UPDATE: [Film] Avant-garde and Documentary Conference (Iowa City)

full name / name of organization: 
Sara Gooch
contact email: 

Avant-Doc: Intersections of Avant-garde and Documentary Film
The University of Iowa â€" March 5-7, 2009
Abstract Deadline: November 21, 2008 (send to avant-doc_at_uiowa.edu)
Website: www.uiowa.edu/~avantdoc

Keynote Speakers:
Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College

Juhasz is the author of essential books in film studies like AIDS TV:
Identity, Community and Alternative Video and Women of Vision: Histories in
Feminist Media and influential articles on feminism, film theory and
documentary, as well as a prominent maker of many documentaries, including
Video Remains (2005), Dear Gabe (2003) and WE CARE: A Video for
Careproviders of People Affected by AIDS (1990).

Scott MacDonald, Visiting Professor of Film History, Hamilton College,
Harvard University

MacDonald is a historian of the American avant-garde and the author of the
landmark series A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers.
He has also authored three books on institutions that have kept alternative
cinema alive: the companion volumes Cinema 16: Documents Toward a History
of the Film Society and Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the
Film Society and the recent Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an
Independent Film Distributor. Other recent books include The Garden in the
Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place and the forthcoming
Cinema As Exploration: Essays/Interviews.

Organized by graduate students in the Department of Cinema and Comparative
Literature, Avant-Doc: Intersections of Avant-garde and Documentary Film
seeks to explore the historical and contemporary intersections of
documentary and avant-garde film and media. While the categories of
avant-garde and documentary have been used to designate separate modes of
filmmaking and institutional frameworks, in practice, filmmakers, theorists
and spectators have experienced and understood the two as malleable and
interactive categories. Our renewed interest in their interaction is due to
new production and exhibition technologies, the boom in experimental
documentary production, and renewed questions of media praxis in response
to global crises such as the Iraq War. Avant-Doc foregrounds the
relationships between avant-garde and documentary modes in order to open
examinations of their productive intersections and the many historical and
theoretical questions which emerge from them.

Possible approaches:
•Readings of documentary and/or avant-garde films, including, but not
limited to, cross readings (i.e. reading avant-garde films as documentary,
non-fiction film as avant-garde, etc.)
•Studies of experimental documentaries, including self-reflexive
documentaries, historiographically engaged experimental films, experimental
ethnographies and essay films, and/or the works of a particular filmmaker
(Rouch, Marker, Berliner, Godmilow, etc.)
•Histories of intersections in production, distribution and exhibition
•Histories of the institutional categories, their intersections, and/or
permutations
•Discussions of alternative media practices and mixed programs

Creative presentations and panels are also encouraged. To propose a panel,
send the panel or session title, a brief description of the theme, names of
participants, and abstract for each presentation. To propose a paper,
please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short CV by
November 21, 2008 to avant-doc_at_uiowa.edu or send to David Harvey,
Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, E210 AJB, Iowa City, IA
52242. This conference is open to graduate students and faculty, as well as
to independent scholars and artists.

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Received on Sun Nov 09 2008 - 11:39:12 EST

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