"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
...
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)
more
"This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research. Featuring fourteen new essays organized into three s
...
ections around the themes of cinematic materialities, discourses, and communities, the volume explores a variety of topics within ecocinema studies from examining specific national and indigenous film contexts to discussing ecojustice, environmental production studies, film festivals, and political ecology. The breadth of the contributions exemplifies how ecocinema scholars worldwide have sought to overcome the historical legacy of binary thinking and intellectual norms and are working to champion new ecocritical, intersectional, decolonial, queer, feminist, Indigenous, vitalist, and other emergent theories and cinematic practices. The collection also demonstrates the unique ways that cinema studies scholarship is actively addressing environmental injustice and the climate crisis." (Publisher description)
more
"This field practitioner’s guide provides step-by-step guidance for creating and using participatory video within a ComDev process. The guide is part of a modular training series, but can be used as a stand-alone resource for self-learning. It is intended for use by communication practitioners, fa
...
rmer and civil society organizations, field workers, extension services, farmer field schools and innovation brokers. This guide helps to identify the purpose, content and context for using participatory video as well as the advantages of using video for development, and presents tips about how to use and share participatory video. The guide will enable users to understand how to produce and share participatory video and how to use it to promote change in rural environments by engaging and giving voice to family farmers and smallholders. It explains how to use video to promote dialogue and engagement and to share knowledge and information, using the right e-platforms, tools, methods and practices to display video content and incorporate it in development processes and initiatives. The guide also touches upon the technicalities of video production, including framing shots, devising sequences, following shooting protocols and applying editing techniques.
more
"This report presents a final evaluation of EngageMedia’s project «Digital Rights and Video for Change: Building the Movement in Southeast Asia», funded by the Embassy of Sweden Bangkok. The evaluation covered activities from September 2019 to August 2022 in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand,
...
and the broader Asia Pacific region. Evaluation reveals EngageMedia’s relevance in addressing digital rights issues but highlightes the need for EngageMedia to have a clearer role definition. The evaluation team also concludes that while EngageMedia increased organizational effectiveness, monitoring data challenges impact demonstration. The evaluation underlines that project’s sustainability is a concern, and urges to consider monetizing outputs and streamlining for long-term viability. Recommendations include refining EngageMedia’s role in the digital rights space and their thematic and geographic scope, improving monitoring and evaluation system, integrating gender equality and human rights into programming, enhancing program and financial management. The evaluation recommends that Sida should consider additional support when providing core funding to mitigate unintended consequences." (Back cover)
more
"Questions of reconciliation and memory after genocide and conflict in Cambodia remain finely poised. Young people often do not believe the stories of hardship and loss of the older generation, and cleavages remain between divided and stigmatised former factions. This article reflects on a series of
...
participatory video projects led by young Cambodians that sought to engage and explore complex ‘perpetrator’ memories with the aim of building dialogue across communities and generations. Working in partnership with the Documentation Centre of Cambodia through 2018, our participatory-video project sought to document the experiences and accounts of former lower level Khmer Rouge community members. Through a discussion of the 11 films produced, and young filmmakers’ reflections on their involvement in the project, we show how participatory video allows and produces interventions on memory that can renegotiate, augment and contest dominant narratives of past violence. Crucially, we argue, that when read together, the films outline the contours, ambiguities and contestation of claims for ‘complex victimhood’ in Cambodia, and the problems of stabilising singular stories of past violence. We argue that this has implications for transitional justice more broadly, which is a field that tends to rely on neat distinctions of victim and perpetrator and shared accounts and meanings of past harm in the ways it intervenes on memory." (Abstract)
more
"Die Methode der Kamera-Ethnographie ist ein zeigendes statt beschreibendes Verfahren und nutzt Kameraführung, Schnitt und Montage im Rahmen einer visuellen Analytik und performativen Wissensform. Bina Elisabeth Mohns Programmschrift zeigt, wie Kamera-Ethnographie auch nonverbale Praktiken in ihren
...
Choreographien und bildhaften Figuren in den Blick rückt: Anstelle einer videographischen Aufzeichnungslogik wird davon ausgegangen, dass Forschungsgegenstände zunächst noch gar nicht sichtbar sind. Durch eine reflexive Pragmatik des Sehens und Zeigens leitet die Kamera-Ethnographie dazu an, die Prozesse ethnographischer Beobachtung, Erfahrung und Entdeckung mit filmischen Mitteln zu gestalten und selbst das Publikum in eine forschende Rezeption einzubinden." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
more
"Shifting attention from the United Nations’ focus on perpetrators of climate change to climate change victims, this qualitative content analysis uses a constructivist paradigmatic approach to examine the participatory video narratives produced by local media producers in rural India. Based on the
...
levels of analyses for the impact, findings from twenty primary issue videos are thematically presented: individual, family and community, and spatial. The videos depict an intertwined nature of agriculture and environment, and documents agentative social action, transformative collective potential, and present a starting point to catalyse an iterative process of communication that expands our understanding of climate change impact beyond what is portrayed in globally dominant narratives." (Abstract)
more
"The idea of telling stories for change or social impact through film is not new. Yet drafting and implementation of a film impact campaign has evolved over the last few years to include a network of impact practitioners sharing ideas and knowledge. Strategies, guidelines and models have emerged tha
...
t can make it easier for a film team to activate the film to achieve outcomes that relate to the social issues portrayed in the film. The STEPS Impact Toolkit offers a practical guide to social impact through film, from research through to implementation. You will find guidelines, practical worksheets, handy tips and case studies to guide you as you develop your own impact strategy. The impact environment is one of co-learning and knowledge sharing and we will refer you to other useful resources along the way." (Introduction)
more
"This article offers new learnings and recommended practices for documentary-centred grassroots engagement and social change research. These learnings were developed through a community engagement effort in 2020 that centred around a documentary film about racial violence and injustice, 'Always in S
...
eason'. Shaped by extended dialogues with industry experts, the filmmaker, local community organizations and more than 100 community participants, these learnings should be of interest to researchers, media makers, organizers, activists, and engagement specialists who wish to engage publics in critical social justice conversations that are not possible through traditional top-down, externally driven methods and engagement approaches alone. Organized around an urgent question – ‘How can participatory methods shift how media is employed and researched for social change purposes?’ – this article responds to a recent call for researchers to avoid ‘re-inventing the wheel’ and to align new work with existing knowledge produced in the field of communication for social change and the long-tradition of community engagement work in the field of documentary." (Abstract)
more
"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
...
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)
more
"Through carefully curated essays, Salazkina and Fibla-Gutiérrez bring wider meaning and significance to the discipline through their study of alternative cinema in new territories, fueled by different historical and political circumstances, innovative technologies, and ambitious practitioners. The
...
essays in this volume work to realize the radical societal democratization that shows up in amateur cinema around the world. In particular, diverse contributors highlight the significance of amateur filmmaking, the exhibition of amateur films, the uses and availability of film technologies, and the inventive and creative approaches of filmmakers and advocates of amateur film." (Publisher description)
more
"Das vorliegende Workshopkonzept wurde im Netzwerk Verstärker - aktivierende Bildungsarbeit entwickelt und im Rahmen der "Aktionsformate" des Netzwerks erprobt. Die Konzepte wurden auf Basis von wissenschaftlichen Studien und von Praxiserfahrungen zahlreicher Pädagog*innen, politischer Bildner*inn
...
en und Sozialarbeiter*innen für die politische Bildungsarbeit mit sogenannten bildungsbenachteiligten Jugendlichen entwickelt. Jugendlichen soll hierbei die Möglichkeit zur Reflexion der eigenen Rolle innerhalb der Gesellschaft eröffnet werden - ohne sie dabei zu stigmatisieren. Unter Berücksichtigung der eigenen Betroffenheit sollen Multiperspektivität gefördert und die Jugendlichen zur Wahrnehmung ihrer Rechte und Pflichten als Bürger*innen der Gesellschaft, zur eigenen Meinungsbildung über politisch-gesellschaftliche Sachverhalte und Vertretung ihrer Positionen und Interessen befähigt werden." (https://www.bpb.de)
more
"Spaces for social and political dialogue within communities and across social levels in inequitable contexts generally do not incorporate difference across community, or enable the most marginalized people to participate meaningfully. In this article, we propose that participatory video can contrib
...
ute to building agonistic pluralism, namely a recognition of the unavoidable tensions between perspectives, and maintaining, rather than erasing, difference when working towards positive change. We draw on our comparable experience using participatory video methodologies to consider how it can be used to progressively build agency and deeper criticality, address difference across communities and to collectively construct political leverage." (Abstract)
more
"While not every story might be appropriate to be realized with a mobile device or smartphone, if working with communities, capturing locations or working in the domain of personal or first-person filmmaking, the smartphone or mobile device should be considered as the camera of choice. The mobile sp
...
ecificity is expressed through accessibility, mobility and its intimate and immediate qualities. These smartphone filmmaking-specific characteristics and personal forms of crafting experiences contribute to a formation of new storytelling approaches. Stylistic developments of vertical video and collaborative processes in smartphone filmmaking are evolving into hybrid formats that resonate in other film forms. This book not only develops a framework for the analysis of smartphone filmmaking but also reviews contemporary scholarship and directions within the creative arts and the creative industries." (Publisher description)
more
"Many Voices, Many Worlds: Critical Perspectives on Community Media in India is a critical reflection on governance and policymaking, development, disability, knowledge and other social markers in the context of community media. Bringing together different modes of community media—such as video, r
...
adio, theatre, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and new media—into a productive conversation with each other, the book focuses on how communities through their communicative practices, negotiate the politics of caste, class, gender, and access to funding and technology." (Publisher description)
more
"La comunicación alternativa –también denominada comunitaria, libre, ciudadana, del tercer sector o para el cambio social– es percibida como una hermana menor en las ciencias de la comunicación hasta padecer una triple invisibilización: en la historia social del campo, en relación con los m
...
edios públicos y comerciales, y en las propias teorías de la comunicación. Desde esta premisa, el presente volumen se adentra en su conceptualización y en sus principales hitos, debates y prácticas en España desde la Transición democrática hasta la actualidad y poniendo el foco en distintos soportes mediáticos: desde la radio comunitaria al vídeo participativo y el activismo digital." (Cubierta del libro)
more
"This paper presents the participatory video methodology as an effective tool to establish a two-way communication channel between researchers and marginalized communities. The discussion begins by describing the transition from one- to two-way communication in the research for development field, fo
...
llowed by how participatory video opens a two-way communication process that contributes to research for development objectives. This is illustrated through a participatory video experience conducted within an agricultural research for development program in Nicaragua, where the methodology was linked to the program’s learning, innovation, and gender and youth empowerment objectives while supporting its productive, economic, and environmental objectives. The paper concludes with an analysis of the effectiveness of participatory video in establishing a two-way communication channel, considering its limitations and its possible applications in various research fields." (Abstract)
more