„Some insights into the history and actuality of (reversed) visual anthropology, West African cinema, indigenous cinema and video activism“
Dr. Andrea Plöger (video activist/ documentary filmmaker with e.g. World Social Forum TV, Afrique-Europe-Interact and timecode e.V. and communication rights activist within the World Forum of Free Media, studied also visual anthropology and wrote her thesis on the World Social Forum Process and alternative media)
In some sessions the Cameroonian filmmaker Richard Djif will be present and talk on the subject of African film. His last film „The last predators“ – a fiction referring to the longtime presidency of many African leaders – caused him to seek shelter from further persecution in Germany.
In the seminar we will retrace some of the history and some actual cases of video activism and indigenous cinema. We will start with the controversy between Ousmane Sembène and Jean Rouch on ethnographic film and retrace some approaches as the „cinéma vérité“ and the „reversed visual anthropology“ and „cinéma d'intervention“.
From there we will move to the appropriation of the medium film/ video by indigenous Amazonians as „indigenous cinema“ from which the later approaches for media reform in Latin America also stem and which play a vital role in the current struggles for indigenous rights and against the destruction of the rain forest on the continent and the building of critical media platforms as in the World Social Forum Process.
As „local“ examples we will follow the history of video activism as in the new social movements in Europe in the 1980s and the globalization critical movements from the 1990s on. As actual and local example of an approach between „reversed visual anthropology „and „video activism“, we will visit a premiere of the „Kiezmonatsschau“ at the Ballhaus/ Naunynritze in Beriln-Kreuzberg.
Possible contributions will be film analyses and scripts for a small documentary video besides a thesis or a presentation. |
