The Surrey Documentary Group
The Surrey Documentary Group is concerned with issues to do with documentary film and forms of documentation that extend beyond film to other modes of documentation in the arts.
Part of the research undertaken in the group engages with debates on the indexical sign, re-examining Pierce's original definition. One strand of the group's research is concerned with the blurring of genres of representation, through techniques such as animation. Another is concerned with the nature of environmental documentary film and theatre. Colleagues are also engaged in documentary practice, including archiving and the tracking of cultural change.
Members of the group are each engaged individually with documentary and meet on a regular basis for discussion focussed on selected texts. Colleagues who wish to join these are cordially invited to contact us.
As a group we organise an annual symposium entitled Documentary and ... which takes place in September. In 2010 the symposium was on Documentary Film and Intimacy. In 2011 the subject was Documentary and Performance. The subject in 2012 will be Documentary and the Environment.
The members of the group are
For more information on the group and its activities please contact Dr Helen Hughes
CALL FOR PAPERS
Documentary and the Environment
A one-day symposium hosted by the Film Studies programme at the University of Surrey.
Friday September 14th 2012
The third in the series ‘Documentary and ...’ to be held at the University of Surrey will be on Documentary and the Environment. The ‘Documentary and ...’ series seeks to explore the conjunction of the documentary project with the worlds it encounters and the practical and conceptual modifications these combinations bring.
The first decades of the twenty-first century have seen a consistent flow of environmental documentary films which have managed to gain attention beyond special interest groups. This one-day event aims to explore the emergence or perhaps resurgence of this documentary subgenre. How have documentary filmmakers worked with the concepts of the environment and environmental awareness? What are the ethics and aesthetics of environmental documentary filmmaking? How do theories of documentary, ecology, and the theorisation of environmental politics interact? How do audiences respond to environmental documentaries?
We invite speakers and contributors working on documentary film and non-fiction media as well as on the intersection of documentary with environmental education, environmental communication, and environmental psychology to respond to these questions. The following topics are a guideline to potential paper proposals and are not meant to exclude other interpretations of the seminar’s title Documentary and the Environment
- Defining the eco-doc: experimental, documentary and activist representations of environmental issues
- Place, space and ecology in environmental documentary
- Environmental justice and the documentary
- Nature and the natural in environmental documentary
- Wildlife documentary and environmental issues
- The history of the environmental documentary
- Support structures for the production and distribution of environmental documentaries
- The evolving environmental film festival circuit and the social hub
- The sustainability of documentary filmmaking
Please submit a proposal including a 300-word paper abstract and a short biography to Dr. Helen Hughes (h.hughes@surrey.ac.uk) by Friday 29th June 2012.