THE EIGHTH (AND A HALF) ANNUAL
SCREENING SCHOLARSHIP MEDIA FESTIVAL
The Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF) provides a creative, collaborative space to explore the affordances and challenges of multimodal strategies in research, and to interrogate their social implications. SSMF is a hybrid between a traditional academic conference and a film/media festival that fosters the intersection of art and science across disciplines since 2013.
RUPTURE AND REPAIR
April 16 - 18, 2021 | Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania
When CAMRA selected the theme of RUPTURE AND REPAIR for our 2020 Screening Scholarship Media Festival, little did we know just how relevant it would become over the course of the year. From the quick and dramatic escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic—which forced us to cancel our gathering in the Spring 2020 semester—to the nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice that shook the United States over the summer, we have all faced rupture and repair in personal and structural ways. While we considered the theme compelling before, it has become clear that it is particularly important, now more than ever, to engage these ideas in the face of the challenges that we have experienced in recent months.
We are thus extending 2020’s theme of RUPTURE AND REPAIR, and invite additional submissions from scholars, activists, artists, filmmakers, and educators of all backgrounds that creatively explore these ideas. In addition to this year’s submissions, those who had been accepted to the 2020 event will have the opportunity to resubmit the same work for automatic inclusion in the upcoming festival.
As in the previous call, we understand the theme to encompass a range of projects and perspectives about how we navigate pain, violence, struggle, trauma, and/or loss. We encourage submissions that explore different forms of rupture or breakage, be they physical, structural, environmental, emotional, symbolic, or spiritual in nature, as well as the many forms of, and approaches to, repair.
What are the possibilities and limitations of taking on creative or experimental modes of research and practice in relation to these topics? How do we depict and discuss pain and suffering sensitively and ethically? How do we represent things that appear to be unrepresentable? And how might multimodality offer new visions for repair, recovery, and reconciliation?
SSMF ruptures the boundary between an academic conference and a media festival, and will showcase film, audio, animations, performances, photographs, installations, immersive media, and other media forms over three days of sharing and discussion.
In 2021, CAMRA will host SSMF in a hybrid format. The majority of screenings and panels will take place online, but we hope to allow for the possibility of a socially distanced and outdoor event, installation, or program (depending on the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States). We welcome submissions that approach these formats in experimental ways and engage the theme both in terms of content as well as in uses of media and approaches to scholarship.
The festival will remain free and open to the public.
Call for Submissions
Categories for Submissions
- Film (narrative, documentary, animation, etc.)
- Audio (soundscape, podcast, etc.)
- Synchronous & Asynchronous Performance (movement-based, theatrical, musical, reading, etc.; we are especially interested in performances designed specifically for a virtual or digital environment, eg. Zoom performances, web-based experiences, etc., as well as proposals for socially distanced, outdoor events that could take place on a timed basis or with minimal participants.)
- Digital or Interactive Exhibit or Installation (physical or digital work that can be
showcased during SSMF 2021—for example, photography slideshow/exhibit,
web-based interactive experience, or printed or sculptural work. This can take the form of a website that we link to from the program, documentation of the work to be featured on CAMRA’s website during SSMF, or a proposal for a socially distanced, outdoor component viewable on a timed basis or with minimal participants.) - Research Presentation (~15 minute talk with visual/auditory aids)
Submission Deadline: Extended to December 14, 2020 (11:59PM EST)
#SSMF2021
#SSMF2021
CAMRA is also recruiting graduate students and scholars to serve as reviewers for SSMF 2020. If you are interested, please contact [email protected].
CAMRA, Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts, asks questions about the affordances, challenges, and possibilities of multimodal scholarship in teaching, learning, mediamaking, and knowledge production. Our aim is to support media-based research and pedagogies, with an explicit focus on: (1) establishing responsive and practical guidelines for the evaluation of multimodal research and scholarship; (2) utilizing participatory, digital, and ethnographic methodologies; (3) creating supportive spaces (both digital and physical) for multimodal work to be showcased; (4) critically examining how technology is changing the processes, relationships and products related to teaching and learning.