Cinema and mountains afford us with new vistas and visions and offer deep insights into the mobility of the gaze. This conference invites contributions that examine the many connections between mountains and cinema as well as the different ways in which they mediate each other. Mountain cinema enacts global and local visions of the world and is a site of transnational and transcultural negotiations. Although historical studies of mountain film frequently focus on national aspects or approach mountains as cultural and national borders, mountain films have always been deeply invested in globalized panoramic views and charged with ideologies of empire, economy, geopolitics, and gender. By its virtue of rendering the world dynamic and open, cinema shows us the changing social, cultural, and material figurations of mountains. Mediating between human and geological time, cinema reveals the fluidity of mountains and allows us to register changes beyond the human scalar. Mountains afford transnational perspectives and deep insights into conceptions of cinema. Their persistence turns mountain cinema into a stage where the historical interconnectivity of geopolitical, cultural, social, and ecological agencies can be studied in particularly productive ways.

Please visit the conference website for more information.

In light of the current health concerns and precautions, the event will take place online and on campus. Prerecorded conference papers will be discussed in live zoom sessions. Keynotes and invited plenary panels will be broadcast live from Innsbruck.

The conference is organized by the research group “Delocating Mountains” (represented by Christian Quendler and Eva-Maria Müller), Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck.

Photo: Tomáš Malík