World Documentary Film & TV Conference

Falmouth University

4-6 September 2014

To contribute to world cinema documentary studies and to film theory/ practice debates, the World Documentary Film  & TV Conference aims to bring together  international scholars and film practitioners. It seeks to critically examine historical and contemporary world documentary films and factual television productions, whose analyses have been developed across many disciplines, but rarely discussed in one place.

Whereas world and transnational cinema studies have witnessed a thriving progression over the past two decades, they typically centred on narrative cinema and its social and cultural analyses.  We wish to approach this and other existing gaps in current world cinema critical frameworks.

With its emphasis on historical and contemporary tensions in the globalising world and their relation to the documentary genre, this conference will offer a common forum for articulating academic and creative/industry practitioners’ views on documentary productions from aesthetic, social, cultural, political and media perspectives.

To acknowledge the impact of currently available distribution channels, especially those using web-based digital platforms, we also intend to stimulate an analytical debate  on potential future directions in the development  of documentary films  and TV productions, including their popularity, reception and global audiences.

This interdisciplinary conference has been developed by the staff of the School of Film  & TV at Falmouth University. It originates from the School’s research and practical film and television projects.  It will coincide with the launch of two new teaching theory/practice programmes, BA(Hons)  TV and Film & Television MA, both starting on Penryn Campus in October  2014.

During the conference we will be showcasing a selected few feature and short documentaries with panel discussions and Q&A sessions with filmmakers in the evenings in The Poly cinema in Falmouth.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof. Lucia Nagib (University of Reading)

Dr. Julian Ward (University of Edinburgh)

Prof. Michael Chanan (University of Roehampton)

Call For Papers

The growing popularity of documentaries produced in traditional film and televisual formats, as well as those designed for web distribution provokes critical discussions on all aspects of contemporary  world documentary practices, including representations, production, distribution, audience,  and modes of filming.

This conference welcomes original presentation proposals on historical and contemporary documentary film  & TV practices coming from both western and non-western cultures. We invite papers from academics and film/media practitioners that fall into one of the following two categories:

• Globalisation & The Contemporary Film Practice

We are particularly interested in papers illuminating the relationship between the processes of globalisation and the documentary genre, where documentarians cross political, cultural, social, and national borders to comment on individual or collective effects of late western capitalism’s expansion.

We encourage analyses of documentary productions that focus on tensions surrounding the global & the local, displacement, migrations, diasporas, terrorism, transnational cities, global politics, economy, tourism & environment. Here the correlation between globalisation and documentary can be approached from the perspective of film content/subject matter, film form, or production and promotion processes.

• Retrospective Discovery

To contribute to the existing scholarly body of work, this conference also aims to engage in a critical debate on those documentary cultures and filmmakers, which until recently rarely attracted the attention of Anglophone film criticism.

We are interested in retrospective analyses of film & television documentaries from/about such regions as Eastern Europe, South-East Asia, Africa, India, South America, Middle East & Australia. Proposed papers may explore the national, diasporic, or outsider/traveller’s films and television documentary works.

Those speakers who wish to present research analyses probing the history of western/English language documentaries are welcome to study unexplored filmmakers/subjects, or discuss original approaches to films that have been previously examined in academic writing.

Critical Frameworks

Suggested, but not exclusive critical frameworks may cut across:

•               Film & TV industrial contexts (distribution channels & funding)

•               Changing modes of world documentary filmmaking

•               Film studies: aesthetics, representations & visual experimentations

•               Film reception and audience studies

•               Transnational and world cinema

•               Environmental studies

•               Representing communities/community filmmaking

•               Political activism/political protest

•               Digital media studies (transmedia, multiplatform & interactivity)

•               Culture studies

•               Translating cultures

•               Anthropology/ethnography

•               Gender studies

•               Nationality studies

•               Sociology (social change studies and minority studies)

•               History

•               Politics

•               Ethics

Please submit your proposal here by 30th May 2014:
http://worlddocumentary.org/conference/submit-your-proposal/