THE SELF-PORTRAIT IN THE MOVING IMAGE
Birkbeck Cinema, 28 February/1 March 2014
Event sponsored by the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image,
43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Within the large field of first-person film and video (including autobiography, diary films, travelogues, video letters), self-portraiture is a singular form that does not consist so much of an account of the filmmaker’s intimate life as a representation of the artist by her/himself, at a given instant of her/his work.
A very common practice in painting, self-portrait is more difficult to define in the moving image. It is a hybrid form, which has flourished in recent years and does not fit in with the traditional definition of documentary or fiction, as it breaks the canons of both genres. The investigative and self-reflexive stance of the self-portrait raises questions about the issue of intimacy (which ‘self’?), the appearance and corporeality of the subject (which face? which body? which voice?) and the medium itself (which film to make? for me? by me?).
This study day proposed to reassess the practice of self-portraiture in the moving image by showcasing and discussing a broad variety of films. It was an opportunity to discover some rarely screened experimental films from the Lightcone collection (Paris), which were projected in 16mm and Super 8.
Invited speakers:
Alisa Lebow (Reader, University of Sussex), editor of The Cinema of Me: the Self and Subjectivity in First-Person Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2012) and author of “First Person Political” (in The Documentary Film Book, 2013)
Laura Rascaroli (Senior Lecturer, University College, Cork), author of The Personal Camera, Subjective Cinema and the Essay film (Wallflower Press, 2009)
Cecilia Sayad (Lecturer, University of Kent), author of Performing Authorship, Self-inscription and Corporeality in the Cinema (I.B Tauris, 2013)
Organised by Laura Busetta (PhD The Self-Portrait Film, Sapienza University of Rome, 2013), Marlène Monteiro (PhD candidate Exposed Intimacy, Birkbeck College) and Muriel Tinel-Temple (PhD The Filmic Self-Portrait, EHESS-Paris, 2004).