Michael Renov

MichaelMichael Renov is Professor of Critical Studies and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of Hollywood’s Wartime Woman: Representation and Ideology and The Subject of Documentary, as well as editor of Theorizing Documentary, and co-editor of Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, Collecting Visible Evidence, The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies and Cinema’s Alchemist: The Films of Peter Forgacs.

In 1993, Renov co-founded Visible Evidence, a series of international and highly interdisciplinary documentary studies conferences that have, to date, been held on four continents. He is one of three general editors for the Visible Evidence book series at the University of Minnesota Press, which has published 27 volumes on various aspects of nonfiction media since 1997. In 2005, he co-programmed the 51st annual Robert Flaherty Seminar, a week-long gathering of documentary filmmakers, curators, and educators, creating 20 screening programs and filmmaker dialogues on the theme “Cinema and History.”

In addition to curating documentary programs around the world, Renov has served as a jury member at documentary festivals including Sundance, Silverdocs, the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, Brazil’s It’s All True, the International Environmental Festival of Film and Video and DocLisboa in Portugal. He has taught graduate seminars at Stockholm University, Tel Aviv University, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and has led documentary workshops in Jordan for the Royal Film Commission and in Cyprus. Renov is one of the three principle investigators on a multi-million dollar, multi-year grant from the U.S. State Department entitled American Film Showcase that brings American-made documentary films and filmmakers to audiences in the developing world. Renov’s teaching and research interests include documentary theory, autobiography in film and video, video art and activism, and representations of the Holocaust.