18 Visible TISCH SCHOOL New York University EOFvidence THE ARTS August 11-14, 2011 NEW YORK, WELCOME EVER VIGILANT, IS THE CITY THAT never sleeps, a perfect setting for an international TO YOU ALL! conference on documentary film. We extend our thanks to Tisch School of the Arts, Cinema Studies Pro- WITHIN THE BROADER CONTEXT fessor, and Visible Evidence 18 Conference Director, Jon- of our Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program athan Kahana for his energetic efforts to bring the confer- and Certificate Program in Culture and Media, the De- ence to the Big Apple. Professor Kahana has deployed his superb organizational skills to assemble an impressive set of partment of Cinema Studies at NYU is committed to sponsoring institutions and panelists over the four days of the developing both pedagogy and practice in the field conference and we are grateful to him and the legion of vol- of documentary. The fact that this year we are unteers and participating institutions who made hosting Visible Evidence 18 is a demonstra- this event possible. The Visible Evidence 18 Con- ference is a bittersweet occasion: we celebrate a tion of that commitment as well as a validation, great filmmaker, the “dean” of documentary film, as Jonathan Kahana writes, of documentary film-mak- George Stoney, Professor Emeritus in the Tisch ers’ long love affair with New York. I want to congratulate School’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, Professor Kahana for putting together this stellar conference and we pay tribute to our school’s beloved and renowned theorist and historian, the late Rob- and mobilizing such a wide range of institutional collabora- ert Sklar, Professor Emeritus in the department tors across the city. The rapid development of definitions and of Cinema Studies. We pay tribute as well to the modes of documentary practice makes this an exciting time in pioneering documentary cinematographer, the the field and I join with you in anticipation of a truly remark- late Richard Leacock. Their accomplishments inspire and motivate us. Welcome to New York able conference and the projects and collaborations that City, New York University, the Tisch School of the will undoubtedly grow out of it. Arts and enjoy the conference. Richard Allen, Professor and Chair of Cinema Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean Studies, Tisch School of the Arts / Tisch School of the Arts / New York University New York University 1 FOR DECADES, the city has been a hotbed of the documentary arts, a constantly-shifting ground of contrasts first figured in the original city sym- phony, Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhat- ta, a film whose metro-normative view of modern life was soon enough shaded by Jay Leyda’s out- DOCUMENTARY erborough answer song, A Bronx Morning. Within and between them, these films lyricized the social CAN CLAIM MANY and cultural tensions that energized their period: between poetry and prose, dark and light, high BIRTHPLACES, and low, rich and poor, labor and capital, modern but any reasonable shortlist of sites of and traditional, old and young, downtown and up- origin would have to include new york town, local business and global marketplace, the city, where subjects, methods, techno- monumentality of stone and steel syncopated logies, critics, curators, scholars, audi- by the ephemerality of smoke, steam, and trash, ences, and institutions of documentary the change and movement of the street played photography, film, television, video, audio, against the weight and stasis of the skyscraper. prose, and performance have emerged or (Or so we used to think.) In the decades since settled for well over a century. these films bookended the formative years of the medium, similar themes have preoccupied docu- FROM JACOB RIIS AND LEWIS HINE to Berenice mentary practice and theory. If New York didn’t Abbott and Diane Arbus; from Robert Frank to invent documentary, it has certainly set the tones Grandmaster Flash; from the Workers Film and and kept the beat for many of its phases. Photo League to Third World Newsreel; from Arthur Mayer and Iris Barry to Bill Sloan and the ON A COLD DAY IN DECEMBER a few years ago Donnell Film Library; from Anthology Film Ar- in Bochum, Germany, it certainly seemed, for chives to Women Make Movies; from Emile de these reasons and others, like a good idea to hold Antonio to Jonas Mekas; from Lionel Rogosin Visible Evidence in New York in August. And we to Spike Lee; from Carl Marzani and George hope that when the gum and asphalt stick to the Stoney to William Greaves and Al and Da- soles of your shoes, the din from tourists, jack- vid Maysles; from Jon Alpert and Barbara hammers, and taxi horns rings in your ears, and Kopple to Shirley Clarke and Jill Godmilow; the smells of urine and street food make you gag from Martha Rosler to Barbara Hammer; and drool, you will merely take these as signs that from CBS Reports to Paper Tiger Television; from Lower Manhattan is an especially empirical place, DIVA-TV to Anna Deveare Smith, Laurie Ander- particularly in the hot dog days of summer, and son to Lynne Sachs, Michael Moore to 16beaver… that you ask yourself what we asked ourselves 2 in Bochum: why did it take so long to get VE to also as close as the conference comes this time around the city. All of these supporters and col- NYC? We would never have gotten here with- to marking a universal condition of reality. Many laborators are named in our lists of sponsors and out the dedication and collective effort of many of our presenters address this ongoing state of committees at the back of the program. All of us people, lots of them unpaid students, and some emergency, speaking to the ways that documen- – and especially those of us connected to “VisEv” of them well outside the five boroughs. (Montreal tary can observe, lament, protest, even celebrate since the last millennium – feel privileged to host and Syracuse became honorary sixth boroughs.) life during wartime as a crisis, even while, as the this edition of Visible Evidence. We welcome you And this large group of steerers, programmers, Talking Heads once sang, we’re getting used to it to NYU and New York City with the same wish designers, web-traffickers, and heavy-lifters col- now. From a wide and impressive range of pro- that Jacob Riis prefaces How The Other Half laborated throughout on the shape and direction posals, our program committee had no trouble – Lives: “that every man’s experience ought to be of the conference, attempting to walk the fine line despite the high number of submissions and low worth something to the community from which Visible Evidence has always walked (like Philippe acceptance rate – assembling a (record!) number he drew it, no matter what that experience may Petit, one might say) between local and global of panels on these themes and many other non- be.” structures. aligned topics. And we’ve experimented in other ways this year, including workshops on problems VISIBLE EVIDENCE 18 is dedicated to the mem- ALTHOUGH THE CONFER- of critical and artistic practice, ories of Richard Leacock and Robert Sklar, who ENCE will in many ways seem with a day on expanded docu- made it possible for us to experience communi- to the habitué the same as it mentary at Hunter College, ties of and in cinema in entirely new ways. ever was, we attempted to Let us and a full-on cinematheque, give it a particular set of New showcasing the breadth and York accents. To this end, VE18 consider energy of independent docu- was loosely imagined around mentary making, program- a set of themes – archiving, the Bowery ming and distribution around Jonathan Kahana preservation, and the material the city. of actuality and documentary; again… Conference Director, Visible Evidence 18 talking heads and other docu- LITTLE OF THIS EMBAR- mentary sounds; radical and RASSMENT of documentary Department of Cinema Studies, experimental New York; trans- Martha Rosler riches would now be available Tisch School of the Arts, national cities – reflective of in, around, and afterthoughts (on to us without the generous New York University this particular city and its spe- documentary photography) (1981) financial support of the De- cial place in the history of doc- partment of Cinema Studies, umentary film and media, and, in turn, of the way Tisch School of the Arts and Dean Mary Schmidt that New York reflects the world. Although some Campbell, and a long list of co-sponsors at NYU might claim that, approaching the tenth anniver- and other institutions in and around the city. Nor sary of 9/11, New Yorkers have a special relation to would there have been anything to fund with- this year’s overarching and most populous theme, out the tireless work of staff, graduate students, it is just as true to say that “life during wartime” is faculty, curators, and programmers at NYU and 3 TRAVEL TIMES MEDIA LOUNGE CINEMATHEQUE In addition to the panels and workshops taking This year we are excited to introduce the Visible WALK place at Hunter College on Saturday, work by Evidence Cinematheque (see pp. 8-9 for overview), BUS TAXI NYU conference participants and other SUNY and a specially curated series of screenings and discus- SUBWAY CUNY faculty and students, developing some sions that will run concurrently with panel sessions. of the notions of expanded documentary Eight of New York City’s most dynamic curators, explored in panels and workshops, will be on distributors, and producers have been invited to Columbia 25 view throughout the conference: present a program of works that push the boundar- 40 ies of documentary and non-fiction media.