Title: The Rural Documentary in the European Context
Acceptance of submissions for the Notebook section: November 1st to 30th 2023
Fecha de publicación: July 2024
Coordinadores: Pascale Thibaudeau, Fernando Luque Gutierrez, Leire Azkunaga García, Violeta Martín Núñez

 

In an interview a few years ago with José Luís Guerin [included in J. Cerdán and M. Torreiro (eds.): Al otro lado de la ficción, Cátedra, 2007, p. 126], the renowned Spanish documentary filmmaker remarked:

"In the history of the documentary there is something very attractive about how it has drawn people in from very diverse disciplines, people from the fields of anthropology and journalism, travellers, scientists, etc.; but all of them, even when they began using filmmaking merely as an extension of their disciplines, ended up having a cinematic revelation and making beautiful films..."

Based on Guerin’s observation, this issue of L'Atalante is intended as a forum for the exploration of the different possibilities offered by the study of the European rural documentary. The objective is to take an interdisciplinary approach to the cinematic techniques used in documentaries, their aesthetic and pedagogical qualities, and the communicative purposes they achieve. Submissions could analyse either the content (specifically, the agricultural and forestry policies that Ministries of Agriculture and other public and private institutions in different countries presented in the documentaries they produced) and the forms used in these film productions, in order to reveal those aspects that explain why the cinematic heritage constituted by these films is worthy of a prominent place in film history.

To this end, we suggest the following lines of research as potential subjects of submissions to this issue:

• Historical contexts of production and how they are reflected in the form and subject matter of the documentaries.
• Genealogy of Spanish documentary production and its characteristic features in relation to other European productions made from the 1930s to the 1970s.
• Ways of presenting women in Spanish and European rural documentaries made from the 1930s to the 1970s.
• Visual construction of the landscape in the European rural documentary.
• Processes of reception of European rural documentaries from different theoretical perspectives: pragmatics, aesthetics of reception, etc.
• Local identities based on different vestiges of cultural heritage that appear in European agricultural documentaries.

 

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos accepts submissions of unpublished essays on topics related to film theory and/or praxis that stand out for their innovative nature. Articles should focus on approaches to the cinematographic fact made preferably from the perspectives of historiography or audiovisual analysis. Those texts that approach novel objects of study with rigorous and well-evidenced methodologies will be appreciated. Articles that take as their main reference the processes of signification through the analysis of the audiovisual form and/or the narratological elements specific to our field, focusing on methodologies specifically related to the treatment of the image will be favoured in the selection process. Although we accept works with other methodologies that approach the filmic fact from transversal perspectives (Cultural Studies, philological approaches, etc.) we consider that the main interest of the journal is located on the studies that take the specifically cinematographic expressive tools as the main elements of discourse. Likewise, texts that are not limited to describing, enumerating or summarizing details of the plot, but that rigorously apply a specific and well-evidenced analysis methodology, reaching particular and novel results, will be given priority.

Below are a few aspects to keep in mind:

• Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission guidelines of the journal and to the standards and scientific rigour expected of an academic publication.
• Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously addressed in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics previously addressed in the journal may be rejected. The content of the issues published to date can be consulted on the journal's website.
• All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that will respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double blind peer review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias. In the event of a very high number of submissions, the Editorial Board will make a prior selection of the articles to be peer reviewed, choosing the articles deemed the most appropriate for the issue. Failure to observe the submission guidelines and/or standards of originality and academic rigour will result in rejection of the submission by the Editorial Board without external review.
• The acceptance of the manuscripts will be notified to the authors within a maximum period of six months.
• Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including all sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as .odt or .docx files, using the template provided for this purpose. A blind version of the article will be provided. A complete version of the article and any images (.jpg, .png) must be uploaded to the website as complementary files. A detailed version of the submission guidelines can be found at the following link. Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected automatically.
• The selected articles will be published in a bilingual edition (Spanish and English). The authors of the texts accepted for publication must pay the costs that result from the translation or revision - in the case of providing, along with the original, a translated version - of their article.
• If the original manuscript is in English, the authors of the accepted papers must provide a professional translation to Spanish. The Executive Editorial Board may also require a revision by the translator recommended by the journal for Non-English speaking authors.
• If the original manuscript is in Spanish, the authors of the accepted papers for publication must pay the costs that result from the translation to English or revision—in the case of providing, along with the original, a translated version—of their article. In all cases, and in order to guarantee the quality of the translations and the unity of linguistic criteria, the text must be translated or proofread by the translator recommended by the journal, a freelance professional specialised in Film Studies. His work will be paid in advance and via credit card, bank transfer or Paypal by the authors.
• L'Atalante does not offer any compensation for published articles. For more information: info@revistaatalante.com