Keynote Speakers:
Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College

Scott MacDonald, Visiting Professor of Film History, Hamilton College, Harvard University

Organized by graduate students in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa, Avant-Doc: Intersections of Avant-Garde and Documentary Film seeks to explore the historical and contemporary intersections of documentary and avant-garde film and media. While the categories of avant-garde and documentary have been used to designate modes of filmmaking and institutional frameworks, in practice, filmmakers, theorists and spectators have experienced and understood the two as malleable and interactive categories. Our renewed interest in their interaction is due to new production and exhibition technologies, the boom in experimental documentary production, and renewed questions of media praxis in response to global crises such as the Iraq War. Avant-Doc foregrounds the relationships between avant-garde and documentary modes in order to open examinations of their productive intersections and the many historical and theoretical questions that emerge from them.

Possible approaches:
• Readings of documentary and/or avant-garde films, including, but not limited to, cross readings (i.e. reading avant-garde films as documentary, non-fiction film as avant-garde, etc.)
• Studies of experimental documentaries, including self-reflexive documentaries, historiographically engaged experimental films, experimental ethnographies and essay films, and/or the works of a particular filmmaker (Rouch, Marker, Berliner, Godmilow, etc.)
• Histories of intersections in production, distribution and exhibition
• Histories of the institutional categories, their intersections, and/or permutations
• Discussions of alternative media practices and mixed programs

Film panels featuring three papers and creative presentations are also encouraged. Please include a panel or session title, brief description of theme, name of chair, and abstract for each presentation. To propose a paper, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a brief CV by November 21, 2008 to avant-doc@uiowa.edu or send to David Harvey, Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, E210 AJB, Iowa City, IA 52242.