Documentary Now! returns (see http://www.criticalstudiesintelevision.com). An annual fixture on the UK documentary scene, this conference brings together scholars, filmmakers, students, and interested members of the public to discuss current trends in documentary film, from the return of documentary as a theatrical box office phenomenon, to broadcast television, the web, and beyond.  It explores questions of industry, audiences, aesthetics, political engagement, documentary's relationship to the mainstream media and other many other issues. What's new in documentary? Where is documentary headed?
Organisers:
Michael Chanan ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Alisa Lebow ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Papers contact: Jolene Mairs This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

See outline programme schedule below:

Documentary Now! 2010 Schedule
A Conference on the Contemporary Contexts and Possibilities of the Documentary
Location: Birkbeck College, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Dates: Friday/Saturday 15/16 January

Friday 15th January 2010
2.00-4.00 pm AVPhD Panel
Jolene Mairs (University of Ulster, Coleraine) Unheard Voices:  Audio Visual Memories of the Troubles in Northern Ireland
Pawas Bisht (Loughborough University) Re-Enacting "Bhopal": Docudrama Negotiations of the "Unfigurability of Disaster"
Shannon Magness (University of Sussex) The 'Extreme Other Self': Caressed, Annihilated, Evil-Twinned
Jodi Nelson (University of Sussex) Digital Technology, Social Media and the Emerging Alternative Documentary Film Production Methodologies

4.00 pm    Welcome (15mns)

4.15-6.15pm    Panels 1 & 2
Panel 1: Issues in Contemporary Chinese Documentary Filmmaking
Tianqi Yu (University of Westminster): The 'Self' under 'My' Camera - Chinese First-person Filmmaking
Luke Robinson (University of Nottingham): Video Nasties: Violence, Liveness and Chinese Digital Documentary
Joshua Neves (University of California, Santa Barbara): Demolition and Relocation Documentaries in Beijing
Ying Qian (Harvard University): Documentary Landscapes

Panel 2: Interactive
Stefano Odorico (University College Cork): Multimedia Production: A Pragmatic Approach
Geoffrey Cox (University of Huddersfield) & Keith Marley (John Moores): Liveness and Documentary Performance
Carolyn Steele (York University)  and Gail Vanstone (York University): Interactive Documentary and the Digital Archive: Remediation or Transformation?
Susan Aasman (University of Groningen): Passing the camera: documentary in a participatory culture

7.15-8.45pm    Screening/Plenary - Diego Mondaca
La Chirola (Bolivia, 2008, 28mns)
The story of former convict Padro Cajias: 'Freedom begins after choosing your own prison'. Winner of numerous awards at film festivals in Bolivia, Amsterdam, Guatemala, Viña del Mar, Mar del Plata and Tenerife. Introduced by its director, Diego Mondaca, who discusses young Latin American documentary and his new project.


Saturday 16th January 2010
9.30-11.00am    Panels 3 & 4
Panel 3: Poetry of the Everyday
Jenny Holt (Manchester Metropolitan University): The Palette of Real Life: Documentary as Art Practice
Annelies van Noortwijk (University of Groningen): The Documentaries of Heddy Honigmann: Contemplations on Ars Vitae
Judith Aston (UWE): Spatial Montage and the Enchantment of Everyday Life: Towards the Development of Fluid Interfaces for Interactive Documentary

Panel 4: Trauma
Brian Winston (University of Lincoln): The only way to tell it: animate!
Thomas Austin (University of Sussex): Standard Operating Procedure: the 'mystery of photography' and the politics of pity
Markos Hadjioannou (King's College London): In Search of 'Lost' Reality: Waltz with Bashir and the Reanimation of the Document-image

11.00-11.15am    Refreshments

11.15am-1.15pm    Panels 5 & 6
Panel 5: Activism
Cahal McLaughlin (University of Ulster): We Never Give Up II: Advocacy and Efficacy
Giulia Battaglia (SOAS): Performing Activism: Thirty Years of Independent Documentary Practices in India
Juan Carlos Rodriguez (Georgia Institute of Technology): From Cine Piquetero to Militant Media: National and Urban Imaginaries in the Documentaries of Grupo Alavío
Daniel Ashton (Bath Spa University): Digital Gaming and the Documentary Form: Agency, Engagement and Designed Experiences

Panel 6: Subjectivity, Ego, Experience
Florian Mundhenke (University of Leipzig): Different Views-The Discourses of New Documentary Forms
Paul Sutton (Roehampton University): Documenting the Dramatic/Dramatising the Documentary: Nanni Moretti's Il Caimano
Silke Panse (University for the Creative Arts): On the Dominance of Experience
Darrell Varga (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design): New Canadian Documentaries and the Logic of Time

1.15-2.15pm    Lunch

2.15-4.00pm    Panels 7 & 8
Panel 7: City Spaces
Enrica Colusso (Roehampton University): Renaissance Perspective - Elephant and Castle
Angela Piccini (University of Bristol): Screening the Olympic City: Vancouver 2010 and Documentary Practice
Iván Villarmea Álvarez (University of Zaragoza): New Urban Symphonies and Archival Footage: Los Angeles Plays Itself

Panel 8: Crossing Borders
Paul Kerr (London Metropolitan University): Found Footage, Documentary Voice and Shared Textual Authority
Elspeth Kydd (UWE): Unmaking Home Movies: Caribbean Diaspora Migratory Aesthetics and the Event
Rebecca Savage (University of Westminster): The Space Between: An Ethnography of the Filmic Space of Mexican Migrant Video Culture

4.00-4.30pm    Refreshments

4.30-6.00pm    Plenary Florian Thalhofer/Respondent/Closing Remarks
Florian Thalhofer is a Berlin-based media artist and the inventor of the [korsakow system], a software to create database narratives, now widely in use to create non-linear documentaries. He is also a motorbike test rider since 2004.