JOURNAL OF AUDIOVISUAL ESSAYS

CFP – JOURNAL OF AUDIOVISUAL ESSAYS ISSUE 17 (JUNE 2026)

Acting Gesturality and New Forms of Female Subjectivity

Special Issue coordinated by Gonzalo de Lucas (UPF) and Diana Toucedo (NFA)

Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays opens its 17th call for submissions for the publication of video essays. In this edition, in addition to the miscellaneous section, the monograph Acting Gesturality and New Forms of Female Subjectivity is proposed, coordinated by Gonzalo de Lucas (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Diana Toucedo (The Netherlands Film Academy / UPF).

Submission deadline: April 30, 2026

Description

Rereading film history from the perspective of actresses allows us to reveal nuances and issues that often remain outside other approaches. This monograph invites the production of video essays that explore actresses’ gesturality and its relationship with moments of crisis, political tensions, or cultural transformations, such as political transitions, economic crises, waves of feminism, technological changes in the digital era, and new forms of activism linked to mobilizations and social networks.

The actress is positioned between the imaginary body — shaped by social norms and imposed imaginaries — and the real body. Analyzing her expressive form — body, face, gesture, voice, and gaze — makes it possible to observe how new subjectivities are configured and how they participate in the cultural production of emotions and imaginaries. Acting gesturality — partly learned, partly invented — reflects narratives about unexpected female models: discomforts, forms of violence, toxic relationships, problematic maternities, or dissident desires. These emerging ways of feeling are expressed more through gestures than through dialogue or explicit plots, transforming the body into a space of tension between what is learned, what is inherited, and what begins to be felt differently.

We invite video essays that, through the editing of figurative motifs — for example, following Harun Farocki’s thesaurus method for indexing film archives — or through genealogical study, approach the configuration of the sensible by actresses, exploring minor gestures and movements. The aim is to analyze how actresses — often conditioned by the industry and the director’s intentions — activate subtle, fleeting, or deviated gestures, as well as forms of bodily indiscipline, that transform stereotypes and generate complex affects.

This approach recognizes actresses as creators of emotions and tensions that reflect the contradictions of female subjectivity, offering new perspectives on film history, cultural imaginaries, and political change.

Particularly welcome are works that:

• Analyze how gestures, movements, facial and bodily expressions articulate narratives about sexuality, love, desire, family, work, the economy, gender-based violence, and rights or legislative changes.

• Explore how actresses’ gesturality shapes female representation in processes of political and cultural transition, beyond the character itself, considering their specific creative labor.
• Investigate, through figurative motifs or genealogy, the cultural function of actresses in periods of sociopolitical transformation, identifying stereotypes, forms of dissent, and contradictions in female experience, with particular attention to Spanish cinema and its history since the democratic transition.
• Recognize the actress as a creative subject capable of constructing new female imaginaries and configurations of the sensible.

Submission Guidelines

Contributions for this issue must be submitted following the usual submission guidelines, indicating in the message the intention to participate in this monographic section.