For more than thirty years Eastern European and Balkan citizens and states were projected towards integration into the EU and NATO with the hope that they would eventually achieve steady economic prosperity and political security. Тhis expectation, however, has faded away as social inequalities, now at unprecedented levels, and divisive political trends have shaken transnational loyalties and blurred conceptions of "democracy". The conflicts in Ukraine and in the Mediterranean region have crumbled our previous certainties, generating a race to rearmament.

In these uncertain times, emotions might serve as a major tool of political mobilization. The aim of this conference is to explore short films through the study of emotions. In particular we're interested in investigating how anxiety, fear, compassion, love and other affective registers shape short film narratives, characters, settings, and intersubjective relations. We also pay attention to the way in which short film practitioners use emotion to engage viewers. Since the beginning of the past century, cinema has been used as a tool for the construction of borders that divide people into nations and races (Mosse 2021). Sara Ahmed (2014) has argued that feelings of hate, love, and fear are essential for the creation of boundaries between the self and the others that characterise national and transnational communities in the contemporary world.

Our goal is to open a reflection on how short films navigate the politics of emotion and thereby contribute in shaping "affective communities" (Hutchinson 2016; Gandhi 2006). In particular, we look for contributions that examine how short films tackle the ways in which minorities are stigmatized as catalysts for public anxieties (Bilgiç 2018). We welcome analyses of short films that deal with the representation of aggressiveness and practices of shaming and humiliation in the relations between states and communities (Fattah, Fierke 2009). In analogy to other social artefacts,emotions are not "natural" sensations, but they undergo a process of construction and circulation that reflect Western colonial thought (Hutchinson, Bleiker, Bourne, Hoang, 2024). The conference welcomes research on short films that deal with sentiments of disillusion with independence and democracy, and desires for empire (Said 1994).

Alongside the social and political implications of emotions in short film, the conference is also interested in analyzing how cinematic affects intertwine with technological instrumentalisation, in particular the “economy of attention”, and its effect on our capacity to perceive and generate feelings. How does it affect the field of short film, its processes and the relationship with audiences? Does it influence the emotional relationships between creator, film and audience? Do filmmakers outwit the diktat of the attention economy and to what extent? We believe in the urgent need for digital literacy, providing citizens with the information to think critically about digital issues.  

Our focus is on the cinemas of the Balkans, Eastern and Southern Europe, but contributions on other geographical areas are also welcome. We seek papers that analyse the ways in which short films position within the affective spectrum of social and political tensions. We would like to explore films in different genres such as  documentary, experimental, noir, war, sci-fi, horror, comedy, erotic, pornographic, and exploitation. We also welcome contributions on the use of emotions in videos published on social media and other Internet platforms propagating news and political ideas.