This one-day event hosted by the Film Studies programme at the University of Surrey on Friday 16th September aims to explore performance in the context of documentary and moving-image documentation.

How do theories of documentary and the theorisation of performance interact?  What are the ethics and aesthetics of recording performances?  How does the documentary form enhance or distort the art of performance?  How does performance taint or enhance the re-presentation of reality?

Speakers and contributors working on documentary film as well as the intersection of non-fiction media with theatre, dance and performance studies are invited to respond to these questions.  The following topics are a guideline to potential paper proposals:

• Documenting dance, dance documentary, documenting dance as ethnography or popular idiom
• Records of performance in biographies and histories of performers
• The role of documentary in the creation/preservation of performance art
• The documentation of site-specific performance
• Performance of the self and the everyday in documentary
• Re-enactment and reconstruction in documentary
• Documentary as embodied knowledge

Proposals including a 300-word paper abstract and a short biography should be submitted to Dr. Helen Hughes (h.hughes@surrey.ac.uk) by Friday 1st July 2011.