CALL FOR PAPERS

We accept articles – in Polish or in English language – concerning subjects as announced below, as well as papers not strictly connected with the main topic of the volume, especially if they are related to history of Polish cinema, film theory or issues from the area of film and media studies that are underresearched so far. We also accept reviews of the books on film published in Poland or concerning Polish cinema and media.

No. 135 (Autumn 2026)

TRANSIENCE AND OLD AGE

(submission deadline: June 1, 2026)

There is a somewhat tragic, if truistic, thought – already weighing on the minds of the ancients – that the experience of transience begins at the very moment of birth. The world and human life are determined by a continuous process of becoming and vanishing, which gives rise to diverse movements and changes. Still, even while humbly accepting the variabilist view that becoming and passing away are the most essential features of existence, we constantly strive to leave behind a visible and lasting trace.

Transience permeates not only our daily lives but also our reflections and artistic expressions. Art, too, is subject to passing, though we often stress that we value precisely its universality and timelessness. Today, it is hard to imagine culture without Botticelli, Bach, or Vivaldi – but they too once disappeared from it (or at least from its foreground) for many years. The world of art is a world of stars, in every field and regardless of its value. Once-forgotten artists (great and mediocre alike) and works (masterpieces as well as less successful efforts) suddenly become almost pop-cultural icons, yet surely there are also creators and works that – despite former splendor – remain invisible to us, “observing” us from hiding. In film art, transience pertains not only to its content, the significance of ideas, but also to its materiality. After all, cinema also grows old. Bad and good films alike pass and age, as do great acting and directing legends and cinematic technologies – sometimes to return unexpectedly. Botticelli needed the famous art historian Ruskin in order to reemerge; films sometimes need only the curiosity and attention of ordinary viewers.

We invite reflection on how cinema thematizes transience on individual and social, ideological and material levels – and on the transience of cinema itself as a physical space, and of film as idea, medium, and matter; on the mechanisms, circumstances, and consequences of sudden returns, but also the causes of falling into oblivion.

Examples of thematic areas:

• the transience and immortality of films – rightfully forgotten or rediscovered: new interpretations, values, and meanings
• the end of the canon – whose/which cinema is fading away?
• cinema in a permanent crisis of transience – e.g., the coming of sound, the twilight of Hollywood’s golden age, the backlash of the Reagan era, the pandemic crisis, etc.
• the end of cinema or post-cinema? new forms of distribution and transformations of cultural practices
• ageism in the context of film production and the functioning of the film industry
• cinematic depictions of life’s transience and changing approaches to aging and mortality
• the aesthetics of decay and ephemerality
• relations to materiality, to one’s own existence, and to others in the face of seemingly infinite resources of time: what do we gain, and what do we lose?
• the film-ontological motif of immortality and the mummification of time and humanity
• the dialectic of transience and permanence as mutually conditioning categories
• the visualization of the passage of time, of phenomena of transience
• transience – progress, historical necessity, or loss?
• transience and the passage of time as models of futuristic archaeology in science fiction
• the contrast between transience and permanence in film genres: the disaster film (transience) versus the vampire or zombie horror film (permanence) – the political, social, and cultural contexts of their popularity in a given era
• testamentary films: the final works of filmmakers read through the lens of their awareness of transience
• the question of film’s survival as both material and cultural asset
• nostalgia for media formats
• the problem of the transience and permanence of film media and cinema infrastructure

No. 136 (Winter 2026)

THEATRE AND FILM: METAMORPHOSES

(submission deadline: August 31, 2026)

Over a decade after the first film- and theatre-oriented volume of Kwartalnik Filmowy (nos. 87-88, 2014), we find it hard not to reiterate the truism that cinema and theatre have always been closely related, regardless whether we approach this affinity (convergent or antagonistic) from a historical (diachronic mutual influences) or theoretical perspective (medium, method, conceptual frameworks, and transposability).

Convinced that the dynamic interface between film and theatre may continue to inspire both film and theatre studies or, in fact, their interdisciplinary convergence, we invite submissions for a volume with the subtitle “metamorphosis” as a guiding concept. We encourage contributors to approach this term in an inclusive and meta-critical way (as transformation, evolution, modification, or reconfiguration) in order to capture as fully as possible the changes that have recently reshaped the relationship between theatre and film, along with their coexistence in the broader field of the arts.

Sixty years ago, Susan Sontag concluded her well-known essay “Film and Theatre,” devoted to theatrical cinema and theatre incorporating film, with the words: We need a new idea. It will probably be a very simple one. Will we be able to recognize it? We hope that the submitted articles will outline such a new idea, whether through innovative ways of conceptualizing the relationship between cinema and theatre, critical reassessments of existing scholarship, reflections on new techniques of imaging and staging, or analyses of contemporary artistic practices engaging with the metamorphic material of theatre and film. We encourage contributors to consider the interrelation between theatre and film from as broad a perspective as possible – not only from a film and theatre studies standpoint (including narrative, thematic relations, technique, technology, media, and production contexts) but also from theoretical and philosophical perspectives (e.g., apparatus theory, dispositif, or metaphors revealing affinities between the two arts).

Examples of thematic areas:

• creators – problem-oriented approaches to artistic practices that innovatively reconcile theatre and film
• new perspectives on film adaptations of theatrical works and stage versions of film texts
• convergences of film and theatre methodologies – for example, quantitative methods as tools in film-theatre research
• film and theatre (film-theatrical) doctrines in critical and re-evaluative perspectives
• film-theatre hybridity – new media genres combining the materialities of film and theatre
• theatre-film self-reflexivity – the category of backstage film, films about theatre, performances about cinema
• film-theatre narratology – new narrative forms at the intersection of theatre and film, trans-medial narratives in theatre and cinema
• broadcasts and rebroadcasts (opera, theatre performances, concerts) – contemporary modes, aesthetics, and conventions
• streaming platforms and the distribution/dissemination of theatrical performances
• theatre’s opening to new media realities – e.g., augmented reality and virtual reality as extensions of immersive experience and participation
• the recording of theatrical performances – current approaches and debates
• film vs. theatre audio description – similarities and differences in methods and techniques
• animated film, puppet film, stop-motion animation as forms of theatre’s cinematographisation
• theatrical and film scenography – inspirations, exchanges, and cross-contaminations in scenographic practice
• editing, framing, shot – film tools on stage
• performative works in art history – addressing the interplay of film and theatrical strategies
• film and theatre acting in new perspectives – masks, personae, stars in a film-theatre framework
• generative AI tools in the film-theatre imaginary
• film-theatre intersections in the light of critical media theory
• film work by theatre practitioners and theatre work by filmmakers
• film as a source in theatre studies
• theatre and film through the lens of philosophical concepts

No. 137 (Spring 2027)

TIMES OF HORROR

(submission deadline: December 7, 2026)

Today, horror constitutes one of the most dynamically developing areas of popular cinema. Long treated as a reservoir of repetitive conventions and recognizable patterns, the genre is now undergoing a phase of intense growth and even more intense transformation. New generations of filmmakers have introduced previously under-represented perspectives – bringing the experiences of marginalized groups into the horror imaginary has not only expanded the range of themes, affects, and modes of representing the body and violence but has also reshaped the very rules that organize horror narratives. Consequently, current horror no longer merely reproduces its own conventions but rather subjects them to negotiation and reinterpretation.

The current stage of the genre’s development begs the question about the relationship between transformations in horror and the experience of our time. In a world marked by catastrophic imaginaries, sense of permanent polycrisis, and mounting uncertainty, horror cinema seems to function as a particularly sensitive seismograph of social anxieties. Is the contemporary flourishing of horror and transformations of its aesthetic and narrative a response to the “times of horror” in which we live? Or are we simply witnessing another phase in the genre’s evolution, in which horror redefines its own boundaries and tests new ways of representing fear? To what extent does current horror remain a tool of critical reflection on reality, and to what extent does it offer merely another, albeit particularly intense, form of escapism?

We invite submissions addressing recent developments in horror, with particular emphasis on genology. We are especially interested in contributions that reflect on the current transformations of horror, as well as analyses of its deconstruction, reconfiguration, or hybridization with other cinematic forms, along with how the genre responds to contemporary social and cultural tensions.

Examples of thematic areas:

• times of horror: the present – horror as a reflection of current anxieties and social conflicts; the past – horror as a way of working through the past/history; the future – horror as an attempt to confront what is yet to come (apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic)
• horror as a hybrid and transmedial genre
• folk horror, body horror, queer horror, eco-horror, techno-horror, political horror – (new) subgenres or merely new thematic inflections?
• horror revisions: new readings and reworkings of genre classics; adaptations, reboots, remakes – faithful renditions or creative betrayals?
• horror and metaphysics: horror cinema and transformations in religious sensibility and so-called new spirituality; current forms of satanic horror; horror and questions of evil and transcendence
• horror and humour: meta-play with genre conventions, self-reflexivity, camp, grotesque, absurd; the limits of taste and aesthetics
• horror and national cinema codes: local and regional variations (J-horror, K-horror, giallo, New French Extremity, Ozploitation, Éire horror, etc.); horror as a tool for negotiating national and social identity
• horror from the perspective of the affective turn: fear, anxiety, dread, unease, disgust, tension; trauma as both theme and aesthetic strategy
• formal and stylistic strategies in contemporary horror: narrative solutions and visual codes; the role of editing and sound in producing affective and physiological responses in the viewer
• the audience of modern horror: empirical research perspectives; distribution channels (cinema, streaming, digital platforms, film festivals)
• horror production: the genre as industry, production and marketing strategies, authorial perspective
• nobilitation strategies: relations between horror and art cinema; post-horror, elevated horror, arthouse horror
• transformations of monstrosity: representations of disability and neurodivergence; reinterpretations of classic monstrous figures (e.g., the vampire, the werewolf) from queer, gender, and disability studies’ perspectives; horror in the context of posthumanism and transhumanism