23 February 2006
The world's first scholarly publication dedicated to documentary film will be published later this year.
Film and television studies expert and Monash University academic Dr Deane Williams has been appointed foundation editor of the new Studies in Documentary Film journal.
Dr Williams, head of Monash's Visual Culture department, said Studies in Documentary Film would be devoted to the history, theory, criticism and practice of documentary film.
The project, which has taken two years to realise, would fulfill the widening interests of the documentary film community, he said.
"There is a huge upsurge in interest in documentary films as shown by the success of films such as Super Size Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Darwin's Nightmare and No Direction Home," Dr Williams said.
" Studies in Documentary Film will serve a vibrant and growing international community of documentary film scholars who regularly attend conferences, film festivals and publish articles in a range of film studies journals and in books of documentary.
"The journal will also benefit a large and growing international community of undergraduate students engaged in documentary film studies who until now have had to resort to a host of less focused and scholarly publications on documentary film."
Dr Williams will edit the journal with input from an international editorial/advisory board comprising high profile documentary film scholars and independent filmmakers.
Among them is Professor John Corner from the University of Liverpool, who is regarded as the pre-eminent documentary film studies scholar in the United Kingdom, and Professor Michael Renov from the University of California, Los Angeles, who is considered the world's foremost expert on documentary films.
Topics to be covered in the journal include new approaches to documentary history, developments in documentary theory, international trends in documentary film practice, political documentary, feminist documentary filmmaking and underground documentary filmmaking.
Studies in Documentary Film will be published three times a year.
For further information contact Dr Deane Williams on telephone +61 3 9905 4226 or Karen Stichtenoth, Media Communications on +61 3 9905 1253.
| 
