Social Documentaries Research Articles

Comunicación para la concienciación social. Una mirada actualizada al documental social en el marco de las producciones digitales

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es actualizar el estado de la cuestión del documental social y completar los estudios existentes incluyendo la producción documental en plataformas y medios digitales. Proponemos una breve revisión histórica para llegar a la producción contemporánea y comparar las tendencias y estrategias seguidas en esta práctica audiovisual. Hemos realizado un análisis visual a partir de un modelo propio con categorías tradicionales del análisis fílmico complementado con otras categorías específicas para los formatos digitales. El artículo muestra la continuidad de las tendencias tradicionales de la función social, comprometida y reivindicativa del documental, así como nuevas estrategias para la concienciación social.

‘The greatest love stories on Earth?’: the ethics of community in social documentaries

ABSTRACT In the documentary Occupy Love (2012), the filmmaker proposes social movements can be love stories. Taking the filmmaker’s claim seriously, this article questions whether social documentaries can be understood as love stories and, if so, how different formations of love in documentary shape the communities they produce. Looking at three key examples, Triumph of the Will (1935), Roger & Me (1989), and Occupy Love, this article uses the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy to analyze the different types of communities and loving attachments engendered by each film. Taking the view that not all documentary love stories are ethical, it demonstrates how some documentaries subvert the ethics of community by reinforcing neoliberal individualism, while others violently eradicate difference in their drive toward total communion. Finally, some documentaries render the community ‘inoperable’ by illustrating the collective as a network of heterogeneous individuals who are nevertheless committed to a shared ethos. In the final analysis, all three documentaries raise questions about the possibilities and problems associated with thinking community through documentary.

Prácticas, saberes y apropiación del medio audiovisual en los colectivos de comunicación comunitaria de la ciudad de Medellín

En el artículo se presenta la reflexión producto de investigación de las prácticas, saberes y apropiación que del audiovisual agencian los colectivos de comunicación comunitaria: ComúnAudiovisual, Pasolini en Medellín y Mancha Negra, todos ellos con incidencia en barrios periféricos de la ciudad de Medellín. Los audiovisuales de estos colectivos son el resultado de procesos investigativos y metodológicos realizados en amalgama con la comunidad. Esos Audiovisuales Comunitarios (AC); Documentales Sociales Participativos (DSP); Documentales Etnográficos (DE) contienen la memoria y vivencias de las comunidades. Inciden en la identidad y construcción del tejido social comunitario. Comunicación otra, aquella del buen vivir, el cambio social que impulsa a expresarse y al diálogo de saberes.

Dorothea Lange

Purpose Dorothea Lange was one of the first US documentary photographers, and she was empowered by the belief that seeing the effects of injustice, in photographs, could elicit social and political reform. She famously documented the plight of Dust Bowl migrants during the US. Great Depression and harsh difficulties endured by incarcerated Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Lange’s photographs brought suppressed issues of class and race to the surface, depicting those impacted by national tragedies into recognizable, honorable, determined individuals. By showing Americans how suffering and injustice look in real life, she stimulated empathy and compassion. This inquiry is not particularly about the Great Depression or Japanese Internment, though disciplinary concept lessons would certainly support students’ prior knowledge. This lesson focuses students’ attention on broader ideas regarding social justice and how social and political documentary photography transform people’s views about distressing problems, even today. Supporting questions are: How can deep analysis of photographs affect our thoughts and emotions about social issues? What is empathy? How can social documentary photography affect people’s emotions? Supporting questions guide students to answer the greater compelling question, How can visuals, such as photographs, impact social change? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This is an inquiry lesson plan based on a National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade book for Young People award winner, Dorothea’s Eyes, written by Barb Rosenstock. Findings The paper is a lesson plan, which incorporates students’ analyses of primary sources and other research methods to engage the learner in understanding how Dorothea Lange helped change perspectives regarding the need for social and political reform. Though the story is historic, similar social justice topics still persist, worldwide, today. Originality/value Through inquiry and research, students begin to learn how social and political documentary photography began in the USA, and students create their own social documentaries. Though the US Great Depression and Japanese Internment are highly relevant within this lesson, the overall, greater message is about class, race, suffering and how to inspire empathy.

Filming the world from home: windows in personal documentary films in Israel/Palestine

ABSTRACTThis article examines documentary diary and essay films made in Israel/Palestine from 1973–2009, where windows play a central role as architectural elements, cinematic frames and embodiments of the relations between the private and public spheres. The films represent personal, artistic and political turning points: David Perlov's Diary, made in 1973–1977, began with the transformative event of the 1973 war, the film was a turning point in Israeli filmmaking which had until then consisted primarily of Zionist social realist documentaries and popular dramas; Michel Khleifi's Fertile Memory (1980), the director's feature documentary debut, it marked the beginning of a new period in Palestinian filmmaking, by its focus on personal rather than collective. The third example is Anat Even's Closure (2009), a camera positioned on a window reflects on death, loss and transformations in urban history. In all films, the window is both a physical and a symbolic space, mediating private and political, constituting a new material awareness of their interrelations, which is eliminated in contemporary technology based communication. The encounter between camera, window, and viewer reflects and facilitates the act of observing and engaging with conflicts, arguing that it is an opportunity for both self-reflection and political critique.

A selection of documents: Workers’ International Relief and the origins of left-wing independent film and social documentary in the U.S.A.

This publication presents a selection of documents to give an overview of the 15 years’ existence of Workers’ International Relief (WIR), the American branch of Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH)/Mezhrabpom in the United States from 1922 to 1936. In the Soviet Union IAH became the second largest film studio. It also created a film network across the globe, balancing Comintern’s political guidelines with aims to use film for the advancement and support of workers, as well as to counterbalance Hollywood, UFA and other capitalist studios and their distribution monopoly. WIR fostered the distribution of early Soviet films, the propagation of a Soviet-inspired film language and radical new film criticism in the U.S.A. It also helped to create left-wing film groups, such as the (Workers’) Film and Photo League. Their activists in turn made and distributed the first American labour-related, grassroots films, newsreels and social documentaries.

Proposing Favorite Strategies to Produce Social and Political Documentaries for IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting)—By Purpose of Promoting State Social Capital for Adult and University Students

<p>Informing and providing awareness is a part of mass media’s significant responsibilities and social and political documentaries is one of the effective frames in performing this significant duty on adults and university students. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is proposing favorite strategies for IRIB in making social and political TV documentaries with the aim of promoting state social capital for university students and adults. The method is in-depth interview with experts and utilizing the findings of another research titled “an analysis of the views of Communication Sciences students regarding the IRIB’s political and documentaries with an emphasis on the utilitarian approach and gratification level” adopting the Rosengren approach. Results showed that aggressive strategies are the most proper policies for the IRIB. Finally, the formulated aggressive strategies were prioritized and the most important strategy for this research is “producing social and political documentaries with informational approach in an accurate, precise, and comprehensive manner and considering other needs of audiences such as amusement, personal identity, and personal relationships”.</p>

Ages and Stages: the place of theatre in the lives of older people

ABSTRACTDespite the growing interest amongst gerontologists and literary and cultural scholars alike, in arts participation, ageing and the artistic outputs of older people, comparatively little attention has yet been paid to theatre and drama. Likewise, community or participatory theatre has long been used to address issues affecting marginalised or excluded groups, but it is a presently under-utilised medium for exploring ageing or for conveying positive messages about growing older. This paper seeks to address this lack of attention through a detailed case study of the place of one particular theatre – the Victoria/New Victoria Theatre in North Staffordshire, England – in the lives of older people. It provides an overview of the interdisciplinaryAges and Stagesproject which brought together social gerontologists, humanities scholars, psychologists, anthropologists and theatre practitioners, and presents findings from: the archival and empirical work exploring the theatre's pioneering social documentaries and its archive; individual/couple and group interviews with older people involved with the theatre (as audience members, volunteers, employees and sources); and ethnographic data gathered throughout the study. The findings reaffirm the continuing need to challenge stereotypes that the capacity for creativity and participation in later life unavoidably and inevitably declines; show how participation in creative and voluntary activities shapes meanings associated with key life transitions such as bereavement and retirement; and emphasise the positive role that theatre and drama can play as a medium for the inclusion of both older and younger people.

Narratives of change, images for change: Contemporary social documentaries in Italy

Abstract This article focuses on contemporary documentaries about social change in Italy. In particular, I examine the Rome-based ZaLab initiative, an association of media professionals and activists whose video work aims at narrating the stories of marginal social actors. This analysis reflects on the role of ZaLab in current visions of migration in/to Italy, focusing specifically on three documentaries produced by ZaLab: Come un uomo sulla terra/Like a Man on Earth (Segre and Yimer, 2008), Il sangue verde/Green Blood (Segre, 2010) and Mare chiuso/Closed Sea (Liberti and Segre, 2012). Based on a careful film analysis and a series of conversations with the directors, Andrea Segre and Stefano Liberti, I discuss the composition and film-making strategies in these documentaries and assess the significance of such choices in the context of Italian documentary production. The analysis of the documentaries is followed by an investigation of the horizontal practices of communication (both in the production and distribution stages) embraced by ZaLab and their innovative approach to the changes in Italian contemporary communities. Clearly, the notion of citizenship presented in these videos defies the flattening, pejorative images found in mainstream programming and acknowledges the central role played by those social actors who are often silenced or marginalized in the audience-seeking productions of television channels.

An Interview with jesikah maria ross

An interview with jessikah maria ross about the restore/restory project.

Analyse visuelle e représentation de la réalité

The author's objective is to establish a relationship between the theoretical structure at the basis of a qualitative sociological analysis and the forms of visual representation of social reality, such as photography and social documentaries. Visual material becomes an object of analysis when it refers to a society that talks about itself and when it reproduces a reality which it records and makes nameable. The theme of observation is characterized by a complex activity in which perception, imagination, and representation are different functions from the sociological point of view, yet strongly connected because they make it possible for the researcher to interact visually with social reality. Observation procedures ask sociologists to have an eye capable of recognizing and perceiving in a representative way the experiences they have lived and the social facts they have observed and described. These must be portrayed not only as suggestive visual metaphors, but also as a consequence of ‘sensitive hearing’ which is essential in all research phases, from anthropology to ethnography and sociology.

Measuring Impact: The Importance of Evaluation for Documentary Film Campaigns

ABSTRACT Most people would agree that films can significantly impact individual attitudes and cultural narratives, but little research has sought to empirically measure these impacts. It is becoming increasingly important for documentary (and other issue-based) films to justify costs by providing data on the social “return on investment”, but care must be taken to ensure that both the questions asked and the methods used to answer them are valid and respectful. This paper introduces an emerging research agenda for the study of documentary film impacts, discussing both why such evaluation is important and key issues relevant to assessing impact. Author Keywords Film, Impact, Evaluation, Social Change INTRODUCTION Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this

Gwangju Video and the Tradition of South Korean Independent Documentaries

This paper aims to examine the history of the South Korean independent documentary movement since its formation in the 1980s. Questioning why social documentaries arose in the mid 1980s, this study traces the origin of independent documentary back to Gwangju Video, the compilations of the video footage that contain the scenes of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. It argues that Gwangju Video, by presenting anti-statism and communalism, prefigured the major themes of succeeding independent documentaries, and that the Video also provided a model for the collective mode of documentary production. By analyzing documentarian Kim Dong-Won’s The Sanggyedong Olympics and Repatriation and what can be termed post Age-of-Resistance documentaries, this study shows that the themes established by Gwangju Video have been expanded and elaborated through the development of the independent documentary movement.

Big-eyed, wide-eyed, sad-eyed children: Constructing the humanitarian space in social justice documentaries

With increased media access to global events, humanitarian advocates within the Western elite have illuminated subaltern populations—those who are cut off from mobility as a result of economics, race, gender, and class. The space in which this subaltern population becomes visible is often the result of Western mediation of events that are defined as newsworthy by mainstream media or of strategic value to private advocacy groups.In this article I explore the neo-colonialism of mediation in the use of images of and produced by children in Born Into Brothels: The Children Of Calcutta's Red Light District (Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, 2004), Invisible Children (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole, 2003), and Shake Hands With The Devil (Peter Raymont, 2004). Despite the intention of the filmmakers, their position of privilege does not consistently provide a perspective from which the representation of the other is acknowledged or challenged.

Media and Metanoia: Documentary ‘Impact’ Through the Lens of Conversion

How do contemporary understandings of religious conversion and formation shed light on the “impact” and “effectiveness” of social change media? This paper evaluates three case studies, public television documentaries produced in the mid-1990s, to reflect on their social effect. Contemporary conversion theory provides a nuanced perspective with which to interpret the nature and circumstances under which social documentary—media created specifically so as to have a social effect—may in fact be said to have an “impact.” Innumerable media theorists have discredited market models where the uncritical television viewer gets off her couch straightaway and goes out to join a social movement in the same manner as she might buy a new brand of toothpaste, and yet an expectation of being able to demonstrate (often quantifiable) “results” insistently follows documentarians and public television outreach professionals. This “high-impact” model may be seen to be analogous to a “Road to Damascus” view of instant and permanent religious conversion, likewise discounted yet tenacious. It is an illuminating exercise to consider the operations of documentary media from the perspective of developmental conversion theorists such as Rambo, Tippett, Fowler, Lovland and Stark, and others. In this light, it is possible to understand both how these documentary case studies did create certain very particular kinds of change, as well as why most social documentaries, in truth, do not.

Cinema 16: A Showcase for the Nonfiction Film

NEW YORKERS no longer have to be school children, "shut-ins," or club members in order to see documentary films. Cinema 16, at first an ambitious dream to create a permanent showcase for 16-mm. documentary and experimental films, has today become very much a reality. More than 3,000 persons crowded into New York's modern Central Needle Trades Auditorium to see one of Cinema 16's shows. Radio stations and magazines carried announcements, and the New York Times alone printed releases in three different sections of one Sunday issue. Organized on a shoestring by people with more enthusiasm than experience, Cinema 16 has validated its original contentions: first, that there were scores of superior nonfiction films gathering dust on film-library shelves; and second, that there were large potential audiences eager to see them. Cinema 16 offers films that comment on the state of man, his world, and his crises, either by means of realistic documentation or through experimental techniques. It "glorifies" nonfiction. It finds excitement in the life of ants, Hindustan music, microbiology, aboriginal life. It hails a film that is a work of art, but will not hesitate to present a film that is important only because of its subject matter. Its avant-garde films comment on the tensions and psychological insecurity of modern existence or are significant expressions of modern art. Its social documentaries stimulate rather than stifle discussion and controversy. Incorporated as an educational, nonprofit, membership society, it has, since its inception in October, 1947, presented more than eighty films. They include Julian Huxley's Monkey into Man, Grierson's Night Mail, Lamentation (a dance study of Martha

Cinema 16: A Showcase for the Nonfiction Film

NEW YORKERS no longer have to be school children, shut-ins, or club members in order to see documentary films. Cinema 16, at first an ambitious dream to create a permanent showcase for 16-mm. documentary and experimental films, has today become very much a reality. More than 3,000 persons crowded into New York's modern Central Needle Trades Auditorium to see one of Cinema 16's shows. Radio stations and magazines carried announcements, and the New York Times alone printed releases in three different sections of one Sunday issue. Organized on a shoestring by people with more enthusiasm than experience, Cinema 16 has validated its original contentions: first, that there were scores of superior nonfiction films gathering dust on film-library shelves; and second, that there were large potential audiences eager to see them. Cinema 16 offers films that comment on the state of man, his world, and his crises, either by means of realistic documentation or through experimental techniques. It glorifies nonfiction. It finds excitement in the life of ants, Hindustan music, microbiology, aboriginal life. It hails a film that is a work of art, but will not hesitate to present a film that is important only because of its subject matter. Its avant-garde films comment on the tensions and psychological insecurity of modern existence or are significant expressions of modern art. Its social documentaries stimulate rather than stifle discussion and controversy. Incorporated as an educational, nonprofit, membership society, it has, since its inception in October, 1947, presented more than eighty films. They include Julian Huxley's Monkey into Man, Grierson's Night Mail, Lamentation (a dance study of Martha