Bristol Docs Presents:  FIRST PERSON FILMS III
The Ethnic Self: First Person Plural
Screenings/Presentations Friday 23 February @ Watershed
Media Centre, 1 Canon’s Road, Bristol 10:00 hrs––17:00 hrs
Symposium Saturday 24 February @ The Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay,
Bristol 10:00hrs––17:00hrs
Admission for all events: £35/£25 Conc.
To book tickets please contact Watershed Box Office: 0117 9275100
For more information contact: Dr. Alisa Lebow: [log in to unmask]
For directions: http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/about/gettinghere.php
This event is cosponsored by: Bristol Docs, University of the West of 
England, University of Bristol, Watershed Media Centre and The Arnolfini.

This third symposium in Bristol Docs’ series on First Person Films is an 
exploration of the role of ethnicity and cultural identity in the 
construction of contemporary first person film. First person films are 
usually considered unique, personal, even idiosyncratic, expressions
of the self, yet they also reflect the cultural context and assumptions 
that form and inform them. This symposium takes as its premise that the 
autobiographical subject does not emerge out of thin air, but rather 
is “subjectified” through a series of discursive regimes, culture and 
ethnicity being perhaps the most pronounced. The symposium asks, via an in-
depth consideration of a series of contemporary first person films from 
around the world: What is the nature of the interplay between the 
individual and culture and how is this tension played out in 
representational terms? How, or in what ways, can culture and ethnicity be 
said to construct the first person character on screen? Working against 
notions of the autonomous self, this symposium will interrogate the ways 
in which culture and ethnicity may constitute
subjectivity. We will explore the ways in which that might complicate 
notions of the individual, autochthonous, willful self, that autobiography 
has often been seen to promote. What emerges instead is a complex image of 
a relational subjectivity: not a first person "singular" but a first 
person "plural".

Speakers:

Berke Bas (Filmmaker, Bilgi University, Istanbul) Hush!
Tina Bastajian (Filmmaker, Amsterdam) Garden Dwelling
Professor Chris Berry (Goldsmiths University)
Professor Michael Chanan (University of the West of England)
Sabeena Ghadihoke (AJK Mass Communications Centre, New Delhi)
Dr. Elspeth kydd (University of the West of England)
Dr. Alisa Lebow (University of the West of England)
Screenings:
Nostalgia (Shu Haolun, China, 2005)
Garden Dwelling (Tina Bastajian, US/Turkey, 2004)
Hush! (Berke Bas, Work-in-Progress, Turkey)
The Television and Me (Andrés Di Tella, Argentina, 2001)
Tales of the Night Fairies (Shohini Gosh, India, 2002)

Bristol Docs Presents is an initiative to provide a focus for documentary 
in Bristol and South West England, on the basis of a collaboration between 
the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England. 
Bristol Docs supports the study and teaching of documentary in Bristol, 
and promotes interchange between filmmakers, scholars, students, media 
professionals, and the community at large.
http://humanities.uwe.ac.uk/bristoldocs/

See Arnolfini listings for our four part First Person Film screening 
series leading up to the symposium—every Monday at 20:30hrs, 22 January––
12 February. Tickets £5/£4 Conc.