Abstract
AbstractThe so-called European ‘refugee crisis’ has bred a profusion of audiovisual accounts throughout the region, many of which aimed to give voice to hitherto voiceless, uprooted people. But as many of these ‘untold stories’ gain material expression as storylines, we are urged to consider the implications of yet another form of displacement: from the historical person to the film character, from personal stories to media representations. The growing interest into the migrant issue and visual representations of refugees have played an important role in the public construction of the ‘crisis’ but have also, paradoxically, obscured or silenced migrant voices. The authors of this paper, a documentary filmmaker (Trencsényi) and a social anthropologist (Naumescu) seek to explore narrative strategies and ethics of representation in European documentaries made after 2010 as well as their participatory filmmaking project developed in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis in Hungary. Having collaborated on several documentary films and filmmaking workshops, they approach this issue from the perspective of practitioners, offering a critical reflection as well as possible strategies for those aiming to produce audiovisual works in this field. The inclusion of refugees’ insight and their ways of constructing their own stories as well as their own observations on the receiving societies can open new possibilities for collaboration and creative engagement for social scientists and filmmakers preparing visual fieldnotes, ethnographic and documentary films as well as participatory projects.
Highlights
The so-called European “refugee crisis” has bred a profusion of audiovisual accounts throughout the region, many of which aimed to give voice to hitherto voiceless, uprooted people
The chapter starts with a critical reflection of the humanitarian impulse in recently acclaimed European documentaries engaging with the issue of migration
It zooms afterwards into Hungary, a prominent case at the time, to show how structural conditions including European integration funds, state propaganda and practices of othering have shaped narrative strategies in Hungarian documentary before and after the “refugee crisis” in 2015. It describes a participatory filmmaking project developed within the frames of CEU’s Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) which aimed to respond to this situation by creating a safe space for refugees and asylum seekers in Hungary to develop their own visual stories
Summary
The so-called European “refugee crisis” has bred a profusion of audiovisual accounts throughout the region, many of which aimed to give voice to hitherto voiceless, uprooted people. The authors of this paper, a documentary filmmaker (Trencsényi) and a social anthropologist (Naumescu) seek to explore narrative strategies and ethics of representation in European documentaries made after 2010 as well as a participatory filmmaking project developed in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis in Hungary. Having collaborated on several documentary films and filmmaking workshops, we approach this issue from the perspective of practitioners, offering a critical reflection as well as possible strategies for those aiming to produce audiovisual works in this field. The inclusion of refugees” insight and their ways of constructing their own stories as well as their own observations on the receiving societies can open new possibilities for collaboration and creative engagement for social scientists and filmmakers preparing visual fieldnotes, ethnographic and documentary films as well as participatory projects
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