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Richard Kilborn

Title of the presentation:
Archaeology or Alchemy? The Use of Archive Material in Contemporary Documentary

Short abstract of the presentation:
The first part of the lecture is intended to introduce students to some of the processes by which archival material can be identified, accessed and processed for the purposes of a research investigation. How do researchers go about the task of locating relevant material? How do they seek to incorporate their findings into a well-argued thesis or presentation? What are some of the do’s and don’ts of conducting archival research? The second part of the presentation will demonstrate one of the particular uses of 'digging in archives'. I will show how the contemporary documentary filmmaker Peter Forgacs has accessed various types of archive material (especially photographs and home movies from personal archives) in order to construct a form of documentary that attempts to provide a thought-provoking exploration of developments in recent European history.

Short biography:
Richard Kilborn is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, Media & Journalism at the University of Stirling and is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute. He has also taught at the Universities of Munich and Klagenfurt and has been a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University (Chicago). His major research interests are in film and television documentary and in developments in television drama. Major book publications include: The MultiMedia Melting Pot (Comedia, 1985), Television Soaps (Batsford, 1992), Confronting Reality: An Introduction to Television Documentary (Manchester University Press, 1997) and Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother (Manchester University Press, 2003). His new book Taking the long view: a study of longitudinal documentary is about to appear.