CFP:
A Cinema of Love. A Cinema of Hate. The Post-Romance in Contemporary Film.

Editors: Antje Ascheid (University of Georgia) and Nina Martin (Emory University)

This anthology seeks to explore the recent emergence of the “post-romance” in
international art cinema, which represents issues of dating, love, sex and romance,
along with modern urbanity, “singularization” and isolation in a fundamentally
pessimistic or at least highly skeptical fashion. The concerns of contemporary plays
and novels chronicling the collapse of the family, the breakdown of marriages and
the atomized loneliness of modern existence (Franzen, Houellebecq, etc.) are
matched here with the re-emerging traditions of art cinema in independent film. As
early as 1998, LA Times critic Kenneth Turan pointed to a new trend towards
immorality and nihilistic darkness in independent cinema, diagnosing in films like
Happiness (Solondz, 1998) or Your Friends and Neighbors (La Bute, 1998) an
inappropriate “lust for the grim.”  Like-minded critics suggested the emergence of a
“new cinema of hate.” Since then, there has been a marked increase in this generic
development identifiable in art films across an international spectrum. This volume
proposes to investigate the phenomenon of the “post-romance” as a counterpoint to
popular romance narratives prominent in heritage cinema and the romantic comedy
in a global context.

Possible paper topics could include, but are not limited to, recent films by Lars van
Trier, Todd Solondz, Catherine Breillat, Olivier Assayas, François Ozon, Neil LaBute,
Mike Nichols, Michael Haneke, Oskar Roehler, Andreas Dresen, Roger Avery,
Nicole Holofcener, Wong Kar-Wei, Coline Serreau and many others.

Proposals of 300-500 words should be submitted by May 15, 2005.

Electronic submission should go to:

Antje Ascheid
Assistant Professor of Film Studies
Fine Arts Building
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
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