Three-D Issue 20: Women’s Media Studies Network roundtable event
Heather Nunn
Roehampton University
The WMSN recently collaborated with the MeCCSA Practice Network to support a one-day symposium on Female Authorship. The event was organised by Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling as part of the Glasgow Short Film Festival’s programme. Invited panelists to this stimulating event included filmmakers, academics, curators, artists and writers. A fuller report on the day is included in the Practice Network section of this Three-D.

This event led to several enquiries from potential organisers of future WMSN symposia. As a result, we are pleased to be supporting a forthcoming roundtable discussion focusing on Women’s Cinema in Greece, within the wider contexts of Women’s Cinema in the Balkans and in Europe. The roundtable will be held during the Contemporary Greek Film Cultures 2013 conference (5-6 July 2013) hosted by the Hellenic Centre in London (www.helleniccentre.org) and co-organised by the Universities of Reading and Glasgow. This 2-day conference seeks to actively help expand the current scholarship in Greek Film Studies, and to help promote a more concerted study and theorisation of Contemporary Greek Cinema, reflecting on its multi-faceted contexts of production, distribution and research, in Greece and abroad. The roundtable’s aim is to firmly place the study of Women’s Cinema within the wider (conference) concerns of Greek Film Studies and Contemporary Greek Cinema. Greece is geographically and culturally linked to the Balkans, and many similarities of women’s roles in these countries are observed. However, ideologically and to a larger extent culturally, Greece is also in close proximity to Western Europe. The speakers will include internationally successful Greek filmmakers, Olga Malea and Angeliki Antoniou, who will be invited to share their experience and knowledge about the opportunities and/or obstacles for women filmmakers in Greece. The discussion will draw upon their experience with distribution in the country as well as abroad. In addition, the roundtable will explore issues of financing not only under the current harsh economic climate, but within a largely male-dominated field in Greece, the Balkan countries and arguably elsewhere. Alongside this practice-led viewpoint, Dr Lydia Papadimitriou of Liverpool John Moores University will explore the relationship between academic and production forces in Greece. The event is being organised by Mikela Fotiou, University of Glasgow who is researching the representation of women in the work of the Greek filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis. Her co-organisers are Tonia Kazakopoulou, University of Reading whose current research focuses on women’s comedy in contemporary Greek cinema: Olga Malea and Philip Phillis, University of Glasgow who is researching Greek transnational co-productions with a focus on representation of Albanian immigrants.
For more information on the roundtable contact the organisers on contemporarygreekfilm2013@gmail.com