The session is pre-approved for inclusion at NEMLA 2002 in Toronto.
Please send proposals in the body of an e-mail message to
ammurphy@canuck.com. All submissions will be acknowledged
Biopics are emerging as an exciting subgenre in film, with filmmakers
producing more and more filmed lives each year. As the popular culture
and academic interest in all things biographical increases
exponentially, the film industry recognizes the potential of filming
lives. While there are many examples of biopics, historically these have
been isolated incidents in the overall development of movies. However,
the last decade has seen a marked increase in lives on film, to the
point that three of five actors nominated for Academy Awards in 2001
were nominated for their roles as biographical characters. Javier Bardem
(Before Night Falls), Ed Harris (Pollock), and Geoffrey Rush (Quills)
all played artists (two writers and a painter) in skillfully made films
which granted centrality to the work which makes Arenas, Pollock, and de
Sade characters of interest to audiences. This session hopes to attract
papers which focus on literary lives (such as Wilde, Total Eclipse, and
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle), painters' lives (such as Artemisia,
Carrington, and Vincent and Theo), political lives (such as Nixon,
Ghandi, and Kundun), royal lives (such as Nicholas and Alexandra, The
Last Emperor and Mrs. Brown) , and even film-directors' lives (such as
Gods and Monsters and Ed Wood). The session might also include papers
which discuss the broader theoretical issues of filming lives in
general, or those which consider women's or men's lives, queer lives,
sports lives, or musicians' lives. Although almost a decade behind the
academy in its realization that individual lives are worthy of study,
the motion picture industry is playing a generally high quality game of
catch-up. The academy now has to keep up by studying filmed lives as
well as print lives.
A. Mary Murphy, Session Chair
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