[ecrea] Photogénie Issue 1: Just the Facts - A New Realist Cinema?

We are proud to announce the first issue of our on-line journal 
/Photogénie/: "Just the Facts – A New Realist Cinema?"

It is freely available and can be found through this link 
<http://www.photogenie.be/photogenie_blog/topic/1-just-facts-%E2%80%93-new-realist-cinema>.

/Photogénie/ (www.photogenie.be <http://www.photogenie.be>) wants to 
combine a sense of wonderment with keen analyses. The connecting 
principle is the intense perception of cinema. The articles that are 
published on the website – on films old and new, cinema past and present 
– will not try and force this perception to fit preconceived frameworks, 
but will endeavour to make the viewer receptive to what films can make 
us see, in an attempt to put the allure of cinema into words.

In a 1977 essay on Lumet’s /Dog Day Afternoon/, Fredric Jameson 
addressed a perceived appetite for documentary fact in American culture, 
a distinct longing for “the anecdotal, the /vécu/, the /fait divers/, 
the true story in all its sociological freshness and unpredictability.” 
This appetite he saw expressed in the rise and prominence of non-fiction 
and historical novels, the primacy of non-fiction over fiction on the 
best-seller lists, the prominence of fictional documentaries or 
‘docudramas’ [drama based on real events but re-enacted] on television, 
and the popularity of both procedural cop drama and political-conspiracy 
thrillers on the big screen. Over the years, this appetite has become 
only more pronounced: reality-based TV is complemented by both HBO 
realism and Youtube /vérité/, while docudrama has dominated the Oscars 
(if not the box office). Filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and David 
Fincher have shown a particular fondness not only for fact-based 
narrative but for absolute fidelity to historical fact in their 
dramaturgy and /mise en scène/.

The aim of this issue is to look at these films and the perceived return 
of realism from a variety of angles, which are discussed in the 
introduction 
<http://www.photogenie.be/photogenie_blog/article/just-facts-%E2%80%93-new-realist-cinema> 
by editor Tom Paulus.

The issue includes articles by Adrian Martin, Tom, Paulus, Pieter-Jan 
Decoster, Stefaan Decostere, Michael Guarneri, David Gunzburg, Drehli 
Robnik, Nancy Vansieleghem and Christophe Van Eecke.

We are grateful to all authors for having contributed these excellent 
papers and we hope you will enjoy reading them as much as we did.

Yours faithfully,

Bart Versteirt / VDFC vzw

02/ 551.19.61  (VOX) / 02/ 551.19.55 (FAX) / 0474/ 38.87.80 (MOBILE)

www.vdfc.be <http://www.vdfc.be/>

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