Marc Isaacs’s documentary cinema is shaped by his direct personal engagement with people either dwelling in or traversing places, which are at once real and emblematic; the cultural and symbolic values of these sites are simultaneously foregrounded and contested in his films. Isaacs’s innovative method, which elicits exceptionally meaningful, intimate responses from the subjects he films, is deeply revealing of modes of being and feeling in late-capitalist, post-colonial, globalized Britain and Europe.
In her presentation, Laura Rascaroli will address aesthetic, cultural and affective aspects of Isaacs’s filmmaking method, in the context of his growing production and increasing international recognition, and against the backdrop of issues of documentary film theory and practice. The talk will be followed by a conversation between Marc Isaacs and Laura Rascaroli, during which a selection of sequences from Marc’s films will be shown, explored, and debated with the audience.
Laura Rascaroli is Professor of Film and Screen Media at University College Cork, Ireland. Her many books include The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film (2009), Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie (2006, co-written with Ewa Mazierska) and Antonioni: Centenary Essays (2011, co-edited with John David Rhodes). Her work has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. Her new book, How the Essay Film Thinks, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
Marc Isaacs is a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker who has made more than fifteen creative documentaries, including Calais: The Last Border (2003), All White in Barking (2007), Men of the City (2009), Outside the Court (2011) andThe Road: A Story of Life and Death (2012). His films have won the Grierson, Royal Television Society and BAFTA awards as well as numerous prizes at international film festivals. Marc teaches documentary in the Media Arts Department of Royal Holloway.
Thursday, 10 March 2016 from 17:30 to 20:00 (GMT)
Wolfson Room 1, Insitute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU
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