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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.