The split-screen is a particularly cinematic device that symbolizes the voyeuristic omnipresence /omniscience that tends to characterize screen spectatorship. Yet, split-screens also expose their own artificiality, baring the mechanics of screen culture by announcing their very constructed-ness. Thus splitting constitutes a doubling that leads to the revelation of duplicity. The split generates a critical rupture — one that we posit as intrinsic to audiovisual media and its theoretical interpretation.

The spectre of the split seems to haunt contemporary screen media from every angle, surfacing in relation to zombie flicks, double-crossing double agents, dubbing technologies and Multiple Language Versions, to name but a few. We invite contributors to take up this theme from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives or multi-disciplinary approaches. Possible themes may include (but are not limited to):

∑ Screen zombies, clones, androids, dummies & twins
∑ Double agents & split personalities
∑ Body doubles & TV soap replacement actors
∑ Motifs of mirroring
∑ Echo & Narcissus
∑ Cinema’s “Coming Of Sound”
∑ Early cinema lecturers and Talker Pictures
∑ Dubbing & (post)synchronization
∑ Sound as ventriloquism (i.e. Rick Altman, Mary Ann Doane) &/or ghost (i.e. Robert Spadoni)
∑ Bollywood Playback Singers
∑ Split-screens in the oeuvres of directors such as Brian De Palma & Darren Aronofsky
∑ Multiplying the split: 24 (Fox Network) & Timecode (Mike Figgis, 2000)
∑ Suture theory
∑ Two-tiered models of film interpretation
∑ Conceptualising the film/theory split
∑ Split-theories (i.e. Deleuze’s time/movement break)
∑ Derrida’s theory of the supplement (le supplément)
∑ Director’s Cuts & Alternate Takes
∑ Remakes & Multiple Language Versions (MLVs)
∑ Rotoscoping animation techniques (i.e. Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, 2006)
∑ 3D technologies & double camerawork
∑ Disharmonies between sound & image (i.e. Godard)
∑ Films such as Singin' In The Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Blow Out (Brian de Palma, 1981), Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004) & I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media is a refereed, peer-reviewed, e-journal that explores the diverging and intersecting aspects of current and past entertainment media. The journal is published by the Cinema Studies Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/ Timeline:

Abstracts Due: 3 March 2008
Notification: 31 March 2008
Manuscripts Due: 15 June 2008
Publication: August/September 2008

Editors:

Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet
Cinema Studies Program
School of Culture & Communication
The University of Melbourne

All enquiries & submissions: tdwyer@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au