Agenda

A multidisciplinary symposium
15 February: 9:00 – 17:30 | 16 February: 8:45 – 13:00

Japanese animation has been widely successful in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany since the late 1970s, and, more recently, in other emerging European markets. Today as well, anime is a pop-cultural form of entertainment publicly recognised as a Japanese product, and whose general popularity is globally increasing. This symposium is a collective discussion – with the participation of outstanding scholars from three continents – on the dimensions of the process that brought this form of animated cinema from its country of origin to European contexts; the features of its distribution through television and other media; the wild reception among the youths’ audience and the press; the transformations from a mainstream amusement for an unsegmented audience of kids to a subcultural form for numerous and committed fan communities; the transition from television and cinema to new distribution modalities, such as internet (legal or not) traffic and commercial services such as Netflix and others.
This symposium, entirely held in English, will consists of two keynote talks, a final roundtable, and four rich panels, titled: (1) “Researching Japanese animation: Innovating frameworks,” (2) “Anime as a transnational creative industry,” (3) “Anime as narrative, entertainment, art: Modes of reception,” and (4) “Anime and international distribution: Past, present, and future.”
The symposium is organised with the support of Hoso Bunka Foundation and Toshiba International Foundation.
Entry and attendance are welcome and free for all kinds of audience; a simple registration on the spot is kindly encouraged for survey purposes.

Program and abstracts attached.