A documentary by a West Virginia University faculty member has been attracting attention lately, and not just because of its title.

“Pretty,” a multimedia documentary by Dana Coester, an assistant professor at WVU’s P.I. Reed School of Journalism, has been accepted for screening at the 2010 International Conference on the Image at UCLA later this year.

Previously, the piece received an Award of Excellence in Narrative in the Faculty Video Competition at the 2010 Broadcast Education Association Festival of Media Arts. Combining photography, typography and design, Coester has created a non-linear love story that intertwines three generations of women in her family.

She began working on a book version of the project in 1991, but it evolved into a film project when she started experimenting with multimedia in 2004. She collaborated on the piece with her husband Joel Beeson, an associate professor at the School of Journalism, former graduate students Melissa Korzun and Adam Webster, and WVU Television Productions staff Kelly Heasley and Brad Stalnaker. An excerpt can be viewed at http://reel-exchange.com/members/a510eff7/profile.
The 2010 International Conference on the Image will be held Dec. 2-3. The cross-disciplinary conference examines the nature and functions of image-making and images with innovative presentation formats including roundtables, screenings and performances.

The conference bridges researchers from architecture, art, cognitive science, communications, computer science, cultural studies, design, film studies, marketing, media studies, photography and semiotics.

Coester’s screening will be accompanied by a workshop session titled “The Forensics of Desire: Deconstructing Narrative in Multimedia.”

-WVU-
cv/07/07/10

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CONTACT: Kimberly Brown, School of Journalism
304-293-3505 ext. 5403