In preparation for the SCMS Conference in New Orleans in March 2011, we would like to invite scholars working on film festivals to submit paper proposals to be part of pre-constituted panel(s) and/or workshop(s) that members of the Film Festival Research Network will submit to SCMS.

The Film Festival Research Network (FFRN) is a loose connection of international scholars working on issues related to film festivals, founded by Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist. FFRN aims to make festival research more available, to connect its diverse aspects and to foster interdisciplinary exchange between researchers. To achieve this, we have compiled a thematic annotated bibliography on film festival research that is available online: www1.uni-hamburg.de/Medien/berichte/arbeiten/0091_08.html and established a mailing list that can be subscribed to at: listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/filmfestivalresearch_listcultures.org. The FFRN has also organized panels for the annual conferences of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) and the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) in previous years.

While for the upcoming 2011 SCMS Conference the theme focuses on “Media Citizenship”, our call is not intended to be rigid. The film festival panel(s) will therefore be open to papers on all aspects of research relating to film festivals.

Please contact Skadi Loist ( skadi.loist@uni-hamburg.de) no later than August 10, 2010 to register your interest and indicate the possible area of your paper or a topic you would like to discuss with others in the workshop format. We will then work at integrating the indicated interests to form panels and/or workshops. Expect
a response by August 15.

For the eventual panel(s), all presenters are asked to provide a title, an abstract of max. 250 words, with key bibliographical references, and a short biography in a form ready to be submitted to SCMS. We therefore ask anyone participating in the panel(s) to send their completed proposals as a Word attachment to Skadi no later than August 21, 2010 to allow time for preparation of the overall panel(s) description(s) and submission before the general submissions deadline on September 1, 2010.

Please consult the SCMS guidelines before you submit.