This message is cross-listed with no apologies for the purposes of registering with as many readers as possible. It is an announcement about, and a call for papers for, the 2024 Film-Philosophy Conference, which will be held on 1-3 July 2024 in Espinho, Portugal, in partnership with the FEST Film Festival and organised with colleagues from the University of British Columbia, the Instituto de Filosofia da Nova (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), and the Universidade de Coimbra.

We are excited to announce that the keynotes for the conference are confirmed as being (in alphabetical order):-

Catherine Constable (University of Warwick) - ‘The Sublime and Contemporary Science Fiction Film’

João Mário Grilo (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) - 'The description of film direction as a philosophical operation: the case of Mizoguchi’s gendai-geki'

Homay King (Bryn Mawr College) - 'Enigma, Opacity: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Image according to Laplanche and Glissant'

There will hopefully also be an opening event on 30 June as a celebration of our partnership with FEST, as well as other possible events during the conference. We'll keep everyone updated about those in due course.

Espinho itself is a beautiful seaside town just south of Porto, which is home to the nearest airport. In Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Maintains, the narrator describes Espinho as "a classy beach with a swimming-pool and casino, I often used to have a swim there and then a game of billiards, there was a first-rate billiard room, and that’s where I and my fiancée whom I later married used to go… that was a wonderful time in my life, and maybe I dream about it because it gives me pleasure to dream about it." We can't guarantee billiards, but the beach, swimming pool and, for those interested in such things, the casino will all be there.

The FEST Film Festival will be running just ahead of the Film-Philosophy Conference, from 24 June to 1 July, 2024. Delegates may want to consider attending both events. The festival's website is here: https://site.fest.pt/en/.

Scholars, both established and emerging, are invited to submit proposals for the conference. These will generally take the form of individual papers - but we are not opposed to panel proposals if you have one (panels will consist of three speakers offering traditional, i.e. 20-minute, papers; or four people if speakers are willing to speak for only 15 minutes). We are also amenable to proposals for workshops and roundtables with multiple speakers if you wish to put one together.

The call for this conference is open, in that there is no single expected theme or set of themes, although we shall certainly encourage speakers to propose papers on topics that push at the boundaries of film-philosophy, be that by looking at non-western films and/or film thinkers, or that are engaged in 'decolonial' film-philosophical work in some respect. And of course we welcome speakers from non-western (or non-northern, if you prefer) backgrounds. Maybe there is a great paper to be delivered on cinematic billiards, too.

Proposals should be submitted to [log in to unmask]. The deadline for the proposals is 28 February 2024, with accepted speakers being notified by the end of March 2024.

We look forward to receiving proposals, and we might well send around this email a few times between now and the deadline in order to keep the conference in people's minds; I hope that this is okay with the recipients of these listserv messages. Most of all, though, we hope to see you in Espinho!

With best wishes

The 2024 Film-Philosophy Conference Organising Committee