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Symbolic Camera

This discussion delves into the assumptions about cameras, interactions with people, activist film, truth and authenticity in documentary, and the importance of believing filmmakers. It also explores the works of Mohammad Al Daradji, Michael Moore, and Eliane Raheb.

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Symbolic Camera

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  1. Symbolic Camera

  2. Symbolic Cameras discussion • What are your personal and cultural assumptions of what a camera does? • How did it feel to interact with people with your camera? • What kinds of conversations did you have?

  3. Building on last week’s ideas… • What is activist film? • How can it be expressed? • What can it do? • In different contexts and in relation particularly to documentary, what is truth &authenticity in representations of the world? • How do we believe what filmmakers are telling us, and why does this matter?

  4. Mohammad Al Daradji 2017 - The Journey 2013 - In the Sands of Babylon 2011 - In my Mother's Arms 2009 - Son of Babylon 2008 - War, Love, God, & Madness 2005 - Ahlaam 2003 - No. 438 2003 - The War

  5. "It's very much an open issue for millions of Iraqis," he said. "My aunt is still waiting for news of her son, who went missing during the Iran-Iraq war. Only a year ago, my sister lost her husband and we have no idea if he was captured by al-Qaida or the Iraqi army. But I believe the only way we can deal with the present is by dealing with the past, and our job is to keep this alive in the people's memory."

  6. Roger & Me (1989) Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) Dika: Murder City (1995) The Big One (1997) Bowling for Columbine (2002) Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) Sicko (2007) Slacker Uprising (2008 – a re-edited version of Captain Mike Across America, which he had released in 2007) Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) Where to Invade Next (2015) Michael Moore in TrumpLand (2016) Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

  7. ‘It is impossible to perceive reality as it happens if not from a single point of view, and this point of view is always that of a perceiving subject’.Pasolini

  8. ‘Many filmmaker, going right back to Vertov in the 1920s, have developed techniques of self reflexivity designed to remind the viewer that this is not reality as such but its double, selected and recombined, with everything that might imply.’ Michael Channan, p. 125

  9. Invisibility

  10. The film as such is always made up of images that are never more than fragments, in which history itself is invisible, an absent cause accessible only through textual reconstruction. This textual reconstruction is the work of montage.’. Michael Channan, p. 128

  11. ‘In short, despite appearances, so to speak, documentary has a power, if not directly to reveal the invisible, nonetheless to speak of things that orthodoxy and conservatism, power and authority, would rather we didn’t know and didn’t think about. And this is exactly why we need it’. Michael Channan, p. 132

  12. ElianeRaheb 1995 The Last Screening 1996 Encounter 2001 So Near Yet So Far 2003 Suicide 2008 This is Lebanon 2012 Sleepless Nights 2016 Those Who Remain

  13. The film could be a metaphor for other similar stories, in Lebanon and in the world. It mainly asks: How can human beings create traps for themselves from which it is difficult to be released? How do they find their own ways of salvation when there is no national plan to rid themselves of their wounds? It was built on personal testimony rather than historical documents. This approach allows us to say that the truth is not absolute. The only truth that our film conveys is our own cinematic interpretation of the characters: Shaftari, Maryam, and the other people who move around them. ELIANE RAHEB

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