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]
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