http://visibleevidence.org/forum/ Thu, 17 May 2012 11:28:08 +0000 MyBB http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=70 Sat, 23 Apr 2011 03:59:12 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=70 http://www.airbnb.com/search

In some cases people are out of town and in others they just have an extra room or two to rent for a short term stay.

They have some places listed in Greenwich Village but they are a bit pricey. There are lots of other options though and some places accommodate quite a few people.]]> http://www.airbnb.com/search

In some cases people are out of town and in others they just have an extra room or two to rent for a short term stay.

They have some places listed in Greenwich Village but they are a bit pricey. There are lots of other options though and some places accommodate quite a few people.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=69 Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:25:49 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=69
http://www.chelsealodge.com

125/night for a small (small!) room, toilet down the hall.

I've never stayed there, but know those who have. Plus, the owner is almost related to me and is apparently a nice person.

Apparently they give discounts to backcountry skiers.]]>
http://www.chelsealodge.com

125/night for a small (small!) room, toilet down the hall.

I've never stayed there, but know those who have. Plus, the owner is almost related to me and is apparently a nice person.

Apparently they give discounts to backcountry skiers.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=65 Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:50:35 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=65 ]]> ]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=27 Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:38:09 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=27 Berke BAS, Feride CICEKOGLU, Nil MUTLUER, Melisa ONEL

  İstanbul as a Transnational City.doc (Size: 61.5 KB / Downloads: 2) ]]> Berke BAS, Feride CICEKOGLU, Nil MUTLUER, Melisa ONEL

  İstanbul as a Transnational City.doc (Size: 61.5 KB / Downloads: 2) ]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=26 Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:25:06 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=26
Taking even a short ride on Mexico City’s Metro is to encounter at least a dozen of the hundreds of ambulant vendors who peddle anything from cough drops to pirated films everyday. More than 40 years after the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, vendors still sell bootleg copies of documentaries that seek to confirm the government’s culpability, long after they aired on television or were exhibited at film festivals, for a fraction of what they cost from retailers. These documentaries shape and are shaped by the discourse of public memory versus impunity in Mexico, meeting continued popular demand amid a failed official truth and reconciliation process. This panel considers the dynamic between piracy and documentary film and media in Latin America, with special interest in informal markets, media ecologies and commons that put not only product but also people and ethics in motion. Among the questions this panel may consider:

· Is there, as Lucas Hilderbrand posits for VHS in the U.S., an embodied “aesthetics of access”?

· If so, what is degenerated and regenerated along the way?

· What is the relationship between pirated dissemination and preservation?

· What are the consequences of legal transgression in states of exception?

Logistics:

Please send 250-350 word abstract, brief bio and essential bibliography on your subject (the conference organizers request this last component for the submission package) by January 5, 2011 to gflahertyfuentes@colum.edu. Selected contributors will be notified by January 8.

George Flaherty
Assistant Professor, Art History
Columbia College Chicago]]>
Taking even a short ride on Mexico City’s Metro is to encounter at least a dozen of the hundreds of ambulant vendors who peddle anything from cough drops to pirated films everyday. More than 40 years after the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, vendors still sell bootleg copies of documentaries that seek to confirm the government’s culpability, long after they aired on television or were exhibited at film festivals, for a fraction of what they cost from retailers. These documentaries shape and are shaped by the discourse of public memory versus impunity in Mexico, meeting continued popular demand amid a failed official truth and reconciliation process. This panel considers the dynamic between piracy and documentary film and media in Latin America, with special interest in informal markets, media ecologies and commons that put not only product but also people and ethics in motion. Among the questions this panel may consider:

· Is there, as Lucas Hilderbrand posits for VHS in the U.S., an embodied “aesthetics of access”?

· If so, what is degenerated and regenerated along the way?

· What is the relationship between pirated dissemination and preservation?

· What are the consequences of legal transgression in states of exception?

Logistics:

Please send 250-350 word abstract, brief bio and essential bibliography on your subject (the conference organizers request this last component for the submission package) by January 5, 2011 to gflahertyfuentes@colum.edu. Selected contributors will be notified by January 8.

George Flaherty
Assistant Professor, Art History
Columbia College Chicago]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=25 Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:07:43 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=25 [b]CFP: The Border Zone Between Documentary and Fiction[/b]

This panel aims to explore new and assesses established strategies for conceptualizing the rich border zone between documentary and fiction film.

The mutual borrowing of techniques across this divide has accelerated over the last decades, turning the border zone into a rich discursive realm in its own right, featuring compelling films that provoke our notions of what films can do and how this discursive realm can be understood.

The panel addresses current developments where filmmakers increasingly find creative ways of transcending this divide.
Film theory has not sufficiently addressed this blooming area of film production, though important pointers and conceptual tools for dealing with the issue have been offered in a serious of contributions over the last twenty years. Thus, key questions remain to be answered as to how and through which tools the boundary can best be conceptualized and described.

Moreover, the challenge to conceptualize this border zone may greatly differ in specific cases according to the representational strategies in play. Thus, new productive works that keep demonstrating the rich possibilities in this area are also likely to require theorizing to adapt to these new representational strategies.

Specific areas for consideration may for example be:
- biographical films of various sorts where issues of performance, questions of identity, authenticity, fantasies, dreams, aspirations as well as attempts to distill character traits are raised in challenging ways.

- films using animation to great extent, which then in various ways may abstain from drawing on the indexicality of authentic visual recordings.

- fiction films involving the use of non-actors and documentary strategies of various sorts in order to obtain forms of realism, which raises issues pertaining to the relation between realism and documentary.

- the continued life of mockumentary like strategies in various guises and media, involving television, fake news casts and other forms.

- the increasingly vexed issues raised by essayistic strategies, also involving fictional elements, in films presented in a documentary setting or in an art contexts.

Please send abstracts to Arild Fetveit, University of Copenhagen
fetveit@hum.ku.dk by January 5th. Panelists will be notified of their
status by January 8th.

Arild Fetveit is associate professor in the Department for Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen. He has published in the field of reception studies, reality TV, music video and digitalization of film and photography as well as worked on the discursive possibilities between documentary and fiction film. He is associated with the research project Nomadikon, University of Bergen, Norway, and has presented at a number of conferences, many times at SCMS and Visible Evidence.]]> [b]CFP: The Border Zone Between Documentary and Fiction[/b]

This panel aims to explore new and assesses established strategies for conceptualizing the rich border zone between documentary and fiction film.

The mutual borrowing of techniques across this divide has accelerated over the last decades, turning the border zone into a rich discursive realm in its own right, featuring compelling films that provoke our notions of what films can do and how this discursive realm can be understood.

The panel addresses current developments where filmmakers increasingly find creative ways of transcending this divide.
Film theory has not sufficiently addressed this blooming area of film production, though important pointers and conceptual tools for dealing with the issue have been offered in a serious of contributions over the last twenty years. Thus, key questions remain to be answered as to how and through which tools the boundary can best be conceptualized and described.

Moreover, the challenge to conceptualize this border zone may greatly differ in specific cases according to the representational strategies in play. Thus, new productive works that keep demonstrating the rich possibilities in this area are also likely to require theorizing to adapt to these new representational strategies.

Specific areas for consideration may for example be:
- biographical films of various sorts where issues of performance, questions of identity, authenticity, fantasies, dreams, aspirations as well as attempts to distill character traits are raised in challenging ways.

- films using animation to great extent, which then in various ways may abstain from drawing on the indexicality of authentic visual recordings.

- fiction films involving the use of non-actors and documentary strategies of various sorts in order to obtain forms of realism, which raises issues pertaining to the relation between realism and documentary.

- the continued life of mockumentary like strategies in various guises and media, involving television, fake news casts and other forms.

- the increasingly vexed issues raised by essayistic strategies, also involving fictional elements, in films presented in a documentary setting or in an art contexts.

Please send abstracts to Arild Fetveit, University of Copenhagen
fetveit@hum.ku.dk by January 5th. Panelists will be notified of their
status by January 8th.

Arild Fetveit is associate professor in the Department for Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen. He has published in the field of reception studies, reality TV, music video and digitalization of film and photography as well as worked on the discursive possibilities between documentary and fiction film. He is associated with the research project Nomadikon, University of Bergen, Norway, and has presented at a number of conferences, many times at SCMS and Visible Evidence.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=24 Mon, 27 Dec 2010 07:03:55 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=24 Operating at the intersections of subjectivity, expressivity, reflection and reflexivity, the essay has been lauded by figures including Theodor Adorno and Aldous Huxley for its potential to innovate aesthetic and intellectual practices within the mode of non-fiction. More recently, documentary scholars and filmmakers alike have come to look upon the essay film as an aesthetically challenging and politically charged engagement with the socio-historical world. Moreover, the form intrinsically rethinks the parameters of a classically understood documentary cinema as well as its auspices towards evidentiary status, objectivity and indexicality.
As it swiftly becomes one of the primary manners in which we think of experimental and personal documentary film, the essay film is enjoying increased attention within the community and cultures of documentary cinema. This panel proposes to further the dialog on the essay film by going beyond notice of its curious existence and an enumeration of its characteristics. It will interrogate fundamental questions raised by the convergence of the essayistic mode of address and documentary film and ask how such a convergence encourages a reconsideration of general assumptions about both the documentary and the essay.
Papers (and films) chosen will reflect the homogeneity of the form while also expressing its central and most pressing problems. We are particularly interested in proposals from both scholars and filmmakers, the latter of which might reflect upon how and why they’ve taken up an essayistic structure in their work. Other potential topics of interest include:

- Essay films that pre-date the work done in the 1950s, such as the work of Hans Richter or Jean Painleve
- The particular political and ethical potential of the essay film
- Sound, music and/or listening in the essay film
- Problematics faced by filmmakers in the production of essay films
- Theoretical suppositions on how the subject/filmmaker might think (or essay) through an image track.

Abstracts must be received by January 1st. Send to both Sasha Waters-Freyer (Sasha-Waters@uiowa.edu) and David Oscar Harvey (David-Harvey@uiowa.edu). Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.

Sasha Waters-Freyer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. Her numerous 16 mm films and videos have screened widely in the U.S. and abroad, including the Tribeca, Woodstock, Chicago Underground and Ann Arbor Film Festivals, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the L.A. Film Forum and Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. Her newest film Chekhov for Children premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to be featured at many other venues. Her writing on film has appeared in Millennium Film Journal and Teachers & Writers Magazine, among other journals.

David Oscar Harvey is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. His writing is forthcoming in Discourse and GLQ. His dissertation focuses on the essay film in interwar Northern and Western Europe. He recently completed an essay film of his own, Red Red Red, which focuses on contemporary issues surrounding HIV/AIDS.]]> Operating at the intersections of subjectivity, expressivity, reflection and reflexivity, the essay has been lauded by figures including Theodor Adorno and Aldous Huxley for its potential to innovate aesthetic and intellectual practices within the mode of non-fiction. More recently, documentary scholars and filmmakers alike have come to look upon the essay film as an aesthetically challenging and politically charged engagement with the socio-historical world. Moreover, the form intrinsically rethinks the parameters of a classically understood documentary cinema as well as its auspices towards evidentiary status, objectivity and indexicality.
As it swiftly becomes one of the primary manners in which we think of experimental and personal documentary film, the essay film is enjoying increased attention within the community and cultures of documentary cinema. This panel proposes to further the dialog on the essay film by going beyond notice of its curious existence and an enumeration of its characteristics. It will interrogate fundamental questions raised by the convergence of the essayistic mode of address and documentary film and ask how such a convergence encourages a reconsideration of general assumptions about both the documentary and the essay.
Papers (and films) chosen will reflect the homogeneity of the form while also expressing its central and most pressing problems. We are particularly interested in proposals from both scholars and filmmakers, the latter of which might reflect upon how and why they’ve taken up an essayistic structure in their work. Other potential topics of interest include:

- Essay films that pre-date the work done in the 1950s, such as the work of Hans Richter or Jean Painleve
- The particular political and ethical potential of the essay film
- Sound, music and/or listening in the essay film
- Problematics faced by filmmakers in the production of essay films
- Theoretical suppositions on how the subject/filmmaker might think (or essay) through an image track.

Abstracts must be received by January 1st. Send to both Sasha Waters-Freyer (Sasha-Waters@uiowa.edu) and David Oscar Harvey (David-Harvey@uiowa.edu). Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.

Sasha Waters-Freyer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. Her numerous 16 mm films and videos have screened widely in the U.S. and abroad, including the Tribeca, Woodstock, Chicago Underground and Ann Arbor Film Festivals, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the L.A. Film Forum and Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. Her newest film Chekhov for Children premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to be featured at many other venues. Her writing on film has appeared in Millennium Film Journal and Teachers & Writers Magazine, among other journals.

David Oscar Harvey is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. His writing is forthcoming in Discourse and GLQ. His dissertation focuses on the essay film in interwar Northern and Western Europe. He recently completed an essay film of his own, Red Red Red, which focuses on contemporary issues surrounding HIV/AIDS.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=23 Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:46:21 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=23
The figure of the child uncertainly indicates the representational limit of both fiction and non-fiction film. A vast array of critical discourses, ranging from philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, legal studies, human rights, and sociology cast the child as an entity that exists outside or before language, culture, or society. In this way, the Western cultural construction of the child as “pre-cultural” seems to forge a curious kinship with visual media, which continue to be associated with notions of indexicality, mimeticism, immediacy, direct documentation, and transparency, despite the existence of a rich body of documentary and film theory that insists that these are textual or affective effects. The consequences of this kinship between the child and visual media are particularly pressing for documentary practices—if the “casting” of children in fiction films seems to invest fabulation with an inexplicable aura of documentary veracity, as argued by Lisa Cartwright (2008) and Poonam Arora (1994), then the lure of referentiality represented by children in documentary genres that themselves lay claim to questionable truths requires urgent theorization.

This panel therefore invites proposals for papers that take up this problematic in relation to questions of the document, broadly conceived. Inquiries that engage approaches or texts that challenge the schema outlined above—particularly in relation to the areas suggested below—would be of particular interest:

- Representations of children in humanitarian advocacy media (topics might include the use of documentary media for child “empowerment”; children as producers of documentary media, eg: Human Rights Watch’s Youth Producing Change series)
- Representations of the child/childhood in scientific documentation (topics might include questions of biopolitics and statistics; the use of non-representational media such as x-rays, sonograms, scans, etc.)
- The relationship between children, mimeticism, and mimetic technologies
- Documentary representations of “gifted” children (eg: My Kid Could Paint That)
- Non-western documentary approaches to childhood
- Longitudinal documentary (eg: the Up! Series)
- Documentation of facilitated communication involving disabled children
- Queerness and childhood (topics might include the anti-social turn against reproductive futurism in queer theory (eg: Lee Edelman) in relation to documentary media; the relationship between childhood, futurity, and documentary witnessing, eg: Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project; etc.)
- The use of documentary images of children in pro-life/pro-choice campaigns

Please send abstracts to Pooja Rangan, Brown University (pooja_rangan@brown.edu or poojarangan@gmail.com) by January 3rd. Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.

Thanks in advance for the opportunity to consider your work.]]>
The figure of the child uncertainly indicates the representational limit of both fiction and non-fiction film. A vast array of critical discourses, ranging from philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, legal studies, human rights, and sociology cast the child as an entity that exists outside or before language, culture, or society. In this way, the Western cultural construction of the child as “pre-cultural” seems to forge a curious kinship with visual media, which continue to be associated with notions of indexicality, mimeticism, immediacy, direct documentation, and transparency, despite the existence of a rich body of documentary and film theory that insists that these are textual or affective effects. The consequences of this kinship between the child and visual media are particularly pressing for documentary practices—if the “casting” of children in fiction films seems to invest fabulation with an inexplicable aura of documentary veracity, as argued by Lisa Cartwright (2008) and Poonam Arora (1994), then the lure of referentiality represented by children in documentary genres that themselves lay claim to questionable truths requires urgent theorization.

This panel therefore invites proposals for papers that take up this problematic in relation to questions of the document, broadly conceived. Inquiries that engage approaches or texts that challenge the schema outlined above—particularly in relation to the areas suggested below—would be of particular interest:

- Representations of children in humanitarian advocacy media (topics might include the use of documentary media for child “empowerment”; children as producers of documentary media, eg: Human Rights Watch’s Youth Producing Change series)
- Representations of the child/childhood in scientific documentation (topics might include questions of biopolitics and statistics; the use of non-representational media such as x-rays, sonograms, scans, etc.)
- The relationship between children, mimeticism, and mimetic technologies
- Documentary representations of “gifted” children (eg: My Kid Could Paint That)
- Non-western documentary approaches to childhood
- Longitudinal documentary (eg: the Up! Series)
- Documentation of facilitated communication involving disabled children
- Queerness and childhood (topics might include the anti-social turn against reproductive futurism in queer theory (eg: Lee Edelman) in relation to documentary media; the relationship between childhood, futurity, and documentary witnessing, eg: Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project; etc.)
- The use of documentary images of children in pro-life/pro-choice campaigns

Please send abstracts to Pooja Rangan, Brown University (pooja_rangan@brown.edu or poojarangan@gmail.com) by January 3rd. Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.

Thanks in advance for the opportunity to consider your work.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=22 Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:31:22 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=22 Proposed Panel
Spatial Practices in Global First-Person Documentary
Visible Evidence XVIII
New York University August 11-14, 2011

The category of non-fiction filmmaking under investigation here may be variously considered to operate in the first-person, personal, subjective, or autobiographical mode. As the title of one such American documentary, Faith Hubley’s My Universe Inside Out (1996) implies, there is a powerful spatial dimension at work in this stance, navigating the subjective intimacies of personal experience, i.e. the world within, as much as the quasi-objective public status of historical circumstance, i.e. the world without. In negotiating between interiority and exteriority, between past and present, between here and there, this mode this mode of filmmaking arguably also exemplifies in more overt form the operations of the camera itself, as a device which literally frames and records for posterity an individual act of seeing the surrounding environment. The filmmaker moves through space, apprehending his/her immediate physical environment and relating to other individuals via the camera. What discursive models exist for bringing sense to spatial relations and spatial practices displayed in personal filmmaking? How does the subjective stance produce different scales of spatial relations and spatial practices, from the level of the self, to domestic life, to the local, national, and even global level?

Please send an abstract to Angelica.Fenner@utoronto.ca by January 5, 2011; feedback will be sent by January 8th.]]> Proposed Panel
Spatial Practices in Global First-Person Documentary
Visible Evidence XVIII
New York University August 11-14, 2011

The category of non-fiction filmmaking under investigation here may be variously considered to operate in the first-person, personal, subjective, or autobiographical mode. As the title of one such American documentary, Faith Hubley’s My Universe Inside Out (1996) implies, there is a powerful spatial dimension at work in this stance, navigating the subjective intimacies of personal experience, i.e. the world within, as much as the quasi-objective public status of historical circumstance, i.e. the world without. In negotiating between interiority and exteriority, between past and present, between here and there, this mode this mode of filmmaking arguably also exemplifies in more overt form the operations of the camera itself, as a device which literally frames and records for posterity an individual act of seeing the surrounding environment. The filmmaker moves through space, apprehending his/her immediate physical environment and relating to other individuals via the camera. What discursive models exist for bringing sense to spatial relations and spatial practices displayed in personal filmmaking? How does the subjective stance produce different scales of spatial relations and spatial practices, from the level of the self, to domestic life, to the local, national, and even global level?

Please send an abstract to Angelica.Fenner@utoronto.ca by January 5, 2011; feedback will be sent by January 8th.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=21 Tue, 21 Dec 2010 09:35:06 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=21
Following up on the successful panels on Left Bank documentary at
Istanbul, "Old Left Documentary" aspires to continue and expand our historical analysis of early generations of documentarists committed to a left political-artistic praxis. With regard to films produced by communist-affiliated and communist-sympathetic practitioners in what was thought of as the first world, second world or third world during those dark (or misremembered?) decades before the advent of the New Left and
New Social Movements, are they simply museum pieces offering glimpses of dreams lapsed, failed or betrayed? or are they a living archive offering pragmatic lessons for the present? If the latter, what are those lessons? The catalyst for this panel has been the "accidental erasure" from the Joris Ivens DVD box set, recently released by the Ivens Foundation and estate, of Ivens's entire output produced in Eastern Europe between 1947 and 1956. Papers are invited that consider documentaries produced within my two-decade timeframe and this ideological framework in any
context, with a focus on textual and contextual analysis. Beyond the name of Ivens, have names like Biberman, Birri, Bossak, Hurwitz, Karmen, Kovacs, Marker, Meszaros, Pontecorvo, Radok, Stoney, the Thorndikes--not to mention their contemporaries positioned in contexts as diverse as Havana, Santiago, Calcutta and Ya'nan--a resonance in 2011? What other practitioners and practices of old left documentary
need recovery from their erasure within inherited documentary historiography, archival and distribution practice?
Please send abstracts to Thomas Waugh, Concordia University, waugh@alcor.concordia.ca by January 1st and panelists will be notified
of their status by January 8th.]]>
Following up on the successful panels on Left Bank documentary at
Istanbul, "Old Left Documentary" aspires to continue and expand our historical analysis of early generations of documentarists committed to a left political-artistic praxis. With regard to films produced by communist-affiliated and communist-sympathetic practitioners in what was thought of as the first world, second world or third world during those dark (or misremembered?) decades before the advent of the New Left and
New Social Movements, are they simply museum pieces offering glimpses of dreams lapsed, failed or betrayed? or are they a living archive offering pragmatic lessons for the present? If the latter, what are those lessons? The catalyst for this panel has been the "accidental erasure" from the Joris Ivens DVD box set, recently released by the Ivens Foundation and estate, of Ivens's entire output produced in Eastern Europe between 1947 and 1956. Papers are invited that consider documentaries produced within my two-decade timeframe and this ideological framework in any
context, with a focus on textual and contextual analysis. Beyond the name of Ivens, have names like Biberman, Birri, Bossak, Hurwitz, Karmen, Kovacs, Marker, Meszaros, Pontecorvo, Radok, Stoney, the Thorndikes--not to mention their contemporaries positioned in contexts as diverse as Havana, Santiago, Calcutta and Ya'nan--a resonance in 2011? What other practitioners and practices of old left documentary
need recovery from their erasure within inherited documentary historiography, archival and distribution practice?
Please send abstracts to Thomas Waugh, Concordia University, waugh@alcor.concordia.ca by January 1st and panelists will be notified
of their status by January 8th.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=20 Sun, 19 Dec 2010 04:38:24 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=20
Feminism, including feminist theory, filmmaking, and activism, has evolved in many ways in the last forty years. It’s not dead but certainly dispersed into many outlets and taken on many new forms. For example, some filmmakers who began making short feminist documentaries in the 80s now work full time in television but not as documentarists; many others would hope for theatrical distribution for their work or perhaps purchase by a cable television channel. To a certain degree, in the United States, the advance of feminist scholarship in various academic disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences and also in professional schools for law, medicine, and journalism, has provided an extended use for documentaries about gender issues. Panelists may look at work that has a large budget and aims to reach a broad audience, or at more personal work, made for a smaller set of viewers.

Prospective panelists are encouraged to take up one of the following topics, using one or two feminist documentaries as case studies.

--Pedagogy with the feminist documentary

--Feminist canons

--Internet media making and feminism

--National specificities that shape women’s film production and exhibition

--Documentarists’ web sites

--Use of films to support specific social issues

--Kinds of distribution for media by and about women

--Autobiography as a feminist genre

--Documentary style and gender concerns

--Humor as a political tactic

--Theoretical interconnections: e.g., between feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, film theory.

Contact me at jlesage@uoregon.edu with your proposals by Jan. 1.

Julia Lesage]]>
Feminism, including feminist theory, filmmaking, and activism, has evolved in many ways in the last forty years. It’s not dead but certainly dispersed into many outlets and taken on many new forms. For example, some filmmakers who began making short feminist documentaries in the 80s now work full time in television but not as documentarists; many others would hope for theatrical distribution for their work or perhaps purchase by a cable television channel. To a certain degree, in the United States, the advance of feminist scholarship in various academic disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences and also in professional schools for law, medicine, and journalism, has provided an extended use for documentaries about gender issues. Panelists may look at work that has a large budget and aims to reach a broad audience, or at more personal work, made for a smaller set of viewers.

Prospective panelists are encouraged to take up one of the following topics, using one or two feminist documentaries as case studies.

--Pedagogy with the feminist documentary

--Feminist canons

--Internet media making and feminism

--National specificities that shape women’s film production and exhibition

--Documentarists’ web sites

--Use of films to support specific social issues

--Kinds of distribution for media by and about women

--Autobiography as a feminist genre

--Documentary style and gender concerns

--Humor as a political tactic

--Theoretical interconnections: e.g., between feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, film theory.

Contact me at jlesage@uoregon.edu with your proposals by Jan. 1.

Julia Lesage]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=19 Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:26:07 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=19
A recent discussion on the Visible Evidence listserv began as a question about the relationship between academic articles and the longevity of particular documentary films: Does the labor of academics help to increase the longevity of the labor of filmmakers? Inevitably the conversation hit upon the relationship between critics and filmmakers, noting that, historically, the avant-guard has most readily accepted the merging of the artist and the critic, artist and theorist. This experimental panel wishes to foster the merging of artist and theorist/critic by asking if it is possible to create films that speak effectively to theoretical or critical issues in documentary; is it possible to create a panel consisting, not of papers, but of films.

The theoretical or critical topics that films might address for this panel can vary—the problems of representing history, the role of affect in documentary, the process of archive, the structure of witnessing, the value of differing documentary media, the force of documentary sound—and can range from specific, located issues to more general explorations of theoretical/critical concepts. Panelists will be asked to screen the film they have made and present an objective and reflective statement, in which they communicate the aim of their film and consider what may have been gained and lost in the process theoretically or critically.

As well as generating discussion points specific to each panelist’s film, this panel hopes to address collective questions about the genre and future of the critical film: What does critical film offer that papers cannot? Does critical film muddy the finer nuances of theory, or does it sharpen them? Does critical film allow for too much theoretical slippage? Does it offer a tactility or an affective force that is inaccessible to print? What is the status of such work in the academic, film, or documentary communities?

Potential panelists should send an abstract describing the documentary question/problem they are addressing in their critical/theoretical film. Include a description of the film itself, with approximate running time—films must run between 1 and 15 minutes. Panelists who have a film or portion of a film or sample film that could be included in the abstract should consider uploading to YouTube or, preferably, Vimeo, or any online venue. Abstracts need to be received by January 1st: send to Jillian Smith, jlsmith@unf.edu. Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.]]>
A recent discussion on the Visible Evidence listserv began as a question about the relationship between academic articles and the longevity of particular documentary films: Does the labor of academics help to increase the longevity of the labor of filmmakers? Inevitably the conversation hit upon the relationship between critics and filmmakers, noting that, historically, the avant-guard has most readily accepted the merging of the artist and the critic, artist and theorist. This experimental panel wishes to foster the merging of artist and theorist/critic by asking if it is possible to create films that speak effectively to theoretical or critical issues in documentary; is it possible to create a panel consisting, not of papers, but of films.

The theoretical or critical topics that films might address for this panel can vary—the problems of representing history, the role of affect in documentary, the process of archive, the structure of witnessing, the value of differing documentary media, the force of documentary sound—and can range from specific, located issues to more general explorations of theoretical/critical concepts. Panelists will be asked to screen the film they have made and present an objective and reflective statement, in which they communicate the aim of their film and consider what may have been gained and lost in the process theoretically or critically.

As well as generating discussion points specific to each panelist’s film, this panel hopes to address collective questions about the genre and future of the critical film: What does critical film offer that papers cannot? Does critical film muddy the finer nuances of theory, or does it sharpen them? Does critical film allow for too much theoretical slippage? Does it offer a tactility or an affective force that is inaccessible to print? What is the status of such work in the academic, film, or documentary communities?

Potential panelists should send an abstract describing the documentary question/problem they are addressing in their critical/theoretical film. Include a description of the film itself, with approximate running time—films must run between 1 and 15 minutes. Panelists who have a film or portion of a film or sample film that could be included in the abstract should consider uploading to YouTube or, preferably, Vimeo, or any online venue. Abstracts need to be received by January 1st: send to Jillian Smith, jlsmith@unf.edu. Panelists will be notified of their status by January 8th.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=18 Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:41:24 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=18
To “transgress” is to “walk across” a boundary or a law of some kind. Documentary filmmakers often cross lines in such a way that might be considered transgressive. This may be due to the filmmaker’s choice of a “taboo” subject. By transgressing social or political taboos about what counts as “appropriate” subject matter for a documentary, the filmmaker may disrupt the norms of acceptable looking or the codes of political silence. From another perspective, the documentary filmmaker may transgress the often-unspoken ethical codes governing the relationship between filmmaker and film subject, leading to potential exploitation of the film subject. Filmmakers may also transgress agreed-upon norms of documentary film, for instance, by staging footage in such a way that it appears to be actuality footage, thereby undoing the implicit contract between documentary filmmaker and documentary viewer, who expects to be told “the truth.” Other literal transgressions occur when documentary filmmakers traverse “forbidden” spaces or when documentary images transgress national and political boundaries (often through the Internet) despite attempts by vested interests to keep them hidden. This panel seeks to explore the relationship between documentary film and transgression, posing the question of what a “transgressive documentary” is and what the consequences of transgression in/by documentary may be. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- Shockumentaries or documentaries that proffer “shocking” images or stories

- Political films or film footage that attempt to document and expose wrongdoings

- Ethical transgressions on the part of the documentary filmmaker, the documentary subject, or the documentary audience

- Films that disrupt the boundary between fiction and documentary

- Documentaries in which space is traversed and boundaries are literally transgressed

Submissions should be in the form of a single email attachment (Word or pdf) including a 250-300 word abstract and a brief author bio. Deadline: January 1st to Jaimie Baron (jaimierbaron@gmail.com). Participants will be notified as to their inclusion in the panel by January 8th.]]>
To “transgress” is to “walk across” a boundary or a law of some kind. Documentary filmmakers often cross lines in such a way that might be considered transgressive. This may be due to the filmmaker’s choice of a “taboo” subject. By transgressing social or political taboos about what counts as “appropriate” subject matter for a documentary, the filmmaker may disrupt the norms of acceptable looking or the codes of political silence. From another perspective, the documentary filmmaker may transgress the often-unspoken ethical codes governing the relationship between filmmaker and film subject, leading to potential exploitation of the film subject. Filmmakers may also transgress agreed-upon norms of documentary film, for instance, by staging footage in such a way that it appears to be actuality footage, thereby undoing the implicit contract between documentary filmmaker and documentary viewer, who expects to be told “the truth.” Other literal transgressions occur when documentary filmmakers traverse “forbidden” spaces or when documentary images transgress national and political boundaries (often through the Internet) despite attempts by vested interests to keep them hidden. This panel seeks to explore the relationship between documentary film and transgression, posing the question of what a “transgressive documentary” is and what the consequences of transgression in/by documentary may be. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- Shockumentaries or documentaries that proffer “shocking” images or stories

- Political films or film footage that attempt to document and expose wrongdoings

- Ethical transgressions on the part of the documentary filmmaker, the documentary subject, or the documentary audience

- Films that disrupt the boundary between fiction and documentary

- Documentaries in which space is traversed and boundaries are literally transgressed

Submissions should be in the form of a single email attachment (Word or pdf) including a 250-300 word abstract and a brief author bio. Deadline: January 1st to Jaimie Baron (jaimierbaron@gmail.com). Participants will be notified as to their inclusion in the panel by January 8th.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=17 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:16:37 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=17 VE18 Forums: Deadline Extended
The original deadline of December 15, 2010 for the posting of CFPs for panels and workshops at Visible Evidence 18, through the Forums area of the visibleevidence.org website, has been extended until December 24, 2010.

Chairs of proposed panels and workshops may choose to extend their deadline for receipt of proposals accordingly, but all other deadlines will apply as previously announced: i.e., chairs should notify applicants as to their workshop or panel of their status by Jan. 8; panel, workshop, and individual presentation proposals must be received through the visibleevidence.org/18 submission process by Jan. 15.]]> VE18 Forums: Deadline Extended
The original deadline of December 15, 2010 for the posting of CFPs for panels and workshops at Visible Evidence 18, through the Forums area of the visibleevidence.org website, has been extended until December 24, 2010.

Chairs of proposed panels and workshops may choose to extend their deadline for receipt of proposals accordingly, but all other deadlines will apply as previously announced: i.e., chairs should notify applicants as to their workshop or panel of their status by Jan. 8; panel, workshop, and individual presentation proposals must be received through the visibleevidence.org/18 submission process by Jan. 15.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=16 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:38:15 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=16
We invite paper proposals that will investigate the production of meaning of those webdocumentaries, the new stakes regarding the audience, the new relation to time and space and the impact on the narrative embracing this hybricity of the media.


If you wish to be considered for this proposed panel, please email Dr. Lise Gantheret : Gantheret.l@sympatico.ca, a 250-word abstract, a brief bibliography and a biograohy with history of Visible Evidence participation.

The deadline for proposals is January 1, 2011; all submitters will be notified of receipt of their proposal within twenty-four hours and of the panel chair's final decision by Friday, January 7, 2011; those not accepted for this panel can then submit to the conference's open call, which has a deadline of January 15, 2011.]]>
We invite paper proposals that will investigate the production of meaning of those webdocumentaries, the new stakes regarding the audience, the new relation to time and space and the impact on the narrative embracing this hybricity of the media.


If you wish to be considered for this proposed panel, please email Dr. Lise Gantheret : Gantheret.l@sympatico.ca, a 250-word abstract, a brief bibliography and a biograohy with history of Visible Evidence participation.

The deadline for proposals is January 1, 2011; all submitters will be notified of receipt of their proposal within twenty-four hours and of the panel chair's final decision by Friday, January 7, 2011; those not accepted for this panel can then submit to the conference's open call, which has a deadline of January 15, 2011.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=15 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:27:54 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=15
How can documentary be approached as a ‘body genre’? How are elements of more conventional body genres (melodrama, porn, horror, comedy, performance art) integrated and employed in documentary works; and/or how do the latter invent and allow for alternative forms of addressing embodiment?
With a special interest in socially and academically marginalized bodies, this panel seeks to discuss various forms of embodiment on and off screen – as representation, event and/or address. Embodiment is here primarily though not exclusively viewed as a negotiation of a self. Possible topics may include but are not restricted to:

- Autobiography/autobiographical performances
- The in/visibility of particular bodies
- Phenomenology
- Political Mimesis
- Laboring bodies
- Sexuality
- Pathology and death

Please send a 250 words abstract, brief bibliography and bio until December 31, 2010 to feng-mei@gmx.de.]]>
How can documentary be approached as a ‘body genre’? How are elements of more conventional body genres (melodrama, porn, horror, comedy, performance art) integrated and employed in documentary works; and/or how do the latter invent and allow for alternative forms of addressing embodiment?
With a special interest in socially and academically marginalized bodies, this panel seeks to discuss various forms of embodiment on and off screen – as representation, event and/or address. Embodiment is here primarily though not exclusively viewed as a negotiation of a self. Possible topics may include but are not restricted to:

- Autobiography/autobiographical performances
- The in/visibility of particular bodies
- Phenomenology
- Political Mimesis
- Laboring bodies
- Sexuality
- Pathology and death

Please send a 250 words abstract, brief bibliography and bio until December 31, 2010 to feng-mei@gmx.de.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=14 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:47:48 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=14
Human rights media creation now occurs within a complex media ecology where old ways of considering documentary are loosened and challenged. It is a world of purposeful witnesses, casual producers, documentary producers, advocacy producers, engagement campaigns, mapping projects. It is a world where governmental, corporate and non-governmental organizations promote technology as a panacea. It is a world of curators, aggregators, citizen participants in projects of collective voice, re-mixers, re-purposeful witnesses, and casual sharers of the spreadable and the viral. The question of ethical engagements between all of these sectors is the challenge we must all enter into proposing both solutions and questions, uneasy interrogations and working protocols.

This workshop seeks to create a space to convene both theorists and practitioners of new media and social media to engage in generating ideas along two vectors:

1. Gather case studies from around the globe and specific geographic contexts of social media/Web 2.0 projects that challenge, unsettle, and problematize thinking and doing documentary
2. Brainstorming on ethical best practices in social media and collaborative media that bridge the old and the new, asking what can we build on from previous existing models and what needs to be invented

Following panels over the last three years at Visible Evidence on the politics and engagements of human rights, social media and new technology, we propose a more user-generated discussion format that would lead to working principles. Our plan for this workshop includes posting our materials on our blogs and inviting workshop attendees to participate in generating topics, making interventions, and sharing their own writing and case studies in advance of the conference.

Participants interested in making a brief opening statement to frame this discussion should send a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio including your history of VE participation to Sam Gregory (sam@witness.org), and Patty Zimmermann (patty@ithaca.edu) by January 1, 2011. All participants will be notified by January 8, 2011 as to their inclusion as workshop leaders.]]>
Human rights media creation now occurs within a complex media ecology where old ways of considering documentary are loosened and challenged. It is a world of purposeful witnesses, casual producers, documentary producers, advocacy producers, engagement campaigns, mapping projects. It is a world where governmental, corporate and non-governmental organizations promote technology as a panacea. It is a world of curators, aggregators, citizen participants in projects of collective voice, re-mixers, re-purposeful witnesses, and casual sharers of the spreadable and the viral. The question of ethical engagements between all of these sectors is the challenge we must all enter into proposing both solutions and questions, uneasy interrogations and working protocols.

This workshop seeks to create a space to convene both theorists and practitioners of new media and social media to engage in generating ideas along two vectors:

1. Gather case studies from around the globe and specific geographic contexts of social media/Web 2.0 projects that challenge, unsettle, and problematize thinking and doing documentary
2. Brainstorming on ethical best practices in social media and collaborative media that bridge the old and the new, asking what can we build on from previous existing models and what needs to be invented

Following panels over the last three years at Visible Evidence on the politics and engagements of human rights, social media and new technology, we propose a more user-generated discussion format that would lead to working principles. Our plan for this workshop includes posting our materials on our blogs and inviting workshop attendees to participate in generating topics, making interventions, and sharing their own writing and case studies in advance of the conference.

Participants interested in making a brief opening statement to frame this discussion should send a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio including your history of VE participation to Sam Gregory (sam@witness.org), and Patty Zimmermann (patty@ithaca.edu) by January 1, 2011. All participants will be notified by January 8, 2011 as to their inclusion as workshop leaders.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=13 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:54:31 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=13
I invite proposals that attempt to come to terms with this problematic in investigations of individual films or filmmakers, or at a more abstract level on strictly theoretical terms.

I can imagine a number of interesting interventions or topics. Some suggestions might be:

Representing the work process.
Theoretical issues in representing the economy and labour.
Visualizing globalization.
Visualizing data.
Representing the market.
Representations of First World/Third World relations.
Implications of recent political/economic theory for understanding representations of the economy.


Please email a 250 word proposal (as a pdf or doc file), along with a short bibliography and a brief bio (including a history of VE participation) to Christopher Pavsek at cpavsek@sfu.ca. Please send your proposal by January 1. Participants will be notified by January 8.]]>
I invite proposals that attempt to come to terms with this problematic in investigations of individual films or filmmakers, or at a more abstract level on strictly theoretical terms.

I can imagine a number of interesting interventions or topics. Some suggestions might be:

Representing the work process.
Theoretical issues in representing the economy and labour.
Visualizing globalization.
Visualizing data.
Representing the market.
Representations of First World/Third World relations.
Implications of recent political/economic theory for understanding representations of the economy.


Please email a 250 word proposal (as a pdf or doc file), along with a short bibliography and a brief bio (including a history of VE participation) to Christopher Pavsek at cpavsek@sfu.ca. Please send your proposal by January 1. Participants will be notified by January 8.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=12 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:19:49 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=12
This panel will explore the extra-textual context of documentary as a means by which our understanding of (a) documentary is enhanced, influenced and altered. Papers are sought on how the extra-textual changes the way we receive and perceive specific documentaries and documentary more generally. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- making-of/ behind-the-scene documentaries on documentaries
- documentary marketing campaigns
- documentary debunkings/ challenges
- documentary and/in the press
- documentary, mock-documentary and the extra-textual
- filmmaker websites and other modes of self-presentation

Submissions should be in the form of a single email attachment (Word or pdf) including a 250-300 word abstract and a brief author bio detailing previous Visible Evidence participation. Deadline: January 1st to Bella Honess Roe (a.honessroe at surrey.ac.uk). Participants will be notified as to their inclusion in the panel by January 8th.]]>
This panel will explore the extra-textual context of documentary as a means by which our understanding of (a) documentary is enhanced, influenced and altered. Papers are sought on how the extra-textual changes the way we receive and perceive specific documentaries and documentary more generally. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- making-of/ behind-the-scene documentaries on documentaries
- documentary marketing campaigns
- documentary debunkings/ challenges
- documentary and/in the press
- documentary, mock-documentary and the extra-textual
- filmmaker websites and other modes of self-presentation

Submissions should be in the form of a single email attachment (Word or pdf) including a 250-300 word abstract and a brief author bio detailing previous Visible Evidence participation. Deadline: January 1st to Bella Honess Roe (a.honessroe at surrey.ac.uk). Participants will be notified as to their inclusion in the panel by January 8th.]]> http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=11 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:43:41 +0000 http://visibleevidence.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=11
This prevalent development also informs works by contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Omar Fast, Matthew Buckingham and Tacita Dean who, while employing media such as photography, film and video, also mobilize fictional narratives and figures as part of an effort to demarcate new horizons of intelligibility and visibility, what Jacques Rancière calls “the partition of the sensible.” By evoking the photographic document or documentary mode of depiction, these works often end up productively complicating any perceived notion of collective and communicative “common-sense.” While pointing to the limits of traditional forms of representation, they also suggest inventive strategies of staging and reenactments of events.

We invite paper proposals that will investigate films and videos which engage in such contingent pursuit of truth, texts which ask viewers to embrace this formal and conceptual hybridity as a strategy meant not so much to dupe, mislead, or mock, but to offer a different documenting tactic which can address the irreducibly complex political life conditions under globalization. Does this strategy point to a possible failure of traditional documentary tactics by criticizing any presumed claims with regard to the transparency and universality of knowledge and visual forms of representation? Does it point to new models of artistic and political critique beyond both identity politics and “the politics of representation”? How does technology in its many cultural and political associations and implications mediate and generate the elusiveness produced between document and fiction? What new positions or roles are allocated to viewers within these new documentary and artistic hybrids?

Please email a 250-300 word proposal, along with a bibliography and a brief bio (including a history of VE participation) to Ohad Landesman at ohad.landesman@nyu.edu and Vered Maimon at maimonv@gmail.com.

Deadline for proposals is January 1, 2011; all submitters will be notified by Friday, January 7, 2011, so that those who will not be on the proposed panel can apply to the open call.]]>
This prevalent development also informs works by contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Omar Fast, Matthew Buckingham and Tacita Dean who, while employing media such as photography, film and video, also mobilize fictional narratives and figures as part of an effort to demarcate new horizons of intelligibility and visibility, what Jacques Rancière calls “the partition of the sensible.” By evoking the photographic document or documentary mode of depiction, these works often end up productively complicating any perceived notion of collective and communicative “common-sense.” While pointing to the limits of traditional forms of representation, they also suggest inventive strategies of staging and reenactments of events.

We invite paper proposals that will investigate films and videos which engage in such contingent pursuit of truth, texts which ask viewers to embrace this formal and conceptual hybridity as a strategy meant not so much to dupe, mislead, or mock, but to offer a different documenting tactic which can address the irreducibly complex political life conditions under globalization. Does this strategy point to a possible failure of traditional documentary tactics by criticizing any presumed claims with regard to the transparency and universality of knowledge and visual forms of representation? Does it point to new models of artistic and political critique beyond both identity politics and “the politics of representation”? How does technology in its many cultural and political associations and implications mediate and generate the elusiveness produced between document and fiction? What new positions or roles are allocated to viewers within these new documentary and artistic hybrids?

Please email a 250-300 word proposal, along with a bibliography and a brief bio (including a history of VE participation) to Ohad Landesman at ohad.landesman@nyu.edu and Vered Maimon at maimonv@gmail.com.

Deadline for proposals is January 1, 2011; all submitters will be notified by Friday, January 7, 2011, so that those who will not be on the proposed panel can apply to the open call.]]>