Abstracts

Named in a programmatic essay by Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann (1999), deformative criticism ‘is a playful method that aims to deliberately transform the texts it engages’ (Buurma & Gold 2018: 146). The approach has lent itself to experimental activities in critical digital humanities and videographic work in film and television studies. Deformative approaches constitute interpretation as remix in order, as Jason Mittell puts it (2019: 231), to ‘make the original work strange’ and to reveal features previously inaccessible or obscured. The 'Men Shouting' project concerns American films that deal with the 2008 financial crisis, including Too Big to Fail (2011), Margin Call (2011), 99 Homes (2014) and The Big Short (2015). I am combining elements of these films according to a set of parametric procedures in order to reveal the means of the films’ shared or divergent historical interpretations. Most deformative experiments with film have focussed on, or begun from, images or shots (see for example Jason Mittell’s deformative investigations of average shot length), but these videographic experiments start with and investigate the voice—in particular the aggressive or loud male voice that asserts the man as the agent of history. This case study forms part of a broader project, ‘Deformative Studies in the History Film’ - Alan O'Leary.

In this presentation, I will share some of my work-in-progress on several, overlapping creative/curatorial projects (in their early stages) that relate to my broader research on women filmmakers decolonising screens, and to the work of my team and our partners on the 5-year, ERC-funded project Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies (2019-2024). The focus will be on how filmmaking has the potential to help academics to decolonise our work if we draw on decolonial, womanist, and activist methodologies that pay attention to positionality, subjectivity, long-term conversation and/or collaboration, undisciplining, and questions of access - Lindiwe Dovey. 

This short research video stems from my fieldwork accompanying the Arte Eletrônica Indígena (Indigenous Electronic Art) project during the opening of its exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Salvador da Bahia in August 2018. Although Indigenous participants in the project were not officially named as curators of the exhibition (an omission that may well be rectified in future projects), I was struck by the way they “occupied” the gallery space and took on an impromptu curatorial role during the opening weekend. They broke and bent many of the standard protocols of the institution to better suit their needs and desires. And they used the gallery space and its environs as a platform for public denunciations of their social marginalisation and dialogue with the general public, as well as for interethnic networking and cultural celebration. I see this form of occupation as clearly evidencing the dynamics of Indigenous resistance/rexistance and the philosophy of “teko porã/bem viver” in Brazil. It also maps neatly onto some of the Indigenous “decolonizing methodologies” set out by Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her homonymous book, particularly “claiming” and “celebrating survival – survivance”. The video aims to give a sense of all this to provide evidence that my written work on the topic cannot - Thea Pitman.

An adjunct to the BRICS summit, the first BRICS Film Festival was held in 2016 in New Delhi, India. Now in its sixth year, the BRICS festival aims to showcase world class film production from, and inspire closer collaboration between, BRICS member states. CWCDC researchers Prof Stephanie Dennison and Dr Chris Homewood attended the third (Durban, South Africa) and fourth (Niteroi, Brazil) editions, where they interviewed filmmakers, jury members and key cultural stakeholders about the ambition of the BRICS Film Festival, still in its infant stages, to function as a key intercultural contact zone. This short film explores the challenges and opportunities that frame the festival and its development - Stephanie Dennison & Christopher Homewood

In the presentation we will discuss a participatory animation project we have been working on in Colombia with the Truth, memory and reconciliation commission, funded by the AHRC/GCRF. This has focussed on capturing the testimony of former FARC child soldiers. The aim of the project was twofold: 1) to ensure the experience and voice of this group of combatants is preserved appropriately in the national historical narrative. In particular the project focussed on telling the story of Operation Berlin, a violent military operation carried on a group of child soldiers the legacy of which has been largely ignored in the historical narrative. 2) to use participatory animation to facilitate intergenerational dialogue between former combatants and young people to foster reconciliation. After briefly introducing the project we will present an extract from the final film, which is a feature-length documentary that draws on animation, archival footage and interview to capture both elements of the original project - Mathew Charles & Paul Cooke. 

Mani will present 'Gallery', by Peter McDonagh. This short film was one of the artistic outcomes of a collaborative project, entitled 'Facing the Mind', that ran online, as a series of six webinars, for six weeks, in June and July 2020. Blending film theory, film history, and artistic practice, 'Facing the Mind' was a project developed between artists and creatives with the aim of promoting mental wellbeing in the local community - Mani King Sharpe.