Congrès international à Ouarzazate : " le cinéma alternatif : les fondements intellectuels et les enjeux créatifs"

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
"Alternative Cinema:
Intellectual Foundations and Creative Challenges"
Multidisciplinary Faculty of Ouarzazate
Ibn Zohr University, Morocco
October 31 to November 02, 2024
Background
Alternative cinema is defined as a set of schools, experiences, trends and artistic sensibilities
that are built via filmic experiences of all genres: documentaries, fiction, short or feature films. The
works have accumulated throughout the history of cinema to compose a new, different, and
unconventional filmography, whether in terms of production, themes, creative and imaginative
proposals, narrative formats, schools, genres, intellectual premises, theoretical frameworks, functions
or issues. These proposals have crystallized outside the dominant figures, relationships and creative or
productive paradigms. It is a political, independent, avant-garde and experimental cinema whose
artistic choices do not fit into the general rules that govern film production.
By alternative cinema, we also mean cinematic experiences that combine aesthetics and
politics linked to certain alternative currents, sensibilities, positions or schools, like Soviet cinema as it
appeared the day after the revolution of 1917. Among others, the experiments of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Alexei Dovzhenko, German expressionism, the Film
League, Free Cinema, Third Cinema, Political Cinema, Dogma 95, Italian Neorealism, the New
German Cinema, the Cinema of Truth, Direct Cinema, the New Brazilian Cinema, as well as various
avant-garde cinemas often have an innovative basis. We believe that alternative cinema can only be
identified in its contradiction and its difference from the dominant cinema at a certain historical stage,
and in relation to what it proposes in terms of constants and substitutions that overthrow both film
creation and social relations. Thus, alternative cinema would have a growing affluence on creativity
and the relationships that link culture, cinema, and society.
This type of cinema shakes the constant, disturbs it, and proposes what overturns and
transcends it, not in the form of predictions, direct formulas and prophetic fantasies, but through the
renewal of characteristics, aesthetics, stakes, and artistic language. What is meant by the renewal of
creativity in general, and of cinematographic creativity in particular, is an innovative development
opposed to the dominant forms of creativity. In addition, alternative cinema reveals itself as a practice
that is not isolated from its reality, but integrated into social dynamics. It is the manifestation of a
position of social and cultural struggle carrying a political and ideological charge.
Alternative cinema, the topic of this conference, is a cinema which represents a posture that
simultaneously disrupts the cinematographic act and its associated functions. It is formed in particular
in relation to the functions of art in general, of cinema in particular, and to the needs of history and
society. It expresses itself as a mode of operation, production, creativity, and intellectual and aesthetic
proposals different from the requirements of the mainstream. That is why it appears dreamy, and its
reflection is based on its relationship with qualitative, different and militant issues. Alternative cinema
has historically been formed within and on the fringes of the major film industries, to create a
cinematographic base consolidated by theoretical postures and reflections that have seduced a wide
audience. Moreover, many theorists and critics evoke the need to study it, question its premises,
dissect its specificities, and reveal its structures as well as the discourse that links it to our present.
Based on the above, we propose "Alternative Cinema: Intellectual Foundations and
Creative Challenges" as a timely theme for the conference to be held at the Multidisciplinary Faculty
in Ouarzazate, a theme through which we wish to create a moment of reflection bringing together
researchers, critics, and filmmakers from all cultural backgrounds. The contributions should be framed
around the following themes:
1. Alternative intellectual premises and creative renewal in the new film schools of world
cinema (study of alternative cinematic experiences and trends: Soviet cinema, Italian neo-realism,
third cinema...),
2. Alternative intellectual frameworks and the creation of alternative cinematic sensibilities in
world cinema (study of alternative cinematic trends and experiences: Free Cinema, Political Cinema,
Dogma 95, Truth Cinema, Direct Cinema, Film League, Brazilian New Cinema...),
3. The theoretical insights of alternative cinema: Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenshine, Glauber
Rocha, Fernando Solanas, Lars von Trier...),
4. Alternative aesthetics in documentary cinema: a study of the experiences of documentary
cinema by Joris Evans, Chris Marker, Johan van der Keuken, Patricio Guzmán Lozanes and Wang
Bing,
5. Cinematographic innovation in Moroccan cinema: Creative constants and innovations,
6. Political cinema: from intellectual conviction to the creation of aesthetic alternatives,
7. Underground cinema: difference and avant-garde approach in cinema,
8. Creative experimentation and the making of alternative cinematic features,
9. Artificial intelligence, digitalization, the industry and the prospects of alternative cinema,
10. The themes of revolution and liberation in alternative cinema,
11. Independent production and the creation of creative alternatives,
12. The intellectual contexts of African alternative cinema,
13. The vision of the marginalized and the oppressed in alternative cinema,
14. The concerns of the Arab alternative cinema experiences,
15. Visions and perceptions of Maghreb alternative cinema,
16. Moroccan cinema: Intellectual anguish and the crystallization of alternative creative
differences.

This conference will take place from October 31 to November 02, 2024. The presentations must be
written in Arabic, French, English or Spanish. Please send a 300-word proposal and a short bio to the
scientific committee on this email address: tbahamid@yahoo.fr.

Dates to consider:
Abstract submission deadline: September 05, 2024
Notification of acceptance: September 10, 2024
anuscript submission deadline: October 10, 2024
Notification of acceptance: October 20, 2024
Conference Coordinator:
Dr. Hamid Tbatou
Multidisciplinary Faculty, Ouarzazate,
Ibnou Zohr University,
Morocco
Email: tbahamid@yahoo.fr
Phone: +2126 64 44 89 25