Accent: Music and Sound in Australian Cinema

The University of Western Australia (UWA) Conservatorium of Music is pleased to announce a call for papers for a conference on sound and music in Australian cinema. The conference will be held on the 29th-30th November 2025 at UWA. This event will bring together scholars, practitioners, filmmakers, and sound/musicology theorists to interrogate the ways in which Australian cinema’s soundscapes serve as sites for political, historical, and cultural theorisation.

Possible papers may explore, but are not limited to:

• The role of sound and music in constructing the emotional/psychic experience of Australian cinema
• The material role of sound technologies in shaping Australian cinema and its political/historical/cultural dimensions
• How Australian filmmakers use sound and music to construct national identity, history, and memory
• How Australian cultural politics and practices are represented sonically
• Sonic markers of “Australianness” that emerge in contrast to international styles
• Australian cinema’s “sonic unconscious”
• The significance of silence in Australian cinema
• Australian cinema’s interactions with modernity
• How Australian filmmakers balance the local specificity of their sound practices with the global demands of the entertainment industry

Submission Guidelines

• Abstracts up to 250 words
• 5 keywords
• A brief biography of 150 words including any affiliations and relevant publications
• Proposals for panel submissions should include an abstract for each paper and an overall panel description

Please submit all proposals to accentconference@hotmail.com by the 1st of August 2025.