Academic literature on the topic 'Interdependent filmmaking'

This essay considers experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin’s work as a lifelong process of technological activism and “knowing-making.” Using recent frameworks from Critical Disability Studies, Chamarette demonstrates how Dwoskin’s decades of activism parallel and in some cases pre-date the evolution of Disability Studies as it is currently situated. As an early adopter of digital and ‘cusp-of digital’ technologies (Hi-8 cameras, Mini-DV tapes, email, digital editing suites), Dwoskin’s creative work aligns with and backdates the “Crip Technoscience Manifesto” developed by Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch in 2019. Drawing on Dwoskin’s films and his archive, now housed at the University of Reading Special Collections (UK) Chamarette reframes Dwoskin’s late creative activity as tactics of technological adaptation, crip technoscience, and spheres of influence within digital and non-digital realms. These digital activisms ultimately give cause to reflect on the ambivalent, interdependent, friction-filled relationships between filmmaking, digitality and disability.

Crip Camp (2020) follows the structure of a well-made film (Simon, 1972), and echoes the social issue film genre (Byars, 1991), thereby telling a clear, chronological story that reifies conservative family values as the solution to challenges faced by society. Through this structure, it fails to push for the change it claims to seek, while presenting content that objectifies people with cognitive disabilities, minimizes the contributions of Black disabled people and LGBT+ disabled people, and erases the voices of non-Black disabled people of color. Crip Camp fails to use the medium of film to present (through tools of filmmaking and the content within) alternative interdependent maps (Mitchell & Snyder, 2017), or reimagine what society can be.

(Synopsis to introductory statement): An introductory statement to five documentary films made by Ian Lang in Australia between 1981 and 1997 exemplifying  a 'democratising' model of sustainable and ethical documentary film production. This document critically reflects on the production process of these films to accompany their submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Publication at Griffith University. It finds that a contemporary tendency towards 'post-industrial' conditions allows an observational film-maker to negotiate a critical inter-dependence rather than a romantically conceived 'independence' traditional to the genre. [Full thesis consists of introductory statement plus six DVD videodiscs.]

(Synopsis to introductory statement): An introductory statement to five documentary films made by Ian Lang in Australia between 1981 and 1997 exemplifying  a 'democratising' model of sustainable and ethical documentary film production. This document critically reflects on the production process of these films to accompany their submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Publication at Griffith University. It finds that a contemporary tendency towards 'post-industrial' conditions allows an observational film-maker to negotiate a critical inter-dependence rather than a romantically conceived 'independence' traditional to the genre. [Full thesis consists of introductory statement plus six DVD videodiscs.]
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy by Publication (PhD)
Queensland College of Art
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What does the nature of social associations between documentary filmmakers and documentary participants reveal about the social relations imagined and constructed by the practice of independent Indian documentary. Particularly in the industrial and social context of the NGO-dominated production and distribution environments where governmentality produces specific subject relations and discourses of subject positions (donor, recipient, client, expert), these relationships function as a lens to bring into focus the re-organisational scope of independent documentary practice and its potential to challenge socially assigned identities, relations, functions and thus social relations. In the practice and works of the filmmakers examined, alternate grounds of “interdependent filmmaking” are noticeable, often formed between socially disparate groups by means of reorganised processes such as “negotiated consent”. When projected alongside broader historical practices of documentary, the relationships point towards “interdependent filmmaking” predicated upon horizontal linkages between filmmakers, individuals and communities.

The third of the levels of engagement comprising the structure of sympathy, allegiance, designates the way in which we are oriented towards characters in terms of the values they embody; the way in which we are invited to evaluate and sympathize with characters. Moral evaluation is central to this process, even if we allow that other, non-moral factors may inflect our sympathies towards characters, and recognize that moral systems are variable and moral judgements often matters of dispute. The chapter surveys the filmmaking techniques exploited by filmmakers to shape our sympathies, which give rise to a work’s moral structure and our moral orientation towards its characters. It explores a spectrum of possible moral structures, from Manichean structures positing a sharp contrast between good and bad characters, to graduated structures eschewing such stark contrasts. Eisenstein’s Strike is examined as a work enlisting a Manichean moral structure in the service of revolutionary ideology, while Melville’s Le Doulos, stretching generic convention to breaking point, embodies a bold form of moral (dis)orientation. This final case study also demonstrates the interdependence of perception, cognition, and emotion in our experience of narrative works: while alignment and allegiance remain distinct levels of engagement and aspects of structure, our moral evaluation of characters plays an integral role in narrative understanding and experience.