Call For Papers: Avant-Doc: Intersections of Avant-garde and Documentary Film

The University of Iowa

March 5-7, 2009

Abstract Deadline: November 21, 2008 (send to avant-doc@uiowa.edu)

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 at the University of Iowa, 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@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.