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“The Documentary Tradition” has a rich history with alternative cinematic forms. In particular, the avant-garde movement contested traditional forms of cinema and documentary through critical filmmaking and modernist film theory regarding the production of film. After WWI, filmmakers stretched the limits of cinema. Later, artists such as Marie Mencken, Maya Deren, and Stan Brakhage figure prominently in the historical rise of an independent American cinema that arose in the period between WWII and culminated in the 1960’s. The early avant-garde cinema interrogated documentary realism in search of connecting the ways aesthetics and ethics intertwine in the director’s field of vision. Maya Deren commented, “The form proper of film is, for me, accomplished … so that the reality which emerges is a new one – one which only film can achieve.” Questioning the film standard of “reality,” the avant-garde movement challenged the stark realism of WWII documentaries, but how did this influence the aesthetics of the documentary tradition? And as a result what new cinematic forms emerged out of this cinematic art society?
Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
• Anthropological and ethnographic influences
• Alternative film practices
• Poetics and the avant-garde
• American avant-garde filmmakers
• New Criticism
• Feminism and avant-garde films
• Ritual in documentary
• Ethics, art, and film practices
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.
Proposals for either individual papers or complete panels (3-4) papers are welcomed, and submissions may be made in either electronic or hard copy format. Please send panel proposals and/or 300 word paper abstracts by July 25, 2006, to:
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