Call for Papers:

Planetary Screens Conference
Environmental Crisis, Interconnected Lifeworlds, & Sustainability in Film & Screen Media
September 4-5, 2025
Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
https://planetaryscreensconference.wordpress.com/

Keynote Speaker: Dr Tiago de Luca (University of Warwick)
Film Screening and Q&A with Filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland

Deadline for submission of abstracts: June 2, 2025

In today’s global environment, ecological destruction, biodiversity loss and climate change, as the consequence of accelerated industrialisation are no longer speculation (Beck 2008). Whether understood through the frameworks of the Anthropocene or the Capitalocene, these are now planetary threats, affecting not only a particular geographical region, but the whole world, endangering both human and non-human lives. According to Tiago de Luca (2021), the environmental crisis acknowledges that the world is an “interconnected sphere made up of delicately interdependent ecosystems and lifeworlds” and “urgently demands solutions on the planetary scale” (1). Unlike globalisation, which imagines the world as a homogenised space shaped by capitalist exchanges and flows, the planetary thinks of the Earth as a space that articulates world connectedness between the human and the non-human (Chulphongsathorn 2021). It forges a “planetary imagined community” (Heise 2008, 61) that demands an “ethics of co-habitation” (Mendieta 2012, 279) and moves beyond national, transnational and global frameworks to address the environmental crisis.

In light of these discussions, this conference invites scholarly papers, creative practice- based research presentations/ screenings or pre-constituted panel proposals to reflect the centrality of the planetary in film and screen media, with consideration for the context of the environmental emergency.

It asks contributors to explore how screen encounters with the human and the non-human articulate ecological and ecocritical discourses and sustainable modes of being on the planet through aesthetics, technologies and screen media forms and genres. It invites contributions that explore alternative planetary imaginations, considering the intersections of climate change and the inequalities of race, class, gender, culture and geography. Furthermore, it welcomes works that investigate the material impact of film and screen media in the sustainability of the planet.

The conference does not ignore the current context marked by a significant shift in global environmental discourses, particularly in relation to the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States. It considers this moment to posit film and screen media as discursive spaces for reclaiming the relevance of the planetary and environmental debates at a time when they are increasingly dismissed.

The conference invites contributions related, but not exclusive, to the following topics:

• The relevance of the planetary in film and screen media to address the current environmental context
• The articulation of the planetary in film and screen media in relation to the global, transnational, national and the world.
• The planetary as a space for human and non-human co-habitation in film and screen media.
• Intersectional approaches to planetary thinking and ecocriticism (in terms of race, gender, queer, class, etc.).
• Decolonial and post-colonial planetary and ecological imaginations.
• Diegetic and spectatorial encounters with the human and the non-human in film and screen media.
• Film and screen media in the context of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene and Chthulucene.
• Ecocritical approaches to film and screen media.
• The representation of the non-human in film and screen media.
• Eco-aesthetics, forms and narratives in film and screen media.
• Environmental justice and activism in film and screen media.
• Creative practice and the environment in film and screen media.
• Ecological and planetary imaginations in film and screen media.
• Indigenous cosmologies and the environment.
• The material impact of film and screen media in the sustainability of the planet.
• The representation of extractivism in film and screen media.

The Conference welcomes individual proposals for 20-minute papers, practice-based research presentations/ screenings or pre-constituted panel proposals.

Please send your abstract (200-250 words) with a title, short bio(s) (up to 100 words each) and bibliography to the email planetaryscreens@gmail.com by June 2^nd.

Conference Fee: 25£ (to cover expenses with catering, including coffee breaks, lunch and wine reception).

This Conference is supported by the School of Arts, English and Languages Research Fund and the Centre of Documentary Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Dr Michael Holly (Queen’s University Belfast)
Dr Humberto Saldanha (Queen’s University Belfast)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beck, Ulrich. World at Risk. Polity, 2009.

Chulphongsathorn, Graiwoot. “Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Planetary Cinema.” Screen, no. 62, vol. 4, 2021, pp. 541-548.

de Luca, Tiago. Planetary Cinema: Film, Media and the Earth. Amsterdam UP, 2022.

Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford U P, 2008.

Mendieta, Eduardo. “Interspecies Cosmopolitanism.” Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, edited by Gerard Delanty, Routledge, 2012, pp. 276-288.