"This collection of essays offers a critical assessment of Labour in a Single Shot, a groundbreaking documentary video workshop. From 2011 to 2014, curator Antje Ehmann and film- and videomaker Harun Farocki produced an art project of truly global proportions. They travelled to fifteen cities around
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the world to conduct workshops inspired by cinema history’s first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, shot in 1895 by the Lumière brothers in France. While the workshop videos are in colour and the camera was not required to remain static, Ehmann and Farocki’s students were tasked with honouring the original Lumière film’s basic parameters of theme and style. The fascinating result is a collection of more than 550 short videos that have appeared in international exhibitions and on an open-access website, offering the widest possible audience the opportunity to ponder contemporary labour in multiple contexts around the world." (Publisher description)
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"This book sets out the fundamentals of filmmaking, explores academic discourse on digital documentaries and online distribution, and considers the place of this discourse in the evolving academic landscape. The book walks its readers through the intellectual and practical processes of creating digi
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tal media and documentary projects. It is further equipped with video elements, supplementing specific chapters and providing brief and accessible introductions to the key components of the filmmaking process." (Back cover)
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"Focusing on the pivotal period of 1919–23 and the large-scale humanitarian responses in Central and Eastern Europe, this paper discusses the development of advocacy in the movies made by organizations like the ICRC, Save the Children Fund or American Relief Administration. While aid agencies obse
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rved and competed with each other for visibility, humanitarian cinema shaped visual advocacy, grounded in the idea that ‘seeing is believing’. Exploring the fragmented audiovisual archives, as well as magazines and promotional material, this paper explores the testimonial function of humanitarian films in the 1920s. It first shows that the immediacy of the cinema technology increased the immersive and affective experience of the viewers by using forensic evidence and images of the body in pain. It then analyses how these films compelled audiences to witness suffering and act through persuasion, suggestion, and emotions. Finally, it inquires into the use of eyewitness images and firsthand accounts during the screenings, to show how these movies operated within larger regimes of visibility, while making claims on behalf of distant beneficiaries." (Abstract)
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"Este libro es –nunca mejor dicho– el resultado de una memoria selectiva. Sus 19 títulos dan cuenta de un ciclo que cierra una etapa inicial del Seminario Pensar lo Real como espacio de reflexión en torno a ‘lo documental’. Estuvo inspirado en el espíritu de Pensar el documental, un encue
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ntro sin duda iniciático, organizado por el Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia en 1998. El encuentro que tuvo como invitados a Patricio Guzmán, Anne Baudry, Nicolás Philibert, Óscar Campo y Marta Rodríguez, entre otros destacados cineastas, tuvo el mérito de impulsar la creación de Alados y, a su vez, de la mano de lo que es hoy una asociación pionera de documentalistas en América Latina, abrió paso a lo que sería durante estas dos décadas1 el largo proceso de consolidación de una Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá - MIDBO." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
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"Frames and Framing in Documentary Comics explores how graphic narratives reframe global crises while also interrogating practices of fact-finding. An analog print phenomenon in an era shaped by digitalization, documentary comics formulates a distinct counterapproach to conventional journalism. In w
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hat ways are 'facts' being presented and framed? What is documentary honesty in a world of fake news and post-truth politics? How can the stories of marginalized peoples and neglected crises be told? The author investigates documentary comics in its unique relationship to framing: graphic narratives are essentially shaped by a reciprocal relationship between the manifest frames on the page and the attention to the cognitive frames that they generate. To account for both the textuality of comics and its strategic use as rhetoric, the author combines theories of framing analysis and cognitive narratology with comics studies and its attention toward the medium's visual frames." (Publisher description)
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"Building upon long-term ethnographic research among image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities, the author interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political participation. The book explores selected artistic experiences in documentary and fict
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ion film, photography, contemporary art and digital curation that have in common a desire to engage with images as tools for social intervention. These experiences reveal images' capacity not only to narrate and represent but also to perform, do and affect. Particular attention is devoted to the 'digital', a critical landscape that offers an opportunity to re-examine the significance of images and visual culture in a rapidly changing India." (Publisher description)
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"Perpetrator Cinema explores a new trend in the cinematic depiction of genocide that has emerged in Cambodian documentary in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. While past films documenting the Holocaust and genocides in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere have focused on collecting
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and foregrounding the testimony of survivors and victims, the intimate horror of the autogenocide enables post-Khmer Rouge Cambodian documentarians to propose a direct confrontation between the first-generation survivor and the perpetrator of genocide. These films break with Western tradition and disrupt the political view that reconciliation is the only legitimate response to atrocities of the past. Rather, transcending the perpetrator's typical denial or partial confession, this extraordinary form of "duel" documentary creates confrontational tension and opens up the possibility of a transformation in power relations, allowing viewers to access feelings of moral resentment. Raya Morag examines works by Rithy Panh, Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, and Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon, among others, to uncover the ways in which filmmakers endeavor to allow the survivors' moral status and courage to guide viewers to a new, more complete understanding of the processes of coming to terms with the past. These documentaries show how moral resentment becomes a way to experience, symbolize, judge, and finally incorporate evil into a system of ethics. Morag's analysis reveals how perpetrator cinema provides new epistemic tools and propels the recent social-cultural-psychological shift from the era of the witness to the era of the perpetrator." (Publisher description)
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"Die vorliegende Masterarbeit versuchte in einem Experiment herauszufinden, wie das journalistische Storytelling in dokumentarischen Filmformaten eingesetzt wird. Es konnte nachgewiesen werden, dass alle drei analysierten Filme sich einer alternativen Erzählkategorie zuordnen lassen und jeweils spe
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zifische filmische Mittel einsetzen, um dem Zuschauer das Gezeigte noch eindrücklicher zu schildern. Darüber hinaus stellen alle drei Beispiele ein Gegennarrativ zur aktuellen Medienberichterstattung über Migration und Flucht dar. Sie zeigen die Situationen von ausgewählten Geflüchteten und machen darauf aufmerksam, wie gefährlich und risikobehaftet eine Flucht ist. Sie berichten abseits des gegenwärtigen Narrativs und vermitteln dem Zuschauer dabei auf innovative Weise einen neuen Zugang und Einblick in diesen Themenbereich.
In einem nächsten Forschungsschritt wäre es angebracht, aus medienkulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive zu schauen, ob sich ein solcher narrativer Wandel in den berichtenden Medien im Print- und Rundfunkjournalismus etabliert und ob sie die Flüchtenden auch in den Fokus ihrer Berichterstattung setzen. Generell eignet sich das Thema Migration und Flucht sehr gut für eine Diskursanalyse. Hier könnte der Wandel des Narrativs vor, während und nach der Zäsur 2015 erforscht werden." (Fazit und Ausblick, Seite 64)
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"This book covers Mai Masri’s three decades documenting iconic moments of Palestinian and Lebanese linked history. Her films, unique for giving agency to her subjects, tell much about the untold, unseen people, namely women and children, who lived these experiences of war and occupation. Former Le
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banese political prisoner Soha Bechara praised her feature film 3000 Nights as “the ‘Lest we forget’ of Palestine." Her focus on the social and political climates of the vivid lives of unseen people connects to the deepening violence in Palestine today." (Publisher description)
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"This guide is about more than just tools and resources, it’s about building community. As with the process of evaluation, we saw an opportunity to learn about how impact happens and to track how films are catalysing social change. That’s the impetus behind the case studies that make up our Impa
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ct Library. We believe that sharing stories of change is inspiring and empowering. This guide is an opportunity for us to learn from each other, to pass on knowledge and equip others in the field." (Chapter 6.7: Wrapping Up)
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"Während des kriegerischen Zerfalls von Jugoslawien und der Bildung neuer Nationalstaaten entstand in der Region ein reges Dokumentarfilmschaffen, das sich den dominanten Rhetoriken der Politik entgegenstellte. Anhand dieses Filmkorpus untersucht die Studie die Bedingungen der Filmproduktion und -r
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ezeption vor dem Hintergrund der komplexen politischen Zusammenhänge und fragt nach den Möglichkeiten der gesellschaftlichen Aktivierung. Die Autorin zeigt, wie die Filme mittels innovativer formalästhetischer Strategien die Widersprüche der existierenden Verhältnisse in ihrer unüberschaubaren Vielschichtigkeit aufdeckten und so die Reflexion der Zuschauer*innen anzuregen versuchten. Ihre präzisen Analysen führen sie zu Erkenntnissen darüber, wie politisch-aktivierende Dokumentarfilme eine zukünftige Realität evozieren, die als eine ‹sich formende› gedacht werden muss. Zudem rückt die Studie ein Filmschaffen in den Blick, das bislang kaum die ihm gebührende Aufmerksamkeit erhalten hat." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The potential of documentary moving images to foster democratic exchange has been percolating within media production culture for the last century, and now, with mobile cameras at our fingertips and broadcasts circulating through unpredictable social networks, the documentary impulse is coming into
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its own as a political force of social change. The exploding reach and power of audio and video are multiplying documentary modes of communication. Once considered an outsider media practice, documentary is finding mass appeal in the allure of moving images, collecting participatory audiences that create meaningful challenges to the social order. Documentary is adept at collecting frames of human experience, challenging those insights, and turning these stories into public knowledge that is palpable for audiences. Generating pathways of exchange between unlikely interlocutors, collective identification forged with documentary discourse constitutes a mode of political agency that is directing energy toward acting in the world. Reflecting experiences of life unfolding before the camera, documentary representations help order social relationships that deepen our public connections and generate collective roots. As digital culture creates new pathways through which information can flow, the connections generated from social change documentary constitute an emerging public commons. Considering the deep ideological divisions that are fracturing U.S. democracy, it is of critical significance to understand how communities negotiate power and difference by way of an expanding documentary commons. Investment in the force of documentary resistance helps cultivate an understanding of political life from the margins, where documentary production practices are a form of survival." (Publisher description)
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"El objetivo de esta guía va más allá de presentar herramientas y recursos, pretende crear comunidad. Igual que sucede con el proceso de evaluación, vimos una oportunidad para aprender cómo se produce el impacto y hacer un seguimiento de cómo las películas están catalizando el cambio social.
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De aquí nacen los casos prácticos que forman nuestra Biblioteca del Impacto. Creemos que compartir historias de cambio nos inspira y empodera. Esta guía es una oportunidad para aprender los unos de los otros, para compartir conocimiento y ayudar a otros que trabajan en el mismo ámbito." (5.7: Para terminar)
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"Nós oferecemos ideias e abordagens para que você não tenha que lidar com um obstáculo que alguém já ultrapassou e, com isso, concentrar-se nos desafios próprios de seu projeto. Disponibilizamos todas as nossas colaborações, conversas, acordos e desentendimentos com equipes de filmagem incr
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ivelmente inteligentes, financiadores e parceiros de todo o mundo. Nesta introdução, nós oferecemos fundamentos práticos e teóricos para que as coisas aconteçam. Pense, por um momento, em como a arte inspira mudança. Conheça vários estudos de caso em profundidade, apresentados em todo o guia. Nós podemos te mostrar mais, mais a fundo, tudo em nossa Biblioteca. Nós recomendamos que se conheça o máximo possível - particularmente sobre filmes e campanhas similares ao seu trabalho." (Introdução)
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"The five-minute film Mouth of a Shark (Isobel Blomfield, 2018) conveys a young woman’s experiences and precarious situation while she awaits an outcome on her refugee status determination in Australia. Aasiya (pseudonym) lives in community detention. Her interest in creating the film stemmed from
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her own acknowledgement that she had a platform as a young, literate asylum seeker woman with a “strong” story, and was therefore in a position to portray asylum seekers in a positive light. However, she cannot be identified in the film, even though it depicts her story, due to concerns over safety and her claim for asylum. We use this example to illustrate issues of anonymity and representation, and suggest strategies in line with our commitment to avoid depersonalising tropes in filmmaking. While we are committed to ensuring that people from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds exercise agency in filmmaking, protecting Aasiya’s identity had to prevail. We wanted to avoid depersonalising tropes, and instead devised filming strategies that were more respectful of the protagonist and, within the constraint of anonymity, ensured that Aasiya could still represent her story in meaningful ways. We argue for an ethical model that reconciles the need for both anonymity and representation in filmmaking, especially through collaborative editing." (Abstract)
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"Representing stories through documentary film can offer a means to convey multilayered and sensory accounts of the lived experiences of people in extreme transition, especially former refugees. However, along with the potential of this medium comes the responsibility to engage with participants in
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an ethical and reciprocal manner. This article examines these prerequisites and applies them to two films about the experiences of people from refugee backgrounds in Australia. The first film, The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour (2015), explores the Myanmar community, their sociocultural relationship to food and how this informs their identity. The second film, 3Es to Freedom (2017), documents a supported employment program for women from refugee backgrounds. Despite having different purposes and target audiences, the two films reinforced the importance of establishing informed and negotiated consent with marginalised people as the basis of all interactions and representations on film. Such negotiation seeks to minimise power imbalances and forms the ethical starting point for reflexive filmmaking practice that considers the filmmakers’ and participants’ intentions, and that promotes a heightened awareness of how knowledge is created through image-making." (Abstract)
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