Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference


Kino-Eye Center President Cesare Wright recently presented a conference paper at the 2012 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Featuring such noted film scholars as Bill Nichols and Vivian Sobchack, the SCMS conference is the leading academic forum for discussion of wide ranging topics in film and media, and the conference supports a distinctly Humanities centered approach. Wright’s paper, “Finding the ‘truth'” – Actuality and Rhetoric in the Documentary Tradition”, explores associations of fact, actuality, and indexicality in documentary, and is informed by the ongoing research in visual and cultural studies promoted by the Kino-Eye Center. Included is a focus on the cinema of Werner Herzog, who challenges traditional boundaries of fiction and documentary, in search of what he refers to as the “ecstatic truth” – a deeper mode of “truth” that may be reached only through “fabrication and imagination and stylization”.

For a draft of the conference paper:
Finding the “Truth” – Rhetoric and Actuality in the Documentary Tradition