Panel: Reality and Fiction in Documentary Film (de/en

Panel: Reality and Fiction in DocumentaryFilm (de/en)

15:15–16:45

When it came out that the multiaward-winning documentary «Lovemobil» contained staged scenes, the film was immediately withdrawn from circulation because the director had failed to designate those scenes as such. The case fuelled an intense debate about documentary filmmaking, especially about what makes documentaries «true» and where they border on the fictional. Yet this debate is anything but new – the status of documentary film between fact and fiction has always been ambiguous, making documentaries easy targets for attack. It is not by chance, then, that artistic documentary filmmaking has brought forth numerous forms, which continue to productively redefine documentary’s relation to reality. Perhaps, what this debate needs most is a precise terminology.

Moderator

Hannah Pilarczyk (GER), DER SPIEGEL

After jobs at taz and NEON, Hannah (*1977 in Hamburg) has been an editor in the cultural department at SPIEGEL/SPIEGEL ONLINE since 2009. She is also on the advisory board of the German film critics’ association, of the Marburg camera awards, and of Haus des Dokumentarfilms (Stuttgart). Her publications include «Ich hatte die Zeit meines Lebens. Über den Film ‹Dirty Dancing› und seine Bedeutung» (Ed.).

Speakers

Margrit Tröhler (SUI), professor of film studies

Margrit Tröhler is Professor Emeritus of film studies at the University of Zurich. Her fields of research include documentary and essay films, the intersection of fiction and non-fiction in film theory and practice, film aesthetics and visual culture, and the history of film theory (mainly French and German).

Daniel Sponsel, DOK.fest München

Daniel Sponsel studied photography at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and film at the University of Television and Film in Munich. He has worked as a director and cinematographer on many documentary films. He now lectures at various institutes and universities and has written several publications on the theory and practice of documentary Film. Since 2009, he has been the director of DOK.fest Munich.

Tizian Büchi, Curator / Director

Tizian graduated from the University of Lausanne in history and aesthetics of cinema and from the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD – Belgium) in directing. He works as a distributor for the Zurich-based company Look Now!, as a teaching assistant in the film department of HEAD Geneva, and as a programmer for various festivals, including Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF), Locarno Film Festival, and currently Solothurn Film Festival as well as Kurzfilmtage. After the «On avait dit qu’on irait jusqu’en haut» and «La saison du silence», «L’îlot» is his first feature film.