Date of Conference: Friday 6 & Saturday 7 October 2023

Venue: National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

Organized by: Song Hwee Lim, Principal Investigator of the collaborative project “Geopolitics and Transnational Cinemas: Towards a New Filmic Geography” (https://geocinema.tw/)

Funded by: Yushan Fellow Program, Ministry of Education, Taiwan

Global events over the past few years have both reconfigured and been triggered by geopolitics. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused an exodus of the population, huge price increases in places near and far, and a bloody war that is, as we write, still ongoing. The COVID pandemic brought travel – cross-border or even, in some cases, just cross-neighbourhood – to a halt, giving birth to a new nexus of power among mobility, medicine, and monitoring devices. The 2019 social movement in Hong Kong and its aftermath (in particular, the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020) saw outward migration, unprecedented level of imprisonment of political activists and dissidents, and heightened tension between the PRC regime and an alliance of countries in the Asia Pacific region.

All the above, and more, events arguably inaugurate a new world order (some would say a new Cold War). The notion of geopolitics has, perhaps, never been more pertinent in contemporary times. Yet, as Gearóid Ó Tuathail tells us, geopolitics is also a discourse, a way of making sense of world politics through words, metaphors, and visual images, indeed, an interpretative cultural practice. Geopolitics, therefore, does not fall only within the purview (or privilege) of international relations scholars; rather, scholars of film and screen studies could and should claim a stake in examining how audio-visual materials partake in the business of generating geopolitical discourses through their storytelling capabilities.

This conference invites contributions on any topic that touches upon the relationship between geopolitics and cinema (broadly defined to include all audio-visual forms). Abstracts of 250 words and a short bio of 50 words can be sent to Ms. Sherry Lai at geocinematw@gmail.com for consideration before Sunday 13 August 2023. Scholars whose papers have been selected will be notified by Friday 18 August 2023.

The language of the conference will be English. We welcome both established and early-career academics to take part. No funding for travel or accommodation is available for participants.