Visible Evidence XIV ¬ Call for Papers Visible Evidence, the ambulatory international conference on documentary, will hold its 14th edition in Bochum, Germany, from December 18th through 22nd, 2007. Hosted by the Krupp professorship for the history and theory of documentary forms at the University of Bochum, together with the Haus des Dokumentarfilms Stuttgart, and dokumentarfilminitiative NRW, Visible Evidence XIV marks the first time that the conference takes place in Germany. Check the conference website www.visible-evidence.org <http://www.visible-evidence.org> for travel and accomodation information. This year?s conference will address current issues in documentary filmmaking as well as questions of documentary and history, documentary images in museums and art contexts, and documentary images and science (among others). We invite paper proposals on all topics and current issues relating to documentary film and filmmaking. Open call paper proposals (300 words, one page) should be submitted by June 30. Final notification of acceptance will follow in the first week of July. Please submit proposals by e-mail to [log in to unmask] Please find here below the calls for papers for panels that have been accepted for Visible Evidence XIV, Bochum, Germany, December 18-22, 2007. Past Performance: Documentary Re-enactment This panel revisits the long-standing concern amongst filmmakers, critics, and historians with the border between fiction and non-fiction in documentary cinema, focusing on what is perhaps the most vexed aspect of this problem: the status of performance in general, and historical re-enactment in particular. Although common in earlier incarnations of documentary film, the development of cinéma vérité techniques and technologies in the early 1960s made the staging of quotidian or historical actions both a formal and political taboo. But techniques of fabrication have made a strong return in documentary cinema, especially in those variants concerned to contest official and hegemonic forms of history. And the revival of dramatic methods in documentary has brought renewed attention to techniques of re-enactment in early non-fiction. This panel seeks presentations on any sense(s) ? theatrical, historical, political, ethical, psychological ? of acting, performance and re-enactment in documentary and non-fiction film, television, and video. Topics the panel will address might include: the ritual or unconscious dimensions of re-enactment; the tensions between political, social, and dramatic senses of acting; the use of film and other recording media for cultural memory and social fantasy; the artistic, sociological, and ethnographic dimensions of casting and directing non- actors; the relation between activism, theatricality, and documentary; testimonial performance; the place of docudrama and other forms of historical fiction in the history and criticism of nonfiction film. Film and video work represented by the presentations may range historically from early actualities to works of film, video and television made to recall and redress recent crises and catastrophes; some attention will be given in panel composition to establishing the historical and international variation of re-enactment as a documentary method. Send 250-word proposals and brief bio by June 30, 2007 to: Jonathan Kahana, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University, [log in to unmask] A Dialogical Approach to the Domain of Documentary Film and the Melodramatic Imagination Mariana Baltar [log in to unmask] Ph.D. in Film & Media Studies from Universidade Federal Fluminense/RJ, Brazil This panel considers the role played by sentimentality and pathos in documentary film practice. This is a vital area of inquiry in documentary studies as evidenced in the work of such scholars as Jane Gaines? and Paula Rabinowitz. The panel also intends to broaden this dialogue to more explicit intertextual approaches within the field of melodrama studies, considering the critical ground provided by scholars such as Peter Brooks, Thomas Elsaesser and Ben Singer. Their work around melodrama has shifted the traditional view of the genre, inviting us to consider it as an organizing structure of the experience of reality that involves elements of sensationalism, , pathos, and psychic and emotional excess. Contributing papers to this panel should investigate the political and aesthetic implications of the convergence between the seemingly antagonistic domains of documentary and melodrama. It is frequently the case that the integration of narrative elements from melodrama within documentaries is used in order to foster a sense of intimacy, remembrance, and identification between film subjects and spectators These are some of the key questions guiding this panel: Does the melodramatic domain provide accurate theoretical support for the documentary field? What are the political and ethical implications of the use of some melodramatic references in order to convey an affective and sentimental impact in documentary? And how is this dynamic structured within the narrative? What are the historical and cultural contexts for this merging of documentary and the melodramatic imagination? Finally, what is the role of testimony and other forms of personal and direct expression in this dialogue? Ultimately, this panel is invested in considering modes of analysis that account for the interrelationship between certain documentary claims of authority and authenticity, and the more affective, viscerally charged expressions of melodrama. Send 250-word proposals and brief bio by June 30, 2007 to: [log in to unmask] Frontiers of First Person Chair: Alisa Lebow, Brunel University This panel invites papers and presentations on any aspect of first person documentary filmmaking internationally. Unlikely as a documentary address even a decade ago in most parts of the world, first person filmmaking has really exploded onto the scene, with the rapid proliferation of first person films everywhere documentary is currently being made. There is evidence of first person filmmaking in China, Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, India, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Guinea, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, and of course throughout Europe and North America. Papers may consider the relationship between autobiography and biography; home movies, family, and "domestic ethnography"; video diary; blogs; the interrelationship between history and memory; personal and collective identities; or any other aspect of first person filmmaking world wide. Questions of performativity, domesticity, confessionality, narcissism, ethnicity, political efficacy, and more, are all welcome to be addressed. An emphasis on non- European/North American first person filmmaking is preferred but all strong proposals will be considered. Please submit a synopsis of your presentation (max 250 words) by 30 June, to Dr. Alisa Lebow, Lecturer in Film Studies at Brunel University, School of Arts, London: [log in to unmask] ?HISTORICAL EVENT TELEVISION?: POPULAR DOCUDRAMATIZATION OF HISTORY IN EUROPE SINCE 1990 Derek Paget, Tobias Ebbrecht This panel is concerned with recent docudrama, especially that which treats key events in European history from the particular perspectives of national cultures through the mixed form. The panel will focus not on those dramatised elements that increasingly appear in "classical" documentary series but on the compromised and often controversial form of docudrama feature/mini-series in its various modes (dramatisations, for example, that incorporate eye witness accounts, archive footage, fictional reconstruction of events). Films often coincide with historical anniversaries, (for example, the events of World War Two ? e.g. BBC/HBO?s Hiroshima, 2005). One of the historic functions of docudrama has been to reassess national/local histories (see Paget 1998). Docudramatic reworkings of key historical moments in recent years have altered formal properties as a result of what John Corner (2002) has described as a widespread ?intergeneric hybridisation? in television. The new situation is due in part to the changed nature of Europe since the last decade of the twentieth century. A new historical conjuncture has followed the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of previous Cold War certainties. In the relatively recently re-unified Germany, for example, there has been a rise in ?historical event television?, historical television programme maker Guido Knopp?s term for docudramas about Germany?s troubled twentieth-century history (e.g. Luftbrücke, 2005 and Dresden, 2006 ? see Ebbrecht 2007). Elsewhere in Europe, too, filmmakers are using docudrama to retell and reinterpret history. Such treatments of the moments of the twentieth century that have reshaped the politics and culture of the twenty-first do not just add empathetic involvement to their outline of events by means of dramatic structurings familiar from previous incarnations of docudrama. The new hybrid forms present documentary more overtly than formerly, montaging witness statement and archive footage with their scenes of reconstruction in ways that are critically challenging. Since television so readily becomes part of national collective memories, and is such a powerful agent in the communication of history within national (and international) cultures, that this seems like a timely topic. The panel aims to analyse its modes of meaning-making and assess its importance in current television practice in Europe, representing if possible a variety of national practices in order to take the temperature of docudrama?s latest attempt to make creatively porous the boundaries between drama and documentary. Please submit a synopsis of your presentation (max 250 words) with short bio by 30 June, to Derek Paget: [log in to unmask] ?Still Images, Moving Contexts: History, Institutions and Practices of Documentary Photography? Matthias Christen, Anton Holzer The practices of documentary photography, its institutional frameworks as well as its notion have been subject to considerable change over the last years. Exhibitions, online-displays, mixed-media-installations and a fast growing photo-book-market provide new outlets for a practice which used to be closely affiliated to the picture press. The traditional distinction between art and documentary photography is in flux. Institutions which for a long time were thought of as ?art? contexts ? museums and galleries ? are opening up to documentary images. On the other hand, photo agencies such as the Paris based Agence Vu set up their own galleries in order to serve both the press and the art market. In return, phenomena are gaining prominence in documentary photography which for a long time were considered alien to, if not incompatible with it (staged photographs). At least some of these recent developments are due to changes which the picture press underwent during the past decades and a subsequent dwindling of editorial markets. Whatever its reasons, the shifting of contexts raises a wide array of questions, theoretical as well as historical, which the panel will provide an opportunity to discuss: Where does the distinction between art and documentary photography come from? What share did the picture press have in shaping the notion and the practices of documentary photography? How are photographs being displayed within the different contexts, and how does the mode of presentation affect the reception of documentary photography? Why is the transfer into art contexts often met with moral reservations? Does the fact that images are perceived as art lessen their authenticity? What kind of strategies are used to authenticate documentary images within the different pragmatic contexts? Contributions approaching the uses photographs are made of in documentary films will be especially welcome. Please send 250-word proposals and brief bio by June 30, 2007 to: Dr. Matthias Christen Dänenstraße 14 D-10439 Berlin e-mail: [log in to unmask] or Dr. Anton Holzer Redaktion Fotogeschichte Florianigasse 75/19 A-1080 Wien e-mail: [log in to unmask] When documentary goes to the galleries: on questions of aesthetics and politics Today, one can observe the phenomenon of more and more films and videos moving towards the gallery or museum space. At the last German art show ?documenta? (2002) as well as the current show (2007) there have for instance been and will be shown more films than anyone could ever watch during a short stay. The last Biennale in Venice (2005) featured numerous video installations as well. When documentaries are screened in galleries or museums, the exhibitions frequently have an explicitly political theme. There are some sociological explanations for this: art exhibitions are no longer conceived only by people working in museums, but by free lance curators, who belong to a new kind of profession in the art world and have profound knowledge in the field of media and media art; the omain of the arts expands and occupies a lot of spaces beyond that of the classical museum; political debates become more and more absent from classical media like television; the art world has become a new source of income for some documentary filmmakers who transform their film work into installations and so on. The panel will neither concentrate on these explanations nor add a new one. Instead it will try, from a more aesthetical perspective, to focus on the concrete phenomenon of fusion of art and politics which is achieved by a specific presentation of documentary films or video installations. To discuss the relation between politics and aesthetics, one of the starting points could be the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. Rancière does not think of art as autonomous and thus apart from politics quite unlike modern philosophers as Adorno or Lyotard; on the contrary, he works with terms which always already relate the aesthetic and the political. These terms are equality, community, participation and the sensible. And especially those works of art are political to him which in their reordering of the sensible question the political/administrative ordering of bodies in the social world. We are looking for papers who take a fresh look at documentary films in art contexts; they may discuss aspects of the political in specific films or the reconfiguration of the sensible in relation to questions of space. This also means that the papers should not neglect questions of form (of a film) and of the specific setting (of a projection) in a given art context. Please submit a synopsis of your presentation by june 30th to: Dr. Christa Blümlinger, maitre de conference, université Paris 3 Email: [log in to unmask] Reality Television & The Documentary Reality television raises a number of issues in a stark form, especially as regards the ethics of modern media practice; but it poses a particular challenge to the documentary tradition as that has been understood since Grierson. In what ways, if at all, can reality tv be said to be within or cognate to documentary; and if it is within or cognate, in what ways does this matter. The initial response among many documentary filmmakers was simply to dismiss reality television, at best, as bastardised exploitation of the realist documentary tradition. Subsequent considerations have suggested that this was too facile. For example, that the tradition allowed intervention (from interviews to set-up situations) can be seen as being directly in line with the interventionism of what has been called, curiously given the degree of manipulation involved in tradition documentaryt 'constructed documentary'. And are the ethical issues raised by reality tv of a piece with those arising from older documentary practice. This panel will explore the extent to which reality tv is the wanted (or unwanted) offspring of the documentary. Send 250-word proposals and brief bio by June 30, 2007 to: Brian Winston, [log in to unmask] ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.ScreenSite.org