CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS
(African Studies, Film Studies)
Title: Aesthetics of the Future: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Editor: P. Julie Papaioannou, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Instruction in French
and Francophone Studies
French Language Coordinator
Modern Languages and Cultures
Lattimore 427
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
julie.papaioannou@rochester.edu
Aesthetics of the Future: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre Bekolo aims to collect peer-reviewed essays for a critical retrospective, and new emerging trends in the work of Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.
Bekolo’s filmmaking spans three decades bridging the end of a century with the beginning of a new millennium, and his contribution to African filmmaking and criticism has consistently reached aesthetic and experimental milestones by projecting, reshaping, and boldly responding to
questions about representation, narrative, production, exhibition, and distribution.
In 1992, Quartier Mozart heralded the future of African filmmaking with a new and upbeat aesthetic orientation in an amalgam of postmodernist and postcolonial thought. Almost thirty years later, his latest feature, Miraculous Weapons (2017) highlights Bekolo’s commitment to generate a critical discursive spin on questions of aesthetics, modernity, and postmodernity.
The goal of this edited book is to revisit contemporary approaches in African film criticism by focusing on critical perspectives in Bekolo’s art while expanding a fresh inquiry in the artist’s active engagement with crossing visual, narrative, filmic, theoretical, discursive borders, to name
a few; Bekolo’s blurring of (post)modern and postcolonial boundaries with Afrofuturism, for example, highlights the director’s commitment to challenge critical paradigms not only in African filmmaking but also in broader artistic domains.
In addition, this edited volume invites scholarly readings and insights on questions of technical aspects, soundtracks, photography, and visual effects that have rendered Bekolo’s filmmaking new and fresh. The aim is to collect papers for a planned volume that will provide a concise underpinning of the filmmaker’s overall work.
Tentative Schedule and Deadlines:
Contributors may express their interest by sending a 200-word abstract, a bio blurb with contact information (email, phone number) and institutional affiliation to P. Julie Papaioannou at julie.papaioannou@rochester.edu by December 15, 2021.
Papers should be approximately 20-25 pages, Times New Roman, Font size 12. Details will be discussed with publisher and will be provided.
Deadline for book chapter drafts May 15, 2022.
Deadline for revised chapters September 30, 2022.
Deadline for submitting manuscript to publisher-end of Fall 2022 (Date TBA)