Ouvrage collectif en anglais sur la revue algérienne de critique de cinéma et de télévision Les 2 écrans /Al-Shashatan

CALL FOR PAPERS


Edited collection on the Algerian magazine of film and television criticism Les 2 écrans / Al-Shashatan

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in historical scholarship on global film magazines. Such examples include the recent anthology on Global Movie Magazine Networks (Eric Hoyt and Kelly Conway, 2025) and the re-circulation of 1970s radical Arab and tricontinental film magazines like Cinémarabe and Cinéma 3 (Léa Morin - CINIMA3 / Talitha) which coincide with wider research on global revolutionary magazines (Revolutionary Papers research project). These archival studies shed light on the centrality of magazines in the formation of revolutionary film cultures, the strengthening of transnational, anti-imperialist links of solidarity, and the self-theorisation of postcolonial cultures and societies in the Global South and beyond.

This edited collection argues that the Algerian bilingual French Arabic film and television magazine Les 2 écrans/Al-Shashatan [The Two Screens, 1978-1983], contributes to experiments in anticolonial and decolonial worldbuilding. The magazine remains virtually unexplored in Anglophone scholarship yet it participated in re-imagining the role of culture in post-liberation Algeria and beyond. Published by the state-funded Radiodiffusion Télévision Algérienne (RTA), the magazine showcases the voices of the major film critics and filmmakers of Algerian, Arab, and African cinema who continue to commit to global solidarity at a time when the Third World project is increasingly confronted with the violence of global neoliberal restructuring, and as Algeria's own iteration of the socialist project faces its own limitations.

We currently have contributions that touch upon the magazine's conception of film criticism and its genealogies; the magazine's investigation of the relationship between cinema and television, Women's film criticism, and the magazine's embeddedness in policies of transnational solidarity. In addition to the themes above, which are not exhaustively treated by our existing contributors, we welcome contributions on the following topic, and any other subject which we may not have considered:

the magazine's bilingualism

the reception of the magazine in the Arab region and the Third World

the magazine's cartoons

the diversity of visions within the magazine

the evolution of the magazine from its inception until its demise

the community the magazine seeks to create

interviews with contributors to the magazine

translations into English of important articles or editorials from either French or Arabic.


The archives of Les 2 écrans can be found in Paris at the Bibliothèque du Film of the Cinémathèque Française, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Site François Mitterrand) and at the Centre Culturel Algérien. Our scans are available upon request.

We welcome English-language articles in priority, but we are also open to discussing the possibility of French-language and Arabic-language contributions.

Chapters should tentatively be around 6,000 words.

Please send a 250-word abstract by 15 November 2025 to Kenza Belarbi, John Bennett, Dareen Hussein, and Viviane Saglier at vmcs1@st-andrews.ac.uk and hussein.128@buckeyemail.osu.edu