Call For Papers

From: Jonathan Kahana (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2007 - 09:45:40 PDT


Frameworkers,

Although this call for papers is for a documentary film conference,
the topic may be of interest to some on this list. I have received a
number of proposals from filmmakers; a previous version of this panel
included a presentation by a filmmaker of a complete short
experimental documentary. The CFP is also a test-balloon for an
anthology of essays and other kinds of writing, so I'd be keen to
hear from anyone who has interest in the topic, and might want to
contribute to a volume.

Conference organizers circulated the CFPs quite late, so the deadline
can be taken with a grain of salt – I'll consider proposals received
by July 5.

Best,

Jonathan

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Call for Papers
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, email suppressed
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