AREA: The 1960s

Post-1960s Hollywood treatments of America in the “sixties” tend to either demonize the period as nihilistic and misguided (see Forrest Gump & The Big Chill) or lament it as a lost utopia (see The Ballad of Jack and Rose). To what degree do historical documentaries such as Making Sense of the Sixties and Berkeley in the Sixties contribute to or complicate these now stereotypical filmic interpretations of the 1960s? The Film & History League invites papers that examine documentary representations of this iconic decade. It also welcomes papers that explore documentary films created in the 1960s. As a period of rich and varied experimental and documentary film production—much of it yet to be analyzed—this area hopes to open doors of investigation into an important phase of documentary history.

Send proposals (200 to 400 words) and inquiries to:
Maria McGrath
Department of Social Science
Bucks County Community College
275 Swamp Road
Newtown, PA 18940
Deadline for submission is Sept. 10, 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. Guest speakers include: Filmmakers, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, makers of THE WAR ROOM (1993), the fascinating study of the 1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaign and documentary scholar, Betsy A. McLane, author of a recently completed history of documentary, A New History of Documentary Film.