Call for Guest Editor: The Cinema Issue

ABOUT MIZNA

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, Mizna has been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.

Named City Page’s Nonprofit of the Year in 2020 and a Regional Cultural Treasure in 2021, Mizna publishes the eponymous Mizna, an award-winning SWANA lit and art journal; produces the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offers classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.

OVERVIEW

Mizna seeks a guest editor for its winter 2023 issue, The Cinema Issue. This issue will explore the relationship between moving image-making and writing and what the two practices can offer one another. Topics or forms to explore could include film critique, the history of SWANA cinema, poetry films, analyses of film programming, writing by filmmakers, film archiving, screen plays, audition calls, end/title credits, movie posters, storyboards, title cards, movie tickets, etc.

The guest editor will develop a vision for and be involved in producing a literary journal which explores any or all of these ideas, working closely with the Literary Programs Manager, the Executive Editor, and the Executive/Artistic Director at Mizna. Candidates should have a strong relationship to the SWANA region or diaspora and a deep knowledge of its current cinema and the writing about it. Filmmakers, writers, poets, artists, curators, or thinkers who have an established relationship with SWANA cinema, cinema theory, and/or other forms of moving image are encouraged to apply and describe their vision for the issue.

DUTIES INCLUDE

1. Develop a vision for The Cinema Issue.
2. Write or help shape the call for submissions.
3. Read and score either all or a shortlist of submissions and participate in a selection meeting.
4. Identify four or five authors, thinkers, filmmakers etc. to commission writing from.
5. Identify and conduct an interview with a writer, artist, filmmaker, or thinker of your choice.
6. Some involvement in the production of the journal, including content editing and establishing the order of the selected works.
7. Select a small number of works to be published digitally on Mizna’s website.
8. Engage in brainstorming about creative ways to activate the issue.
9. Be available for readings and discussions once the journal is launched, some likely in-person.
10. Write a foreword for the issue.

STIPEND

This is a contract position with intermittent stretches of work from March 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024. The stipend for this position is $3000. This position can be done remotely and is open to international candidates.

Thanks to all who submitted! We are no longer accepting applications for this position.