Mdocs Poster-2016-06-09, Festosium 2016, Jesse Wakeman

MDOCS Publications

Festosium™ (n). A gathering that combines the best elements of a festival to showcase and a symposium to bring together a small group of scholars and artists to engage with intellectual and creative work.

MDOCS’ inaugural festosium will be held June 10–12, 2016, with filmmakers, audio creators, visual artists, and virtual reality designers presenting recent documentary work that interrogates the division between fact and fiction, truth and reality.

All events are hosted at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum on the Skidmore College campus. Everything is free and open to the public.

SCHEDULE

Thursday, June 9

8 p.m.: Opening screening …

Mdocs Banner-2016-06-01, Walking The Line Fact And Fiction In Documentary Storytelling, Jordana Dym, Jesse Wakeman

MDOCS Publications

Storytellers' Institute 2016 Walking the Line: Fact and Fiction

May 31 - July 1, 2016

THEME

This June, the MDOCS' Storytellers' Institute explores the theme of "fact and fiction." Documentary works are evidence-based stories, working with facts to render, reveal, and represent truth(s) to inform and, at times, inspire action. Despite relying on real people, depicting real places, and presenting real events, documentaries engage by interpreting and representing reality (Lamarre 2009).

In the words of John Grierson (1926) (considered the father of the term "documentary"), a documentary film is a "creative treatment of actuality." Tools in a documentarian's kit are …