Documentary in artistic practice: accented essays from Turkey

Online talk via Teams, 1 December Wednesday, 14:00-15:00 (link)

Documentary and art are seemingly two words in conflict with one another: the former implies a kind of documentation that encloses an objective record of the real world while the latter is defined and evaluated by subjectivity and creativity. Nonetheless – as Grierson’s famous definition of documentary also suggests – subjectivity and creativity are two concepts that inevitably become significant during the documentary filmmaking process as they can produce and/or prevent conventions, possibilities and limitations in a film’s narrative. Moreover, the historical collaboration between documentary filmmakers and visual artists is an indication of the range of forms documentary can take.

As part of the Centre's research seminar series, Elif Akçalı's paper will look at the use of documentary filmmaking in artistic practices in Turkey, especially focusing on those contemporary works that adopt a first-person, subjective viewpoint, made by artists in transition. Akçalı's case studies are Didem Pekün’s Of Dice and Men (2016), Şener Özmen’s How to tell of peace to a living dove? (2015) and Aykan Safoğlu’s Off-white Tulips (2013), which she categorizes as accented essays. Akçalı will analyze the aesthetics of these three works especially in terms of how the subjective viewpoint in their narratives shape our understanding of the social and cultural context, which was largely shaped by the political events during the period in which they were made. The accented first-person address in these works, along with other stylistic choices prone to essayistic documentary filmmaking that they pursue, allow them to enjoy a multiplicity of meanings, raising personal questions that become relevant for collective issues of identity, belonging, culture, history and memory.

Dr. Elif Akçalı completed her PhD in Media Arts in 2014 at Royal Holloway, University of London, and she is Assistant Professor at the Department of Radio, TV and Cinema Department, Kadir Has University (Istanbul, Turkey) since 2015. She teaches the practice of film editing as well as a variety of theoretical courses in screen studies within the undergraduate and graduate programmes at Khas. Her works have appeared in a variety of journals including Critical Arts, Journal of Film and Video and [in]Transition. Her research interests include film style and aesthetics, documentary and essay film, gender and audiovisual production, and videographic film studies. Currently she is leading a two-year research project funded by TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) titled “Women on Screen and Behind the Camera: A Contemporary Outlook of Representation and Labor of Women in Film and TV Industries in Turkey (2017-2021).”

Famous monsters: mediations of celebrified sex offenders in contemporary US media

Online talk via Teams, 16 November Tuesday, 17:00-18:00 (link)

As part of the Centre's research seminar series, Sabrina Moro's paper will examine the imbrications of sexual violence and celebrity culture in contemporary US media. Even before #MeToo, the public fascination with everyman perpetrators of violent sex crimes has been instrumental in shaping cultural understandings of sexual violence. A critical analysis of the media framing of sex offenders who have become famous because of the crime they committed reveals how the celebritisation of sexual violence can be lucrative.

Because of its focus on sex-based offences and its trademark ‘ripped-from-the-headlines’ episodes, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC 1999-) provides an entry point to analyse the celebrification of perpetrators. This paper draws on SVU’s dramatization of the cases against Earl Bradley and Larry Nassar It first explores how celebrified pedophiles are constructed as monstruous abnormalities to maintain the mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality and violence. Even as there are many similarities between the Bradley case and the Nassar case – abuse of medical authority, serial assault of minors – their cultural resonance is not equivalent. The second part of this paper attends to this discrepancy. It shows that the media coverage of Nassar’s trial captures social anxieties related to gender, sexuality, race, and class, as well as the changing nature of fame.

 

Sabrina Moro recently submitted her PhD in Journalism and Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University and is currently a lecturer in French and Media at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests include contemporary celebrity cultures, mediations of sexual violence, and feminist theory. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies and Journal of Fandom Studies. Her chapter on Maria Schneider’s sexual assault testimony will be published next Spring in Screening #MeToo: Rape Culture in Hollywood (SUNY Press).

 

Trigger warning: the paper deals with sexual assault of minors, but no details or depictions are included in the presentation.

The Centre is pleased to announce a seminar by Dr Colin Alexander, 3-4 p.m., November 3rd., 'Hegemony, Morality and Power: A Gramscian Theory of Public Diplomacy'

 

This research seminar examines ways in which public diplomacy should be understood at a theoretical level. It focuses on the key themes of hegemony, morality and power, using the philosophical writings of Antonio Gramsci as a guide. Gramsci is an important source of authority for many academics interested in International Relations (particularly World Order studies), Communications Theory, Culture Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Political Communications. His widespread absence from literature on public diplomacy is therefore interesting in and of itself but so too is public diplomacy’s general lack of sufficient theorisation. This seminar looks to engage with some of those issues and to create a debate about them. The seminar also serves as a book launch of Dr. Alexander's new edited volume 'The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy' (Routledge, 2021).