REMINDER - a gentle reminder as the new term beckons of this upcoming
one-day conference. The deadline for abstracts is September 30th.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
Representing the War on Terror: post 9/11 television drama and
documentary
One day conference at the ATRiuM, CCI, University of Glamorgan, Cardiff
Saturday November 21st 2009
The phrase 'the War on Terror' has become shorthand for the West's
response to the attack on New York's twin towers in September 2001, and
has never been far from our television screens since. Although the
phrase itself is controversial, television has engaged directly, and
obliquely, with the new realities of the post-9/11 world. Much of the
coverage has been in news, current affairs and documentaries, but there
have also been several significant one-off filmed dramas made by UK
companies (largely independents) and transmitted by broadcasters in the
UK and abroad to considerable acclaim. These range from an account of
the attack itself (The Hamburg Cell, C4 2004); to an examination of the
David Kelley affair (The Government Inspector C4, 2005); to a projected
assassination of the US President (Death of a President C4 2006); to an
analysis of the radicalisation of British Muslims in the BAFTA-winning
Britz (C4 2007); to an account of the arrest, imprisonment and release
of British citizens in Guantanamo Bay (The Road to Guantanamo C4 2006);
to an exploration of the role of the British army and mercenaries in
Iraq (Occupations, BBC 2009).
This conference invites colleagues to examine these and other fictional
and docudrama and documentary programmes/series that take the 'War on
Terror', and the complex response to it, as their subject matter.
Potential topics of discussion might include, but are not limited to:
* Textual analyses of specific representations
* Problems and possibilities of acting in such forms
* Production contexts, commissioning, independent production
* Aesthetic contexts: docudrama in a new era; representing
historical agents and agency
* Audiences and their response to contemporary docudrama
Peter Kosminsky, the award-winning filmmaker and director of several
important contributions to post-9/11 drama (including Britz and The
Government Inspector), will attend and take part in a discussion in the
afternoon (see brief biog below).
The conference organisers are Stephen Lacey (University of Glamorgan)
and Derek Paget (University of Reading).
Please submit your title and a 350-word abstract to Stephen Lacey (to
whom any enquiries should be addressed) at: [log in to unmask] by
September 30th 09
We look forward to hearing from you.
Peter Kosminsky: brief biog (extracted from the British Documentary
website)
Peter Kosminsky began his career in 1980 at the BBC as a general
trainee, working as a Drama Script Editor before moving to Current
Affairs as a director on Nationwide, Breakfast Time and Newsnight. He
then joined Yorkshire Television in 1985 as documentary
Producer/Director for the First Tuesday series, which included the award
winning The Falklands War - The Untold Story, Cambodia: Children of the
Killing Fields and Afghantsi, as well as the two-part drama Shoot To
Kill by Michael Eaton. In the early nineties, he turned to fiction with
Wuthering Heights and since 1995 has worked freelance. After The Life
and Death of Philip Knight - the life and death of a young man who is
victim of a miscarriage of justice and commits suicide in prison - he
made The Dying of the Light, about the murder of a British aid worker
working with UNICEF in Somalia. Then came No Child of Mine and Walking
on the Moon, after which he directed Warriors, in which he described the
plight of a British UNPROFOR peacekeeping battalion in Bosnia in 1992.
He followed this with the docudrama Innocents, which dealt with
experimental surgical practices used on children in Bristol. The Project
was a chronicle about the rise to power of Tony Blair's Labor Party,
after which he directed a feature in Hollywood, White Oleander. His
recent work includes: The Government Inspector a film for Channel 4 and
Arte about the suicide of leading microbiologist and former chemical
weapons specialist David Kelly, and Britz , also for C4, about the
radicalization of British Muslims. Kosminsky was a past winner of the
Alan Clarke Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Television
and is a Fellow-elect of the RTS.
Professor Stephen Lacey
Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries/Ysgol Diwydiannau
Creadigol a Diwylliannol Caerdydd
University of Glamorgan/Prifysgol Morgannwg
ATRiuM
Adam St/Heol Adam
Cardiff/Caerdydd CF24 2FN
tel: 01443-668611 (direct line)
01443-480480 (university switchboard)
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