Call for papers for a conference to be held Friday, November 23, 2012 at
Birkbeck
College, University of London. Co-sponsored by the departments of the
History of
Art and Film, Birkbeck, Media Arts, Royal Holloway, and the University of
London
Screen Studies Group.
With Madonna’s W.E on the Wallis Simpson-Edward VIII romance attempting to
exploit
the Oscar-winning success of The King’s Speech and The Queen, and a film
drama on
Diana’s romance with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan in production, this Diamond
Jubilee
year seems the appropriate time to consider the historic past and current
effusion
of film and television representations of the British monarchy.
Moving images of British monarchs traverse the history of film and
television, with
documentary footage of Queen Victoria dating from 1897; Sarah Bernhardt’s Les
Amours de la Reine Elizabeth in 1911; Bette Davis and Errol Flynn in The
Private
Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939); the Commonwealth Film Unit’s extensive
archive of royal visits to far flung colonies; British television’s repeated
attempts to humanize the Windsors at work, in interviews and enjoying a
Balmoral
barbecue; and a newly announced feature to star a regal Emma Thompson
confronting a
burglar in her Buckingham Palace bedroom.
Among the topics for possible consideration at this conference are:
 The relation of royal representation to the attribution of
‘quality’ and
‘prestige’ to UK film and television production.
 The republican rhetoric of TV drama in which royal
occasions figure, e.g. The
Price of Coal (1977), The Spongers (1978), and Royal Wedding (2010).
 The political role of the documentation of British royalty
produced by the
Commonwealth Film Unit.
 How diva figures like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Glenda
Jackson, Bette Davis,
Flora Robson, Sarah Bernhardt and Quentin Crisp inflect their royal roles
with their
screen queen personae.
 The queering of the British monarchy in the work of Derek
Jarman, Alan Bennett
and Sally Potter.
 The generic complexities of royal representation – Costume
Drama? Current
Affairs? Docudrama? Melodrama? Biopic? Farce?
 British royalty and Hollywood royalty in celebrity culture
today.
Applicants to give 25 minute papers at this conference are asked to send a
200 word
synopsis and a brief academic biography to Mandy Merck, Media Arts, Royal
Holloway
([log in to unmask]) by April 30, 2012.
Chris Berry
Professor of Film & TV Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London
SE14 6NW
0207-919-7565
0207-919-7616 (Fax)
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