[ecrea] CFP Documentary and Performance

*Documentary and Performance *

A one-day symposium hosted by the Film Studies programme at the 
University of Surrey.

Friday September 16^th 2011

While theatrical acting and fictionalised action is generally precluded 
in documentary film, the concept of performance is inherently, if 
ambivalently, linked to the study of documentary and non-fiction media. 
The documentation of performance is a primary function of the moving 
image, going back to the first screenings of the Skladanowsky brothers 
in 1895 Berlin, where the six second films featured dance performances, 
acrobatics and kangaroo boxing. There now exists a rich and varied 
tradition of documenting the performing arts, from dance to theatre to 
performance art. Moving from the perspective of performance studies to 
that of documentary studies, the process of making film and television 
documentary also implies issues of performance. The performance of the 
self in everyday (filmed) situations, the performance of re-enactment 
and reconstruction and the performative act of documentary production, 
question how we understand the notion of performance as it relates to 
the representation of the real.

This one-day event aims to explore performance in the context of 
documentary and moving-image documentation. How do theories of 
documentary and the theorisation of performance interact? What are the 
ethics and aesthetics of recording performances? How does the 
documentary form enhance or distort the art of performance? How does 
performance taint or enhance the re-presentation of reality?

We invite speakers and contributors working on documentary film as well 
as the intersection of non-fiction media with theatre, dance and 
performance studies to respond to these questions. The following topics 
are a guideline to potential paper proposals and are not meant to 
exclude other interpretations of the seminar’s title /Documentary and 
Performance/

/ /

· Documenting dance, dance documentary, documenting dance as ethnography 
or popular idiom

· Records of performance in biographies and histories of performers

· The role of documentary in the creation/preservation of performance art

· The documentation of site-specific performance

· Performance of the self and the everyday in documentary

· Re-enactment and reconstruction in documentary

· Documentary as embodied knowledge

Please submit a proposal including a 300-word paper abstract and a short 
biography to Dr. Helen Hughes ((h.hughes /at/ surrey.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(h.hughes /at/ surrey.ac.uk)>) by Friday 1^st July 2011.