AREA: Canadian Documentary Film and Docudramas

John Grierson (National Film Board of Canada’s first commissioner and an advocate of an informed citizenship) observed that “realist documentary, with its streets and cities and slums and markets and exchanges and factories, has given itself the job of making poetry where no poet has gone before it, and where no ends, sufficient for the purpose of art, are easily observed. It requires not only taste, but also inspiration.” Canadian documentaries have provided such taste and inspiration and have served as an important visual portal to historical, political, and social issues, reinforcing the notion that in an image-oriented society, seeing is believing. Canadian documentaries and docudramas such as Drylanders (1963), for example, reflect this cinematic perspective. The docudrama represents an attempt to present factual material through the organizing aesthetics of fiction and narrative, and they often utilize forms of narrative patterning and visual composition that facilitate audience identification with the “characters”—even when these characters are well-known historical figures. The Conference is seeking proposals that fall within the Canadian documentary and docudrama tradition. Deadline for submission is July 25, 2006.

The Film and History League conference details can be found at www.filmandhistory.org. The meeting will run from 8-12 November, 2006 in the Dolce Conference Center near the DFW airport. A spectrum of other areas will evolve on the web site over time.

Send all inquires and proposals to

Dr. Ron Smith
Visual and Performing Arts Department
Thompson Rivers University
Kamloops, British Columbia
Canada V2C 5N3
rsmith@tru.ca