extended deadline for essay-competition »backup.plaintext«

[atelier querformarte]

We are EXTENDING THE DEADLINE to AUGUST, 31st

CALL FOR ENTRIES – ESSAY COMPETITION:

backup.plaintext – Theory and context of moving images

The 7th »backup_festival. new media in film«, which takes place at the 
E-Werk, Weimar, Germany, from October 6-9, 2005, is looking for 
theoretical texts by academic newcomers. Under the title of 
»backup.plaintext« we are collecting essays on the theory and context 
of moving images. In cooperation with renowned media experts and 
cultural scientists, as well as publishers, the most convincing works 
will be selected, and awarded with publication in our festival 
catalogue. Together with our media partners we are preparing further 
publications.

Goal of this initiative is to afford an opportunity to young film and 
media theorists to present their thoughts in the highly public 
framework of a short-film festival. The publication of texts in the 
backup_festival catalogue, which has a circulation of 5,000 pieces and 
reaches a broad audience of experts (e.g. filmmakers, publishers, 
universities), is meant to contribute to a good start into a career as 
an essayist or feature writer.

The topic of »backup.plaintext« 2005 is: Avant-garde today - beyond or 
beside film?
In the context of the festival, the project »backup.plaintext« 
functions as a theoretical framework for the different short-film 
programs. It is meant to demonstrate the intellectual substance of a 
festival which sets out to explore new artistic and narrative 
strategies in the medium of (short) film. Many of the submitted filmic 
works prove to be "experimental" or "innovative", and thus pose 
questions concerning the character of the "avant-garde". In which sense 
can this concept, originating from the first decades of the 20PthP 
century and proclaimed dead several times, be formulated in such a way 
that is plausible for films of the 21PstP century? Transcending the 
common definition of art – that was one of the chief concerns of the 
"classical avant-garde". Is it still legitimate today to try and 
transcend film, as the exhibition "Future Cinema" at ZKM, Karlsruhe, 
proposed a few years ago? Is experimental film looking for new spaces, 
places, ways of presentation? Where are moving images moving to? Where 
can the filmic avant-garde of 2005 be found – beyond film? Beside film? 
Offside? Is filmic avant-garde shifting, out of the cinema, e.g. into 
galleries and museums? Into television? Into the club scene? Is there 
any room or potential left for an avant-garde in film/cinema? Has the 
avant-garde of moving images become nothing but a technological 
project, recycling traditional imagery and trying to reconstruct 
historical dispositives? Is filmic avant-garde a social project? An 
aesthetic one? Might not the true avant-garde exist not in the 
invention of new ideas, but rather in the creative reprocessing of old 
ones? Could it be that montage, which was judged the most important 
means of filmic avant-garde by Sergey Eisenstein, has found its 
up-to-date equivalent in Copy&Paste?

These and other questions might serve as a possible guideline for the 
essays, which should contribute to the search for a filmic avant-garde 
2005. There are no further content-related restrictions. The submitted 
texts must be no longer than 10,000 characters, texts in both German 
and English are acceptable (the festival catalogue is bilingual). 
Submission via post or (preferrably) e-mail in PDF or RTF format. The 
competition entries will be anonymized on receipt, so the identity of 
the authors will not be revealed during the whole selection process. In 
the first round, every text will be evaluated by several members of the 
festival-internal pre-selection committee. The remaining ca. 15 works 
will then be presented to the jury, composed from renowned film experts 
and cultural scientists, who will choose two texts for publication.

Jury members: Roger Behrens (Weimar), Dr. Ulrike Bergermann 
(Hamburg/Bochum), Christine Hanke (Potsdam), Judith Keilbach (Berlin), 
Sabine Nessel (Frankfurt/Main) & Prof. Dr. Joseph Vogl 
(Weimar/Princeton)

Selection criteria:
- thematic relevance
- autonomy of theoretical position
- strength of argumentation
- linguistic quality

Deadline for submissions (postmark) is August, 31st, 2005

backup_festival. new media in film
c/o Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Fakultät Medien
Bauhausstrasse 11
D-99423 Weimar
Germany

phone +49 (0) 3643 - 58 39 29
fax +49 (0) 3643 - 58 37 01
mobile +49 (0) 176 - 216 30 422
plaintext at backup-festival.de www.backup-festival.de