- Convenors:
-
Caterina Sartori
(Goldsmiths (University of London))
Stephen Hughes (Royal Anthropological Institute)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Alessandra Ferrini
(University of the Arts London)
- Format:
- Workshop
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 7 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We welcome proposals from filmmakers who wish to receive feedback on a film work-in-progress at any stage of production. The selected participants will receive feedback from an expert and from their peers in a supportive environment.
Long Abstract:
We welcome proposals from filmmakers who wish receive feedback on a film work-in-progress at any stage of production. The selected participants will get a chance to screen and present their work to an expert: either a filmmaker or an academic drawn from the wide RAI film network who can comment on their work in a generative way. The sessions will be moderated by RAI Film Festival directors Caterina Sartori and Stephen Hughes, and they will be open to the festival audience. We aim to provide a creative and nurturing environment in which filmmakers will benefit from the expertise and sensibility of senior practitioners, scholars and fellow filmmakers. It is an opportunity to receive valuable feedback and encouragement, to think through issues and open questions, and to connect with a network of peers.
Each selected participant will have 30 minutes to present their work and receive comments.
In your proposal please provide:
- a brief summary of your project or a treatment
- information on what stage your project will be at (pre-production, production, post-production)
- an indication of what aspect you would like feedback on (for example but not limited to.: editing, sound design, narrative structure)
- OPTIONAL: a link to a sample of up to 5 minutes of your current project. This can be a trailer or a segment of a longer piece.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 7 March, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
My short film, 'Weights and Measures', created through practice research, experiments with critical ways to expose the histories that colonial film holdings record and represent. I am collaborating with a music composer in order to increase the film's impact. I would value feedback through the RAI.
Paper long abstract:
'Weights and Measures' is a short film (6’38) created through practice-based research using film footage held in the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection, Bristol (c.1930s-1950s). It takes its title from a Central African Film Unit film, 'Weights and Measures' (1959). The film is constructed of sequences organised thematically, including images of subjects looking directly at the camera, infrastructural works and hard labour, forms of transport, marching and military drills, and landscape surveys. I initially conceived the film as a pilot project in order to experiment with making colonial film holdings more public and trialling critical ways to expose the histories they record and represent. The sequences I selected worked together thematically, but the fact that the images were silent suggested an added layer (or layers) of sound would potentially draw out critical meanings and create greater impact. I am currently working with the British-Nigerian composer and performer, Juwon Ogungbe, to create a musical score. We collaborated very successfully on a UK tour in 2014-15 of two colonial films, 'De Voortrekkers' (1916) and 'Siliva the Zulu' (1927), with the live accompaniment of his original scores. I expect that for the film work-in-progress workshop the project will be in the post-production stage with a musical soundtrack added and possibly a fuller sound design to be developed. I would value feedback on the film’s form, its soundtrack, and the film’s potential as a prototype for creating themed exposures of colonial film holdings in the future.
LINK:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18O0V4tCB3vK0siNVkhd0tr-UQRAjTJbt/view?usp=share_link
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on archival footage from 9/11 Congressional hearings and the director’s involvement in the Massachusetts Driver’s Licenses for All campaign, Unverifiable interrogates how driver's licenses became crucial for the criminalization of illegalized residents' mobility.
Paper long abstract:
Note for organizers: the film is in production and I am looking for feedback on the narrative structure and editing.
Abstract: Unverifiable draws attention to the post-9/11 securitization of identity documents and its role in the criminalization of illegalized residents’ mobility. Drawing on archival footage from 9/11 Congressional hearings and the director’s involvement in the Massachusetts Driver’s Licenses for All campaign, the film interrogates how driver's licenses became tools of homeland security. While some U.S. states had already introduced legislation preventing illegalized residents from obtaining driver’s licenses as early as the 1990s, the passage of laws such as the 2005 REAL ID Act symbolized a significant shift in the federal approach to homeland security. Particularly, this mandate required that each state develop an enhanced driver’s license which would be both restricted to legal residents and required to board domestic flights and enter federal buildings. Crucially, this federal mandate forced state legislatures to turn the driver’s license into a de facto national ID, constraining illegalized residents’ mobility through the issuance of an identification card for which they were ineligible, and introducing ‘federal compliance standards’ which would creating additional barriers for the passage of state driver’s license laws. By tracing the two-decade-long implementation of the REAL ID Act and the trajectory of the Massachusetts local driver’s license debate, the film questions the ways in which identity documents have been used to racialize and other illegalized communities.
Paper short abstract:
This talk examines the possibilities for 're-sounding' the Idi Amin photographic archive: a collection of around 85,000 negatives, produced by Amin's official photographers, that I helped to uncover, with Malachi Kabaale and Winston Agaba, at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation in Kampala in 2015.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, the field of visual anthropology has paid increasing attention to the ways in which photographs may be ‘re-sounded’, which is to say, brought into relation with voice, narrative, and other elements of sonic experience. This presentation, which is very much a work in progress, examines the possibilities, and implications, of such a move for our understanding of the Idi Amin archive: a collection of around 85,000 photographic negatives, produced by Amin's official photographers, that I helped to uncover, with Malachi Kabaale and Winston Agaba, at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation in Kampala in 2015. Since 2018, the University of Western Australia, in partnership with the University of Michigan, have been leading a project to digitise this archive, to conduct research on it, and to bring it to public attention including through exhibitions. In this presentation, I want to introduce the next phase of my own research on the archive, which is exploring what affordances the photographic archive has to be re-sounded, in various ways. I want to also explore how these, and other kinds of multimodal ethnographic interventions, may further the goal of doing justice for the up to 300,000 Ugandans who lost their lives at the hands of the Amin regime.