Gala Hernández (Murcia, Spain). Filmmaker and researcher.

She graduated in Filmmaking from ESCAC (Superior School of Cinema and Audiovisuals of Catalonia, Barcelona). The short film in 35mm Still Life is her graduation project. She holds a Master in Contemporary Cinema and Audiovisuals Studies from University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and the International Master in Audiovisual and Cinema Studies (IMACS) from Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle University and Paris 10 University.

She is currently a PhD Candidate in film studies at Paris VIII – Vincennes Saint-Denis University, ESTCA laboratory. Her research-creation projet reflects on desktop films and films recycling and reappropriating vernacular video in the post-internet era. The project will generate a written thesis and some films and video installations. She also teaches film studies methodology and amateur film practices at Paris 8 University. She co-leads the research project After Social Networks.

Interested in edition, she has worked as a video editor in PlayGround Magazine and participated in an international edition workshop in the EICTV (San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba). She has been the Festivals Coordinator of the international sales agent Luxbox Films, based in Paris.

She has published poems in some online magazines, fanzines and a poetry plaquette in paper with the publisher Ad Minimum: Amnesia of the birds (2016).

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Research activities

• Lecture « Poétique de la navigation comme flux de pensée: « Sitting in Darkness » de Graeme Arnfield », International Congress « L’essai médiatique », organized by the labs LISAA (Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée UPEM), EHIC (Université de Limoges), the Université de Bologne and the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, at the Université Paris Est, 25-27 November 2019.
• Lecture « Films on crisis, in crisis. Concerning « Havarie » by Philip Scheffner », International Congress « Filmic and Media Narratives of the Crisis: Contemporary Representations », organized by the Université Panteion, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, Université Haute-Alsace, Centre d’Études sur la Communication Européenne, l’IRMÉCCEN and the PHILéPOL of Université Paris Descartes, at the French Institute of Athens, Greece, 7-8 November 2019.
• Lecture “Ecologies of the videosphere: about ‘Roman National'”, at the International Congress “L’art tout contre la machine”, organized by the Collège des Bernardins, the laboratory RIRRA21 (University Paul Valery Montpellier 3) and the laboratory ESTCA (Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis) at the Collège des Bernardins and the INHA, Paris, 10-11 October 2019.
• Lecture “Silvered Water Syria Self-Portrait: the camera, a weapon against the regime?”, lectured in the conference “Regime-critical media and Arab diaspora: challenges and opportunities after the Arab spring”, organized by the Mediatized Diaspora Team: Controversial Policies among Arab Media Users in Europe (MEDIASP), Department of Intercultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 5-6 September 2019.
• Lecture “Dialectizing YouTube, reconstructing the revolution”, lectured in the Ludovia Summer University “Digital and representations”, organized by the association Culture Numérique, in Ax-les-Thermes, France, 20-23 August 2019.
• Lecture “Desktop films: the act of seeing with someone else’s eyes”, lecture in “Radical Ventriloquism: Acts of speaking through and speaking for” organized by Lee Campbell Christabel Harley, London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT), Centre for Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths, University of London, 5-6 July 2019.
• Lecture ” Desktop films: recycling vernacular video in the post-Internet era ” lectured at the Conference ” Forms and places of the virtual: first cartography “, organized by Guillaume Soulez, Olga Kobryn, Éric Thouvenel, Ángel Quintana and Lisa Zaher. IRCAV Laboratory (Sorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3) and University of Girona, at the Centre of the University of Chicago in Paris, 20-21 June 2019.
• Lecture “Confession in the Web 2.0 era: ‘Testament Series’ by Natalie Bookchin (2009-2017)”, in the workshop “Pour une cartographie des récits de soi: de l’autobiographie aux webcams” of the Annual Congress of the APFUCC, Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 1-4 June 2019.
• Lecture “Recycling vernacular video from areas in social and political conflict”, lectured at the conference ‘What is Radical film? – Radical film Network Meeting’, organised by Julia Lazarus and Ursula Böckler in cooperation with the Harun Farocki Institute, at the Silent Green Kulturquartier, Berlin, 2-5 May 2019.

PERFORMED/ VIDEO LECTURES

• Performed lecture ” CINEMA ft. Yellow Vests – We’re coming to get you at home (Remix)”, with Seumboy Vrainom :€, in the international conference “La manifestation politique au cinéma. Continuités, ruptures, détournements de l’expérience contestataire “, organized by Camille Bui and Raphaël Jaudon, at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, on January 31st and February 1st, 2020.
• Video lecture “Video en mp plz: porno-politics of the visual virtual”, with Allan Deneuville, in the international online conference “The circulation of images”, organized by the Center of Excellence Jean Monnet IMAGO (Paris, École normale supérieure) and the the University of Geneva (Chair of Digital Humanities), in partnership with Purdue University and the Beaux Arts de Paris, 15-18th June 2020.

PUBLICATIONS 

• « Contes virtuels d’été. Le décyclage de la vidéosphère dans Roman National», in Rodolphe Olcèse (éd.), L’art tout contre la machine, Éditions Hermann, fall-winter 2020.
• « Le genre vernaculaire comme genre cinématographique », Interfaces Journal, nº42, december 2020.
• Notice « Recyclage », in Roberto Barbanti, Isabelle Ginot, Makis Salomos, Cécile Sorin (éd.), Arts, écologies, transitions. Construire une référence commune, upcoming.
• « What post-media does to cinema », in Post-mass-media and participation, Augenblik Journal, n.78, 3/2020.
• « Du vernaculaire au profane. Puissances politiques de l’amateur », in L’utilisation des flux numériques dans le cinéma, Crisnée, Éditions Yellow Now, spring 2021.
• « L’importance d’être diffusé. Politiques de la contre-visualité virtuelle à partir de Perfect. de Shengze Zhu » in Théorème Nº32. Les lieux du virtuel, winter 2020.

EDITORIAL WORK

• Co-editor, with Alejandro Pena, of issue 34 of the journal Contratexto: “Reinventions and new poethics of cinema in the post-Internet era”, Department of Communication, University of Lima, Peru (issue to be published in 2021).
• Co-editor, with Chloé Galibert-Laîné, of Number 3 of the journal Images Secondes, “Post-cinéma: dialogues, resistances”, to be published in 2021.

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

• Organisation of the conference “After Social Networks. Practices, Aesthetics and Ethics of an Ecology of User-generated Content” at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 27 June 2019. Co-organised with Allan Deneuville and Chloé Galibert-Laîné.