Congratulations to many A/CA members who are presenting their research at this year’s Film and Media Studies Association of Canada (FMSAC) Annual Conference on May 27–29, 2025 in the Department of Film & Media at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario).  Details about the A/CA members’ collaborative workshops, panels, and individual paper presentations are below.

The conference theme for 2025 is “Autonomies: Screening Film and Media Independence.” The final schedule will be circulated later this week and will be available in print at the conference registration table. 

A/CA SPECIAL EVENTS

 

We are extremely proud to share that A/CA Project’s Co-Director, Mike Zryd (York University), will present the 2025 Martin Walsh Memorial Lecture on the topic “Autonomies in Film and Media in Canada: Institutional Ambivalences.” Martin Walsh was among the founders of FMSAC-ACÉCM in 1976 and an esteemed scholar of avant-garde film practices who taught at the University of Western Ontario and whose work, in particular The Brechtian Aspect of Radical Cinema (1981), made a huge impact on film studies. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, 3:30–5:00 pm, in Room 222, and is followed by the annual members’ reception and book launch. Join us at the Broom Factory from 6:00–10:00.

Debbie Ebanks Schlums and Sonya Mwambu’s screen-based performance-event “Theorizing Black Diasporic Archival Practice” is on Tuesday, 12:00–1:30 pm, Art & Media Lab 124.

Desire Lines, the video program curated for our most recent Educational Guide, by A/CA members Alanna Thain and Ylenia Olibet (MIRL at McGill in collaboration with Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV) in Montreal and VUCAVU, will be screened during the “Desire Lines: Intimate Autonomies in 50 Years of Groupe Intervention Vidéo Workshop” organized by Alanna and Ylenia, on Thursday, 2:45–4:15 pm, Room 329.

A/CA PRE-CONSTITUTED WORKSHOPS AND ROUNDTABLES

Wednesday, 8:30 am–10:00 am | Room 222 | Autonomy and Complex Media Archives 

Sara Diamond, Jeremy Heil, Eric Kaltman, Jen Kennedy, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Susan Lord, Mikhel Proulx, and Danuta Sierhuis 

Wednesday, 10:15 am–11:45 am | Room 336 | Precarious Autonomies: A Workshop on Contemporary Feminist Collaborative Media Practices

Roberta (Edem) Abbeyquaye, Dorit Naaman, Brenda Longfellow, Liz Miller, and Kristy Snell

Thursday, 1:00 pm–2:30 pm | Room 336 | Interdependence Against Autonomy 

Fan Wu

Thursday, 2:45 pm–4:15 pm | Room 336 | Witches, Spectres, and Incantations: Revisiting the Witch Institute 

Tamara de Szegheo Lang, Brandon Hocura, Ali Na, Jenn E Norton, Naomi Okabi, and Emily Pelstring

PRESENTATIONS BY A/CA MEMBERS

Tuesday, 9:00 am–10:30 am | Room 329 | Canadian Cinema History Panel

Daniel Keyes (Chair), UBC Okanagan, “The NFB’s Home Town Newspaper (Parker 1948): Analogue and Digital Dissonances for Hinterland Fantasies of Civil Setter Sovereign Spaces”

Tuesday, 9:00 am–10:30 am | Room 312 | Anticolonial Cinema Panel

Malini Guha (Chair), Carleton University, “Making Cinematic Kin: Solidarity Politics in the Work of Filipa César and Suneil Sanzgiri”

Tuesday, 10:45 am–12:15 am | Room 329 | Canadian Film & Television Panel

Charles Acland (Chair)

Kathryn Armstrong, Concordia University, “Returns on Cinema: The Subsidization of Canada’s Cinematic New Wave Through Television”

Liz Clarke and Peter Lester, Brock University, “Archiving a ‘Guilded Age’”: The Directors Guild of Canada and Canadian Film Studies”

Paul Moore, Toronto Metropolitan University, “The Cineplex Concept: From Toronto’s Multicultural Film Bazaar to Global Post-Modern Non-Place”

Jennifer VanderBurgh, St. Mary’s University, “A Banal Disruptor: Early Instructional TV in Nova Scotia”

Tuesday, 1:30 pm–3:00 pm  | Room 329  | Gender & Media Studies Panel

Kyler J. Chittick, University of Alberta, “Anonymity and Becoming-Imperceptible on the Lower East Side: Gender and Gentrification in Desperately Seeking Susan"

Wednesday, 8:30 am–10:00 am | Room 342 | Ecocinema 

Kelly Egan (Chair), Trent University, “Tracing Latent Blues: Towards an Eco-Feminist Aesthetics of Analogue Film”

Zoë Anne Laks, Concordia University, “Seeding Vegetal Sovereignty: Plant-Based Witches and the Horrors of Gardening in The Manor” 

Wednesday, 2:45 pm–4:15 pm I Room 329 I Catastrophies of Time: Decomposition in Film and Media Studies 

Mary Hegedus, York University,  “When Nature Returns: Decay and Regeneration of the Archives in the Films of Bill Morrison” 

Janine Marchessault, York University, “AI as Infinite Archive in They Shall Not Grow Old”

Jessica Mulgovue, University of Saint Andrews, “Catastrophic Aesthetics: Immersive Screen Media, Environmental Crisis, and Aesthetic Experience”

Matthew I. Thompson (Chair), York University, “The Garden Machine: AI as Environmental Archivist”

Wednesday, 2:45 pm–4:15 pm I Room 342 | Archives & Collectives

Andew Bailey, Concordia University, “Super Sonic Saves the World: Maddy Thorson’s Kaizo ROM Hacks as Counter-Archival Practice”

Thursday, 1:00 pm–2:30 pm | Room 329 I Unseen Narratives: Sound, Image, and the Politics of Found Footage Cinema 

Andrew Burke (Co-chair), University of Winnipeg, “Channeling The Peak Experience: Entering the New Age through the Goodwill” 

Thursday, 1:00 pm–2:30 pm | Room 312 | LGBTQ+ Media 

Mary Bunch and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (Co-chairs), York University/Queens University, “Fabulating Worlds”

Thursday, 1:00 pm–2:30 pm | Room 342 | Media & Technology 

Aaron Tucker (Chair), Memorial University, “White Faces, Black Eyes: Faciality Within Facial Recognition Technologies”

Simone White, York University, “Movie Magic: The Preservation of Practical Effects in the Digital Landscape of Cinema”