“A camera shooting itself through the mirror would be the last movie.”
(Jean-Luc Godard)

Although the idea of cinema discovering itself as a subject is not new, it is impossible to overlook the fact that in recent years there has been an increasing number of films that bring cinema into the frame, in an expression of a certain kind of post-modernity. This special issue seeks to focus on such films, which are the result of a process of reflection on cinema by filmmakers who are true cinephiles – directors who are fervent enthusiasts of their trade and who express their reflections on cinema in their filmmaking practice. In 1996, on the occasion of the celebration of the centenary of the cinema, Susan Sontag wrote her now famous essay titled “The Decay of Cinema”, in which she exposes one of the main features of cinephilia: a nostalgic approach to film history. This approach is itself related to intertextuality, the concept introduced by Julia Kristeva in 1967, drawing from Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas about literary dialogism. Later, in 1982, in his book titled Palimpsests, Genette proposed the concept of transtextuality. Both concepts essentially refer to anything that places one text in relation to another. Also in 1982, Noël Carroll introduced the notion of allusion to refer to the cinematic practice which includes quotes, homages and recreations of classic scenes, shots, motifs, lines of dialogue, themes and gestures. Other related concepts include Frederic Jameson’s “nostalgia” and “pastiche”, and Vera Dika’s proposal of the term “recycling” to define the act of appropriation that filmmakers make of their film heritage.

All of these notions are different ways of defining the practice whereby cinephile directors engage in a cinematic dialogue with those who have gone before them. In short, the aim of this special issue is to examine the practice of those directors who propose a metalinguistic approach to filmmaking, wherein cinematic creation is transfigured through a process of questioning its own nature. The purpose of this special issue is thus to tackle concepts such as metacinema, film within film, self-referentiality, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, allusion and mise en abyme from different perspectives. In an effort to narrow down this vast subject matter (because, as noted above, there has been a growing interest in such practices in contemporary cinema), the study will focus on films produced since 1995.

Acceptance of articles for the section Notebook: 1 june-2 September 2013

For more information, please contact publicaciones@cineforumatalante.com