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In recent years, Israeli movies have gained increasing attention at international film festivals. They also played successfully in German movie theaters and found an audience there; e.g. during the Berlinale Film Festival it is often difficult to get tickets for screenings of Israeli films. However, in the German academic sphere a reception of Israeli movies has yet to start. Scholarly publications, be it books or articles, on Israeli movies or cinema are scarce in the German-speaking countries, though a lot of political literature and fiction from Israel is published. To make a start filling this gap, the Ismar Elbogen Network for Jewish Cultural History (www.elbogen.org) plans to edit a German-language volume on Israeli Cinema to be published with Neofelis Publishers, Berlin (www.neofelis-verlag.de).
The volume will address the topic of Israeli cinema from different angles. One part of the book will target Israeli film history, the development of filmmaking in Israel, also including social aspects of cinema, like conditions of production, the culture of film review, and audience structures. The other parts will explore Israeli movies starting from central and recurring topics, focusing on social conflicts and cultural motifs, such as: the history and turning points of Zionism, the Shoah, the Israeli-Arab wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the immigration of Arab Jews in the 1950s and 1960s, the immigration of Russian Jews in the 1990s, the traditional spheres of religion and orthodoxy, the gay community. An article’s subjects may include but are not limited to specific motifs, conflicts, directors or actors, one or several movies, as well as film festivals, cinemas or audience reception.
The richness of potential approaches to Israeli cinema results from the different aspects and meanings which movies produce in historical, social, and aesthetic discourses, but also in economic, technical, and political contexts. The volume will bring together contributions from different disciplines, not only film and media studies, but also literature studies, sociology, history, cultural and political studies, and other disciplines of interest.
The Ismar Elbogen Network is inviting scholars to send proposals for articles on Israeli cinema by November 30, 2011, to the editors Matthias Naumann, Frank Schlöffel, and Lea Wohl:
schriftenreihe@elbogen.org
The abstract should be in German or English and not exceed one page. Please add short biographical information.
The articles should be handed in by April 30, 2012. Articles should be delivered in German or English. We will try to provide for a translation of English articles to German.
For any questions, please contact the editors at the above email-address.
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