CALL FOR PAPERS

We accept articles – in Polish or in English language – concerning subjects as announced below, as well as papers not strictly connected with the main topic of the volume, especially if they are related to history of Polish cinema, film theory or issues from the area of film and media studies that are underresearched so far. We also accept reviews of the books on film published in Poland or concerning Polish cinema and media.

No. 131 (Autumn 2025)

CINEMA/MEDIA ECOLOGY

(submission deadline: June 2, 2025)

Ecology is a domain that uses insights from various sciences – biology, geography, economics, sociology, etc. – to study the mutual influences between the animate and inanimate environments, or, put differently: between humans, nature, and technology. With regard to cinema and/or media, this term obviously evokes concepts such as ‘green cinema’ or ‘ecocinema,’ which are based primarily on the film industry’s relationship to environmental issues and activism. While this perspective is not excluded from the proposed thematic volume, we would like to go beyond it, towards phenomena such as systemicity or environmentality. We encourage reflection on both the system created by cinema or media themselves and their various, not always evident, relations with other systems (e.g., ecosystems, including those entirely independent of humans). We seek contributions that not so much juxtapose culture and nature or isolate one category from the other, but rather discern the mechanisms of their functioning, similarities, and even interdependencies; mechanisms that are based on the balance between various factors and influences or vulnerable to its absence.

We invite considerations of the proposed topic in various orders: ontological or epistemological, ethical or aesthetic, historical or contemporary, as well as textual or infrastructural.

Examples of thematic areas:

• film as a cognitive tool in natural sciences
• ecocritical perspective in film and media studies
• the transgressiveness of relationships between humans, media, and nature
• aesthetics of nature and its (possible) relations to cinema and media: experiencing nature as art, Gernot Böhme’s ecological aesthetics of nature (the aesthetic, sensual experience of nature; nature not contrasted with culture or technology: ‘expanded ecology’)
• in lieu of representation: transformation and creation as a paradigm of ecological audiovisual art, i.e., how can films teach us to perceive the world differently?
• theory and practice of research on ‘ecocinema’
• globality and locality of media ecosystems
• transmedia worlds as narrative types and strategies; fandom, online discourses and other paratexts as a film ecosystem
• the convergence/divergence of ‘eco-ethical’ perspectives in film content and production (growing environmental consciousness vs. disregard for labour rights; environmental devastation as part of other social problems, etc.)
• zero waste cinema in terms of materiality (waste reduction and disposal) and/or aesthetics (against the aesthetics of excess)
• film/cinema/media history and the growing environmental awareness, i.e., what may discourses in film theory and history have to do with nature?
• AI and its influence on pro-environmental developments in cinema/media

No. 132 (Winter 2025)

WORLD CINEMA

(submission deadline: September 1, 2025)

One challenge facing “world cinema” scholars involves defining its core content. Conceptual diversity and multiple research perspectives hinder synthetic or cohesive reflection. World cinema encompasses, for example, films produced outside Hollywood that oppose its aesthetics and values, arthouse productions from various regions of the world, Third Cinema, and foreign productions interpreted through national frameworks. While this semantic richness offers advantages, it frequently creates conceptual chaos – taming this complexity forms a key objective of the proposed volume. Examining the methods – and even the validity – of employing the term “world cinema” becomes possible through foundational texts like World Cinema: A Critical Introduction (2018). Its authors propose three analytical frameworks: polycentrism, polymorphism, and polyvalence. Another valuable reference point emerges in Przemysław Czapliński’s article “Literatura światowa i jej figury” [“World Literature and Its Figures”] (2014), which provides a historical and critical analysis of the titular phenomenon. This approach does not advocate conventional comparisons between film and literature but rather applies a method of critical reflection on the former using the analytical tools employed – within our paradigm of interest – for the latter.

Submissions might address the question of the perspectives from which scholars define world cinema and their underlying motivations. We encourage critical examinations of the geopolitical, economic, technological, and social forces that influenced or continue to influence the construction of world cinema as a category.

Examples of thematic areas:

• world cinema’s global character examined through diverse geographic perspectives
• the tension between cinematic worldliness and globalization (for example, preserving local distinctiveness against Americanization – or more broadly, Westernization – of film aesthetics and production)
• avant-garde cinema as world cinema
• history and historicism as frameworks for world cinema (how plot, narrative and staging elements depend on historical reflection across global contexts)
• Hollywood’s absorption of world cinema elements and “world” national cinemas
• the Oscar category “Best International Feature Film” – its meaning, essence, and purpose
• if there is world cinema, does “world television” also exist?
• “image-worlds” – cinematic universes and multiverses as examples of the transnational and transcultural dimensions of cinema
• worlds alongside worlds – can one culture be interpreted using analytical tools belonging to another’s discursive frameworks?
• cinema’s entanglement in global networks of meaning (production and distribution methods), economic flows, and value systems – the transnational and transcultural aspects of filmmaking

No. 133 (Spring 2026)

FILM STUDIES AND MEDIA STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES

(submission deadline: December 8, 2025)

The contemporary era demonstrates a weakening of theories, particularly in the humanities. Multiple “turns” – often transient and provisional – replace these theories. However, can these turns substitute the theories and guarantee the methodological rigor of scientific inquiry? Perhaps “theorizing” and “mapping” research fields by academia will suffice today, instead of “deep” ontological and epistemological insight, to maintain clarity in navigating the course of intellectual trajectories. Suppose a new theory (or theories) were to emerge. What form should they take, and what purpose should they serve in the age of digitalization, transitivity of media cultures, and constant transformations of post-cinema?

More theoretical questions arise. Should film and media studies function as a unified discipline or separate research fields? Should they adopt an integrative and comparative approach, or should it lean toward interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity? What should film studies constitute today when questioning the nature of film no longer indicates theoretical extravagance? Should the digital paradigm, defined by the dominance of algorithms and artificial intelligence, serve as its primary context? Should we view cinema through the lens of critical theories or position it within posthumanist perspectives (which is not mutually exclusive)? What constitutes the nature of the dispositif today, and where should we draw inspiration for the field’s language?

Film studies and media studies remain in perpetual motion today, driven by the dynamics of transitions from humanistic to posthumanist and transhumanist narratives. In such circumstances, does reviewing past analog theories still hold value? How should we conceptualize film histories within inter-, trans-, and post-media spaces? By inviting readers to engage in this issue, we encourage discussions about the place of film studies and media studies in contemporary humanities; we also invite attempts to capture the dynamics of their transformations.

Examples of thematic areas:

• theoretical discourses of film studies and media studies facing transformations in the humanities
• proliferation of turns – a temporary necessity or the state of theory after theory?
• theorizing versus mapping in response to theoretical deficit
• film expertise – media expertise: integration, interdisciplinarity, or transdisciplinarity?
• post-cinema and post-media as research objects and cognitive tools in the humanities
• metalanguage of theory in times of its decline
• film and screen media in the digital paradigm
• transformations of dispositif and their theoretical, psychological, formal, and technological aspects
• trans- and posthumanist perspectives in film and media research
• critical theories and critique of theory
• histories anew – further challenges or an anachronistic project?