[ecrea] CFP: Documentary/Philosophy International Conference

Call for Papers


DOCUSOPHIA: Documentary/Philosophy International Conference

May 22-24, 2018


Conference Venue:

The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University

The Tel Aviv Cinematheque


Organizing Committee: Dr. Shai Biderman, Dr. Shmulik Duvdevani and Dr. 
Ohad Landesman (Tel Aviv University, The Steve Tisch School of Film and 
Television)


There is a century-old tradition of defining documentary in 
philosophical terms. Yet, this tradition seems to miss the most 
intelligible (yet, conspicuously evasive) aspect of documentary praxis: 
its conceptual entanglement with philosophy itself. This entanglement is 
oddly mirrored in Carl Plantinga’s characterization of the documentary 
as an “asserted veridical representation,” or in John Grierson’s famous 
depiction of documentary as “a creative treatment of actuality.” Such 
characterizations install the most adamants relations film has with the 
highly charged philosophical concepts of truth, reality and the real. 
These relations are at the heart of the documentary practice, and are 
essential to any working definition of documentary cinema.


Indeed, how do we think of the notion of documentary and of specific 
documentary films in philosophical terms? how do documentaries deal with 
philosophical issues? A recently published anthology edited by David 
LaRocca titled The Philosophy of Documentary Film: Image, Sound, 
Fiction, Truth(2016) testifies to the ever-growing connections, both 
scholarly and in practice, between the two disciplines. Prominent 
filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Terrence Malick (in his 2016 IMAX 
documentary Voyage of Time) as well as films like What the Bleep Do We 
Know?andIs The Man Who Is Tall Happy?are exploring philosophical, 
theological, scientific and abstract questions in a unique and 
unprecedented way.


Thus, such an engagement is especially timely and topical because of the 
pressing need to reconfigure the philosophical outputs of documentary’s 
new horizons as a developing practice. Characterized by unprecedented 
theatrical success and accelerated aesthetic evolution, documentaries 
today have been breaking new grounds, entertaining arguments based on 
uncertainties and incompleteness by prioritizing elements of 
subjectivity, fiction, and drama. In this second film-philosophy 
conference—devoted to the entangled relations between documentary and 
philosophy—we wish to consider the significant makeover that documentary 
studies has gone through lately to fit these changes, and further 
explore the significant place that philosophy may hold within 
contemporary documentary studies.


Considering how fiction and fact have been recently intertwined in 
non-fiction subgenres (e.g., the mockumentary, the drama-documentary or 
the ‘hybrid film’), it becomes essential to redefine what we now mean 
when we say “documentary films”, and to assess the nature of their truth 
claims. Following its recent spread into new virtual and social 
platforms and increased venture into the realm of television, 
philosophizing about documentary must invite us to rethink what defines 
it as a practice, a genre, a medium or a filmic strategy, and how this 
definition is always dynamic. When subjective authorial voices are 
assertively flaunted in video diaries, essay-films and performative 
documentaries, a new set of philosophical questions that relate to 
performance, ethics and authorship is in need of reconsideration.


The conference will also coincide with the 20th installment of DocAviv, 
the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, which will take 
place between 17-26 on May 2018. DocAviv has carefully carved its niche 
today as one of the leading documentary festivals worldwide, and it is 
the only festival in Israel dedicated in its entirety to documentary 
films. We are excited to participate with DocAviv next year and happy 
that our conference attendees will also be able to enjoy such an 
important celebration of documentary cinema.


We aim to bring together in our conference leading and emerging scholars 
and filmmakers to investigate together such issues and enhance ongoing 
dialogues both within documentary studies and philosophy individually 
and also between these discourses. We welcome a range of papers that 
might be conceptual, theoretical or practice-as-research in orientation.


We are interested in papers, for example, in the following broad areas:


 1.

    New takes on the ontology of the cinematic image in the digital age.

 2.

    Video essays and philosophizing about film through film.

 3.

    The meeting between philosophy and poetry in documentary films in
    general and essay films in particular.

 4.

    Documentary in the age of film-philosophy: specific films (analysis
    and theory) and filmmakers (documentarians).

 5.

    Documentary, theory and/v.s. praxis.

 6.

    The real and reality through philosophy (Cavell, Plato, etc.).

 7.

    Documentary and epistemology.

 8.

    Documentary-as-objective (Noël Carroll) vs. the dismissal of such an
    approach (Brian Winston).

 9.

    Ethical issues in the age of crowd-sourced and social networks
    documentaries.

10.

    Documentaries on philosophy and philosophers.

11.

    Imposters and frauds: the status of documentary truth in the 21st
    century.

12.

    Theological debates dealing with religious subjects and faith in
    documentary.

13.

    Philosophical provocations on the elusive fiction/non-fiction divide.

14.

    Philosophical inquiries into fraud and deception in mockumentaries.

15.

    Phenomenology and documentary (e.g., cinema verite, experiential
    documentary).

16.

    The philosophical premises and goals of ethnography in documentary
    cinema.


SUBMITTING PROPOSALS:

Please send an abstract (up to 300 words in length, including the 
research objectives, theoretical framework and methodology) and a brief 
biography (100 words maximum), by December 15th, 2017 to 
(tau.docuphil /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(tau.docuphil /at/ gmail.com)>. Each proposal 
must include title, name(s), affiliation, institutional address and 
email addresses of the author(s). Notification of acceptance/rejection 
of abstracts will be sent by February 1st, 2018.

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by participants.

For further enquiries, please contact the organizers directly: Dr. Ohad 
Landesman ((lander /at/ post.tau.ac.il) <mailto:(lander /at/ post.tau.ac.il)>); Dr. 
Shai Biderman ((bidermans /at/ post.tau.ac.il) 
<mailto:(bidermans /at/ post.tau.ac.il)>); or Dr. Shmulik Duvdevani 
((duvdeva /at/ post.tau.ac.il) <mailto:(duvdeva /at/ post.tau.ac.il)>).




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