Refugees on film: Assessing the political strengths and weaknesses of the documentary style

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dc.contributor.authorRobinson, P. Stuart
dc.contributor.editorHemelryk Donald, Stephanieen
dc.contributor.editorDavies Hayon, Kayaen
dc.contributor.editorSorbera, Luciaen
dc.date.accessioned2019-12-10T13:48:32Z
dc.date.available2019-12-10T13:48:32Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractThe article considers one dominant tendency of independent filmmaking, and its impact on the treatment of the refugee (broadly conceived): the application of contemporary documentary methods to both fiction and nonfiction works. The goal is a preliminary exploration of the complex, context-sensitive political effects of the approach, sometimes dubbed the “documentary style”, as resistance of (and/or submission to) the hegemonic global-nationalist order. To this end, the paper investigates specifically how such filmmaking efforts may—or may not—redirect the phenomenological vehicle of imagination away from narrow nationalist imaginaries towards a broader humanist identification and emotional (and normative) investment in the stranger or “the other” per se. The focus is on two works in particular, Another News Story (Orban Wallace, 2017) and Before Summer Ends (Avant la fin de l’été, Maryam Goormaghtigh, 2017), identifying how the filmmakers’ broadly pluralistic techniques help avoid the potentially dehumanising pitfalls of more didactic approaches, but also generate their own potential limitations. While the slackening of the subject’s categorical—and the plot’s narrative—shape may be liberating, it also risks a phenomenological disconnection on the part of the potentially interested spectator. The cognitive effects—including impediments to memory and recall—may thus weaken the work’s potential as a vehicle of cultural awareness and social identification.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationRobinson, P. S. (2019) 'Refugees on film: Assessing the political strengths and weaknesses of the documentary style', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 18, pp. 107-122. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.08en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.08
dc.identifier.endpage122
dc.identifier.issn2009-4078
dc.identifier.issued18
dc.identifier.journalabbrevAlphaville
dc.identifier.journaltitleAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Mediaen
dc.identifier.startpage107
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/9407
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherFilm and Screen Media, University College Corken
dc.relation.urihttp://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue18/ArticleRobinson.pdf
dc.rights© 2019, the Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectRefugeeen
dc.subjectMigranten
dc.subjectFilmen
dc.subjectDocumentary styleen
dc.subjectRealismen
dc.titleRefugees on film: Assessing the political strengths and weaknesses of the documentary styleen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 18: Refugee Filmmaking