̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - documentary

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker comes to Cambridge

sjr81 — Tue, 09 May 2017 14:51:48 +0000

Rosi’s most recent documentary, 2016’s Fire at Sea, was an uncompromising look at the everyday life of six locals on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the first port of call for the hundreds of thousands of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe.

Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear award for best film at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy awards in February.

During Rosi’s two-week residency (May 14-28), the Arts Picturehouse will screen the entirety of his work to date, with each screening followed by a Q&A with the director. Rosi will also connect directly with staff and students in the Centre for Film and Screen by delivering masterclasses and participating in a public symposium, Lands, Seas, Bodies: On the cinema of Gianfranco Rosi, on Wednesday, May 24.

International recognition of Rosi soared after Meryl Streep, the jury chair of the Berlin film festival, publically endorsed Fire at Sea as “a daring hybrid of captured footage and deliberate storytelling that allows us to consider what documentary can do. It is urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking.”

Dr John David Rhodes, Director of the Centre for Film and Screen and a specialist in Italian cinema, calls Rosi’s work “indisputably among the most important in the world.”

Audience numbers for documentaries have grown considerably in the last ten years, largely driven by audiences going in search of authenticity in the lived experience.

“It’s a rich moment for documentaries because they provide the ability to respond powerfully and flexibly to geo-political crises,” said Rhodes. “People are starved for contact with the real and with reality. People are trying to find ways to make contact with the world – documentary filmmaking is one way of doing that. It can produce knowledge and experiences that are otherwise closed to us.

“Rosi’s residency offers our students and the wider ̽��ֱ�� the opportunity to engage at close range a working filmmaker of the highest calibre. As was the case last year when we hosted Joanna Hogg (our first filmmaker-in-residence), Rosi’s residency brings to our community of film scholars and students of cinema the opportunity to think about film from the point of view of the film artist. It offers a vital opportunity to test practice and theory against each other, while getting to hang out with one of the most interesting people working in world cinema.”

More information about the screenings and public symposium is available on the Centre for Film and Screen’s website.

Tickets for the screenings including a post-film Q&A can be purchased from the Arts Picturehouse website.

Hailed as “one of the most important artists in any medium”, the award-winning and Oscar-nominated Italian documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi is coming to Cambridge this month as filmmaker-in-residence at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Film and Screen.

Rosi's work is indisputably among the most important in the world.

John David Rhodes

Still from Fire at Sea, the Oscar-nominated documentary by Gianfranco Rosi

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Bringing Ukraine to the screen

sjr81 — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 10:16:14 +0000

Today and tomorrow (November 6/7), the Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film once again offers UK audiences a unique opportunity to experience some of the best of Ukrainian cinema. Free and open to the public, the event is organised by Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an academic centre in the Department of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge.

Since 2008 the Festival has premiered prize-winning new releases as well as provocative forgotten masterpieces; invigorated silent classics with live piano accompaniments; made world headlines with a documentary about Stalin’s man-made famine of 1932-33; and hosted contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers, film scholars, preservationists and musicians who have educated and engaged with well over a thousand attendees.

This year Cambridge Ukrainian Studies is partnering with the Docudays UA International Documentary Human Rights Film Festival to bring six powerful new documentaries to local audiences. DocuDays UA was launched in Kyiv in 2003 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to the development of documentary cinema and to the flourishing of democratic civil society in Ukraine.

Many of the films in the Festival programme confront the tumult of revolution and war in today’s Ukraine with an uncommon honesty, sensitivity and maturity. They avail the viewer of the perspectives of the volunteer doctor, the wounded veteran, the soldier preparing to leave home for war. Other films in the programme meditate upon the passing of generations in a Ukraine very far from today’s headlines: the village and countryside.

“We are very proud and very honoured to collaborate with DocuDays UA in this year’s Cambridge Film Festival of Ukrainian Film”, said Dr Rory Finnin, Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies and Director of the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme. “We share their passion for documentary cinema and their belief in its ability to foster an open dialogue about human rights and social justice in Ukraine and around the world.”

“For the Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film we have chosen both full-length and short documentaries produced during the last two years,” explained Darya Bassel, Docudays Programme Coordinator. “With these screenings we hope to bring Ukraine and its documentary scene closer to international audiences and to create space for a discussion of problems relevant not only for Ukraine but for the whole world.”

Admission to the Eighth Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film on 6-7 November 2015 is free and open to the public, but online registration is required. ̽��ֱ��screenings of Maidan Is Everywhere; ̽��ֱ��Medic Leaves Last; Living Fire; Post Maidan; This Place We Call Home; and Twilight take place in the Winstanley Theatre of Trinity College, Cambridge. Wine receptions follow both the November 6 and 7 screenings.

Over the past eight years, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has become Britain’s pre-eminent showcase for documentary and feature films from and about Ukraine.

Documentary cinema fosters an open dialogue about human rights and social justice in Ukraine and around the world.

Rory Finnin

Still image from the Ukrainian documentary 'Twilight'

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Churchill Archives Centre celebrates 40th year with UNESCO award

amb94 — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 14:30:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��Churchill Archive, the personal papers of Sir Winston Churchill, which contains over one million items, including originals of his best-known phrases and speeches, has been recognised by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), as part of its Memory of the World Programme.

̽��ֱ��collection will now appear on the UK National Register, highlighting its particular importance to the heritage of Britain. Churchill is joined this year by ten other British collections of note, including Hitchcock's Silent Movies and ̽��ֱ��Domesday Book.

“Churchill's words continue to resonate.” said Sir David Wallace, Master of Churchill College, home to the Churchill Archives Centre and the collection. “ ̽��ֱ��notes for his great speeches, the drafts for his many books, and his rich correspondence are the raw material for the study and understanding of his legacy. It has to be right that they are now included on the National Register of our Documentary Heritage.”

UNESCO’s UK Register follows the larger, International Register of Documentary Heritage established in 1997. This list contains many types of globally important documentary, from ancient clay inscriptions and writings on papyrus, to modern digital sound recordings. UK entries to the list include the 1916 film, ̽��ֱ��Battle of ̽��ֱ��Somme and ̽��ֱ��Magna Carta.

A special ceremony will take place on July 9 at the Council Chamber of Tamworth Town Hall where staff from the Churchill Archives will be presented with the award.

“We hope [the] announcement will encourage people to discover these items and collections, as well as some of the other great documentary heritage near them.” said David Dawson, Chair of the UK Memory of the World Committee.

For further information on accessing the archives go to: http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives

̽��ֱ��Cambridge archives which hold the papers of Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Thatcher is celebrating the inclusion of its core collection on the UK National Register of Documentary Heritage, a standard linked to the United Nations Cultural arm.

̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives

Sir Winston Churchill

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Filmed behind bars

amb206 — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 08:13:33 +0000

̽��ֱ��past few weeks have seen a re-emergence of a media phenomenon that I had hoped had been consigned to the mists of a more ignorant age. I refer to the two voyeuristic documentaries made for Channel 4 television and filmed in British prisons, Lifers and Gordon Behind Bars.

Based on interviews with inmates, the Cutting Edge documentary Lifers was shot in Gartree Prison in Leicestershire; the series Gordon Behind Bars is set in Brixton Prison in south London and follows the progress of the irascible celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey as he attempts to set up a food business staffed by prisoners.

Prison particularly, and punishment in general, is a social practice visited upon more than 100,000 of our fellow citizens every year yet remains a hidden business, something that happens to others in some other place, a place away from where the business of the rest of society is conducted.

Like all things hidden or unknown, prison breeds a fascination and a thirst for understanding. This desire to know more is in many ways admirable: the torch of inspection, review and understanding should be shone into the shrouded dark of a society’s furthest reaches. It is through such projects that injustice, abuse, exploitation, malpractice and corruption are exposed and can be addressed. However, what was screened in the past fortnight fell far short of this noble enterprise.

Historically, documentary-makers who focus on prisoners, prison life and the carceral state have, with a few notable exceptions (Rex Bloomstein’s Lifers, 1984, and the follow-up Lifer - Living with Murder, 2004), fixated on the sensational, not to mention prurient, facets of that world. ̽��ֱ��approach has been somewhat scatophilic in nature, concentrating less on shining the proverbial light but instead wallowing in the murk and filth.

Of course, this approach has not been the sole province of documentary-makers. There is, lest they be forgotten, the ‘nick-lit’ brigade of writers who focus on, and thus perpetuate, the standard iniquitous mythologies about prisoners and prison life. However, I digress - the approach taken by the makers of Gordon Behind Bars and Lifers is designed to evoke an emotional response, to titillate, rather than provide a means of understanding. I refer to this form of reporting as penal voyeurism.

̽��ֱ��two recent Channel 4 programmes are prime examples of the two flip sides of the penal voyeuristic coin. On one side, we had Lifers, with its clumsy imagery (the fellow with his budgie) and spotlight on sad and broken individuals carrying the weight of years and a dawning horror of their actions. This is the Guardian-esque approach to prison reportage, painting the prison world as a form of Stygian purgatory.

On the other side of the coin, we have Gordon Ramsey’s effort with its visual attention on the situational control measures of bars, gates, locks, walls and so on. Ramsey’s focus is on the promotion of the work/responsibility ethos that has been popular with successive governments since the Thatcher years, the prurient interest in people’s offending history and the volatile machismo of a men’s local prison (though interestingly, and unusually, Gordon’s machoisms were consigned to the voice over). This is the Sun/Daily Mail-esque approach.

It is unfortunate that once again what may have been a good opportunity to explore some of the more important, rarely heard, stories to be found behind the walls was squandered. To sum up one ex-con of my acquaintance it was … “the same old, same old s**t!”

This is not to say there were not some redeeming points made, wittingly or unwittingly, in both programmes. I spent five years in Gartree (where Lifers was filmed) … five years on the same wing, in the same cell, looking at the same walls and I have often struggled to explain to people how that felt and what impact it had on me.

̽��ֱ��major triumph of Lifers was how its makers managed to convey that sense of isolation and time away (the four World Cups as opposed to 16 years) and of time and lives wasted and the impact of that on the familial self (the man talking to his son on Christmas day was especially evocative). It was this sense of passing moments, moments that would normally be spent with loved ones, moments lost, that was poignant and moving and could have done with further extrapolation.

Oscar Wilde said: “We who live in prison have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.” This was what Lifers managed to capture.

Lifers also successfully captured the power of forensic psychologists in a prison setting. Many people in society view psychologists as benign curative entities with the best interest of the vulnerable at heart. This is simply not true in prison, where contact with psychologists is often coerced, and where psychologists have now become, in the words of Dr Crewe, ‘the new enemy of the prisoner community’. ̽��ֱ��reason for this? ̽��ֱ��power of their word. As one of the men in Lifers pointed out, a psychologist could add ten years to a man’s sentence with ‘…the sweep of their pen!’.

For the lifer, psychologists are seen to fill a malignant position: central to their role is not the interests of the offender but the interests of the public - and these can often be in conflict. With nearly an eighth of the prison population of England and Wales serving some form of indeterminate sentence (such as life or IPP), a large portion of the prison population are now subject to the, largely unchecked, power of prison psychologists.

As for the Ramsey series, let’s hope that the inevitable ‘con done good’ hook will, in rather nauseating fashion, move away from the negative stereotypes thus far on show. However, one thing captured brilliantly by the programme was the form and function of the humour that lurks inside. Prison is not a place for smiles (you DO NOT smile on the landings) but it can often be a place of raucous laughter. Humour, often of the blackest kind, is a way of ameliorating the inescapable impact of being locked away.

It would also have been nice to have some form of follow-up on those that were cast aside by the (in my opinion, dubious) selection criteria employed by Gordon and the shows producers (and the prison). However, I feel that once discarded these chess pieces are not to reappear within this game and therefore our curiosity must remain unsated. A shame.

̽��ֱ��third and final part of the first series of Gordon Behind Bars is screened on Tuesday night. What has shown promise for any future episodes, and what could be a saving grace for the series, is the innovation and bravery shown by the Governor in embracing change, challenging the cynicism of his uniformed staff and actually allowing the Ramsey project to take place. This should not be underestimated and needs further exploration. We can only hope that these facets will be allowed to emerge but, alas, I fear that the head chef’s ego conjoined with sensationalist editing will get in the way.

Jason Warr is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Criminology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. His research topic looks at Forensic Psychologists working in the modern prison. He gained a range of qualifications while in prison and did his first degree (Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method) at the LSE.

For thousands of people in Britain, prison is a grim reality. For the rest of us, it holds a fascination that is all too often simply prurient. Jason Warr, a PhD student at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� who has served a custodial sentence himself, offers a critique of television documentaries filmed behind bars.

A good opportunity to explore some of the more important, rarely heard, stories to be found behind the walls was squandered.

Jason Warr

Guardian newspapers

Jason Warr

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