film festivals are an important showcase for these cinemas, since the majors do not leave much
space at commercial theatres for independent cinema exhibitions. Basque-language cinema is an
example of that. In addition to being a meeting point for cinema agents, film festivals play a
strategic role in putting such cinemas on the world’s map.
Loreak (2014) was the first Basque language film competing in the San Sebastian Film Festival, in
2014. Curiously, it achieved the second Basque language’s best audience mark in Spain. So, this
paper wants to use case analysis to look into film festivals as a promotional tool for small cinemas.

The methodology consists of in-depth interviews of the producer and directors of the film, before
and one year after the festival took place. According to the preliminary results, apart from
demonstrating that something is changing in Basque-language cinema, the positive effect of the
festival’s selection of Loreak (2014) is already confirmed by the interviewees and the international
awards it has achieved.

Keywords: Films Festivals; Small Cinemas; Film Promotion; Basque-language cinema;

Audiovisual

Cameron McCarthy, University of Illinois at Urbana, USA: “Burnished Ornamentalism: Making

Sense of History, Iconography and the Visual Cultural Practices of Postcolonial Elite Schools in
Globalizing Circumstances”

This presentation probes deeply into the tangled of historicities that animate British-bequeathed
elite schools now operating in new competitive transnational educational markets in selected post-
developmental states. The scenarios of this competition are increasingly moving online in photo
and video-sharing websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flicker and in the websites that
individual schools are creating to consecrate their school heritages. I examine closely the work that
postcolonial elite schools in a nine-country international study are doing with their historical
archives, preserved cultural objects, architecture, emblems, mottos and their school curricula as
they martial these cultural resources at the crossroads of profound change precipitated by
globalization and attendant neoliberal imperatives. This change is articulated across the whole
gamut of global forces, connections, and aspirations. And, it is in relation to and through these
dynamics that postcolonial elite schools must now position and reposition themselves—acting and
intervening in and responding to new globalizing circumstances that often cut at right angles to
the historical narratives and the very social organization of these educational institutions linked to
England. Globalizing developments have precipitated efforts on the part of these schools to
mobilize their rich heritages and pasts as a material resource and not simply as a matter of
indelible and inviolate tradition. History, then, I maintain in this context, cannot be reduced to the
realm of epiphenomena of securely linear school chronologies. Instead, drawing on Walter
Benjamin, I look at the way in which postcolonial school histories are “active in the present” and
the way in which schools in India, Barbados and Singapore are adroitly and selectively managing
their school identities in the light of globalization. The results of these interventions are not
guaranteed. They often run up against the revolution of rising expectations of school youngsters
and their parents, the taste for global cultures and global futures indicative of the global ambitions
of the young, and the pressures of alumni and other stakeholder interests which must be
navigated.

Violeta Martínez Alcañiz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain: “The Artist and the
nostalgia for silent cinema”

More than one hundred years after its birth, cinema has reached a technological perfection that the
primitive film industry could hardly imagine at the dawning of the twentieth century. Digital
cameras, special effects or 3D technology immerse the audience in a fictional environment more
vivid and close to our reality, while they are capable of building fantastic worlds that we could not
know otherwise. Added to this is the current transmediality of films, where the commercialization
of merchandising, video games or the creation of ad hoc web pages and social networking profiles
allowed people to enlarge their experience.

In this context, one cannot help wondering why a film like The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011),
which recovers the essence of silent cinema, was welcomed with a great reception by both critics
and audience. Even when spectators are used to standardized codes and norms, the film was a
success. We aim to examine the reasons of such a success and the possible existence of a nostalgia
for the past. Nowadays, we give much importance to the quality of the image. This paper will
open a forum for debate about whether voice is, after all, of great importance to understand a film.

Keywords: The Artist, silent cinema, digital, nostalgia, voice

Cristina Martínez-Carazo, University of California at Davis, USA: “Transnationality and

Spanish Cinema: A Typology”

Although transnationality as a phenomenon is as old as film, the contemporary reflection on this

topic and the plurality of approaches that converge on it have opened new lines of analysis to
evaluate the impact that this reality exerts on the film industry. My intention in this study is to
propose a typology that reflects the impact of transnationality in the specific case of Spanish film to
explore the dynamics that control our cinematic production in the third millennium. I propose six
segments to structure my approach to the Spanish film industry: 1- Production modes; 2-
Transnational subjects: 3- Esthetic registers; 4- Themes; 5- Ethics and ideology; 6- Critical and
moviegoer reception. Within this framework, I will explore the dialectics between the national
essence of Spanish film and its transnationality, the impact of different financial models, the
multidirectional movements of our actors and directors, esthetic influences, the ethics of the
industry and the response of critics and viewers to a film industry that swings between preserving
and erasing its identity markers.

Forum Mithani, University of London, UK: “‘Shining’ examples for the 21sst Century? The
‘Glorification’ of Unmarried Mothers in Japanese Visual Media”

The trope of the unmarried mother plays an important role in Japanese film and television, despite
the fact that in reality, the extra-marital birth-rate in Japan is significantly lower than in other
developed nations. This means unmarried mothers are actually overrepresented in the Japanese
media. Recent surveys suggest negative perceptions of unmarried motherhood are persistent in
Japanese society, which might lead one to assume that media representations of such women
would also be negative. In fact, single mothers are often portrayed as idealised heroines in film
and television. So why are such representations so popular with media produces and audiences
alike? What messages can be read in such representations regarding gender and family? My paper
hopes to shed light on this phenomenon and offer an insight into how these unlikely heroines
might carry significant political and social implications in a country that is encouraging it’s
women to ‘shine’ in the face of economic stagnation and demographic crisis.

Keywords: Japan, film, television, gender, unmarried mothers

Jan K. Olesen, Red Deer College, Canada: “Infocolonialism: New Media as Third Wave
Colonialism”
Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility” has cast a long
shadow over contemporary media studies. Benjamin argues that through mechanical
reproduction, works of art lose their unique presence in time and space — their aura — but as a
result of reproduction are able to reach a wider audience. In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark
Hansen suggests that digital technology introduces a “universal and limitless interconversion of
data”. This limitless interconversion takes Benjamin’s theory a step further, effacing distinctions
between producer and consumer while displacing temporality and materiality of artistic
productions. This new interchangeability Hansen calls our “post-medium condition”, one that
demands a new philosophy to understand the new interchangeability between producer and
consumer, and how media interconversion transgresses traditional cultural and genre distinctions.
This paper will investigate the politics of this post-medium age with reference to first nations art
and identity politics in Canada. Drawing from Hansen’s analysis of new digital technology, this
paper will examine how digital technology makes artistic productions malleable in a way that
allows consumers to supplant producers of art, and how this malleability potentially constructs a
third wave of colonialism, a techno-colonialism, that threatens to co-opt first nations peoples and
artistic productions. The paper will examine specifically how digital technology and culture
potentiality transfers control of indigenous art and identity to hegemonic culture, but also how
even benevolent participation in first nations art is potentially corruptive.

Keywords: post medium, digital media, First Nations, identity politics, colonialism

Ruth Palmer, IE University, Spain: “‘Making the news’ and spoiled identity, then and now”

In a poignant scene from the 1981 Sydney Pollack film, Absence of Malice, a woman runs across her
neighbors’ lawns at dawn, frantically picking up their newspapers so they cannot read a damaging
article about her. While the point of the scene is to convey the futility of trying to contain a
damaging news story at the time, a contemporary viewer is more likely struck by how very much
more futile such an effort would be today. In this paper I juxtapose this scene with a more recent
example of a private citizen becoming the subject of a stigmatizing news story—dentist Walter
Palmer, now notorious as the slayer of Cecil the Lion—to highlight some of the key ways “making
the news” in today’s digital environment differs from in the past.

The differences are many: while in the past most newspaper articles never made it to any form of
screen, today many readers never touch newsprint. For people who become the subjects of news
articles, digital publication and frictionless online circulation mean they must contend with
potentially vast audiences, near-effortless commentary and feedback from readers, and—perhaps
the most reputationally significant change of all—the online archiving, searchability, and retrieval
of news stories pegged to their names. To help illustrate how these recent sociotechnological
developments can exacerbate the stigmatizing effect of news articles, I apply Erving Goffman’s
concept of spoiled identity, and draw on findings from interviews with over 80 people who were
named in newspaper articles and newscasts in the United States.

Keywords: journalism subjects, online news, digital reputation, stigma, spoiled identity

Alicia Parras Parras, Universidad Compultense de Madrid, Spain: “Snapchat—or the vanishing
media”

This lecture is about the big change in how we consume video and specially photography through
the new social media apps. From analogic photography, that could be stored in two different ways
-as photography itself or as negative, specially in archives- to this revolutionary new app that
doesn’t store the previously shared information anymore because it is gone away once the
user/follower check it. We are talking about Snapchat, the app that was born in 2010 as a class
project, and then released in 2011, and nowadays there are more than 200 millions of users all over
the world.

In this lecture, we will be mainly focused in the change of mentality of new generations on the
massive consumption of images, how we can communicate through Snapchat (even documentary
photographers), the change of photography aesthetic thanks to this app, and of course a glimpse
into the evolution of photography in the last 10 years.

Keywords: Photography aesthetics, social media apps, documentary photography, media

consumption, communication

Joan Pedro, Saint Louis University–Madrid, Spain: “Towards a Pluralist Epistemological

Approach to the Study of New Media”

A contradiction can be observed between the rapid and continuous changes that the ongoing
technological revolution is bringing about and the slower pace and soundness required by
academic research. Society’s fascination with technological gadgets and its acritical, conspicuous
consumption has its parallel in the hegemony of techno-centric, techno-determinist and techno-
utopian scholarship, which views new media technologies as the engine of social organization and
change. This reductionist approach can be counterweighted by an epistemological reflection of the
possible theoretical and practical foundations of new media studies. Drawing on Johan Galtung’s
proposal for the development of eclectic epistemologies, this paper attempts to combine
humanistic, holistic and scientific epistemologies. Humanism allows scholarship to consider
human agency as a key component in media uses and social change, but may lead to a view of an
all-powerful free will. A holistic approach is thus needed to frame the human making of history
within the totality and observe how people interact with the social system in which they are
embedded. The analysis of the whole presents the risk of omitting the analysis of the different and
specific parts of the system (for example, technologies). That is why scientific procedures of
classification and division of reality are helpful, as well as the methods of empirical validation.

Keywords: New media studies, techno-centrism, epistemological pluralism, humanities, science,

holism

Ramachandran Ponnan, Taylor’s University, Malaysia: “P. Ramlee: Asian Film Auteur and
Persona”

The most versatile film star of the Golden Age of Malay cinema in the 50s and 60s was P. Ramlee,
was a scriptwriter, comedian, actor, music composer, singer as well as director. The icon of Malay
entertainment was even dubbed the “Charlie Chaplin of Asia”. Andrew Sarris outlined 3 premises
of the auteur theory, the techniques, personal style and interior meaning. P. Ramlee as an auteur-
director was involved in every aspect of film production, from acting to directing to soundtrack.
His stylistic signature worked with group of actors and characters to evoke emerging themes, he
also returned to familiar and recurring themes of family, romance and royalty. His Interior
Meaning was to preserve the values of Malay and Islamic culture but at the same time he
emphasized the diversity of ethnicity but with no attempt of raising any racial issue. However,
why P. Ramlee was not popular beyond the region although he is such an auteur? Methodology:
content analysis (official discourse, critical discourse), and focus group (audience discourse). As
part of an on-going study on cinematographic semiotics in P. Ramlee’s films, a content analysis
and focus group on three of his most memorable films, Penarek Becha (1955), Semerah Padi (1956)
and Seniman Bujang Lapok (1961). Findings are presented as Recurring Iconography in three of P.
Ramlee’s selected Films. In conclusion, P. Ramlee as an auteur was concerned with the state of
Malays during his time. Most of his films in satire comedy genre pursued a storytelling style for
the betterment of the Malay community in particular; projected the unity concept among the
Malays, Chinese and Indians. That Shaw brother provided the launching pad to stardom, his
popularity grew after his passing, the locals recognize his contributions to the industry and nation
and began to appreciate his work, and next his films and music have become evergreen.

Keywords: Malaysian cinema, P.Ramlee, genre, auteur, semiotics

Pamela Rolfe, Saint Louis University—Madrid, Spain: “Spain’s Film Industry: Beyond Buzz
Words”

Pedro Almodovar, Alejandro Amenabar, Penelope Cruz and English-language horror films. Until
recently, the Spanish film industry reduced neatly into these buzz words for the U.S.-based movie
executives. But as Spanish-language directors like Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
and Alfonso Cuaron have gained international attention, Hollywood started to take more notice of
Spain, which has long acted as the natural gateway between Latin America and Europe. A crop of
internationally savvy film producers backed by the deep pockets of Spanish broadcasters has
leveraged the triangulated relationship with Latin America and the U.S. to transform Spain into a
player in its own right with production facilities, shooting locations and talent. So now we see
animated feature film Atrapa la Bandera sporting state-of-the-art CGI that can go head to head with
Pixar, Game of Thrones shooting parts of season five and season six in Spanish towns and Juan
Antonio Bayona set to direct Brad Pitt in World War Z2 in 2017. Now, trending topics related to the
Spanish audiovisual industry span hundreds of key words for the U.S. industry. The glamorous
names that generally resonate with U.S. film executives are only the most visible layer of the
intricate, international web that is now the Spanish film industry.

Bryan Sebok & Peter Christenson, Lewis & Clark College, USA: “Musicality in Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema”

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our
feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

-Ingmar Bergman

“Music and film are parallel experiences: they are linear, they are narrative.”

-Todd Haynes

Separated by time, industry, style, and approach, two filmmakers grapple with the appropriate
metaphor to explicate the dynamism of the image-sound interface. The incongruity represented in
these quotations, illustrated by Bergman’s desire to link music and film to dream logic, and
Haynes’ desire to contain music in the prescribed linearity of narrative progression reveal how
historical practice and context may determine approach. Certainly, historical convention,
technology, scale of production (resource allocation), and prevailing trends influence filmmakers’
use of music in cinema. But music in cinema is also functional, atmospheric, idiosyncratic, highly
personal as well as driven by industrial realities like marketing, sound track distribution, and the
star system surrounding particular musical composers. Hollywood films engage music differently
at various points in history; the orchestral film score has gone in and out of favor as the dominant
mode of cinematic musicality. The popular music track has similarly ebbed and flowed across
time, with periods of expressive engagement between the popular film and the popular sound
track.

So, what is going on with music in contemporary Hollywood? How do comic book franchise films
design musical tracks to accompany wordless spectacle? How does music differ between the
cinematic and the extra-cinematic text? Between “awards season” films and the summer
blockbuster? And what does the recent spike in music documentary (20 Feet From Stardom, Muscle
Shoals, et. al) reveal about the desire for musicality in contemporary cinema? This presentation
draws upon the expertise of esteemed popular music scholar Peter Christenson and film historian
Bryan Sebok to assess the state of musicality in cinema today through a representative sample of
films and their accompanying musical elements.

Keywords: music, score, audiovisual, style, genre, Hollywood

Carmen Spanò, University of Auckland in Media, New Zealand: “Emerging dynamics in

audiences’ mobile consumption of trans-media products: the cases Game of Thrones and Mad
Men as a comparative study between Italy and New Zealand”

In the current multi-modal environment rich in on-demand content, audiences operate as active
users of media content by exercising control over their viewing schedules, and by integrating
media texts into their lives according to new patterns of consumption.

My analysis investigates this new form of agency possessed by the audience with reference to two
television texts: Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The two popular American TV shows are ‘typical’
products of the convergence era (Jenkins, 2006), which is characterized by trans-media storytelling.
Audiences’ freedom in the modes of consumption, however, is limited by the control that media
corporations still exert on the circulation of media texts; this ‘struggle’ for media content
management becomes central for the understanding of the changes in the televison text and in
audiences’ behaviours.

My research is structured as a comparative study between two countries: Italy and New Zealand.
Comparative research has been applied by scholars as a valid way to investigate audience
practices. However, there is still a dearth of international, cross-cultural comparisons. In selecting
and comparing two nations that are different from the dominant media market (the US), my study
aims to show that audiences’ behaviors are specific to the culture and society to which they
belong. The methodology employed for the data collection is the focus group, which allows for a
rich understanding of individuals’ attitudes and habits in consuming trans-media products and of
the relational and social dynamics that define them.

Keywords: Trans-media Storytelling, Media Convergence, Fan Practices, Cross-cultural Research

Rosana Vivar, University of Granada, Spain: “Cinephilia takes the streets: a cinephile’s uprising
at Gijón International Film Festival/FICXixón”

The focus of this paper is a medium-sized festival that has had an essential role in determining the
character of cinephilia in Spain: Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón/FICXixón, located in the
northern seaside town. Since José Luis Cienfuegos took command of the festival in 1995, it has
been generally known among regular attendees and cinephiles throughout Spain for its
controversial and cutting-edge film programme as well as for hosting challenging directors such as
Aki Kaurismaki, Harmoniy Korine, Hong Sang-soo or Pawel Pawlikowski. Additionally, the
festival has been a focal point for indie music enthusiasts, attracted by the event’s live music
concerts and parties running parallel to the screenings. This paper focuses on the events occurred
in November 2011 when festival regulars held protests against the city council’s out-of-the-blue
decision to dismiss Cienfuegos. Taking the media turmoil and boycott that followed as a point of
departure, I want to use FICXixón as an example of how film festivals can contribute to define
cinephilia as a means for citizens to participate in civic life and take a stance on public affairs.
Given Cienfuegos replacement and the subsequent changes to the programme brought about a
more locally focused agenda and a “safer”, less-changeling film programme, I will argue that
audiences have had to resort to other emotional discourses such as place and pride in the local
community in order to make their cinephile identity fit in with the new situation. Since survival
has been the main concern of many Spanish festivals after their problematic proliferation in the
2000s (Mesonero-Burgos, 2008) and the so-called “end of the festivals era” (Triana-Toribio, 2011),
this paper examines the role of FICXIxón in creating an enduring community of cinephiles
through an ambitious ideological agenda that combines two main festival pillars: a long-term
scheme for educating the young audience, and a festive display around the city where regulars
and visitors learn the aesthetic and ideological conventions specific to that cinephilia.

Keywords: FICXixón, Spanish film festivals, citizen audience, festivity, cinephilia

Thomas Wiedemann, University of Munich, Germany: “Movie Directors in Germany: Structure

and Logic of a Heteronomous Field of Cultural Production”

The paper explores the logic of the field of movie directors in Germany and reveals that German
cinema is far away from being an art for art’s sake, but has a strong political and social dimension.

In the past decade, German film has experienced a revival, which easily makes us believe in the
potential of movies to initialize socialization processes and to form part of society’s cultural
identity. Certainly, these cultural products have an economic value, too. They are the outcome of a
diversified working process and sponsored by public institutions like no other mass medium.
Thus, film policy measures are also supposed to influence the movie directors’ practice of
constructing social reality. In this spirit, throwing a light on their work contributes to analyze the
dynamics of visual communication and the production culture of fictional entertainment.

The study refers to Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and considers the practice of movie directors as an
interaction of habitus, capital and the configuration of the field. Major sources are 20 expert
interviews with German directors from both small-scale and large-scale production.

The findings show that the German field of movie making is highly professionalized. At the same
time, it is shaped by economic unsteadiness and demands a big portion of idealism. The directors
consider themselves as artists affecting public agenda. However, their practice does not only
require considerable network resources, but also reflects the film boards’ parameters of profitable
casts as well as the exploitation partners’ requests for TV appropriate settings and genres.

Key words: German Film, Movie Directors, Production Culture, Film Policy, Field Theory

Precious V. Yamaguchi, Southern Oregon University, USA: “‘Walt Disney Picture Presents…’:
An In-Depth Interview with the Voice of Disney Trailers”
At some moment in most of our lives we have heard the phrase “Walt Disney Pictures presents….”
We may have heard this familiar phrase and voice in the movie theaters or on a DVD right before
we were going to watch a feature film. For several decades, Mark Elliott, the voice of Disney
trailers entered into our homes and cinemas to inform audiences of the latest Disney films coming
to “a theater near you” or on DVD. Unlike the baritone voiceover actors who were commonly
heard in film trailers throughout the 1980s thru the early 2000s, Mark Elliot had a uniquely higher
voice, notifying audiences of the release of the VHS Bambi promotional trailer or alerting millions
of enthusiastic Disney fans from all over the world about the Lion King film. Mark Elliot’s voice
invited people to engage in exciting new films, DVDS, and videos for Disney, one of the world’s
largest media companies. This qualitative research focuses on the history and culture of the man
and the voice behind Disney’s trailers and his journey from being a radio DJ in Iowa to being one
of the most heard voices on film trailers. This in-depth interview also reveals the motivation
Disney had in selecting a more “friendly” male voice with a higher tone as opposed to a lower
baritone male voice commonly heard in film trailers and the changes Mark Elliot experienced in
the voiceover entertainment industry as individuals began to create home studios and diverse
voices and identities emerged in media.

Key Words: Voiceover, Audio, Technology, Disney, Film

Yingfan Zhang, Suffolk Community College, USA: “The Change of Figure and Ground on the
Media Landscape”

The figure and ground theory in perception is commonly known to explore the relationship
between what draws our attention in a presented image. Adapting this theory to the media
landscape of different electronic mass media, this study compares the relationship between online
communication with TV broadcasting in the case study of major social movements such as Occupy
Wall Street and People’s Climate March. The case study shows the interplay of online
communication and TV news broadcasting in terms of the change of figure and ground on the
media landscape. Usually when an event gets enough “vibe” on the Internet, it also gets the news
“worthiness” on the primetime TV. At the same time TV broadcasting can downplay or ignore a
mass event to protect its own interests, especially ideological interests. The study then continues to
differentiate cyber gathering from e-participation in social movements.

E-participation builds its own speech community while cyber gathering can be massive but does
not create its own communal identity. And finally the speech community with its own linguistic
identity has provided a good perspective to review and develop the cultivation theory which was
developed from the study of TV but now can be applied to the study of online communication.

Key Words: figure and ground on media landscape, cyber gathering, e-participation, speech
community, and cultivation theory

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