Conference Baltic Sea Region Documentary Cinema: A Social and Aesthetic Phenomenon
Centre for Scientific Research of Latvian Academy of Culture and Riga Film Museum, along with the support of international partners, is organizing an international academic conference Baltic Sea Region Documentary Cinema: A Social and Aesthetic Phenomenon. The conference will be held from 14 -16 April, 2016, in Riga.
Documentary cinema has a strong tradition in Latvia, but it is important to look outside the country’s borders and see it in a broader context. Therefore the aim of the conference is to open up the field of research on documentary cinema from Baltic Sea region countries by studying its main movements and creators, doing comparative analysis of various national cinemas, along with covering numerous other topics.
The conference will gather participants from Baltic countries, Poland, United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, and others. The keynote speakers will be Dr. Ewa Mazierska, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. She has published nearly twenty monographs and edited collections, and is principal editor of a Routledge journal Studies in Eastern European Cinema. A keynote speaker from Finland will be Dr. Susanna Helke. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker (e.g. American Vagabond (2013), Playground (2010), The Idle Ones (2001), White Sky (1998), Sin (1996)) and associate professor at the Film, Television and Scenography Department at Aalto University in Helsinki. The final keynote address will be from Dr. Patrik Sjöberg, an Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies at Karlstad University in Sweden. He is the author of The World in Pieces – A Study on Compilation Film (2001), a contributor to several anthologies on documentary culture, as well as articles and essays in Swedish and English.
All presentations will have simultaneous translation to either Latvian or English.
Entrance is free of charge.
Full program here
* Photo: The Frescoes of Kuldīga (1966, dir. Aivars Freimanis). Photographer Aivars Čakse, from private archive of Ivars Seleckis/ Collection of LAC Riga Film Museum.