[ecrea] CFP: Powers of the False

*Powers of the False Symposium*

Institut Francais & Cine Lumiere, London, UK

May 18^th -19^th 2012


*CALL FOR PAPERS AND FILM/VIDEO SUBMISSIONS*

* *

“There is a power inherent in the false: the positive power of ruse, the 
power to gain a strategic advantage by masking one’s life force.”

(Brian Massumi, REALER THAN REAL, The Simulacrum According to Deleuze 
and Guattari)


This two-day symposium addresses the complex ethics of the manipulation 
of real people and events in documentary, fact-fiction hybrid cinema and 
artists’ moving image.  Through close readings and screenings of 
contemporary and historical films that deliberately falsify actuality, 
the Powers of the False symposium will ask, can there be an ethic of 
falsification in the encounter between filmmaker and subject? How can we 
document something whose truth has many sides or may be inscrutable? Is 
the act of documenting always inevitably performative?  The symposium 
will also examine instances where the subjects of films have 
deliberately deceived filmmakers. Inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s theories 
of minor cinema and his term ‘powers of the false', the symposium will 
turn to other philosophers too, to approach its central conceptual and 
ethical questions, including Levinas’ philosophy of alterity.


Academic research methods regard most filmmaking practices as unethical, 
particularly documentary filmmaking because of its direct encounter with 
actuality. The principles of consent for sociological research are 
anathema to factual film production, because total editorial control can 
never be given to the subjects. Instead, prior-consent is necessary. 
Moving image artists tend to disregard contributor consent forms and 
often freely intervene in the lives of their subjects. The activity of 
filmmaking is clearly predisposed to manipulation, and film productions 
inexorably produce alteration and change. Powers of the False looks at 
filmmaking as a site for performing difference and as a manipulative and 
coercive agency. When and for what reason is forgery, manipulation and 
deception conceptually motivated, even ethically necessary? How are we 
as human subjects changed by filming and by being filmed?


Topics may include:

    * Inventing the past and fictionalising the present in the factual 
film; ethno-fiction.

    * Staged events and re-enactments.

    * Instances where filmmakers have deliberately delayed, intervened 
in, or given testimony in legal proceedings, or have broken the law.

    * Films that have to come to light as true/false over time; film 
hoaxes.

    * Films where authorship has been shared with, or passed over to, a 
subject.

    * Films where the subject has manipulated the filmmaker.

    * Films that have significantly altered personal or historical 
events, whether positively or negatively.

    * Directionless films guided by an encounter with a subject.

    * The docudrama, the drama-documentary, the mock-documentary and 
the cinematic essay.

    * Iterations of subjectivity within the factual frame, recollection 
images, use of free indirect discourse.


Suggested artists and filmmakers for consideration as topics of 
discussion include Jean Rouch, Chantal Ackerman, Werner Herzog, Agnes 
Varda, Sophie Calle, Chris Marker, Abbas Kiarostami, Errol Morris, Nick 
Broomfield, Ulrich Seidl, Andrew Kötting, Ben Hopkins, Clio Barnard. 
This list is by no means exhaustive.


The papers and short film/video works presented over the weekend will be 
edited into a published collection of essays (accompanied by a DVD).


Please email abstracts for papers or films no more than 20 minutes in 
length by Dec 1st 2011, attn of:


Steven Eastwood  (University of East London): (eastwood /at/ uel.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(eastwood /at/ uel.ac.uk)>

Catherine Wheatley (Kings College London): 
catherine/./wheatley/@//kcl.ac.uk/ <http://kcl.ac.uk/>



Powers of the False Symposium supported by
The University of East London and Kings College London