Poetics and Politics 2017 has invited two leading practitioner-theorists to present their ideas at the nexus of theory and practice, where ideas about the world and practices in the world collide in productive and challenging ways.

 

Eyal Sivan

Eyal Sivan is a Paris based documentary filmmaker and theorist. Known for his controversial films (The Specialist 1999, Route 181, with Michel Khleifi 2003, and Jaffa: the orange’s clockwork 2009), Sivan has directed more than 10 internationally awarded political documentaries and produced many others. Worldwide theatrically released and broadcast on television, Sivan’s works are also regularly exhibited in major art shows around the world, influencing cultural debates and inspiring scholars from various academic and artistic disciplines.

In parallel to his filmmaking and research practices, Sivan conducts an extensive practice of master classes and of teaching artistic research in and through cinema and visual media. He lectures on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict representation, documentary filmmaking and ethics, political crimes and representation, political use of memory, genocide and representation, and more.

He is the founder and artistic director of the Paris based documentary film production and distribution company, Momento! and the film distribution agency, Scalpel. He is the founder and Chief Editor of South Cinema Notebooks – a journal of cinema and political criticism edited by the Sapir academic college in Israel where he was a visiting professor for more than 10 years. After co-leading the MA program in Film, Video and New Media as Reader (associate professor) in media production at the school of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI), at the University of East London (UEL) Sivan is visiting professor and program advisor to the Masters in Film at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam as well as an Honorary Fellow at University of Exeter UK.

Currently Sivan leads three web-based interactive database documentary research projects: Common Archive Palestine 1948; Framing Perpetrators, and; Montage Interdit. For more information visit his website: www.eyalsivan.info

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John Greyson

John Greyson is one of cinema’s queerest experimenters, redefining political cinema that embraces the highest and lowest culture has to offer. His video operas vacillate between public service announcement and art work, making short shrift of the divisions between the political and the poetic, not to mention those between fiction and documentary. He began as a video activist working often in collaboration and/or collective, and has made several award winning films and installations.

His shorts, features and installations include:Fig Trees (2009, Best Documentary Teddy, Berlin Film Festival; Best Canadian Feature, Inside Out Festival); Proteus (2003, Best Film, Diversity Award, Barcelona Film Festival; Best Actor, Sithenghi Film Festival); The Law of Enclosures (2000, Best Actor Genie); Lilies (1996 – Best Film Genie, Best Film at festivals in Montreal, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco); Un©ut (1997, Honourable Mention, Berlin Film Festival); Zero Patience (1993 – Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival); The Making of Monsters (1991 – Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival, Best Short Film Teddy – Berlin Film Festival); and Urinal (1988 – Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival).

He co-edited Queer Looks, a critical anthology on gay/lesbian film & video (Routledge, 1993), is the author of Urinal and Other Stories (Power Plant/Art Metropole, 1993), and has published essays and artists pieces in Alphabet City, Public, FUSE, and twelve critical anthologies. He was awarded the Toronto Arts Award for Film/Video, 2000, the Bell Canada Video Art Award in 2007, the Arts & Culture Pride Award, 2009, and the 1st annual Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance, Cinema Politica, 2011. He  has taught at California Institute of the Arts (1986-89) and York University Film Department (2005-present).

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