(CFP) B for BAD Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics and Cultural Value

B for BAD Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics and Cultural Value

Inaugural Centre for Film and Television Studies Conference, Monash University, Melbourne, April 15-17, 2009

Over the past decade, paracinema – a movement that has grown up around sleazy, excessive, or poorly executed B-movies – has seen a counter-cultural valorisation of all forms of cinematic trash or ‘badfilm.’ In many internet and print sources devoted to the celebration of paracinema, the term B-movie has (in contrast to its earlier studio-era sense) come to mean almost anything: disreputable and unworthy movies, low-budget exploitation movies, straight to TV or video movies, and even big-budget studio movies. B for BAD cinema seeks to negotiate some of the (aesthetic and moral) values and judgments inscribed in a B-movie culture in which films are deemed to be good-because-bad or bad-because-good. B for BAD cinema invites international film scholars, critics and filmmakers to present their thoughts on badfilm, with a particular focus on the following themes:

1. Cultural value and theory
2. Bad feeling and affect
3. Aesthetic value and bad art
4. Cultural morals and politics
5. Bad film theory and criticism

Plenary speakers include:

• Elisabeth Bronfen
• J. Hoberman
• Adrian Martin
• Ernest Mathijs
• Murray Pomerance
• Jeffrey Sconce

The Conference Conveners will accept proposals for individual papers or three-speaker panel sessions until November 14 2008.

Abstracts of no more than 250-words and a 100-word biography should be sent to Con Verevis.