- Home
- A-Z Publications
- New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film
- Previous Issues
- Volume 17, Issue 1, 2020
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film - Volume 17, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 17, Issue 1, 2020
- Articles
-
-
-
From documentary networks to documentary worknets: Strategies of participation and co-creation in emerging practices of factual storytelling
By Anna WiehlStarting from the premises that documentary assemblages are networks in the sense that they are not given but need to be established and are in constant flux leads us to the assessment that any interactive documentary environment is a collaboratory but also precarious endeavour. In this context, bringing into dialogue network theories, namely ANT ‘and after’, the concept of ‘assemblage’ and discourses around participation and co-creation can lead to fresh perspectives on different strategies and tactics of participation in collaborative factual storytelling. Still, two aspects need to be revisited: the symmetric approach to networks and the notion of distributed agency. These concepts will be discussed in terms of their value to derive strategies and tactics of (shared) authorship, the striving for a documentary argument and documentary authority on the one hand and participation, interaction and plurivocality on the other hand. In this regard, ANT makes certainly inspiring points but also has its shortcomings. One solution can consist in relating the axiom of ANT as an analytic tool to actual documentary long-term strategies as well as to stand-up tactics as, e.g. interventionist media-making, open space documentary and context-provision. Thinking of emerging documentary configurations not only in terms of hybrid transdisciplinary, transprofessional networks but pragmatic worknets can lead to a better understanding of how to balance different agents within these networks|worknets – always keeping in mind that we are dealing with an approach that calls for constant self-reflection as it presents a case of what Law describes as ‘uncertain method’. All theoretical reflections are accompanied by an analysis of a paradigmatic documentary networks|worknet, The Quipu Project (2015).
-
-
-
-
Navigating history: Aesthetics and appropriation and the interactive web documentary Freedom’s Ring (2013)
More LessThe article focuses on web documentaries as a form of interactive historiography by presenting a case study on Freedom’s Ring (2013), a multi-media-based animation of Martin Luther King’s speech ‘I have a Dream’ published in Vectors. Taking both the production and the reception side into account, the article addresses the constitution of knowledge – or rather aesthetic experience – through artistic research practices. In doing so, it reflects upon the concepts of authorship, copyright and participation. Due to its numerous sources, the navigation system, the artwork, its referentiality and variability, it is made the case that Freedom’s Ring challenges history as a ‘grand narrative’ by creating a subjective point of view and putting the user in the position of an activist. Web documentaries are regarded as part of an epistemic and sociopolitical development, in which artistic and academic methods merge.
-
-
-
From i-doc to VR experience: New forms of user engagement in immersive digital documentaries
More LessAudience research proves that possibilities of interaction in i-docs are often not fulfilled by the user, who is not really part of a ‘work in progress’ (as intended by the makers). With the shift and development of new digital formats (360-degree-films, nonfictional VR experiences, AR apps), the question of the possible interactive potential should be addressed once again. Since VR projects are fully immersive (mostly using head-mounted displays), there is no possible distraction from outside on the one hand. On the other hand, there is a shift from the computer game style aesthetic of early i-docs, with their pure spatial arrangement of events, to a more inclusive digital storytelling modality with the user experiencing his own world-building. This will be discussed with taking into consideration the non-fictional VR experience as a mode of actively combining immersion and storytelling for a satisfactory user experience. Afterwards two very different examples of nonfictional VR production will be presented, and their modalities will be briefly touched; the utilized approach and its user response will be discussed. A look at the future of possible developments concludes the essay.
-
-
-
Ways of affection: How interactive documentaries affect the interactor’s felt experience and performance
More LessThis article intends to explore how interactivity and new technologies promote new spectatorship performances and subsequently affect the interactor’s subjectivity. Through the analysis of three interactive documentaries, I propose and describe a taxonomy for addressing the felt experience of interacting in digital environments. Each selected documentary corresponds to a different mode of interaction and, therefore, engages the audience in a particular way: Bear 71 (hyperlink mode), Fort McMoney (conversational mode) and A Journal of Insomnia (participative mode). Throughout the analysis, I consider the interactor and the digital object as two interrelated and dependent entities that influence and shape one another. I argue the objects of interaction affect the viewers by inducing bodily felt sensations and shaping their subjectivity. As so, the sensuous encounter between the interactor and the digital documentary provides a virtual gratification for the spectator’s performance. Delving into a phenomenological and post-phenomenological investigation, I focus my attention in the microperceptions, as structures of sensory perception in the bodily dimensions of experience, translated as senses. As fragmented, multilinear and dynamic forms, interactive documentaries provide the audience with the agency of manipulating and developing the narrative, while conversely engender in the interactors what I address as ways of affection. I propose or adapt eight digitally disrupted and induced sensations, or senses of, for describing how interactive documentary affects users during the interaction performance: sense of control, sense of presence, sense of Self, sense of place, sense of belonging, sense of almightiness, sense of endlessness, sense of incompleteness.
-
-
-
Self-sacrifice in Train to Busan (2016)
By Will McKeownIn order to recognize and calibrate the two parts to its structure, self-sacrifice in zombie cinema will be examined in terms of survival-based and emotion-based motivational frameworks. The interaction of these frameworks will be unpacked and their properties, differences and similarities will be appraised and questioned. Examinations of this kind require three different analytical methods that therefore determine the structure of this article. The first section will outline how the survival and emotional-based motivational frameworks exist within the same sequence in Train to Busan (2016). The implications of this will be addressed in relation to the organization of modern neo-liberalism and what Paul Verhaeghe coins the neoliberal meritocracy. The second section examines the temporal projections of the characters in the sequence (specifically how the sequence depicts a character’s understanding of the future and how their present situation fits into that). These projections are cross-referenced with the specific example of the neo-liberal South Korean economic climate to add credence to the proposition that the need (or fetishization) of survival is a neo-liberal symptom and a hangover from the pressures that are ceaselessly exerted to keep its hierarchies in place. The final section of this article examines abjection and identity in relation to the chosen sequence in Train to Busan. It explores the generation of identity in relation to self-sacrifice and concludes that self-sacrifice is a necessary enforcer of a specifically neo-liberal competition.
-
-
-
What is ‘antimicrobial resistance’ and why should anyone make films about it? Using ‘participatory video’ to advocate for community-led change in public health
In this article, we discuss the role of participatory video (PV) as a tool for developing community-level solutions to ‘Antimicrobial Resistance’ (AMR) in Nepal. In recent years, PV has become an ever more popular tool in development contexts for supporting communities in low and middle income countries to raise awareness of issues that they do not feel are adequately represented in mainstream media. One area of growing interest in this regard is public health. However, PV has not, to date, been used to address AMR, currently considered to be one of the biggest public health issues we face globally. Placing our project within the wider context of ‘participatory documentary’ practice, we examine the world-view presented in the films this project generated, a dimension of such projects that is, somewhat curiously perhaps, often overlooked, with commentators tending to focus on the process of delivering PV, rather than the final products made. Here we are particularly interested in questions of power and how a close reading of the texts produced highlights the complexity of the power relationships at work in these films, which, in turn, can allow us to reflect in new ways on the processes at work in the project.
-
- Book Reviews
-
-
-
In Permanent Crisis: Ethnicity in Contemporary European Media and Cinema, Ipek A. Celik (2015)
More LessReview of: In Permanent Crisis: Ethnicity in Contemporary European Media and Cinema, Ipek A. Celik (2015)
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 206 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-47205-272-1, p/bk, $39.95
-
-
-
-
Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television, Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer (eds) (2016)
More LessReview of: Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television, Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer (eds) (2016)
Austin: University of Texas Press, 367 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-47730-817-2, p/bk, $29.95
-
-
-
The Introspective Realist Crime Film, Luis M. García-Mainar (2016)
More LessReview of: The Introspective Realist Crime Film, Luis M. García-Mainar (2016)
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 207 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-13749-652-2, h/bk, £89.99
-
-
-
Horror Film: A Critical Introduction, Murray Leeder (2018)
More LessReview of: Horror Film: A Critical Introduction, Murray Leeder (2018)
New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, ix+276 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-50131-443-8, p/bk, £25.90
-
-
-
Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation, Lilian Munk Rösing (2016)
By Edward KingReview of: Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation, Lilian Munk Rösing (2016)
New York and London: Bloomsbury, 181 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-62892-059-8, h/bk, £31.30
-
-
-
Middlebrow Cinema, Sally Faulkner (ed.) (2016)
By Mary HarrodReview of: Middlebrow Cinema, Sally Faulkner (ed.) (2016)
London and New York: Routledge, 224 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-13877-713-2, p/bk, £28.99
-
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 20 (2022)
-
Volume 19 (2021)
-
Volume 18 (2020)
-
Volume 17 (2020)
-
Volume 16 (2018)
-
Volume 15 (2017)
-
Volume 14 (2016)
-
Volume 13 (2015)
-
Volume 12 (2014)
-
Volume 11 (2013)
-
Volume 10 (2012)
-
Volume 9 (2011 - 2012)
-
Volume 8 (2010 - 2011)
-
Volume 7 (2009)
-
Volume 6 (2008 - 2009)
-
Volume 5 (2007)
-
Volume 4 (2006 - 2007)
-
Volume 3 (2005)
-
Volume 2 (2004)
-
Volume 1 (2002 - 2003)