"The presence of cameras, at the forefront of crises, either in the hands of journalists, bystanders or passers-by and sometimes even parties to the crises, has inspired multiple visual notations, commentaries and perspectives. Thus, efforts and resources are channelled towards documenting crises, t
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o help us better understand them and play a part in their resolution. Sometimes, the camera also participates in the adjudication of cases arising from crises or, indeed, even in the reconciliatory efforts after a crisis. The book aims to explore the multi-dimensional role of the camera in times of crises, with particular interest in how scholars view the camera as a [useful] tool in times of crisis in Africa. Hopefully, this book will help unravel the multi-layered tendencies of the camera as an instrument of documentation, history verification, (re)presentation of the other, and perhaps the legitimisation of narratives. The camera’s subjective framings of crisis narratives, as a manipulative tool for influence, inference and power are also explored. The book is structured into three parts. The first part focusses on the visual narratives of crises. The second part of the book explores the camera’s tendency to be a tool for representation and agency, while the third segment discusses the use of the camera as an entity for activism and advocacy in crises. These structured parts are intended to broaden the understanding of readers about the greater possibilities that images and imageries from the camera as a tool possess." (Abstract introduction, page 1)
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"Founded in 2004, the WCF was initiated by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Berlin International Film Festival. It quickly established itself as one of the leading institutions in the field of international film funding for artistic and innovative productions. The WCF concentrates on b
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acking the production and distribution of films from Latin America, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caucasus, Pacific as well as Bangladesh, Nepal, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. The goal is to promote high-quality filmmaking in regions with a weak infrastructure for film, while fostering cultural diversity in German cinemas as well as supporting collaboration between German and European producers and partners in WCF regions and countries. All WCF films finalized to date have screened at cinemas and / or in the programmes of renowned festivals. Many have also won prizes, proof of the worldwide success of the initiative. The World Cinema Fund provides support in the fields of production, post-production and distribution for feature lenght films and creative feature documentaries. Audience Design Strategies training and mentorships have become an important part of our programme. We have developed important partnerships in the field of Audience Design with the Torino Film Lab, Brasil Cinema Mundi, Locarno Open Doors, Nuevas Miradas, the Great Lakes Producers Lab and with the Ouaga Film Lab." (WCF Info, Page 4)
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"Greater North Kivu is a region in the East of the DRC characterized by an unending socio-cultural and political crisis that has brought about insecurity, war, massacres, and land conflicts since 1996. Efforts to resolve this war crisis to restore justice and peace have not been successful. The aim
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of this research was to evaluate the film practice in the Greater North Kivu region in the context of this war situation and if those films which were set against this reality had messages that focused on sustainable peace. The specific research questions of the study were: What could be the varying contexts of war and related conflicts from which each of the selected films acquires its character? In what way do the cinematographic messages reflect the context of war in the Greater North Kivu? How do the thematic messages aim to sensitize the population towards peace in the region? What are the opportunities and challenges of film making for peace in the region? What construct emerges as a typology of context and types of persuasion messages that may emerge from selected films of the study. The study adopted a qualitative research design, and constructivism and interpretivism philosophical research paradigms. The target population consisted of film makers in the Greater North Kivu, civil society, community and government leaders. The study concluded that the multiple contexts of the war manifest in the character of the variety of films produced but that the film codes reflecting this reality aim to break and change it thereby creating a new grammar for a new context. In addition, the film for sensitizing works with strategies of arousing emotions that are carefully selected with great sensitivity because of the fragile context of the war situation in its causes, consequences, and what is to be done. The thesis of this study is that the many contexts of the war situation in the region of study manifest themselves in the selected films chosen for the research. In a simultaneous manner the film maker’s codes aim to break the existing contexts to new beginnings. While the film codes may be of the grammar of existing context, their very ambition and motivation is to introduce a new grammar for a vision of a new context, transforming the old one. Based on the findings of the current study, the study recommends the film makers to continue to use potent symbolism in their stories to effectively sensitize the population to the situation and promote the necessary actions. The study recommends to the government and policymakers makers to allocate resources towards the Ministry of Arts and Culture to support local film production, recognizing its potential as a tool for peacebuilding and societal change." (Abstract)
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"Branding Brazil examines a panorama of contemporary cultural productions including film, television, photography, and alternative media to explore the transformation of citizenship in Brazil from 2003 to 2014. A utopian impulse drove the reproduction of Brazilian cultural identity for local and glo
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bal consumption; cultural production sought social and economic profits, especially greater inclusion of previously marginalized people and places. Marsh asserts that three communicative strategies from branding-promising progress, cultivating buy-in, and resolving contradictions-are the most salient and recurrent practices of nation branding during this historic period. More recent political crises can be understood partly in terms of backlash against marked social and political changes introduced during the branding period. Branding Brazil takes a multi-faceted approach, weaving media studies with politics and cinema studies to reveal that more than a marketing term or project emanating from the state, branding was a cultural phenomenon." (Publisher description)
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"Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia examines an array of auteur-driven fiction and documentary independent film projects that have emerged since the turn of the millennium from East and Southeast Asia, a strand of transnational filmmaking that converges with Asia's vibrant ye
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t unevenly developed independent film movements amidst global neoliberalism. These projects bear witness to and are shaped by the ongoing historical processes of inter-Asia interaction characterized by geopolitical realignment, migration, and population displacement. This study threads together case studies of internationally acclaimed filmmakers, artists, and collectives such as Zhang Lu, Kuzoku, Li Ying, Takamine Go, Yamashiro Chikako, and Midi Z, all of whose transborder journeys and cinematic imaginations disrupt static identity affiliations built upon national, ethnic, or cultural differences. This border-crossing filmmaking can be viewed as both an aesthetic practice and a political act, reframing how people, places, and their interconnections can be perceived - thereby opening up possibilities to reimagine Asia and its connections to globalization." (Publisher description)
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"Viele Filme aus Ländern in Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika befassen sich phantasievoll mit gesellschaftlichen Fragen. Unter welchen Bedingungen arbeiten Regisseurinnen in Algerien, Marokko und Tunesien? Warum sind afrikanische Religionen und Riten ein Thema im jungen nigerianischen Kino? Und wie g
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eht ein indonesischer Regisseur mit Drohungen religiöser Fanatiker um?" (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The article considers one dominant tendency of independent filmmaking, and its impact on the treatment of the refugee (broadly conceived): the application of contemporary documentary methods to both fiction and nonfiction works. The goal is a preliminary exploration of the complex, context-sensitiv
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e political effects of the approach, sometimes dubbed the “documentary style”, as resistance of (and/or submission to) the hegemonic global-nationalist order. To this end, the paper investigates specifically how such filmmaking efforts may—or may not—redirect the phenomenological vehicle of imagination away from narrow nationalist imaginaries towards a broader humanist identification and emotional (and normative) investment in the stranger or “the other” per se. The focus is on two works in particular, Another News Story (Orban Wallace, 2017) and Before Summer Ends (Avant la fin de l’été, Maryam Goormaghtigh, 2017), identifying how the filmmakers’ broadly pluralistic techniques help avoid the potentially dehumanising pitfalls of more didactic approaches, but also generate their own potential limitations. While the slackening of the subject’s categorical—and the plot’s narrative—shape may be liberating, it also risks a phenomenological disconnection on the part of the potentially interested spectator. The cognitive effects—including impediments to memory and recall—may thus weaken the work’s potential as a vehicle of cultural awareness and social identification." (Abstract)
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"Der landesinterne Konflikt in Kolumbien und die damit einhergehende Gewalt sind seit deren Ausbruch in den 1940er Jahren zentraler Gegenstand des kolumbianischen Kinos. Unter dem Einfluss sich wandelnder Gewaltdiskurse und Produktionsbedingungen entwerfen die kolumbianischen Filmemacher_innen viels
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chichtige Porträts der kolumbianischen Gesellschaft und liefern neue Ansätze zur Reflexion und Bewertung der Gewalt in Kolumbien. Anne Burkhardts diskursanalytisch fundierte Untersuchung von 17 ausgewählten Filmen, darunter einige Klassiker des kolumbianischen Kinos, wird ergänzt um die erste umfassende Darstellung der kolumbianischen Filmgeschichte in deutscher Sprache." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Revisar y recorrer el cine latinoamericano actual mediante 23 películas es, de hecho, un reto. Keith Richards ha tomado la opción inusual de analizar la cinematografía de una región entera mediante el prisma de las películas seleccionadas ("mirar el cine por derecho propio"). Lo más interesan
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te es que el análisis está agrupado bajo siete secciones que cubren temas esenciales, y no necesariamente los más obvios. Desde "La imagen indígena" (que ofrece un recorrido realmente amplio de la práctica de hacer cine de tema indígena en América Latina) a "Poetas en la ciudad", se brinda una mirada fresca sobre la realidad social y cultural latinoamericana." (Cubierta del libro)
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"Contemporary Latin American Cinema investigates the ways in which neoliberal measures of privatization, de-regularization and austerity introduced in Latin America during the 1990s have impacted film production and film narratives. The collection examines the relationship between economic policies
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and the films that depict recent transformations in many Latin American countries, demonstrating how contemporary Latin American film has not only criticized and resisted, but also benefitted from neoliberal advancements. Based on films produced in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru since 2010, the fourteen case studies illustrate neoliberalism's effects, from big industries to small national cinemas. It also shows the new types of producers that have emerged, and the novel patterns of distribution, exhibition and consumption that shape and influence the Latin American filmscape." (Publisher description)
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"The 16th Afrika Film Festival Köln will present 75 new films from Africa – with a wider focus on migration within Africa Let’s start with some numbers: there are currently 68 million displaced people worldwide, most of whom now reside in countries bordering their homelands. The wide range of r
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easons for their displacement is well known: war, democratic defi cits and economic deprivation. Only a small percentage of the world’s refugees (around 17 percent) make it to the comparatively rich Europe, while 30 percent of all refugees live in sub-Saharan African countries. If we include the Maghreb, the percentage of the world’s refugees accommodated in Africa swells to around 50. Migration within Africa is one of the key focal points of this year’s Afrika Film Festival Köln, with 25 fi lms in the main programme and many others in the supporting events that directly or indirectly address the issue." (Introduction)
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"Narrativas del miedo: Terror en obras literarias, cinemáticas y televisivas de Latinoamérica es una colección de ensayos escritos en inglés y en español en los que se analizan distintas representaciones del miedo como un elemento estructural y simbólico en obras literarias, teatrales y visual
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es de Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Colombia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana y Venezuela. Este libro ofrece una coherente y comprensiva visión de conjunto que abre una discusión sobre una de las más problemáticas consecuencias de la violencia: el miedo. A los largo de los últimos dos siglos, los países de América Latina han experimentado numerosos conflictos tales como guerras, revoluciones, dictaduras, narcotráfico, desplazamientos, exilios, etc. Existen abundantes estudios críticos sobre estas problemáticas, así como también sobre sus representaciones literarias y cinematográficas. Sin embargo, es muy poco lo que se ha dicho sobre el miedo que distintos tipos de violencia infligen en la sociedad, los individuos y sobre cómo estos fenómenos condicionan las representaciones artísticas y literarias. El valor y la originalidad de este volumen yace en el hecho de que enfoca su atención en esta fuerza emocional tan profundamente integrada en la producción de novelas, cuentos, teatro, películas y cómics en América Latina." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
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"Historically, cinema in the Americas has been signed by a state of precariousness. Notwithstanding the growing accessibility to video and digital technologies, access to the material means of film production is still limited, affecting the spheres of production, distribution, and reception. Equally
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, questions about the precarious can be traced in cultural and archival policies, film legislations, as well as in thematic and aesthetic choices. While conventional definitions of the precarious have been associated with notions of scarcity and insecurity, this volume looks at precariousness from a non-monolithic angle, exploring its productivity and potential for original, critical approaches, with the aim of providing new readings to the variedly rich and complex cinemas of the Americas." (Publisher description)
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"Going to the cinema means going on a journey” reads one of the banners in Ouagadougou that have been put up to promote the legendary pan-African FESPACO film festival. Afrika Film Festival Köln has also been taking its guests on audiovisual journeys through African cinescapes for 25 years. More
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than 750 films from 45 African countries have been shown in Cologne since the first festival in 1992. They have showcased some hugely diverse and multi-faceted filmmaking talents from Africa and the global African diaspora [...] In addition to showing films relating to this year’s theme of “Land Grabbing and Migration”, one of the first ideas we came up with regarding the make-up of the festival programme was to present a retrospective with the highlights from the last 25 years. But this was soon scrapped due to the huge number of exciting new films that were submitted to FilmInitiativ in 2017 and the many discoveries at major festivals, such as those in Tunis, Ouagadougou and Durban. FilmInitiativ was ultimately again spoilt for choice, with more than 400 new features, documentaries and short films. We therefore decided to keep the focus on contemporary African cinema for the anniversary festival, and to complement the films with a small selection of classics." (Introduction)
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"Combining approaches from the social sciences and the humanities, the book provides an interdisciplinary perspective while outlining a transnational history of films that either document or fictionalise the favelas, shantytowns, Elendsviertel, gecekondu, barrios populares or chawls of our diverse '
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planet of slums', exploring the way accelerated urbanisation has intersected with an increasingly interconnected global film and media culture. From Jacob Riis's How The Other Half Lives (1890) to Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008), the volume provides a number of close readings of slum representations of different historical periods and regions to outline how contemporary film and media practices relate to their past predecessors. It focuses thereby particularly on the way filmmakers, both north and south of the equator, have repeatedly grappled with, rejected or continuously modified documentary and realist modes of representation to convey life in our 'planet of slums'." (Publisher description)
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