Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti: Announcements
Cinergie – ISSN 2280-9481 is an open-access, peer-reviewed, class-A journal. Its first on-line issue first appeared in 2012, but the journal has been published in hard copy since 1999. Cinergie is a wide-ranging film journal, that aims to publish original articles about national and international cinema, building a bridge to related fields.
Visualizing Jihad: Western Representations of Jihadism in Cinema and Visual Culture (1989-2019)
Edited by Alessandra Goggio (University of Bergamo) and Giuseppe Previtali (University of Bergamo) From the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 to the death of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in 2019, jihadism occupied a central and often obsessive place in global geopolitics and the Western imagination. Over the course of these three decades, the figure of the jihadist has become one of the most recurring and recognizable representations of otherness, danger, and political violence in visual and media products. Long before and after 9/11, cinema, television, comics, graphic novels, video games, photography, digital media, and contemporary art have shaped, circulated, and transformed representations of jihadism in various cultural contexts. As a complex cultural phenomenon, jihadism has generated an extensive body of interdisciplinary scholarship, including work from political scientists, security studies experts, historians, and cultural and media scholars. Similarly, scholars of film and visual culture have produced significant analyses of how jihadism and the War on Terror have been represented in cinema, television, digital media, and popular culture. This body of works often highlight the political significance of these representations. However, most of these analyses focus on specific events, media texts, or historical moments, particularly those surrounding 9/11 and IS's rise to prominence in 2014. Conversely, relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding these representations within a longer historical trajectory. Adopting a diachronic and transmedial perspective, this special issue investigates how Western visual cultures have reimagined jihadism over three decades. This investigation reveals recurring tropes, narrative frameworks, and figures of alterity that shape public understanding of political violence, religion, and global conflict. Rather than focusing exclusively on the post-9/11 period, this issue aims to contextualize the emergence and evolution of these representations within a broader temporal framework. It will highlight the continuities, ruptures, and shifts across various media ecosystems. The issue will focus on the transmedial circulation of narratives, stereotypes, visual tropes, and political imaginaries across cinema, television, digital platforms, gaming cultures, comics, and contemporary artistic practices. Contributions grounded in film and media studies, visual culture, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, memory studies, game studies, comics studies, and related disciplines are welcome. Suggested Topics Topics may include, but are not limited to: Representations of jihadism in cinema, from Hollywood productions to documentary; Television series and streaming productions dealing with jihadism and counterterrorism; Jihadism in video games and interactive media; Military simulations, gamification, and other digital representations of terrorism; Comics, graphic novels, and graphic journalism addressing jihadism; Contemporary art, video art, and artistic engagements with jihadist violence; Photography, photojournalism, and visual archives of the War on Terror; The evolution of the jihadist figure in Western imaginary before and after 9/11; Narratives of radicalization and de-radicalization; The emergence of surveillance and security narratives; Gender, sexuality, and representations of jihadist militancy; Orientalism, neo-Orientalism, and the construction of the Muslim enemy; postcolonial perspectives on terrorism and representation; Transnational and comparative approaches to representations of jihadism; Transmedia circulation of jihadist imaginaries across different media forms; Aesthetic and ethical issues in representing terrorism and political violence. This special issue is part of the outputs of the research project JAVISar - Jihadism Archives. Visual and Intermedia Strategies Against Radicalization, funded by the Italian Ministry of University (MIM) within the FIS3 - Starting Grant funding scheme. CUP: F53C25001220001 Submission Guidelines Authors are invited to submit an abstract of 300-500 words, accompanied by a short biographical note (100 words), by October 1st, 2026 to alessandramaria.goggio@unibg.it and giuseppe.previtali@unibg.it Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 20, 2026. If the proposal is accepted, the full article must be submitted by March 1st, 2027. Articles should not exceed 6,000 words and may include up to six images, as well as relevant links. Authors are responsible for securing all necessary permissions and publication rights for any iconographic or archival materials included. All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. Contributions may be submitted in either Italian or English. Publication of the issue is scheduled for December 2027.
The Mickey Mouse Paradigm: Aesthetics, Cultures, and Industries in the Disney Universe
Over the past century, The Walt Disney Company has established itself as one of the most influential and prolific players in the global film and media landscape. Founded as an animation studio, it consolidated its position throughout the twentieth century, evolving into a multinational conglomerate capable of diversifying its activities across a wide range of sectors. Today, Disney stands not only as one of the most globally recognisable media brands, but also as one of the most complex and multifaceted media corporations. Parallel to this industrial expansion, scholarly engagement with the Disney universe—defined as the ensemble of narratives, languages, cultural practices, and production configurations under or around the Disney brand—has developed in increasingly nuanced ways. From early critical reflections (Schickel 1968; Finch 1973; Ejzenstejn 1984), academic interest has steadily grown, culminating in the consolidation of Disney Studies as a productive, distinctly multidisciplinary field of research. In recent decades, scholarship on Disney has largely foregrounded its aesthetic and creative dimensions. Alongside well-established approaches centred on cinema—particularly animation (Furniss 2009; Pallant 2013)—a substantial body of work has broadened the field to encompass television, video games, and Disney’s intersections with music, theatre, and fashion (Johnson 2011; Bell 2020; Madej, Lee 2020). At the same time, Disney has been examined as a social and cultural phenomenon, most notably through the lens of “Disneyfication” (Bryman 2004), as well as in relation to the production and circulation of ideological discourses and moral norms (Byrne, McQuillan 2000; Ward 2002). These analyses frequently engage with questions of national identity, gender, ethnicity, class, and the construction of otherness (Wells 2002; Brode 2006; Cheu 2013). Moreover, growing attention has been directed towards Disney’s industrial strategies and economic practices, including its role in shaping stardom and celebrity culture (Giroux, Pollock 2010; Bohas 2016; Blue 2017). Building on earlier audience studies (Griffin 2000; Wasko et al. 2001), subsequent research has explored reception among specific audiences, as well as emerging digital practices and the dynamics of participatory culture and fandom (Mittermeier 2022; Brookey et al. 2023). Within this framework, Issue 31 of Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti addresses a field that remains comparatively underexplored in the Italian context: Disney Studies. Building on a rich and well-established international debate—only briefly outlined here—this special issue seeks to investigate the structures, dynamics, and complexities that have shaped—and continue to shape—the Disney universe more than a century after its foundation. While placing cinema and the media at the core of its inquiry, and engaging with other sectors of the cultural industries, the issue aims to consolidate and expand critical discussion on the aesthetics, cultures, and industrial configurations of The Walt Disney Company. Moving from its origins to the present, contributions are invited to explore, first and foremost, the company’s creative logics. These may be examined not only through its celebrated animated production, but also by extending the analysis to live-action cinema, television, video games, and digital media, reflecting on both the canon and the ways in which its conventions are reworked or even challenged. In dialogue with cultural studies, the issue also encourages contributions that approach Disney as a cultural phenomenon capable of shaping social, cultural, and identity models, both within its productions and across the broader discursive and symbolic frameworks they generate. Finally, drawing on media industry studies, contributions may address the company’s production logics and economic practices, as well as its modes of reception and participation, in relation to one of the corporations that has most successfully asserted itself on the global stage, both in industrial terms and in the construction of a powerful and enduring imaginary. Consequently, the issue invites contributions that engage with Disney, including (but not limited to) the following thematic areas: – Cultural, social, and industrial histories; – Aesthetic and representational conventions; – Global dynamics and local/national articulations; – Ideologies, value systems, and moral frameworks; – Constructions of gender (femininities, masculinities, queer identities, etc.); – Configurations of otherness (ethnicity, class, etc.); – Production, distribution, and promotional strategies; – Forms, practices, and techniques of animation; – Specificities and interrelations of audiovisual forms (cinema, television, video games, etc.); – Stardom, including teen idols; – Interconnections with other sectors of the cultural industries (publishing, fashion, music, etc.); – Audiences, fandom, and participatory cultures; – Disney+ and emerging modes of digital consumption. Deadlines and Submission Guidelines An abstract of 300–500 words, together with a short author biography (max. 100 words), should be submitted by June 7, 2026, to francesco.dasero@uniba.it and gabriele.landrini@uniba.it [subject: Cinergie]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 1st, 2026. If the proposal is accepted, the full article must be submitted by November 1st, 2026. Articles should not exceed 6,000 words and may include up to six images, as well as relevant links. Authors are responsible for securing all necessary permissions and publication rights for any iconographic or archival materials included. All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. Contributions may be submitted in either Italian or English. Publication of the issue is scheduled for July 2027.
When We Were Digital: Critical Archaeology of the First Digital Turn
The forceful spread in recent years of an “Algorithmic regime” (Uricchio 2020) in almost every aspect of our daily lives has sparked a lively debate, often marked by alarmist and nostalgic positions, but also by a certain eagerness to label new “turns,” provide definitions, and predict future scenarios. Yet beneath the “futuristic” veneer of terminology and scenarios, the most common arguments used to describe this supposed “Second Digital Turn” (Carpo 2017) are, upon closer inspection (Langdon Winner 1977), the same arguments that accompanied the social, cultural, psychological, and emotional processing of all the major twentieth-century shifts in scientific knowledge and technological development—especially when driven by more or less intelligent forms of automation of the “machine.” And as in the past, today too the fields of visual and audiovisual creation and production, as well as the social and cultural dynamics of our relationship with images, are particularly apt to bear witness to change in especially eloquent ways. This special issue arises, in some respects, as a “reaction” against the discursive practices that daily surround the presence, uses, and products of “artificial intelligence” (an extremely ambiguous term which, as Hito Steyerl suggests, should rather be replaced with the phrase “machine learning-based tools,” 2025). It reacts in particular by proposing a return to the first Digital Turn—the one that, in the early 1990s, globally marked a radical change of paradigm—not simply to distinguish between forms of continuity or rupture, fragmentation or reorganization (or to question the very hypothesis of a first and a second turn), but rather to recover and reread, in all its complexity, the debate triggered by that crucial transition. We are convinced that this debate may prove valuable in helping us better focus on the present, enrich our understanding of the key issues that shape it, and avoid overestimating what is new. After all, just as the digital did in the 1990s (Elsaesser 2016), artificial intelligence today seems to represent, more than a mere technology, a “cultural metaphor” for talking more broadly about the present and the future (crises, ruptures, transitions). And as in that earlier case, the domain of visual and audiovisual production appears, from many perspectives, the most exposed and problematic—and for this very reason the most strategic: “It is only when digitization generates images that something akin to a cultural crisis appears to occur, with exaggerated claims being made by some, and acute anxieties being voiced by others” (ibid.). If this special issue orients itself toward visuality—in all its dimensions: cultural, social, anthropological, technological, creative—it is therefore not merely for disciplinary reasons. Let’s instead use the visual “as a conduit for asking bigger questions about our own situation in the world” (Zylinska 2023). With regard to the first Digital Turn—understood therefore also as a Pictorial Turn—and to the complex, contradictory debate that accompanied the spread of new images and a new visual culture (technologies, devices, forms of knowledge, languages, forms, practices, and media environments), it seems particularly promising today to reconsider certain key nodes. First among them—once again invoking Elsaesser’s contribution—is the profound crisis of the “indexical status of (moving) images” and the consequent crisis this triggered in “held beliefs about representation and visualization, and many of the discourses—critical, scientific, or aesthetic—based on or formulated in the name of the indexical in our culture.” Equally crucial, problematic, and unprecedented was the rearticulation of the relationship between scientific visualization, artistic imagination, social representation, media history, and technical vision (one need only think, for example, of the spread of a culture—not merely a technology—of the “virtual” and the “augmented”), as well as that between visual production and political, military, and financial power (exemplified by W. J. T. Mitchell’s notion of the biopicture and Harun Farocki’s operational images). But from the early 1990s onward, it was above all the fields of cinema and photography—at a time when “personal” and “social” visuality was still far from being established, though already foreshadowed—that prompted the most original and (still today) productive reflections. These were divided between those who viewed the digital transition as the end of an era (Casetti, Batchen), as a “false revolution” (Belton, Marra), or as an inevitable and revealing passage (Aumont). In particular, it was in relation to the nature, production, circulation, and consumption of cinematic and photographic images that primacies (especially cultural and aesthetic ones), orthodoxies, and values (such as realism and truth) were first called into question, while new keywords (convergence, remediation, relocation…) took hold and suffixes (post-cinema, post-photography) proliferated, collectively suggesting the entry of images into a new regime of instability, vitality, and above all autonomy (Fontcuberta, Mitchell). This issue aims to promote a reflection/reconstruction of the complexity of the first Digital Turn, understood as a metaphor for an anthropological and epistemological transformation of which the current “algorithmic condition” appears at once as continuation, deviation, extreme development, intensification, contraction, and epilogue. The goal, however, is not comparison per se, but rather a rethinking and rereading of the set of discourses, interpretations, hypotheses, and definitions through which the first disruptive process of digitization was elaborated, as well as the very idea of a “turn,” its scope, and its impact. Accordingly, the issue seeks to collect contributions primarily, though not exclusively, focused on the following themes: Cultural history of the notion of the digital. Analysis of advertising communication around new technologies (computers, data and image-processing software, digital video cameras and cameras, etc.). History of digital technology, companies, and brands. Debate in specialist journals and the general press. Rhetorics and philosophies of the “new,” with particular reference to media. The social and cultural repositioning of cinema and photography. Theoretical debate on the image, photographic and cinematic. Digital remediations of analog culture and technology. Debate regarding the question of realism. Film and photography theory. Digital cinema and cinema in digital form. Reflection on the notions of the post-photographic, live action, and animation. The inclusion of computer science in debates on cinema and visual culture. Analysis of “post-” culture. High and low definition between technology and aesthetics. Bibliographical References Aumont, Jacques (2012). Que reste-t-il du cinéma ? Paris: Vrin. Balbi, Gabriele (2022). L’ultima ideologia. Breve storia della rivoluzione digitale. Bari–Roma: Laterza. Batchen, Geoffrey (2001). Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Baudrillard, Jean (1987). The Evil Demon of Images. Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney. Belton, John (2002). “Digital Cinema: A False Revolution.” October, 100: 98–114. Boehm, Gottfried (2009). La svolta iconica. Roma: Meltemi. Carpo, Mario (2017). The Second Digital Turn. Design Beyond Intelligence. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Elsaesser, Thomas (2016). Film History as Media Archaeology. Tracking Digital Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Fontcuberta, Joan (2018). La furia delle immagini. Note sulla postfotografia. Torino: Einaudi. Friedberg, Anne (2000). “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change.” In Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 438–452. London: Arnold. Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion (2013). La fin du cinéma ? Un média en crise à l’ère du numérique. Paris: Armand Colin. Grusin, Richard (2017). Radical Mediation. Cinema, estetica e tecnologie digitali. Cosenza: Luigi Pellegrini Editore. Lewis, Jon (ed.) (2001). The End of Cinema As We Know It. American Film in the Nineties. New York–London: New York University Press. Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Marra, Claudio (2006). L’immagine infedele. La falsa rivoluzione della fotografia digitale. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. Mitchell, W.J. Thomas (2017). Pictorial Turn. Saggi di cultura visuale. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Mitchell, William J. (1992). The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Negroponte, Nicholas (1995). Being Digital. New York: Knopf. Quintana, Àngel (2008). Virtuel? À l’ère du numérique, le cinéma est toujours le plus réaliste des arts. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma. Winner, Langdon (1977). Autonomous Technology. Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cambridge–London: The MIT Press. Deadlines and Instructions An abstract of 300–500 words (together with a short biography – max 100 words – of the author) should be submitted by April 15, 2026 to luca.malavasi@unige.it [subject: Cinergie]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by April 20, 2026 If the proposal is accepted, the article must be submitted by July 15, 2026, must not exceed 6,000 words in length, and may include images (max 6) and links. Authors are required to clarify permissions and publication rights for any iconographic or archival documents included in the publication. Articles will be subject to double-blind peer review. Publication of issue: December 2026
Tele-Archives. Reframing Archival Research on Local Televisions Across Europe
This special issue of «Cinergie» − developed within the scope of the PRIN 2020 research project ATLas - Atlante delle Televisioni Locali (Atlas of Local Televisions) − intends to bring together a wide variety of contributions on local broadcasting in Europe, with a particular focus on the several ways in which archival research can delve into the evolution of media systems in different contexts, as well as investigate unexplored narratives in European television history. The existing literature has largely relied on memorialist accounts to assess the peculiarities of local TV stations. A thorough and systemic historical inquiry of Europe’s commercial broadcasting is however still lacking. The CFP consequently solicits contributions addressing the many single stories of local broadcasters in relation to more general interpretations of the progressive commercialization of European television. Italy provides an interesting case study to address the evolution undertaken during the 1980s by European televisions, but it also shows the need for a transnational and/or comparative analysis. Between 1974 and 1976, a series of rulings issued by the National Constitutional Court brought about a revolution in the country’s television landscape. Together with the 1975 reform of national PSB Rai, the Court provisions opened a new era in the history of Italian broadcasting, ending State’s monopoly and leading the way towards the growth of Italian local and private televisions. The ensuing commercialisation of Italian broadcasting was however connected to and sustained by larger historical transformations which cannot be confined within the nation’s geographical or political borders: technological innovations in broadcasting, increased market liberalisation, progressive segmentation of consumer habits all contributed to transnationally challenge the hitherto dominant European television paradigm, prompting a greater influence of American commercial television models and programs, as well as a variety of local and national responses. The eventual introduction, in 1989, of the European directive known as “Television without Frontiers” testifies to the strong relation between larger trends impacting media landscapes all across the continent and the evolution of European television broadcasting in the 1980s. Since they represent one of the most valuable resources to study the past, archives can be framed from a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including comparative and cross-media scholarly points of view. Lack of access to audiovisual repositories and documentary sources referring to private TV stations has undermined a full understanding of their role and legacy. Accordingly, the recurrent absence of institutional databases demands a “patchwork” approach, fostering the adoption of an inter-textual outlook connecting the experience of local televisions with other media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations, cinema, etc. Such an integration of sources entails new strategies to collect, preserve and transmit audiovisual heritage, while providing fruitful insights into the history of broader European socio-economic and cultural developments throughout the 1980s. Following the “archival turn” undertaken in film, media and television studies, this special issue of «Cinergie» will gather contributions that deal with − but are not strictly limited to − the following topics and issues: the role of formal and informal TV and media archives in shaping private and public memories, cultures and identities, especially in Europe and with reference to different territorial scales (i.e. transnational, national, regional, local); the rediscovery of hidden TV and media archives, including forgotten or marginalised figures, stories, TV programmes, genres and schedules; the resort to audiovisual archive to shed light on TV production and distribution patterns, with a special focus on industrial details; the integration, in addition to audiovisual records, of different archival sources (i.e. sound recordings, images, scripts, interviews), the role played by grey archives (i.e. those storing administrative deeds and business data) and the enhancement of oral history practices within academic research on local broadcasting; the technical, editorial and commercial structure of TV archives: data treatment, sampling criteria, content hierarchies and discovery tools; academic, historical and public uses of archives: methodological and theoretical standpoints, limits and problems of database access between analogical and digital repositories; data circulation and dissemination strategies, with a special focus on local TV and commercial broadcasting; the evolution and survival of media archives: policies, open science practices, IP protection, alternative approaches towards the revitalisation of cultural heritage. Please send a 300/500-word abstract and a short bio (50-100 words, in English) to Giulia Crisanti and Paola Zeni at giulia.crisanti@uniroma1.it and paola.zeni@unito.it by January 10, 2025 – [subject: Cinergie Application + name surname author(s)]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31, 2025. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by May 20, 2025. Articles (in English or Italian) must not exceed 6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please provide proper credits, permissions, and copyright information to ensure that images, clips, and links are copyright-free and can be published. Contributions will undergo a double-blind peer-review. Expected publication: December 2025. Please note that the 16th edition of Media Mutations International Conference - Unlocking Television Archives in the Digital Era, to be held in Bologna in May 26-27, 2025, will focus on some of the topics covered by the issue; cross-applications are welcome. More information are available on the <a id="OWA8bfb6d92-9a0f-0a64-5993-a53e5a197ff1" class="OWAAutoLink" href="https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamutations.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cdorothea.burato%40unipr.it%7C1b5c0d97b3764599f54608dcfcb11392%7Cbb064bc5b7a841ecbabed7beb3faeb1c%7C0%7C0%7C638663084705150291%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wKE%2Bvk3aaXUMoYjMEDlMf%2Fi03xxjTimBiX1vxEgKy48%3D&reserved=0">Media Mutations website.
The ‘Spectral Turn’ in Film and Media. Technology, Images, Identities and Aesthetics in between Presence and Absence
The concept of spectrality has spread in a cross-disciplinary manner following the consolidation of the term ‘spectral turn’ (Blanco and Peeren 2013), courtesy of Derrida's (1994; Derrida and Stiegler 2002) notion of hauntology, subsequently reworked by Simon Reynolds (2011) and Mark Fisher (2014). A spectral perspective has cut across deconstructionist thought, media and film theories, cultural history and queer and postcolonial studies. Roger Luckhurst's (2002) seminal contributions on telepathy in late 19th century science, culture and literature, Terry Castle's (1995) investigations into the invention of the uncanny in post-Enlightenment culture, and Jeffrey Sconce's (2000) analyses of the “electronic liveness” of communication technology, have highlighted the mediumistic dimension of the media, highlighting the pledge to connect the world of the living with that of the dead. These studies attribute a supernatural, magical and occult dimension to the media inventions of the 18th and 19th centuries. The communicative and visual functions of the media are juxtaposed with extra-ordinary uses and a symbolic construction that interacts with everything that appears as liminal. For instance, photography and the wireless telegraph experienced a kind of splitting apart through the spread of “spirit photography” (Gunning 2007, 99), which posed ghosts, phantoms and ectoplasm alongside the actual people portrayed, and the “spiritual telegraph’” (Sconce 2000, 12), which aimed to connect the living with the dead, the worldly with the otherworldly. The study of spectrality is not limited to the analysis of representations of supernatural entities and the deconstruction of their recurrence in media texts. The evocation of spectral figures makes it possible to reflect on issues relating to the construction of identity, the processing of trauma and the creation of a collective memory. Through the reworking of the phantom as a conceptual metaphor, spectrality is expressed as a paradigmatically deconstructive gesture, the “dark third” or trace of an absence that undermines the fixedness of binary oppositions (such as those between life and death, visible and invisible, real and virtual, authentic and replica, wakefulness and sleep, absence and presence) by subverting the chronological dimension of time and history (Weinstock 2004, 4). The ghost provides a figurative, impalpable and elusive structure to the continuity between the visible and invisible, produced through the technology of vision, establishing an osmotic relationship with cultural, political and scientific aspects. Tom Gunning (2007, 99), for instance, traces back one of the moments of intensification of the culture of spectrality to the spread of spirit photography in the second half of the 19th century. Akira M. Lippit (2005) sees X-rays as a form of denuding the invisibility of the human body, a visual revelation that coincides with the invention of cinema. Mireille Berton (in Grespi and Violi 2019, 99-125) traces the continuity between phantasmagoria and séances. If then, as Tom Gunning (2007, 98) states, “in the new media environment based in the proliferation of virtual images, the concept of the phantasm gains a new valency as an element of the cultural imaginary”, is it then not possible to consider the digital avatar as a kind of post-media phantom integrated into the fabrics of contemporary communication? However, specific and historically distinct, practices and techniques from the past show a surprising and inexhaustible conceptual proximity to contemporary ones. Therefore, from Phantasmagoria to Extended Reality, one can begin to trace media archaeology reinterpreted from a spectral perspective, focusing on technology and its cultural space and the ways in which the technical appearance of otherworldly entities has been disseminated on a cultural level. Since the first forms of attraction, the cinema has not only explored the reproduction of the phenomena of reality, but also investigated the realms of the fantastic and the magical. It has nurtured a fascination with the occult that ran through late 19th century culture and society, creating tricks and magic, showing disappearances and reappearances, transformations and deformations, super-impositions and blurring. These techniques gave substance to an impossible world, based on the eerie wonder of seeing ghosts and other supernatural entities appear, infusing them with the illusion of movement. In doing so, cinema reveals its spectral essence and restores a liminal reality. For Maksim Gor'kij (1896), cinema represents a threshold between worlds, while for Edgar Morin there is a profound connection between cinema and the realm of the dead (1956). This legacy stems from phantasmagoria, in which the lanternist often made the faces and portraits of deceased people appear. The return of the dead in phantasmagoria is revived in contemporary technology and digital spaces. Here we see the spread of virtual cemeteries and the “avatarisation” of the dead through algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence; through these it becomes possible to interact and communicate with those who are no longer present. There is also another level on which the concept of spectralisation moves, that of expressive strategies. We can thus distinguish certain spectralising effects, such as backlighting, superimposition, out-of-focus (widely used by Garrone in his first films, e.g. The Embalmer), the handheld shot, the long-take, and various other techniques that tend to dematerialise the image. It is very interesting to note how some of these expressive strategies can even be found in the directors who most often employ and advocate a cinema of the body, such as Pasolini, for example, in whose work a spectralising tendency weaves like a hidden thread, almost as if it were a return of the repressed. We might also mention a more recent film, displaying a counterpoint Pasolini’s poetry: Her by Spike Jonze, exalts the ghostliness of desire and the spectrality of cinema, without facile enthusiasm, but with considerable, fascinating ambiguity, all culminating in a poignant and mysterious finale. If cinema is the art of “walking shadows” (Martini 1998), and an art that has links to the dead, then it is even more an art of spectres and ghosts. Spectrality represents an elusive category based around the dialectics of the oxymoron, thus being strongly evocative; spectrality, in this special issue of “Cinergie”, is meant to be read and framed within theories of cinema and media. Therefore, it is to be examined as a field of archaeological investigation between the techniques and contents of the optical devices of the past and contemporary media, between pre- and post-cinematographic visual experiences, and as aesthetic tension capable of expressing a profound fascination for the impalpable, the immaterial and absence, as a media processing of bereavement. There are several thematic references that we would like to see covered within the special issue: - The representation of ghosts and spectral entities in cinema and digital media. - The spectralisation of media - Spectralisation and the symbolic construction of identity - Spectralisation as a process of expression - The spectral genealogy of cinema and media - Spectrality, bereavement and media - Trauma and cultural memory - Spectrality and expanded cinema Submission Details and Journal Deadlines Please send a 300/500-word abstract (either in English or Italian) and a 50/100-word biographical note (in English) to mirko.lino@univaq.it and massimo.fusillo@sns.it by October 31, 2024. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by February 28, 2025. Contributions will undergo a double blind peer review. The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images or archival documents are copyright free and can be published. Number 27 of Cinergie will be published in June 2025. Bibliography Berton M. 2019. “Le fantasmagoria cinematografiche dei medium spiritici”. In Grespi Barbara and Violi Alessandra, Eds., Apparizioni. Scritti sulla fantasmagoria, 99-125. Roma: Aracne. Blanco M.P., Peeren E. 2013. Eds. The Spectralities Reader. Ghost and Haunting in the Contemporary Cultural Theory. New York-London: Bloomsbury. Castle T. 1995. The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny. Oxford: OUP. Costa A. 2020. Il richiamo dell’ombra. Il cinema e l’altro volto del visibile. Torino: Einaudi. Derrida J. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. London: Routledge. Derrida J., Stiegler B. 2002. Ecographies of Television. Cambridge: Polity Press. Eugeni R. 2015. La condizione postmediale. Media, linguaggi e narrazioni. Brescia: Scholé. Eugeni R. 2021. Capitale algoritmico. Cinque dispositivi postmediali (più uno). Brescia: Scholé. Fisher M. 2014. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zer0 Books. Fusillo M. 2018. “Fantasmaticità del desiderio, spettralità del cinema”. In Puglia Ezio, Fusillo Massimo, et al. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Grossi G. 2021. La notte dei simulacri. Sogno, cinema, realtà virtuale. Milano: Johan & Levi. Gunning T. 2007. “To Scan a Ghost : The Ontology of Mediated Vision”. Grey Room. 26: 94-127. Lino M. 2018. “Una ‘singolare’ spettralità tecnologica. L’avatar tra cinema, letteratura e serie TV”. In In Puglia Ezio, Fusillo Massimo, et al. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Lino M. 2017. “Spettri postmediali. Sessualità e singolarità in Ex-Machina”. Fata Morgana. 33: 327-334. Lippit A.M. 2005. Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). Minneapolis: UMP. Luckhurst R. 2002. The Invention of Telepathy: 1870-1901. Oxford: OUP. Martini E. 1998. Ombre che camminano. Shakespeare nel cinema. Torino: Lindau. Morin E. 2016. Le cinéma ou l’homme imaginaire. Essai d’anthropologie sociologique, Paris: Minuit. Puglia E., Fusillo M., et al. 2018. Eds. Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. Bologna: il Mulino. Reynolds S. 2011. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber. Sconce J. 2000. Haunted Media. Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: DUP. Shaw K. 2018. Hauntology: The Presence of the Past in Twenty-First Century English Literature. New York: Springer. Sisto D. 2018. La morte si fa social. Immortalità, memoria e lutto nell’epoca della cultura digitale. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Tanner G. 2016. Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts. John Hunt. Warner M. 2006. Phantasmagoria. Oxford: OUP. Weinstock J.A. 2004. Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination. Madison: UWP. Wunenburger J.J. 1997. Philosophie des images. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Cinephemera. Ephemeral materials for the study of Italian cinema between the 1930s and 1960s
This special issue of «Cinergie» - developed in the context of the research PRIN project Cinephemera. Ephemeral materials for the study of Italian cinema between the 1930s and 1960s - aims to investigate “cinephemera” in the history of Italian cinema during the period of its prime role in the media system and consumer habits (1936–1966), and use them to cast light on unexplored regions fields? of Italian film. The study of the ephemera can aim to rebuild the everyday film experience in terms of memories, materials and mediation processes. They are all objects of transitory nature, which is linked to forms of use on a specific occasion (Makepeace 1985, 10). They mediate, build and extend a constant dialogue between public and industry (Moore 2016, 316) and contain precious evidence of past culture (Wickham 2010). More in detail, we understand cinephemera as a category that includes manufactured objects and collectible items (trading cards, cigarette cards, postcards, envelopes, stamps, pocket calendars, gadgets and other movie-inspired, mass-produced objects); artefacts spontaneously produced by cinema fans (personal and appointment diaries, albums, “schedari” (spectator film files), scrapbooks and other movie-inspired private paper items); and correspondence from admirers and spectators (letters sent to Italian or international stars and columns devoted to reader-spectator correspondence in popular periodicals and in the sector press), all intended as elements mediating the spectator experience and as sources for the social history of “moviegoing” (Wickham 2010; Moore 2016). Thanks to these collectible items and spontaneous artefacts, the moviegoing experience can be rebuilt using senses other than just sight (Casetti 2001), including touch and indeed the whole body. Personal and appointment diaries or objects from a cinema visit kept as a memory act as “portable” records and archives, private memorabilia, “mnestic protheses” (Caneppele 2018) and extensions of the memory of watching the film (Mariani and Comand 2019b). Finally, the activities of writing personal diaries and letters (Guerra and Martin 2019) and creating scrapbooks, and the spaces personal expression in the press (Martin 2019) can be interpreted more directly reserved to as concrete expressions of the mediation process “of retelling, interpreting and recreating social discourses that the spectator does during his or her film experience” (Fanchi and Mosconi 2002, 8). Moving transversally through the traditions of study mentioned above, this issue aims to open a space for reflection on specific case studies, in order to investigate the cinephemera with tools derived especially from the following methodological frameworks: - Material culture: in order to frame ephemera as “social objects”, everyday elements and expressions of a specific historical-cultural moment, whose value lies principally in the information provided by their material form (Kuipers 2004). With specific reference to collectible objects, we will follow the lines of material culture research concerned with mass-produced goods (Dei and Meloni 2015): when looked at as stock resulting from production and consumption infrastructures, ephemeral forms can help disclose new ways of understanding the dynamics and trends of the film industry’s entanglement with apparently distant sectors of industrial activity (cosmetics, food, confectionery, publishing, etc.); - Microhistory: in order to frame ephemera as essential materials to uncover individual experiences and the relational universes that produced them. The eccentric and heterogeneous heritage of paper items and spontaneous artefacts demands a microanalytic approach, safeguarding the singular nature of each material under examination. In addition, concrete imaginative efforts are needed to interpret the social practices that they derive from (Grendi 1977). Facing radically different documentary sources to those used by quantitative studies on the cinema-going public and the film consumption of past audiences, the close-up view and the eclecticism of the methods belonging to microanalytical historiography (Levi 1991) enable an alternative way to rebuild spectator presence, which is not deduced so much from data, but more empirically and inextricably linked to “hands-on work” on the media and the objects at our disposal. - Fandom studies: in order to frame ephemera as evidence of an active and participatory experience in the film spectacle. To this end, we propose to finetune the tools that “fandom archaeology” has already applied to objects produced by and for fans, to the swap groups and networks revolving around informal collection-building practices, and to identifying the cultural intermediaries of cinema discourse (Fuller-Seeley 2018). By raising fan mail columns, diaries and scrapbooks to the status of historical source, we can trace the different fan culture discourses that have been present in Italy, either on cinema fandom, or actor fandom (McQuail 1997). More in general, we will try to make an original contribution to research on past audiences in the form of “bottom-up” film history. We will not deduce spectator presence so much from data, but more empirically from “hands-on work” on the media and the objects at our disposal. - Gender studies: in order to frame ephemera as active places in the construction of a “gendered” subjectivity from Fascist Italy up to the post-war period of recovery. While making use of the knowledge and methods offered by the literature on the condition of women audiences (Cardone 2009), a close-up analysis of the ephemeral materials will nevertheless enable us to call into question the assumption that places some of these practices – writing fan mail, scrapbooking, etc. – exclusively in the female domain (Grubey Garvey 2013). This evidence of “active” reprocessing will instead be investigated as a field of social tension between the male and female models of discourse put forward by film and the different access to film consumption permitted to men and women spectators. Submission Details and Journal Deadlines Please send a 300/500-word abstract (either in English or Italian) and a short biographical note to princinephemera@gmail.com by February 15, 2024. If the proposal is accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by May 31, 2024. Contributions will undergo a double blind peer review. The articles must not exceed 5,000/6,000 words and may include images, clips, and links for illustrative purposes. Please, provide correct credits, permissions, and copyright information in order to be sure that the images or archival documents are copyright free and can be published. The Number 26 of Cinergie will be published in December 2024. Bibliography Aasman S. e Montrescu-Mayes A. 2019. Amateur Media and Participatory Cultures: Film, Video, and Digital Media. New York-Londra: Routledge. Buckley R. 2017. “Italian Female Stars and Their Fans in the 1950s and 1960s”. In Burke Frank, ed., A Companion to Italian Cinema, 157–178. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Caneppele P. 2018 “Protesi mnestiche. Memorabilia ed esperienze spettatoriali”. Cinema e Storia. 1: 191–200. Cardone L. 2009. “Noi donne” e il cinema. Dalle illusioni a Zavattini (1944-1954). Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Casetti F. 2001. “L’esperienza dello spettatore attraverso le cartoline del cinematografo Centrale”. In Della Torre R., Mosconi E, eds., I manifesti tipografici del cinema. La collezione della Fondazione Cineteca Italiana 1919-1939. Milano: Quaderni della Fondazione Cineteca Italiana. Cubitt S. e Papastergiadis N., McQuire S. 2008. “Transient Media”, in Public 37: 76–85. Comand M. e Mariani A. eds. 2019a. Ephemera. Scrapbooks, fan mail e diari delle spettatrici nell’Italia del regime. Venezia: Marsilio. Comand M. e Mariani A. 2019b. Effemeridi del film: Episodi di storia materiale del cinema italiano. Milano: Meltemi. De Berti R. 2000. Dallo schermo alla carta. Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi cinematografici: il film e i suoi paratesti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Dei F. e Meloni P. 2015. Antropologia della cultura materiale. Roma: Carocci. Druick Z., Cammaer G. 2014. Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema and New Screen Histories in Canada. Montreal-London: Kingston-MQUP. Fanchi M. e Mosconi E., eds. 2002. Spettatori, forme di consumo e pubblici del cinema in Italia. 1930-1960. Roma-Venezia: Marsilio. Forgacs D., Gundle S. 2007. Cultura di massa e società italiana: 1936-1954. Bologna: Il Mulino. Fuller-Seeley, K. 2018. “Archaeologies of fandom. Using Historical Methods to Explore Fan Cultures of the Past”, in Click, M. A., Scott, S., eds., The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 27–35. New York-London: Routledge. Grainge P, ed. 2011. Ephemeral Media. Transitory screen Culture from Television to YouTube. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gray J. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers. And Other Media Paratexts. New York-London: New York University Press. Grendi E. 1977, “Micro-analisi e storia sociale”, Quaderni storici (35), 2: 506–520. Gruber Garvey E. 2013. Writing with scissors. American scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press. Guerra M., Martin S. eds, 2019. “La cultura della lettera. La corrispondenza come forma e pratica di critica cinematografica”. Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti. 15 Hastie A. 2006. “The Miscellany of Film History”. Film History (18), 2: 222–230. Kuipers J. M. 2004. “Scrapbooks: Intrinsic Value and Material Culture”. Journal of Archival Organization (2) 3: 83–91. Lanzilotta G., ed., 2017. L’arte in tasca. Calendarietti, réclame e grafica. 1920-1940. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini. Levi G. “On Microhistory”. 1991. In Burke P. ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 93–113. Cambridge: Polity Press. Makepeace C. E. 1985. Ephemera: A Book on its Collection, Conservation, and Use. Aldershot : Gower. Martin S. 2019 “Minie Piquet e le altre. Le rubriche di moda su alcune riviste cinematografiche negli anni del Regime”.In Comand M., Mariani A. eds. Ephemera. Scrapbooks, fan mail e diari delle spettatrici nell’Italia del regime, 231–246. Venezia: Marsilio. Manzoli G. 2012. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958-1976). Roma: Carocci. McQuail D. 1997. Audience Analysis. London: Sage. Moore P. S. 2016. “Ephemera as Medium: The Afterlife of Lost Films”. Moving Image 16 (1): 134–139. Noto P., Pesce S. eds., 2017. The Politics of Ephemeral Media. Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts. London: Routledge. Rickards M. 1977. This is Ephemera: Collecting Printed Throwaways. Brattleboro: Grossamer Press. Rickards M. 2000. The encyclopedia of ephemera: a guide to the fragmentary documents of everyday life for the collector, curator, and historian. Routledge: New York. Scarpellini E. 2008. L’Italia dei consumi: dalla Belle Epoque al nuovo millennio. Bari-Roma: Laterza. Tortora M. 2006. “Modi di transitare: dai fotoalbum cinematografici agli screen captures”. In Autelitano A., Re V., eds. Il racconto del film. La novellizzazione dal catalogo al trailer, 293–299. Udine: Forum. Vitella F. 2015. “Forbice, album e carta da lettere. Hollywood come fan magazine”. Fata Morgana 27: 51–64. Vitella F. 2016. “Mia carissima Alida. Le lettere degli ammiratori nell’Italia mussoliniana”. Bianco e Nero 58: 92–114. Wickham P. 2010. “Scrapbooks, Soap Dishes and Screen Dreams: Ephemera, Everyday Life and Cinema History”. New Review of Film and Television Studies 8 (3): 315–330. Young T. G. 2003. “Evidence: Toward a library definition of ephemera”. RBM 4 (1): 11–26.