The 1999 Visible Evidence Conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television and the USC School of Cinema-Television
The 1999 Visible Evidence Conference is the seventh in a series of major interdisciplinary conferences focused on the role of film and video as witness to and voice for lived, social reality. The Conferences originate from a center in non-fiction documentary to encompass issues of ethnography, journalism, medical imagining, visible evidence and the law, advocacy, biography and auto-biography, and the art of social representation. We welcome a wide range of perspectives from fields such as anthropology, architecture, art history, ethnic studies, gay and lesbian studies, history, journalism, law, medicine, political science, sociology, urban studies and women studies.
At this time you may submit a paper directly to a panel listed below, or to the Open Call address listed at the bottom of this page. In either case you will need to submit the following: 1) a one page paper proposal; 2) a brief description of your background or experience relevant to the proposal; 3) your email or alternative address and phone number.
All proposals must be received by e-mail, or postmarked, by March 30th, 1999.
VISUAL EVIDENCE VII PANELS:
Jane Gaines, Duke University; and Tom Waugh, Concordia University: “Hand Held Cameras and Other Things: Documentary Sexologies”
At least one contemporary theorist (Bill Nichols) has compared documentary to pornography. On this panel we will be interested in probing this analogy-—in discussing the affinities between sex acts and machine acts, in considering the prosthetic aspects of the camera as well as the anthropomorphic ones, and finally in historicizing the documentary camera’s role in Foucault’s “implantation of perversions,” and “proliferation of sexualities.”
Derek Paget, University College Worcester: “Border Genres: Facts, Fictions & The Spaces in Between”
The main focus for this panel will be mixed-form television programming: in particular, those genres which negotiate between the formal characteristics of documentary and drama. Such types of program habitually use documentary and historical material to produce dramas, but increasingly the importation of dramatic structures into documentary has complicated already problematic ‘border lines’.
Akira Lippit, San Francisco State University: “Real Phantasies” Role of Fantasy in Documentary
This double-session panel will explore the status of fantasy, and its psychological counterpart phantasy, in documentary film and media. The purpose of this double-session is to assess the status of the fantastic within a discourse that places an ideological value on the rhetorical force of the real.
Scott Curtis, Northwestern University: “Cinema and Scientific/Medical Practices of Media”
This panel will explore the impact of moving image technology on science and medicine, focusing especially on its role in organizing scientific and/or medical practice. How has the moving image influenced the way scientists or physicians represent phenomena? A broad range of approaches that emphasize the scientific/medical researcher’s point of view are welcome, including (but not limited to) those that investigate such issues as: subjectivity and objectivity, legibility and legitimacy, rhetoric and ethics, race and gender, technology and perception.
Christie Milliken, University of Southern California: “Life Lessons: Theorizing Documentary as Pedagogy”
This panel will focus on explicitly educational film and video texts in order to examine the intersection of critical pedagogy with the rhetorical strategies of documentary film and video. Particular emphasis on how different models for critical pedagogy are reflected in the transformation of documentary film practices over time, as well as the success or failure of various educational methodologies offer a potential starting point for investigation.
VISUAL EVIDENCE VII - WORKSHOPS
Eric Smoodin, Film and Media Editor, University of California Press: “Documentary Publishing”
Editors from several presses will discuss the possibilities for scholarly publishing on documentary, and also the future of such publishing. Participants would not only get a chance to talk about theoretical and historiographic issues, but they would also discuss the nuts and bolts of scholarly publishing.
John Hess, University of Maryland and Patricia Zimmermann, Ithaca College: “The Digital Documentary Project”
A “Working Session” with three to five selected presenter/curators to engage in collective discussion and exchange about the continuation of the Documentary Project in digital forms, particularly websites and CD ROMs.
VISUAL EVIDENCE VII - OPEN CALL
Approximately eight panels or workshops will be constructed from submissions to the open call. We welcome all papers relating to documentary media and Visible Evidence.
Send open call proposals to:
James Friedman, UCLA Film and Television Archive —- jimf@ucla.edu
Or mail to:
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UCLA Film and Television Archive
Archive Research & Study Center 405 Hilgard Ave. 46 Powell Library Los Angeles, CA 90095-1517 |
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In addition to the receptions, panels and discussions with filmmakers at UCLA, USC will be hosting “Documentary Outlaws” a panel discussion followed by an evening reception.