[ecrea] cfp: Biopic Film Symposium Bristol 31st May

Places are available for those that would like to attend the Life 
through the Lens: The British Biopic in Focus symposium.


The timetable/links to registration can be found below


Many thanks


Matthew Robinson




Life through the Lens: The British Biopic in Focus

31st May 2014 at Watershed, Bristol

Keynote speaker: Belén Vidal, King’s College London

Conference fee: £20 salaried; £10 student/unsalaried (includes tea/coffee)

Organised by the UWE Film and Television Studies Research Group


The Execution of Mary Stuart (1895) tells us that the desire to 
represent historical lives has been present since the inception of 
cinema, while the continued commercial and critical success of biopics, 
from The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) to The King’s Speech (2010), 
indicates that the genre has long been important to the British film 
industry. The funding for ‘British’ biopics such as 12 Years a Slave 
(2013, UK/US) and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013, UK/South Africa) 
exemplifies the globalisation of an industry and problematises the 
conflation of production context, subject matter and claims to national 
specificity. The Iron Lady (2011) and Diana (2013) provide contemporary 
examples of the biopic’s sometimes contentious place in the shaping of 
history and the development of discourses around public figures. The 
diversity of the genre is illustrated through the different forms and 
approaches the biopic has taken: historical epics and intimate character 
studies, larger-budgeted productions and experimental works. However, 
while biopics made in Britain and about British subjects continue to 
proliferate, scholarly work in this area is limited.

This symposium therefore seeks to place the British biopic under the 
spotlight and to consider appropriate paradigms which reflect the 
specificities of British production. It welcomes new angles on canonical 
texts and introductions to films that are less familiar. The symposium 
will highlight the genre’s sustained and continuing influence on British 
filmmaking, and its commercial and critical success - both domestically 
and internationally.











Timetable

9.30 – 9.50 Arrivals/Coffee

9.50 – 10.00 Introductions



10.00 – 11.20 Three Faces of the Biopic



The Hangman’s Tale: Pierrepoint (2005) and the Execution Narrative in 
the British Biopic

Liz Jones

The Arbor (2010): Restaging the Real in the Biopic

Alexis Brown

On The Face of It: The Ontology of the British Cinematic Portrait

Paul Elliott



11.20 – 11.35 Coffee



11.35 – 12.55 Femininity, Creativity and Stardom



Anna, Glenda and Helen: Queens of the Biopic

Melanie Williams

British Stars by the Back Door: Glimpsing a Vivien Leigh Biopic in My 
Week with Marilyn

Lucy Bolton

The ‘bio-moment’ of Agatha (1979): ‘An imaginary solution to an 
authentic mystery’

Sarah Street



12.55 – 2.00 Lunch



2.00 – 3.00 Keynote



The Contemporary Biopic in British Cinema and Television: Questions of 
Narrative, Medium and Performance

Belén Vidal

3.00 – 3.15 Coffee



3.15 – 4.35 Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll: Figures of Popular Culture



Hit me with your bio-pic: Cultural memory, fidelity and the reimagining 
of a pop icon in Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

Andy Pope

Tommy Steele: the ‘Napoleon’ of British Rock’n’Roll

Stephen Glynn

He’ll take Manhattan: Cultural Authority and the older woman in the 
Fashion Film

Estella Tincknell



4.35 – 4.50 Coffee



4.50 – 6.10 The Thatcher Biopic: Narrative Conflicts and Ambiguities



The Iron Lady and the politics of prosthetic aging and ‘youthing’.

Josie Dolan

The Lady’s Not for Returning: Stylistic Remembering and Political 
Forgetting in The Iron Lady

Caitlin Shaw

Shadows of the Present: Imagination and Fantasy in the Contemporary 
British Biopic

Carolyn Ellam



6.10 – 6.30 Conclusions


Registration: http://info.uwe.ac.uk/events/event.aspx?id=15812


For further information: (Matthew5.Robinson /at/ live.uwe.ac.uk)


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