All about their mothers: fashion documentaries and the politics of dis/appearance

Description

Over the last twenty years, the fashion documentary has become a cinematic staple, fuelled by an ever-increasing public interest in celebrity, cultural heritage, and social and economic impact of this industrial sector. These films vary in format, content, and intention, ranging from the informative and analytical to the angiographic. This paper provides a taxonomy of the phenomenon and identifies two approaches: the celebratory and the critical, which can coexist in the same film in a contradictory effort of glorifying icons and exposing social, economic or environmental consequences of the industry. More specifically, this paper looks in details at two very different documentaries: Franca: Chaos and Creation (Carrozzini, 2016) and The Disappearance of My Mother (Barrese, 2019) which focus not only on fashion and celebrity, but take as their subject the mothers of the two respective directors. I compare these films to analyse notions of motherhood in relation to celebrity, the fashion industry and performativity in front of the documentary camera. These two films are arguably different in every way, but considered together they provide considerable insight into the fashion documentary's efforts to celebrate and at the same time demythologise teh fashion world.

Period	01 Jul 2023
Event title	Screen Studies Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	GlasgowShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International