Vilnius, 18-20 January 2024
The Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies (Vilnius University) and the Centre for Creative and Cultural Practice (University of East London) invite proposals for conference papers on streaming and video online distribution in the Global South.
The rise of streaming in the Global South offers an opportunity to explore in a grounded but multidimensional way changes in the national cinemas of the Global South. Across Asia, the MENA region, Africa and Latin America powerful clusters of film production have tended to stifle local production. For decades they have monopolised national markets with films that have functioned simultaneously as a shared medium and a modern form of cultural colonisation. Today the operation of streaming platforms is beginning to destabilise this configuration, enabling the circulation of films from a wide range of countries that, until recently, were confined to their domestic market. What is the impact of video online distribution (VOD) on filmmakers working in Asia, the MENA region, Africa or Latin America? What kind of exchange does streaming technology make possible between filmmakers and audiences from the Global South?
Existing research tends to examine VOD as an industrial complex through a political economy of the media approach within which films’ content, aesthetics and regional address are marginal concerns. It also focuses exclusively on a small number of global, corporate operators, ignoring wholesale the undergrowth of local, language-specific VOD platforms that operate in individual countries and regions. Third, much research of VOD focuses on the Global North and the flow of large budget productions from there to the South. We are interested instead in papers that examine VOD as a form of distribution, exhibition or new mode of film production in any country or region of the Global South. We especially welcome papers that foreground a Global South-centred perspective, focusing on the flow of Asian, Arab, African or Latin American content either within these regions, or from there globally and into the North.
More information - International Symposium: Streaming in the Global South