CfP: Apparatus Video Essay Special Issue

"Resurfacing in the Cut: Videographic Explorations in East Central European Cinemas and Visual Cultures"

Decolonial epistemics and direct interventions in the archive go hand in hand, and the audiovisual essay is an exemplary medium for creating new ways of reframing, accessing and reclaiming histories. Adopted by researchers in film studies and adjacent fields, this mode of scholarly inquiry offers exciting and generative approaches to the once “unattainable text” (Bellour 1975). As several researchers-practitioners have pointed out, this creative methodology has diverse origins, including experimental cinema, video art, the essay film, and different documentary modes (Álvarez López & Martin 2014; Gills, Grant, & O’Leary 2024). Many of the video essay’s formal ancestors aimed to establish counter-narratives and counter-archives and to destabilise the rational, invisible, impersonal narrative perspectives often associated with media production in imperial centres.

While dominant, largely Anglophone narratives of videographic scholarship trace its recent development in the Western hemisphere, this issue also invites reflections on earlier and parallel traditions of thinking through moving images in East Central Europe.

Due to its mixed parentage, the video essay embraces a variety of formal expressions, with the explanatory and the poetic comprising the two ends of the spectrum (Keathley 2011). Frequently trading clarity for immersion and proximity, videographic research draws on embodied practices of performance art, placing the scholar-maker closer, and sometimes at the centre, of their objects of study, raising questions of positionality and subjectivity (McLeod 2023).

Catherine Grant describes the physical “handling” of a film in an editing programme as “material thinking”, validating affective and sensory forms of scholarship and allowing for unexpected revelations about the media object that would be inaccessible via writing or reading (Grant 2014; Binotto 2024). This kind of material thinking also mobilises “sensory perception of cultural history” (Russell 2018).

Videographic knowledge production has generated a vibrant and ongoing critical conversation about the potential of scholarly audiovisual work. Scott MacDonald has heralded the audiovisual essay as a new cinematic avant-garde, as it “offers implicit and explicit critiques of both the commercial media and the logocentric literature of academic cinema and media scholarship” (MacDonald 2022). Alongside [in]Transition, the first academic journal dedicated to digital video scholarship cofounded in 2014 by Grant, Jason Mittell, Christian Keathley, and Drew Morton, an increasing number of peer-reviewed journals – MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Literature/Film Quarterly, Tecmerin, Teknokultura, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Iluminace, and ASAP/Journal, NECSUS among them – now publish video essays.

As a leading journal in the screen cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, Apparatus invites contributions of audiovisual practice-based research for its special issue titled Resurfacing in the Cut: Videographic Explorations in East Central European Cinemas and Visual Cultures, guest-edited by Viktoria Paranyuk and Irina Trocan.

The aim of this special issue is to gather original research on our diverse region that uses the creative and critical potential and affordances of the audiovisual essay. We are particularly interested in work that engages with critical theory, archives, political activism, and marginalised groups and screen practices. We welcome formally diverse contributions that utilise any videographic style: the argumentative and the experimental, the explanatory and the performative, and anything in between. In approaching East Central European cinema and moving-image cultures through audiovisual remix and analysis, the special issue proposes three broad areas of focus: archives and historiography; resilience and agency; and small cinemas in the era of globalised production and media convergence.

Submissions must be original, previously unpublished works made no earlier than 2024. Final video essays (20 minutes maximum) must be accompanied by a 1000-2000-word written statement that articulates the author’s goals and method of engagement. We will prioritise original research that advances critical inquiry by engaging with the many affordances of the audiovisual essay.

Topics of research may include, but are not limited to:

• Decolonising (post)Soviet and (post)socialist cinema and visual culture
• Creative use of early cinema
• Reflections on national archives and canons as structures of power
• Reflections on counter-archives and alternative film historiographies as sites of resistance and resilience (e.g. political cinema; feminist film histories; nontheatrical film)
• Critique of globalisation-era film festival canons and their influence on small cinemas’ aesthetics
• Hegemonic representation of women/racialised characters/ethnic or political minorities
• The mediated spectacle of violence in recent cinema of the Balkans/East Central Europe

To be considered for publication, please submit a proposal by August 1, 2026.
If selected, you will receive notification by September 1. Proposals should include the following:

• Title: A descriptive title of your audiovisual essay
• Abstract: 300-350-word abstract that identifies the central research question(s) and media objects
• Methodology/Approach: Briefly describe the methods and techniques you intend to use in your audiovisual essay, including how you plan to convey your ideas visually and aurally (i.e. the role of onscreen text or spoken word in guiding viewers’ attention, audiovisual genres that inspire your editing style, etc.)
• Bibliography: Provide a preliminary list of key texts, media objects and other materials that inform your project.

The final video essay and accompanying written statement are due January 31, 2027. If you are invited to submit a complete work for publication, please refer to the journal’s precise video essay guidelines available here.

If you have any questions about the topic, format, or submission process, please contact the guest editors at
paranyuk@gmail.com
irina.trocan@unatc.ro

For general queries about Apparatus, please contact the editorial team at
journalapparatus@gmail.com