"In one of the first cultural acts to follow independence in 1975, Frelimo's new socialist government of Mozambique set up a National Institute of Cinema (the INC). In a country where many people had little previous experience of cinema, the INC was tasked to "deliver to the people an image of the p
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eople". This book explores how this unique culture of revolutionary filmmaking began during the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. Following independence, the INC began the task of decolonising the film industry, building on networks of solidarity with other socialist and non-aligned struggles. Mozambique became an epicentre for militant filmmakers from around the world and cinema played an essential role in building the new nation. Crucially, the book examines how filmmaking became a resource for resistance against Apartheid as the Cold War played out across Southern Africa during the late 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on detailed film analysis, production histories and testimonies of key participants, Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution provides a compelling account of this radical experiment in harnessing cinema to social change." (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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"The documentary dalan ba dame was produced by the East Timorese Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (Comissao de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliaao de Timor-Leste, CAVR) and covers the twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste, during which nearly one quarter of the
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population died. The CAVR was originally set up to produce a report about the human rights violations committed between April 25, 1975, and October 25, 1999, analyze its root causes, and identify ways of how to come to terms with the violent past. It therefore constitutes an instrument of transitional justice, defined as “a set of practices, mechanisms, and concerns that arise following a period of conflict, civil strife, or repression and that are aimed directly at confronting and dealing with past violations of human rights and humanitarian law.”1 As the same institution produced both media, the report about the human rights violations and the documentary, one should expect them to communicate the same message. However, this is not the case. The report emphasizes the need to prosecute individual members of the Indonesian military for the human rights violations committed as a precondition for sustainable peace. The documentary tells the story that peace already prevails and keeping it is a matter of reconciliation among the East Timorese population. Consequently, the case of the CAVR and its documentary is interesting for research on visuality, which analyzes the dynamics and effects of visuals in social and political processes." (Introduction)
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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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"Worin besteht eine visuelle Kultur der Migration? Ömer Alkin liefert hierfür die erste umfassende Geschichte und Analyse des ›deutsch-türkischen Kinos‹. Mit seinem Konzept der »Polyzentrierung« macht er die populären Yesilçam-Filme aus der Türkei in der Historie des Genres sichtbar und
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wendet sich so gegen eurozentrische und epistemologisch vereinseitigende Modelle. Die postkolonialtheoretisch informierte Auseinandersetzung mit der Historie mündet so in medientheoretische Reflexionen: Ästhetische und kulturtheoretische Analysen zeigen, als was Migration in den Filmkulturen überhaupt sichtbar wird. Dabei werden die populären Filme zu »denkenden Medien«, die zu grundlegenden Erkenntnissen für die Bestimmung einer visuellen Kultur der Migration führen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Existing accounts of Myanmar’s film industry available to English speakers are more than twenty years out of date. Opening with a brief overview of cinema in Myanmar since 2000, this article is based on a recent visit to the Myanmar Motion Picture Development Department and the Yangon Film School
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, on conversations with staff, students and alumnae of these institutions and of the National University of Arts and Culture, and with local independent filmmakers. The purpose of my visit was to begin the groundwork needed to answer basic questions: Who are the women making films in Myanmar today? Where are they trained? What are the conditions in which they work? What kind of films they make? How do they fund production? How do their films circulate? And finally: Is there a women’s cinema in Myanmar? What follows thus outlines the context in which women in Myanmar make films today and introduces the work of a small number of them. I conclude with reflections on three short films: A Million Threads (2006, by Thu Thu Shein), Now I am 13 (2013, by Shin Daewe), and Seeds of Sadness (2018, by Thae Zar Chi Khaing), two of which can be found online." (Abstract)
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"How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous c
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ommunities take on radically new significances. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia shows how in the portrayal of indigenous groups by both 'insiders' and 'outsiders' imaginations of indigeneity and nation become increasingly interlinked. Indigenous groups, typically marginal to the nation, are at the same time part of mainstream polities and cultures. Drawing on perspectives from media studies and visual anthropology, this book compares and contrasts the situation in South Asia with indigeneity globally." (Publisher description)
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"Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures
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in India during the 20th and 21st centuries. The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience." (Publisher description)
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"Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world's leading experts in their respective fields, the book's contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and ne
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w technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analysing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audio-visual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities." (Publisher description)
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"This article examines the ways in which cinematic film underscores the latency of structural violence in its visualization of peace, specifically through the juxtaposition of the life world of the two main protagonists in the Danish film A War (2016): Captain Claus Pedersen who serves as a Danish s
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oldier in Afghanistan and his wife Maria who takes care of the family in peaceful Denmark. The analysis centers on the internationally acclaimed film A War, directed by Thomas Lindholm, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film. In contrast to many other films about war in general and the Afghanistan war in particular, it intimately portrays how the young family struggles with the consequences of a war taking place in faraway country and right in the middle of their life." (Abstract)
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"Das Thema Suizid spielt in der Weltliteratur eine große Rolle: In Shakespeares Werk kommen 13 Freitode vor, in der Bibel sind elf Selbsttötungen zu finden. Auch der Spielfilm interessiert sich seit jeher für den Topos der Lebensmüdigkeit und Todessehnsucht: Das American Film Institute zählt an
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die 1.600 Spielfilme, in denen Suizidhandlungen vorkommen bzw. eine Rolle spielen. Neuere Untersuchungen zu den wichtigsten Suizidmotiven im Spielfilm zeigen, dass es im Film weniger psychiatrische Erkrankungen sind, die zu einem Selbstmord führen, sondern soziale Schwierigkeiten und Konflikte, wie zum Beispiel Beziehungsabbrüche, Trennungen, Eltern-Kind-Konflikte, Partnerschafts-Probleme, Geldnöte, Einsamkeit, Mobbing und zwischenmenschliche Schikanen, gesellschaftliche Vorurteile gegenüber Rasse und sexueller Orientierung, Schuld und Scham, welche Film-Protagonisten dazu bringen, sich das Leben zu nehmen. Damit fordert der Film die gängige psychiatrische Lehrmeinung heraus, dass sich 90% aller Suizidhandlungen vor dem Hintergrund einer psychischen Störung ereignen. Zumindest für die Filmfiguren stimmt diese These keinesfalls, da nur ca. 20% aller Film-Protagonisten sich aufgrund einer psychiatrischen Problematik das Leben nehmen. Dieses Buch thematisiert alle Freitod-Beweggründe in den enthaltenen Filmen in unterhaltsamen Beiträgen und fachlich fundierten Analysen. Es richtet sich sowohl an filmbegeisterte Fachleute aus Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Psychologie als auch an interessierte Laien, die die Beweggründe der Filmfiguren besser verstehen möchten." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Lange Zeit gab es wenig Kritik an dem, was die großen Digitalkonzerne mit den Daten ihrer Kunden machten. Doch die Diskussion um »Manipulations-Kapitalismus « und »Datenökonomie«, um zwei Begriffe zu nennen, die in der Diskussion über Vor- und Nachteile sozialer Medien oft zu hören sind, ni
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mmt zunehmend Fahrt auf – nicht zuletzt im Blick auf politische Wahlkämpfe. Vielfältige Einblicke in diesen Problemkomplex ermöglicht die Themen-DVD Afrika_Digital.2 – Start-ups und Künstler-Träume. Sie greift darüber hinaus Fragen der Menschenrechte im Verlauf der Produktions- und Gebrauchszyklen von Mobiltelefonen auf – und ist damit auch als Fortsetzung der Kompilations-DVD Digital – mobil – und Fair? zu verstehen. Und nicht zuletzt gilt es hier auch, den anderen, weitgehend positiv grundierten Blick auf Afrika hervorzuheben. Dies betrifft sowohl die hierzulande wenig bekannte Start-up-Szene, als auch die beiden ästhetisch innovativen Kurzfilme Algo-Rhythm und Zombies, die Bestandteil dieser DVD sind und bereits mehrfach mit Preisen ausgezeichnet wurden. In der dokumentarischen Kurzfilmreihe 10 von 199 kleinen Helden nehmen uns vier Mädchen und sechs Jungen mit auf ihren Weg zur Schule. Die Kinder sind mit dem Boot, zu Fuß oder über schwankende Hängebrücken unterwegs, während sie uns an ihren Gedanken über ihren Platz in der Welt teilhaben lassen. Der dreiteilige Dokumentarfilm The Food Challenge – Wie die Ernährung sichern beschreibt, analysiert und problematisiert die Geschäftspraktiken der großen Internationalen Chemiekonzerne in Kenia, die dort weiterhin Agrarpestizide vermarkten, die wegen ihrer Schädlichkeit in Europa und den USA oft schon lange verboten sind.
Gleich drei Filme thematisieren unterschiedliche Facetten des Themas Migration. Der niederländische Jugendfilm Rafaël erzählt eine dramatische Liebesgeschichte vor dem Hintergrund des Arabischen Frühlings und der Bootsflüchtlinge auf der Mittelmeerroute. Auf das organisierte Durcheinander europäischer Migrationspolitik blicken wir dabei aus der Perspektive einer jungen Europäerin, die selbst existentiell davon betroffen ist. Der Dokumentarfilm Die neuen Kinder von Golzow begleitet im Mikrokosmos dieser kleinen, legendär gewordenen Ortschaft die Aufnahme einer syrischen Flüchtlingsfamilie und ihre Bemühungen, sich zu integrieren. Yves’ Versprechen erzählt die mehrjährige Migrationsgeschichte eines jungen Kameruners, deren Vielschichtigkeit gerade auch deshalb spannend ist, weil sie die Perspektive der zuhause gebliebenen Familie und Freunde klug mit einzubinden weiß." (Editorial, Seite 1)
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"This book examines transformations in the production and domestic and international reception of Iranian cinema between 2000 and 2013 through the intersection of the political markers - the presidential terms of Reformist president Mohammad Khatami and his successor, the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadi
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nejad - and filmic markers, particularly Jafar Panahi's The Circle (2000) and Asghar Farhadi's About Elly (2009). Through extensive field and media research, the book considers the interaction of a range of factors including government policy, Iranian national cinema genres and categories, intended audience, funding source, and domestic and international reception, to demonstrate the interplay between filmmakers and the government over these two successive presidencies. While the impact of politics on Iranian filmmaking has been widely examined, this work argues for a more nuanced understanding of politics in and of the Iranian cinema than has generally been previously acknowledged." (Publisher description)
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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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"Visual metaphors stand at the border between text and image, as they are linguistic figures that visualize the spoken. Based on this assumption and on the existing knowledge on the discourse analytical method of metaphor analysis, Part One of the article develops a method of visual metaphor analysi
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s (VMA). Part Two uses this method to examine the metaphors of peace found in the acclaimed movie Mango Dreams, the winner of the Peace on Earth Film Festival 2017. The film by John Upchurch tells a story of Dr. Amit Singh, whose family was killed by Muslims during the partition of India and who is suffering from the onset of dementia. In order to confront his fading memories and in pursuit of peace, he commences on a journey to his childhood home in what today is Pakistan. On his travel, he is aided by Muslim rickshaw driver Salim, whose wife was raped and murdered by Hindus. During the long journey across India in a rickshaw, the two form a close friendship and help each other find the peace they have been searching for. Based on our visual metaphor analysis (VMA) of the film, as well as an interview with the director, the article demonstrates how metaphors are employed to visualize a positive concept of peace, particularly HOME, JOURNEY, and BRIDGE, which has a specific temporal, spatial, and moral dimension. In contrast to much of the international relations research on visualization of peace and conflict, the conceptualizations of peace in Mango Dreams metaphorically envision positive peace, instead of the more familiar conceptualization of negative peace, through a representation of PEACE not only in terms of a place (HOME) or process (JOURNEY) but as practice (BRIDGE)." (Abstract)
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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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"Since the beginnings of African cinema, the realm of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by directors and critics alike. James S. Williams explores an exciting new generation of African directors, including Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Regina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Ne
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wton I. Aduaka, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mati Diop, who have begun to reassess and embrace the concept of cinematic beauty by not reducing it to ideological critique or the old ideals of pan-Africanism. Locating the aesthetic within a range of critical fields - the rupturing of narrative spectacle and violence by montage, the archives of the everyday in the "afropolis", the plurivocal mysteries of sound and language, male intimacy and desire, the borderzones of migration and transcultural drift - this study reveals the possibility for new, non-conceptual kinds of beauty in African cinema: abstract, material, migrant, erotic, convulsive, queer. Through close readings of key works such as Life on Earth (1998), The Night of Truth (2004), Bamako (2006), Daratt (Dry Season) (2006), A Screaming Man (2010), Tey (Today) (2012), The Pirogue (2012), Mille soleils (2013) and Timbuktu (2014), Williams argues that contemporary African filmmakers are proposing propitious, ethical forms of relationality and intersubjectivity. These stimulate new modes of cultural resistance and transformation that serve to redefine the transnational and the cosmopolitan as well as the very notion of the political in postcolonial art cinema." (Publisher description)
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