Apologies for cross posting.
The following is sent on behalf of the film studies team at Oxford
Brookes. Please send responses directly to the conference organizers and
not to this address.
Call for Papers
The Realist Impulse: Contemporary Film-making in Britain
A Conference hosted by Film Studies, Oxford Brookes University
12 and 13 July 2007
at St Anne’s College, Oxford
Keynote Speaker: Professor John Hill, Royal Holloway University
Restrospective of films by director Pawel Pawlikowski
Q&A with Pawel Pawlikowski and Jim Hillier
The Film Team at Oxford Brookes invite papers for a conference on The
Realist Impulse: Contemporary Film-making in Britain. We welcome proposals
from a diversity of cultural, historical and analytic approaches.
While, as Samantha Lay (2002) states, there is ‘critical consensus that
realism is the dominant representational form in the Western world’, the
realist impulse has been held to have a particular resonance within the
context of British film. In contemporary cinema, however, relationships
between film-making in Britain and realism have been both contested and
fertile, and this conference seeks to explore such relationships.
It can be questioned whether the term ‘British social realism’ is a valid
and relevant one today when, as Lay points out, each component of the
phrase is contentious: must we now, post Devolution, think about Welsh,
Irish and Scottish social realisms alongside the British? Does the
frequent focus of contemporary films which have been hailed as ‘realist’
on marginal or under-represented groupings inevitably problematize notions
of nation and identity? Is this realist impulse most explicable in terms
of political commitment by film-makers or can realism as an aesthetic be
uncoupled from ideological critique?
In addition to panels of papers which will run across the two days of the
conference, there will also be daytime and evening screenings of
contemporary works responding to the notion of ‘the realist impulse’.
There will be a retrospective of the works of Pawel Pawlikowski and Jim
Hillier will conduct a Q&A session with the director. Other film works
will also be shown.
Please send abstracts of proposed papers to BOTH organisers: Dr Tamar
Jeffers McDonald <[log in to unmask]> AND Dr Daniela Treveri
Gennari <[log in to unmask]> by February 16th, 2007.
Abstracts should be 500 words maximum and copied in the body of the email
rather than sent as an attachment; please also include a brief
biographical note along with institutional affiliation and contact
information. Queries, which can be addressed by email to either organiser,
are welcome.
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