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).”

Braber on the concept of identity in the East Midlands

Braber, Natalie (2014). "The concept of identity in the East Midlands of England", English Today 30(2), 3-10.

When considering language variation in the UK, linguists have frequently considered the North/South divide and the linguistic markers separating the two regions, for example by investigating the vowel speakers use in words like ‘grass’ and whether the words ‘put’ and ‘putt’ sound the same or not. But it has been noted that this is not a straightforward division and that this situation is more complex. There are clear stereotypes for the North and South – but how do areas like the East Midlands fit into the picture? The boundaries between North and South are defined in different ways and in linguistic studies the East Midlands have been described as belonging to the North and to the South. Linguistically, the question has been raised whether there is a clear North/South boundary or whether there is a transition zone in the Midlands. Natalie Braber's paper revisits this question from the point of view of young people living in the East Midlands, to examine their sense of identity and whether this cultural divide is salient to them.

The East Midlands is a problematic area in its definition geographically as there is no overall agreement in which regions belong to the East Midlands, and people may have difficulty in relating this to their own sense of identity. It seems that for many the North/South divide is a natural one but what do non-linguists, and specifically young people, think? Although the East Midlands may be the geographical centre of England, it is not in any sense the perceived centre of England. It is an area which can be hard to locate perceptually and has been referred as ‘neither here nor there’ and as a ‘no-man’s land’. It seems that a definition of where the East Midlands is and what to call it is problematic, and this paper will deal with these issues to attempt to resolve them.

For the entire article, click here. 

'How Gay is Football this Year?'

Liz Morrish recently gave a paper at the Queering Paradigms IV conference (with Helen Sauntson, University of Birmingham) exploring how 'desire' operates within women's Varsity football.

Their paper starts by considering arguments from Bucholtz and Hall (2004; 2005), Morrish and Leap (2006) Morrish and Sauntson (2007) about how sexual identity emerges in context, is done relationally (i.e. between interactants) and can be linguistically signalled in various ways. Differences in culture, class, gender and race all coalesce in the production of sexually dissident identity. Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004; 2005) ‘intersubjective tactics’ framework offers a clear framework of analysis for the study of language and sexual identity. The framework is informed by aspects of queer theory and sociolinguistic theory. The framework sits well within the sociolinguistic Communities of Practice framework advocated by Eckert ( 2000) and further developed by Eckert and Wenger (2005). Queer theory reminds us that identity is not fixed, but permeable. The framework focuses analysis on three different dimensions of intersubjective enactment of identity:  adequation and distinction; authentication and denaturalisation; authorisation and illegitimation -- through which identity is intersubjectively constructed in local contexts of language use.

In this paper, they applied the tactics of intersubjectivity framework to data from conversations within a women’s football team, comprising a number of straight, questioning, bisexual and newly out lesbians. In the data, desire is constantly evoked as a way of performing adeqaution and distinction, and in this, simultaneously doing the work of identity in this context. They suggest that in a context where sexual identity is highly salient, unfixed and eroticised, desire becomes the vehicle and proxy for the signalling of adequation, authentication and authorization. In this way, enthusiastic expressions of heterosexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality reveal a celebration of sexual discovery in late adolescence, together with experimentation with the limits of tolerance. 

Liz Morrish (Nottingham Trent University, UK) and Helen Sauntson (University of Birmingham UK), “How gay is football this year?” Desire as adequation and distinction in a women’s Varsity football team, Queering Paradigms IV conference (Rio di Janeiro), July 2012.