Editors' Preface

Authors

Abstract

This editorial preface contextualizes the genesis, conceptual focus, and organization of this special issue.

Author Biographies

Alex Lichtenfels, Salford University

Alex Lichtenfels is a filmmaker and theorist who is a senior lecturer in film production at the University of Salford. He has several years’ experience in the film and television industries, working primarily as a freelance producer and director in corporate and advertising venues. He is also an independent filmmaker with the Primary Films collaborative, producing or directing numerous short films as well as several longer projects. Through his work, he investigates emerging filmmaking practices, driven by research into technological changes and how methods used in other artforms might be applied to filmmaking. He is concerned with how these practices might allow for new types of films that engage audiences in nonstandard ways. He is currently pursuing research projects on remodelling the organization of film production based on anarchist political principles, and the links between film and antihumanist ethics.

Heather Nolan, UC Davis

Heather Nolan is a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at UC Davis. She holds a master’s degree in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA. Her current research is on the involvement of personal monitoring devices in the production of knowledge about the self. She has previously developed theater games workshops for foster youth around identity development and performance related to the internet and social media. Heather received a BA in Drama from Dartmouth College and attended acting conservatory at the New Actors’ Workshop in New York, founded by George Morrison, Mike Nichols, and Paul Sills. She as acted on stage and in independent films and has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Heather has been a producer in theater, television, and independent film and has taught film studies at UC Davis and Woodland Community College.

John Zibell, Salford University

John Zibell is a lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford. He earned his PhD in Performance Studies from UC Davis. He is a performance scholar / practitioner working on critical training and radical politics. His material practices happen in the theatre, cinema, gallery, and the street and focus on exhaustion, imaging, and presencing. Zibell earned the Provost’s Dissertation Year Fellowship at UC Davis, during which time he developed a major Practice as Research work in the immersive virtual reality environment of the UC Davis KeckCAVES. The piece was suggested by the film/TV works of Samuel Beckett and the outcome was a dissertation chapter on the systematizing of actor training practices involving embodied engagement with new media. He is a conservatory-trained actor currently working with a company of actors/filmmakers using the methodologies from that work in the CAVES to produce workshops (currently in process) directed at cinematic devising strategies around de-unifying the camera’s “gaze.” Zibell’s key research focus is constellated around strategies (largely taken from theatrical knowledge systems) that can be used to pull the camera into practice and process as an active player.

Lynette Hunter, UC Davis

Lynette Hunter is Distinguished Professor of the History of Rhetoric and Performance at the University of California Davis: Much of her research work has been related to the rhetoric of western democratic politics and has included many textual forms, writing genres, and performance modes. More recently these research areas have led to Disunified Aesthetics (2014) and her research into training, practice, rehearsal and performance, including the book A Politics of Practice (2019), and her current exploration of performing as training in affect.

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Published

2020-05-24

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2020): Copresence with the Camera

Section

Editorial Notes

License

Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.

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