[ecrea] CFP: Powers of the False - MeCCSA practice supported

Powers of the False Symposium

Institut Francais & Cine Lumiere, London, UK

May 18th-19th 2012

Supported by the Practice Network of MeCCSA



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?


The symposium welcomes submissions from theorists and practitioners.


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).


The DEADLINE has been put back to Dec 15th 2011:


Papers 20 mins maximum. Abstracts 250-500 words. Please supply brief bio.


Please email abstracts for papers and/or post DVDs  of no more than 20
minutes in length , attn of:


Dr Steven Eastwood

University of East London

(eastwood /at/ uel.ac.uk) <mailto:(eastwood /at/ uel.ac.uk)>


1st Floor,

17-25 Cremer Street,

London E2 8HD
---------------------------

Joanna Callaghan
Chair Practice Section
MeCCSA
http://www.meccsa.org.uk/practice-section/


Senior Lecturer Media Production
Division of Media, Arts & Production
University of Bedfordshire
Park Square, Luton
Bedfordshire
LU1 3JU, UK

01234 400 400 xtn 3087
(joanna.callaghan /at/ beds.ac.uk) <mailto:(joanna.callaghan /at/ beds.ac.uk)>