BEYOND THE THEORY OF PRACTICE

This conference aims to address the importance of theoretical practice today and evaluate its influence on film teaching and the film audience.

It is intended to bring together an international community of filmmakers, film theorists and educators in order to consider future strategies for the practice of film and theory in a 'post-theory' intellectual environment. The topics set out below are intended as guidelines for the conference although the scientific committee welcomes proposals covering all aspects of this crucial issue.

CILECT CONFERENCE
Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Télévision in association with Sgrin the Media Agency for Wales and the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image (NAHEMI)

KALOS –K’AGATHOS
THEORY FOR FILM SCHOOLS 3

Hosted by: THE FILM ACADEMY
The University of Glamorgan

VENUE
CARDIFF SCREEN FESTIVAL
WALES
20 – 22 NOVEMBER 2003

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Recent developments in film theory evaluate questions for both the place of theory and the place of practice. They reopen issues of subject and object and challenge the assumptions of the viewer and the viewed.

Cinema, it could be said, knows us better than we know it. That the gaze of the screen may be stronger than the look of the spectator is a powerful enough indictment of the empire of cinema. Our resolve as subjects of and to this cultural empire is to find our place in its world, beyond the screen’s depiction.

Conversely, the shared enthusiasm between filmmakers, film theorists, film students and film audiences to willingly embrace and encompass the field of cinema, its pleasures, its pains and its plenitude suggests that we take time to consider the relationship between maker and reader, between practitioner and theorist, between theory and practice.

Filmmakers from Eisenstein to Godard produced seminal works in both film and theory and many filmmakers and writers during the past thirty years have developed both practices hand in hand.

What sort of films and practices are filmmaking students engaging with today? Are they challenging audiences and extending the language of practice? With an increasing number of film schools and film courses, what new questions are being raised for and by our graduating students? Are we providing the relevant insight for raising complex issues of theory/practice or are we simply stretching the divide?

The theory of film practice and its discursive relationship with filmmaking, can too easily be mistaken for cinema studies or cinema history and many film schools today still separate theory from practice, knowledge from craft, art from skill. Cinematic theoretical practice, prevalent from early cinema to postmodern film, television and art practices have impacted upon and changed the very medium itself. German, Expressionism, Soviet Cinema, Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave, New American Cinema and (arguably) Danish Dogme as well as many individual independent filmmakers across the world have challenged and advanced cinema language beyond the economic realm of the formulaic.

Papers addressing the topics identified below will be welcomed along with proposals for papers on other issues concerned with the future of theory and practice especially in education:

• Discursive Practice

Praxis and the inter-relation of theory and practice. Theoria and the act of looking. Beyond the New Wave – practice as theory. From Eisenstein to Godard to Kiarostami. Contributions to new knowledge – the PhD by Practice. Philosophy of and in practice.

• Film as Art

The challenge to commerce – art or industry? Post-Classical film and the crisis of exhibition. From Third World Cinema to World cinema – the barrier of English language cinema. Teaching the ‘Other’ – non-normative filmmaking. The art debate in film history.

• The Film School Laboratory

Breaking the mould – at the edge of the craft. Pushing the boundaries – experiments with form and content. Film as research by practice. Teaching the codes of production - not all owned by commerce. What is to be undone? – breaking the inertia.

• Misunderstanding Audience

Demystifying the personal – the audience as object of the film. Cultivating audiences – or giving the audience what the industry wants? Creating new audiences. Reception theory. The post-Lacanian place of the viewer.

• Narrativity in Threads

Do structures of narrative determine and define the place of the viewer? How have books on scriptwriting affected film school production? Are ‘open’ structures teachable? Does narrativity itself contain the problematic of new thinking?

• Documentary Challenges

Cinema theory and practices grew from documentary and fictional beginnings. Why is there such a chasm between fact and fiction? How do documentary practices define themselves in their apparent similitude with reality?

• Theorising Television

How is television received in difference to cinema? Has it the cultural prerogative? Does institutional and economic power negate aesthetic exploration? Does television cut across fact and fiction in its omnipresence and ubiquity?

Conference Chair:
Clive Myer
Director of The Film Academy
University of Glamorgan
Wales

Associate Chair:
Steve Blandford
Associate Head of Humanities & Social Science
University of Glamorgan
Wales

Series Chair:
Igor Korsic
Professor of Film History & Theory
Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television
Ljubljana
Slovenia

Please indicate expressions of interest for attendance or presentations including area of interest on receipt of the email below.

• Expressions of interest should be received by May 23rd 2003
• Abstracts (500 words as an attachment in Microsoft Word) should be received by June 16th 2003. Include in your submission the title of the paper, full name(s) of author(s), institutional affiliation(s), and your mailing address, including email/phone/fax/and URL if applicable. Your abstract must be accompanied by a declaration of intention to attend the conference. Presentation papers should be no more than 20 minutes including media.
• Articles developed from conference papers will be considered for publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Media Practice
• Conference costs:

Three days residential in Cardiff hotels and inclusive of conference fees, lunches and gala party - approx. costs £300(2 star)/£400(3 star)/£500(4 star) (please state preference)

Non-residential inclusive of conference fees, lunches and gala party - £150

In order to be included in the Conference Programme, publicity and announcements, including the Website, the Registration Fee must be paid no later than 20th September 2003.

• Programme Committee:

Clive Myer, Director of The Film Academy, University of Glamorgan, Wales

Professor Igor Korsic, Akademija za Gledaliðèe, Radio, Film in Televizijo, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Dr Michael Punt PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo Digital Reviews, MIT Press.

Dr Graeme Harper, Director of the Centre for Advanced Development of the Creative Industries and Director of the Centre for the Creative and Performing Arts, University of Wales, Bangor

Yossi Bal, Chair of the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image.

John Adams, Editor of the Journal of Media Practice, University of Bristol, England

Pavel Jech, FAMU, Filmova a Televizni Fakulta Akademie, Prague, Czech Republic

BEYOND the Theory of Practice Conference convened by Clive Myer